On Thursday, Time Magazine came out with a piece on my friend Nisha Sadekar and her organization Play Golf Designs.  Play Golf Designs is a company that offers golf entertainment services to nonprofits, charities, corporations, and private groups. 

The ladies that contract with Nisha to play in these outings are professional golfers that are either on the Duramed Futures Tour or the LPGA Tour.  They're very talented players who just also happen to be physically attractive and outgoing.  The combination of their talents has been so compelling that Golf Channel has cast several of the ladies on the seasons of their reality competiton The Big Break, which offers professionals an opportunity at cash and playing opportunities that they have been struggling to achieve on their own.

With the background information out of the way, the Time Magazine article is a wonderful example of lazy journalism run amuck.  The title of the piece - "Lady Golfers for Rent: Escort Service for Duffers?" - is a gross mischaracterization of Play Golf Designs.  The insinuation behind the concept of an escort service is that escorts merely front in public with their guests and act as prostitutes behind closed doors.  No professional golfer does this, much less the girls at Play Golf Designs.

Professional golfers are constantly making public appearances - for sizeable fees - at corporate outings, or for reduced fees or pro bono at charity events.  It is a critical part of a sport in which the players are considered "independent contractors," but the Tours on which they star.  Hell, even professional caddies make such appearances.  Tiger Woods' caddy Steve Williams makes a number of public appearances at such outings each year.

For players that are struggling to recoup the costs of trying to become a successful pro, making such appearances supplement income and can keep the dream alive.  Effectively, that is what Play Golf Designs does.

The spin on this - the one that Time piece author Sean Gregory chose to exploit - is that these ladies are attractive, outgoing, and not afraid to play that up to the same extent as their talent. 

Having some professional journalism training myself, I know that writers often come into stories one of two ways.  They either start the story with no bias of the topic and little knowledge of how the story will turn out in print.  The other approach - the one that I feel Mr. Gregory took in this piece - is that the writer has a bias before they do the research into the story and write the story to fit their bias.  It happens in political and sports journalism all of the time.  This style of "soft news" is a cited as a big reason why the public credibility of journalists is undermined.

The bias of Mr. Gregory shines through in his piece in the article title (almost assuredly written by his editor, not him), language choices, and who he spoke to - and didn't speak to - in the piece.

He opted to speak to Jocelyn Samuels, who spoke only in abstract terms which generally indicates ignorance about the subject at hand.  Gregory also turned to Dr. Donna Lopiano for a quote - a respected and known advocate for gender equity in sports, particularly at the scholastic level.  Both people were reliable in providing quotes that served Sean Gregory's bias.

Here is what Dr. Lopiano had to say:

"Whenever anyone, including the athletes themselves, chooses to portray female athletes in other than sport-appropriate attire on the golf course, like these two golfers on the fairway, they're selling a sexual stereotype, not a skilled professional golfer."

Odds are that Dr. Lopiano simply looked at the Play Golf Designs home page on the phone with Sean Gregory and said this quote.  Besides, what is "sport-approrpriate attire" anyway?  Is that just a sloppily thrown around cover for saying "don't dress remotely feminine?"  Would Dr. Lopiano prefer that all women wear pants and a polo shirt that resemble those seen on the PGA Tour?

In case Dr. Lopiano or Mr. Gregory have not noticed lately, the European fit has become quite prominent on the PGA Tour.  Camilo Villegas wears pants so tight that they actually split during the Shark Shootout this off season.  Where was the similiar outrage because he was not wearing "sport-approrpiate" attire?  Or is it ok for a man to wear Two Wild and Crazy Guys pants to show off their "bulges" because they're men?

Perhaps Sean should have considered that there was a contest before the Players Championship - the crown jewel tournament of the PGA Tour - to see what outfit Sergio Garcia would wear in the second round.  Effectively, the promotion appealed to the many women who find Garcia physically attractive.  Again, since it was attire for a man that was given a pass in the telling of this story.

Mr. Gregory wrote the story with a double standard.  It is evident.

Mr. Gregory did not actually attend a Play Golf Designs outing or find out about any of the charity work that they do.  He talked to Anna Rawson - one of the girls that has worked with Play Golf Designs - but didn't quote other LPGA Tour players or professional golfers, male or female, about Play Golf Designs or the critical importance of these public appearances.  He didn't quote anyone from my generation in the story other than Nisha.  Basically, Sean ignored a huge percentage of the golf industry in order to write an article that fit his bias.

Interestingly enough, Mr. Gregory did not only engage in a double standard, but so did Time Inc.  Time Incorporated had this story distributed to many parts of its company and affiliates, including Sports Illustrated, Golf.com, and CNN. 

Golf.com routinely show sphoto slideshows of female golfers in anything but "sport-approrpaiate" attire.  Consider the slideshow of Wilhelmina 7 golfers, or perhaps this slideshow of the hottest players on the LPGA Tour.  If it's ok for golf.com to exploit the looks of LPGA Tour players to generate hits and ad revenue for their site, then why is Sean Gregory so up in arms without a full disclosure of what is being done by the company that signs his paychecks?

Or how about the most obvious example?  The Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is the most widely read issue of the calendar year for the magazine.

The psychological term for what Mr. Gregory did is "confirmation bias."  It is the practice of seeking out information sources that confirm your bias, and either discounting or ignoring information that contradicts or does not support your bias.

The curious thing is that someone at Time Inc. actually did find information to the contrary of the article's bias.  I know because my website traffic data shows hits from Time Inc. servers via a Google search for "Nisha Sadekar."  Coincidence perhaps, but it came before the article release.  Perhaps they listened to my interview with Nisha from our program, from which it would be impossible to believe that Nisha is running an organization of escorts.

I know that the quality of journalism is a frequent topic on this site.  Often, though, it deals with simple mistakes or omissions of fact from the golf record books.  That's benign compared to a piece that effectively makes an ill-informed judgment of an organization to an international audience.  I find this piece to be an extremely unfortunate example of lazy journalism and corporate hypocrisy.