Media Equation: In Ray Rice Scandal, TMZ Scores on a Fumble

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Media |In Ray Rice Scandal, TMZ Scores on a Fumble

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The N.F.L., arguably the three most powerful letters in branding, bumped into three other letters â€” TMZ â€” and was thrown for a huge loss.

Last week, the gossip website TMZ released a video in which Ray Rice, the star running back of the Baltimore Ravens, is shown cold-cocking his fiancÃ©e in the elevator of an Atlantic City casino. The National Football League and its commissioner, Roger Goodell, are now in a position of having to explain why Mr. Rice was suspended for just two games and whether league officials had seen the video before issuing the suspension. Robert S. Mueller III, the former director of the F.B.I., has been tapped to investigate the matter.

Itâ€™s a huge story that has spread to every corner of the media, in part because the N.F.L. plays such a core role in American life. And TMZ now has the league on the run.

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Unlike so many media brands, TMZ doesnâ€™t derive its power from its reputation â€” kind of the opposite, really â€” but from its aggression. After the N.F.L. meted out a penalty widely criticized as too lenient, TMZ applied pressure and â€” probably â€” some money to shake loose cold, hard evidence that the punishment hardly fit the crime.

The N.F.L., which has led a somewhat charmed life in terms of news coverage, is now besieged by punishing headlines. In addition to the Rice scandal, Adrian Peterson, a star running back for the Minnesota Vikings, was indicted Friday on child abuse charges. On the same day, the league admitted in court documents that one-third of retired players would suffer from long-term cognitive problems, many at a young age. Over the long haul, the rugged news is bound to take some sparkle out of game day and, perhaps, slow the business momentum of a league that has known only growth.

Not everyone has given the league a pass, and TMZ, since launching a sports site a few years ago, has brought remarkable aggression to the locker room and beyond. Obtaining the grainy security video that depicted the attack inside the elevator was a journalistic act that rendered words, and the N.F.L.'s stance on the incident, pretty much beside the point. We all saw what happened.

In this instance, the value of the information derived from the artifact, not the outlet that released it. There is a lesson in there for legacy news organizations that believe they can hold back the tide on insurgents because they have a different and deeper relationship with consumers. It has become clear that audiences will tune into and believe whoever has the goods.

TMZ has a tactical advantage. While networks continue to play peekaboo about whether they pay for news â€” many do â€” TMZ is more than happy to pony up for information that will tilt the field and draw hits. A line in the sand long drawn by journalismâ€™s church ladies and observed by most mainstream organizations has all but been blown away. Most people donâ€™t care where the news came from or how it was obtained. And if the N.F.L. is not interested in seeing what happened in the elevator, the rest of us certainly are.

Seeing is more than believing; it is telling. When Mr. Rice knocked out Janay Palmer, the woman he would eventually marry, it did not scan as an emotional act. He took her out casually, seeming unsurprised when she dropped to the floor. His easy savagery explains why he pulled her out of the elevator with all of the ceremony of taking out the garbage.

TMZ is a gossip site, but gossip is news by another name when the subjects or their actions rise to the level of public interest. Iâ€™ve visited its offices, and underneath the newsroom set you see on syndicated television, there is a beast that must be fed. Harvey Levin, TMZâ€™s founder, buys-sells-trades his way to scoops big and small, and he knows a big story when he sees it.

TMZ may be owned by Time Warner, but it is an ill-mannered guerrilla outfit taking aim at and drawing blood from big, fat targets. Unlike the broadcast networks and ESPN, which have become increasingly dependent on the mighty N.F.L. for continued relevance and profit, TMZ is an outrider that reports without regard to propriety or relationships. Itâ€™s no coincidence that TMZ also broke the story of the National Basketball Association owner Donald Sterlingâ€™s racist remarks by posting an audio clip of his hateful words. He was eventually compelled to sell the team.

But the professional sports leagues arenâ€™t the only big organizations that should be quaking in their boots. As journalists, we like to think that the august platforms we work on and our learned interpretation of facts create value and credibility, but in an age of digital artifacts and digital distribution, the pure act of discovery can create big news. The N.B.A. and N.F.L. exposÃ©s, along with an earlier story about sexual assault at Florida State University, created mayhem because each story relied on the publication of police reports, video or audio, combined with reporting. Tiger Woods also ended up deeply damaged by TMZâ€™s exposing ugly facts and has never seemed to fully recover.

We live in a time when if it can be known, it will be known. By now, people have learned the hard way to be careful about what they commit to paper, but much of what we are seeing is people living their life and doing the things they do when no one is looking. For some, that might be talking in racist ways to girlfriends, and for others, that might mean hitting them and then spitting on them.

Once that information is out there in way that can be embedded and referred to, it goes from being hidden to being everywhere. Video, in particular, is a powerful medium when combined with the network effects of the web. Part of the reason that President Obama is leading us into yet another conflict in a distant place is the profound effect of the videos depicting the beheadings of two American journalists.

The Rice video was so profoundly disgusting that it has managed to implicate a whole league and may have imperiled the N.F.L.'s commissioner, depending on what he knew and when he knew it.

The implications are odious enough to break up the general bromance between ESPN and the N.F.L. The cable network is now pursuing the story with guns blazing, but at some point people are going to stop asking why the N.F.L. did not seek the TMZ video and wonder why the sports press didnâ€™t either. The N.F.L.'s dominance in live-action television means that it is often given the benefit of the doubt by the news divisions of big media companies. Itâ€™s worth noting that Time Warner, the owner of TMZ, has few big deals with the N.F.L.

The influence of a site that was initially named after the Thirty Mile Zone â€” a shorthand used by the industry to describe the area around Hollywood â€” has grown to the 3,000-mile zone, a countrywide reach. Thereâ€™s a reason for that. All the worldâ€™s a stage, as Shakespeare pointed out, and all the men and women merely players â€” they have their exits and their entrances, and by now we can be pretty sure that those players will be known, their deeds will become legend and consequences will ensue.