Camas and 1080 The Fan not exactly friendly these days
It was an interesting Friday on the radio.
Folks at 1080 The Fan, the biggest sports station in the market, had some harsh comments directed at Rory Oster, the athletic director at Camas High School for an e-mail he sent to the station declining The Fan’s request to cover a Camas football game.
Here is a link to that letter, courtesy of Jason Scukanec’s twitter feed.
I talked to Oster today soon after I heard some of the radio segment.
“I’m not interested in a feud. I don’t have time for it,” Oster said.
He acknowledged the school did not want The Fan covering its game, and he was the one who declined the staion’s request to cover the Sherwood, Ore., vs. Camas game. Mostly, he said, it was for what he called negative comments about the community itself.
To hear the 1080 The Fan’s segment, go to Primetime with Isaac and Big Suk here.
UPDATE: To be more specific, Camas denied The Fan from broadcasting the game from Doc Harris Stadium. However, The Fan did have a reporter at Friday’s game, as well as at last week’s game.
A few personal thoughts:
Critiquing Oster’s letter is fair play. It is concerning to have access denied for news coverage due to an opinion. Plus, the person who made the “negative” comments about Camas has nothing to do with the people involved in game coverage. I would hope no team in Clark County would deny me access to cover a game because of the opinion of someone else.
The name-calling on the radio was, well, I guess that’s just radio. Society loves name calling. I’m not immune to it. I say terrible things all the time. Glad I’m not on the radio every day. I know I’d fall into that trap. Regardless, the radio personalities were on solid ground with the argument and did not need to resort to name-calling.
The Columbian actually heard about Rory’s letter in late July. I looked into the issue. It is news when a school district denies media coverage due to a negative opinion. However, 1080 The Fan, at the time, did not want to make a big deal of this. Guess that changed today.
Regardless, what I’m most puzzled by is the fact that several people in high positions within the Camas School District have told me they just want “this” to go away, to just move on from it. The “this” is the coverage of football coaches initially being suspended, then winning their appeal, but the athletic department being put on probation. That’s where all this “negative” coverage from The Fan started.
So why, then, would the school deny access to The Fan, more than a year after the suspension/probation story had run its course? If the school wanted to move on, the best thing would have been to simply allow the game coverage.
It’s a big game between two great programs, one from Oregon, one from Washington. And the biggest radio station in the market wanted to cover it.
Camas could have taken the high road here. And that would have shown that Camas had, indeed, moved on.
