Orioles CEO John Angelos shows America how to abuse your power
Timothy P. Carney
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John Angelos is the CEO of the Baltimore Orioles, and in his father’s illness, he is the acting owner. The Orioles own 77% of the television station MASN, which carries Orioles games.
That makes Angelos the boss of the announcers who call and comment on Orioles games as well as the Washington Nationals’ announcers. Apparently Angelos has decided that Orioles announcers should never say anything bad about the Orioles past or present, for any reason.
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At least that’s the logical inference from multiple press reports that MASN suspended announcer Kevin Brown for accurately noting that the Orioles were not as good in recent years as they are now.
That’s right. Here are the comments by Brown that reportedly led to his suspension:
“[Orioles manager] Brandon Hyde has felt that this has been maybe the toughest ballpark to play in. But the Orioles have a chance to do something special today. They’ve already clinched at least a split in the series, winning two of the first three. And they could pick up a series win behind Tyler Wells today.
“It’s been a minute. The Orioles split a two-gamer with the Rays in June. They had lost their last 15 series here at Tropicana Field. You have to go back to when our now-colleague Brad Brach picked up a win in the series finale June 25, 2017, the last time the Orioles won a series here in St. Pete. They’ve already gone 3–2 at the Trop this year after winning 3 of 18 the previous three years combined. It is a stark difference, Ben, and it is not a bad Rays team. It’s not like all of a sudden the Rays became slouches in the American League East. They’ve led this division every day but now two, and the Orioles once again are back alone in first place.”
One sports blogger said this on Monday:
A website called Awful Announcing added more reporting to the claim, as did the Athletic. This story isn’t 100% confirmed, but it hasn’t been rebutted.
This is an important dynamic. The Orioles own MASN, and so Angelos believes MASN should serve the Orioles, even if it’s at the expense of serving Orioles fans. That precludes any idea of independence.
A baseball commentator who is not free to comment on his team’s mistakes or even its past woes is not able to give viewers and fans the context and information they want. That decreases the quality of the announcing and thus denigrates the experience of being an Orioles fan.
This is a case against the team owning the television station. But since the O’s do own MASN, a prudent Orioles owner would give broad independence to MASN, just as media corporations give independence to their editors and reporters.
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People with power often like to impose speech codes because they know what is right and wrong or because they know what is supposedly “harmful.” This is an abuse of power.
Having the power to enforce speech codes doesn’t mean you should enforce strict speech codes. If the reports on Brown’s suspension are true, then John Angelos abused his power.