Concussion Inc. (19 page)

Email exchange with Alan Schwarz:

[Muchnick to Schwarz]

… Please answer a few questions. (I wanted to cc Bruce Sheridan in case he is better positioned to answer the first question in particular. But the Columbia College Chicago website directory is balky right now. I'll forward this to him later.)

There is no information on the website about the funding of
Head Games
. Can you provide it?

Also, I'm sure the
Times
has policies on outside projects by staffers, so I would assume that there was a process by which you disclosed your involvement and secured permission from the editors. Please share with my blog's readers how and when this played out.

Finally, does the film project relate in any way to your departure from the concussion beat? And what is your current role at the
Times
? The last time I looked at your Twitter profile, it no longer said you were National Education Correspondent, as the bio at the film's website says.

[Schwarz to Muchnick]

1. Questions regarding the funding of
   Head Games
   should be directed to the producers.
   
2. Yes, the
   Times
   has policies regarding projects like this, and yes, I went through that process and received permission. As for the substance of that process, please direct your questions to the
   Times
   .
   
3. This film has nothing to do with any “departure from the concussion beat,” as that very voluntary process had begun in early 2011 (and perhaps before, I don't remember) and had been long completed when a producer approached me last summer. I agreed to participate in September, months after I had joined the Education department.
   
4. I am now a National Correspondent, period. I do not have any formal attachment to any particular subject, although I remain very interested (and encouraged by the
   Times
   ) in covering news regarding education ­issues. I have been heading a massive project regarding children's health for the past several months, hence my few bylines during that time.
   
5. I have never “promote[d] the idea that he and his buddies invented the concussion issue” [ … ] I have repeatedly stated that this was news long before I ever showed up, and fantastic work had been done at least 10 years before, specifically by Michael Farber of
   Sports Illustrated
   . I agree with you that OTHERS have cast me as having invented it, but I have repeatedly, when possible, corrected them in that misperception. You might not find proof of this on the Web — I know you will look, so I did — but it's not my fault that the many people who have interviewed me have not ­included that comment in their stories. At the very least I can send you the following note I sent to Mr. Farber back in 2009:
   

—–Original Message—–From: Alan Schwarz Sent: Wed 12/2/2009 3:07 PM To: Farber, Michael – Sports Illustrated Subject: from Alan Schwarz / New York Times

Michael–

I hope this note finds you well. I just wanted to let you know that through my three years of covering head-injury stuff for the
Times
, and watching all sorts of change take place, I have been very aware of the fantastic story that you did way back in 1994. I still think it's one of the best treatments of the subject that I've ever seen; people treat me as if I've invented concern for this subject, but you obviously were around far earlier than I, and long before what much has been learned since was known. It's a damned shame that your story didn't effect the change it should have, making my work unnecessary.

I've been meaning to write you for a long time just to say that your story was great.

–Alan.

[Muchnick to Schwarz]

Thanks. [ … ]

One follow-up: since becoming associate producer of the film, you have had, I believe, one co-byline on a concussion story, and a solo byline earlier this year on the report of the Duerson family lawsuit against the NFL. I can understand the thinking of the editors that, since you are so knowledgeable on the subject, it was helpful to return you to it on an ad hoc basis. What is potentially troubling, though — and let's not make too much of this, nor, frankly, too little — is the failure to disclose your role in the
Head Games
film. Any thoughts?

Alan Schwarz, who almost exactly a year ago took great umbrage at my comparing his relationship with Chris Nowinski to that between the co-authors of the bestselling book
Freakonomics
, has become exactly what he insisted he wasn't in May 2011 (and what, by the way, I had never accused him of being): a business partner of Nowinski.

Schwarz is the associate producer of the new documentary,
Head Games
.

Here's the
New York Times
' explanation. Eileen Murphy, vice president for corporate communications, told me:

The
New York Times
has a detailed and comprehensive ethics policy. There is a specific section that deals with consulting agreements on films or television programs.

It states: “Staff members offered consulting agreements by agents, producers, studios or others must consult the standards editor or the deputy editorial page editor before accepting. No staff member may serve as a consultant to a film or program that he or she knows in advance is tendentious or clearly distorts the underlying facts. In no case should a consulting role be described in a way that invokes the
Times
or implies its endorsement or participation.”

Alan's role on
Head Games
was approved in advance and meets with all other aspects of this policy.

Murphy did not answer my second question: why the
Times
didn't disclose to readers Schwarz's involvement in the Nowinski film project after Schwarz, who had putatively left the concussion beat, continued to byline stories on such subjects as the Dave Duerson family's recent lawsuit against the National Football League.

When I suggested that
Times
standards editor Phil Corbett might be asked for a fuller explanation, Murphy got testy: “Thank you for your instructions on how to do my job… . We're not commenting further on this.”

I don't advise anyone to hold his breath waiting for commentary by Arthur S. Brisbane, the
Times
ombudsman (or, as the Gray Lady calls that position, with perfectly pitched pomposity, the Public Editor). The Public Editor's column, you see, is better suited for things like busting freelancers who accepted perks while working on travel articles.
Times
ethics are like NCAA compliance — meant for the players more than the coaches.

8 May 2012..........

In an email, Steve James, director-producer of the film
Head Games
, told me its funders are anonymous:

As is increasingly the case in documentaries these days, funding has come from private investors, many of whom commonly prefer anonymity. What I can say is that funding did not come from any sports league, SLI,
NYT
or the Center for the Study of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. We really are scrambling right now to prepare a version of the film for this showing. So beyond this, you'll really need to wait until we get our publicist on board.

