It took social media outrage to catch up with Sterling

April 29--In 1983, coaching candidate Rollie Massimino angrily recounted how San Diego Clippers owner Donald Sterling -- he would move the NBA team to Los Angeles a year later -- used the N-word to describe his players during an interview. Hardly anyone noticed.

In 2006, the U.S. Department of Justice brought charges of housing discrimination against Sterling, alleging that he refused to rent apartments to African-Americans. The suit was settled three years later for $2.75 million, creating a minor hubbub that soon passed.

In 2009, in documents included in a wrongful-termination lawsuit, former Clippers general manager Elgin Baylor attributed this quote to Sterling: "Personally, I would like to have a white Southern coach coaching poor black players." The world went about its business.

Nothing Sterling has done or said since buying the Clippers in 1981 has resulted in anything approaching the mass outrage we have witnessed since Saturday morning, when TMZ.com posted an audio file of the franchise owner urging his young mistress not to be photographed with black people or bring them to Clippers games.

Since then, NBA commissioner Adam Silver has banned Sterling from remaining playoff games, and many of the Clippers' biggest corporate partners have pulled their sponsorships. Some fans have discussed their intention to boycott Game 5 of the Warriors-Clippers series, set for Tuesday at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Before that, Silver is expected to announce league-imposed sanctions against Sterling, which may include an attempt to force him to sell the team.

Donald Sterling has not changed noticeably over the years. He has long been considered the NBA's cheapest, kookiest and most bigoted owner. What has changed is the media landscape around him.

"It came out Saturday, right?" Ed Sherman, who writes about sports media at his site ShermanReport.com, said of the Sterling story. "So then boom, it's on ESPN the whole day. Then you've got TNT (basketball coverage), and those guys get to weigh in, and then all that stuff gets posted ... via either social media or YouTube. It all kind of feeds on itself, and you've got this big boulder that keeps getting bigger and bigger, and it's rolling right toward Sterling."

If this were 1984 or 1994 or maybe even 2004, Sterling's cringe-inducing words never would have made it to public ears, and he would have been sitting courtside at Oracle Arena in Oakland for Game 4 on Sunday. Thanks to the Internet and social media platforms and the ubiquity of hand-held computers, he became the biggest story of the weekend, and the groundswell of sentiment against him may be too massive to withstand.

This is not an isolated example, of course. Scandals like the imaginary girlfriend of Notre Dame football player Manti Te'o and the Richie Incognito bullying case tend to unfold on social media before they are fully examined by traditional news sources like newspapers and network television -- and it happens at the speed of electricity.

Within a couple hours after TMZ first posted the Sterling audio, links to the page were erupting on Twitter. It wasn't long before people were weighing in on sites like Facebook and Tumblr, and rapper Snoop Dogg delivered a profanity-laced response via Instagram -- the site on which Sterling's girlfriend, Vanessa Stiviano, had attracted his ire by posting a photo of her and NBA legend Magic Johnson.

The aftermath can be seen as a clear flexing of Twitter's muscle, not unlike the Kony 2012 campaign and some of the independence movements that helped define the Arab Spring between 2010 and 2013.

"I spend a lot of time discussing what's wrong with social media, what we shouldn't be doing, best practices," said Kerry Rego, a Santa Rosa-based social media consultant, author and instructor. "But I'm a hopeful person, and when I see something amazing and wonderful that social media is a big part of, I spend much of my time discussing that to inspire people in what can be done. Yes, everybody takes photos of their coffee and takes selfies, but they also can change the world with these tools."

But if the new media have given voice to citizen-consumers and greatly sped the flow of information, they also have created thorny issues for news outlets.

TMZ, after all, is the same site that announced on April 10 that 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick was the subject of a sexual assault investigation in Miami. Much of the story turned out to be false -- Kaepernick wasn't even at the scene when the incident took place, and police didn't accuse anyone of assault.

Even in the latest uproar, it isn't clear who taped Sterling, or why, and what TMZ provided to acquire the audio. That may give news organizations pause as they must quickly decide whether to get involved.

"I think you do have to not just rush to print," said Jonah Raskin, professor emeritus of communication studies at Sonoma State. "You have to think about it, try to ascertain what the facts are and nail down sources and have corroboration. . . . I mean, I think you can be prudent and you can follow ethical standards and still make use of those kinds of sources."

Trading in gossip can undermine a newspaper's reputation. But by sitting on the sidelines you risk being left out of an important breaking story. The resulting tightrope walk can look pretty awkward.

"I wish I had a dime for every time I heard the word 'allegedly' in the last two days," Sherman said. "I'd make a lot of money. (Sports commentator) Stephen A. Smith was on George Stephanopoulos yesterday, and it was just amazing. He's railing on about this guy, and then every fourth word he had to throw in 'allegedly.' "

Meanwhile, Sterling's alleged transgressions are already having tangible ramifications. State Farm Insurance, Mercedes-Benz, Virgin America airlines, Kia Motors, Red Bull, Yokohama Tires, Car Max and AQUAHydrate all announced they were severing financial ties to the Clippers on Monday.

"Alleged comments by Sterling are offensive/reprehensible. Suspending LAC ads. Our support of players/sport is unwavering," Kia Motors America said -- via Twitter, of course.

Phil Barber can be reached at [email protected].

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