October 14th, 2016 was an exciting day for baseball fans in Toronto, Ontario. The Toronto Blue Jays prepared to face off against Cleveland in the American League Championship Series. Catch anything out of sorts about that last sentence (specifically relating to the teams)? Read it one more time. The full name of the team the Cleveland Indians was purposefully left out. The Toronto Blue Jays play-by-play announcer, Jerry Howarth, also uses selective vocabulary like this. Howarth’s protest efforts towards racial terms in broadcasting will be the focus of this paper.
The Canadian Press (2016) wrote an article summarizing an interview conducted by the radio station Sportsnet 590AM pertaining to Howarth’s non-usage of the word “Indian” prior to …show more content…
). It should not be thought of as the complete halting of a particular media message. A more appropriate metaphor for culture jamming is a person touching a weed and getting pinched by a thorn. The person in this case are teams such as the Cleveland Indians, and the thorn would be Howarth. Howarth is by no means shutting down the franchise of such teams. However, sometimes saying nothing can be much louder than saying anything, as Klein (2000) explains that the tool of culture jamming, in this day and age is “…more effective than most [other methods] at breaking through the media barrage” (p. 389). This is exactly what Howarth is doing. Through jamming the messages of the Cleveland Indians and resisting to use common baseball terms such as “powwow”, he is creating a discussion that questions team’s ethics, and baseball broadcasting culture as a …show more content…
Jerry Howarth breaks the dominant narrative of stereotypes in sports by disregarding racist terms when he announces. Howarth’s compassion for indigenous people results in culturally jamming the idea that racism is acceptable. The jamming helps the larger movement of counterculture for which Howarth is a great leader and advocate. He continues to fight for what he believes is just, despite the normalization surrounding him. Efforts such as Howarth’s are powerful and noble causes, as they amplify the voices of those unheard or
The Canadian Press (2016) wrote an article summarizing an interview conducted by the radio station Sportsnet 590AM pertaining to Howarth’s non-usage of the word “Indian” prior to …show more content…
). It should not be thought of as the complete halting of a particular media message. A more appropriate metaphor for culture jamming is a person touching a weed and getting pinched by a thorn. The person in this case are teams such as the Cleveland Indians, and the thorn would be Howarth. Howarth is by no means shutting down the franchise of such teams. However, sometimes saying nothing can be much louder than saying anything, as Klein (2000) explains that the tool of culture jamming, in this day and age is “…more effective than most [other methods] at breaking through the media barrage” (p. 389). This is exactly what Howarth is doing. Through jamming the messages of the Cleveland Indians and resisting to use common baseball terms such as “powwow”, he is creating a discussion that questions team’s ethics, and baseball broadcasting culture as a …show more content…
Jerry Howarth breaks the dominant narrative of stereotypes in sports by disregarding racist terms when he announces. Howarth’s compassion for indigenous people results in culturally jamming the idea that racism is acceptable. The jamming helps the larger movement of counterculture for which Howarth is a great leader and advocate. He continues to fight for what he believes is just, despite the normalization surrounding him. Efforts such as Howarth’s are powerful and noble causes, as they amplify the voices of those unheard or