Let's see what
Head Games
brings to the screen. James, the director of
Hoop Dreams
and
The Interrupters
, has done sterling work on subjects in which I am not as intimately connected. If his new documentary moves the ball down the field in the concussion debate, his oeuvre will boast a fine new entry. If he limits his story to counterposing those who want to make football safe with those who don't, he'll have stalled an important national conversation.

My reset, in extended bullet points:

• While Alan Schwarz (an associate producer of
  Head Games
  ) will never die of chronic traumatic modesty, whether he is a self-promoting egotist or a self-effacing genius is just a squabble between a couple of bar mitzvah boys.
  
• We are not even having this discussion today if Schwarz and the
  Times
  hadn't devoted assets and front-page real estate to it as early as 2007. That ain't chopped liver.
  
• Schwarz states repeatedly that his grasp of statistics was a game-changer. His newspaper in an unkind review of the excellent new off-Broadway play
  Headstrong
  perpetuates this myth. I think that's an elitist load. The public health narrative of the boys of America turning their brains into mush in service of their parents'
  panem et circenses
  is not the Bill James Annual TBI Abstract. It is a story best told by classic investigative journalism: cumulative and progressive anecdotes, plus relentless probing of powerful institutions and players.
  
• Since, oh, let's say the spring of 2010 — right around the time Schwarz's Boston pals, Chris Nowinski and Dr. Robert Cantu, started receiving National Football League money —
  Times
  coverage has been poor. There has been an assumption that “concussion awareness” legislation is efficacious; there has been bent-knee attention to the ­efforts of the CEO of the same multibillion-dollar corporation that has lied to its employees and the public, across decades, in “peer-reviewed scientific literature”; there has been no heat on the Senate Commerce Committee for its fealty to the NFL and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center lobbying lines. Excuse all this, if you must, on the grounds that the NFL is “too big to fail” and this is about what we should expect from the
  New York Times
  . But do me a favor and don't idealize it.
  

14 May 2012..........

The principal funder of the new documentary film
Head Games
is Steve Devick, a billionaire music and technology entrepreneur, who co-invented and is marketing a sports sideline concussion tool called the King-Devick Test.

On the virtual eve of the first preview screening of the movie in Chicago — originally billed as a “red-carpet premiere,” now called a “private sneak peek” — Devick is listed as an executive producer on the film's website (HeadGamesTheFilm.com).

According to a knowledgeable source, Devick controls all rights to
Head Games
. The documentary is directed by Steve James, whose previous credits include the acclaimed
Hoop Dreams
.

Among the other listed executive producers of
Head Games
is Anthony Athanas, a Boston restaurateur who is a friend of Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots. Athanas and Kraft serve together on the executive council of the Catholic Schools Foundation.

A former optometrist, Devick made his fortune developing Platinum Entertainment, a record label, which became a pioneer of digital music transmission systems. He is a trustee of Columbia College Chicago, whose faculty member Bruce Sheridan produced
Head Games
.

. . .

I'm ramping up my knowledge of the origins of and scientific to-and-fro regarding the King-Devick Test, which billionaire Steve Devick is promoting via the Steve James film he underwrote. A good place to start is an article in the October 2011 issue of
Philadelphia
magazine, “Penn Researchers Study Football Concussions.”
13

The Penn researchers are neuro-ophthalmologists Steven Galetta and Laura Balcer. The
Philadelphia
story describes their work and their relationship with Devick.

The piece also includes this grumpy assessment of the King-Devick Test from Boston's Dr. Robert Cantu, one of the protagonists of
Head Games
:

They don't have any background in concussion research. They don't have a good feel for what concussions are all about. They talk about finding nearly 100 percent of concussions … We'll see what the data shows … I doubt it will be able to predict more than 75 or 80 percent of the time. That's good enough to rule somebody out, but not good enough to rule somebody in [for return to play]. And we don't want simplistic tests to let people go back in.

Another researcher, whose views I respect, thinks Cantu “is not wrong” on this point. “There is a lot of interest in both balance and neuro-ophthalmology. We have been looking at these things for years and it just has not proven scientifically reliable,” this source says.

..........

1
The document can be viewed at
muchnick.net/xenithpr.pdf
.

2
boston.citybizlist.com/article/vin-ferrara-xenith-raises-105m-safer-­helmet-cbl-0
.

3
www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/5/26/commencement2011-­feature-nowinski/
.

4
blog.4wallspublishing.com/2011/01/28/brain-expert-omalu-wants-­longer-rest-for-concussed-football-players.aspx
.

5
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/03/17/sports/football/20100317_CONCUSSION_TIMELINE.html?ref=football
.

6
“Study: Non-Head Injuries May Impact Thinking Skills,”
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/07/29/study-non-head-injuries-may-impact-thinking-skills/
.

7
The audio and transcript are at
www.npr.org/2011/09/08/140297255/nfl-season-kicks-off-with-new-safety-rules?sc=emaf
.

8
Hear it at
www.youtube.com/wrestlingbabylon#p/a/u/1/hrXZLpKvAAQ
.

9
The executive summary is at
www.sportslegacy.org/policy-2/hitcountwhitepaper/
. The full document is at
http://www.sportslegacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Hit-Count-White-Paper.pdf
.

10
sports.yahoo.com/top/news?slug=dw-wetzel_little_league_world_­series_pay_kids_082411
.

11
See
www.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/opinion/kristof-­veterans-and-brain-disease.html
.

12
See
www.headgamesthefilm.com/
.

13
www.phillymag.com/articles/penn-researchers-study-football-­concussions/
.