Rodeo Reporters -- Judas Journalists

Imagine for a moment that you are at a game in the World Series, and you witness an official of Major League Baseball, say the Vice Chairman of the Board, secretly injecting some players with a fast-acting, very illegal stimulant. Imagine that as you watched this unimaginable thing transpire, it became obvious that the umpires were in on the tampering.

Of course, it is impossible to conceive of such a wildly implausible scenario. What would be even harder to imagine is that if it were documented, that the media, including sports writers and even sports media like ESPN and Sports Illustrated, would be unwilling to cover it.

While this scenario did not happen in the world of legitimate sports, it did in fact happen in December 2007, in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association’s National Finals Rodeo (NFR).

SHARK video recorders caught the number two person in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association -- the Vice Chairman of the Board, Charles Soileau -- shocking some, but not all horses with a very small shock device hidden in the palm of his hand. The device was held in place with a flesh-colored band around his middle finger. Fully aware of the nature of what he was doing, Mr. Soileau kept his hand palm down, so his device was virtually invisible.

It doesn’t take an animal behaviorist to figure out that a horse with a few thousand volts of pain coursing through her (many bucking horses are mares) is going to buck very differently from a horse that is not shocked. But beyond that we should ask why ANY animals are EVER shocked at rodeos, and especially at the National Finals Rodeo.

According to rodeo propaganda, rodeo horses are supposedly “Born to Buck”. Additionally, the NFR boasts that it brings in only the very best horses from the rodeo industry. So how can it possibly be that these ‘world champion’ equines have to be jump started with a few thousand volts?

Some television media in Las Vegas and Reno ran the story when it first broke. But SHARK personnel is not aware of a single rodeo writer or rodeo columnist nationwide who had the guts or ethics to write about what should rank as an enormous scandal in the rodeo world, even though many of these individuals and their publications received press releases directly from SHARK, detailing what happened.

Let’s focus on three rodeo reporters: Jeff Wolf ( jwolf@reviewjournal.com) of the Las Vegas Review Journal, Brett Hoffman (brett@myrodeoinsider.com) of the Fort Worth Star Telegram, and Ed Knocke (knocke1@aol.com) of the Dallas Morning News.

Mr. Wolf works in Las Vegas, which hosts the NFR, and as he has in years past, Mr. Wolf reported extensively on the NFR. Mr. Wolf had an opportunity to report on what happened firsthand, but he failed to do so. Let’s give him the benefit of doubt that, although a SHARK investigator observed the score tampering from the very first performance attended, Mr. Wolf simply didn’t see what was going on during any of the ten performances. In that case Mr. Wolf had every opportunity to contact SHARK once the story ran on multiple television stations in Las Vegas and Reno. He did not.

It should be mentioned that Jeff Wolf has won awards from the PRCA for his articles because they are so friendly to rodeos. He has gone to the homes of rodeo producers and sat at their table. It’s hard to say where the “perks” of being the “right kind” of rodeo reporter ends. The question is, does a rodeo reporter have a duty to report what is going on in the industry, or should the title of rodeo reporter be changed to rodeo cheerleader, with blinders issued as standard equipment?

Mr. Knocke and Mr. Hoffman are full time rodeo “reporters”. Additionally, Mr. Hoffman is a former rodeo competitor, and is a member of the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame. Each of these “reporters” has been involved in the rodeo industry for decades. Mr. Knocke and Mr. Hoffman each received press releases from SHARK detailing the animal/score tampering at the NFR.

As in the case of Jeff Wolf, Ed Knocke and Brett Hoffman completely failed to cover what could be considered the biggest story ever in the history of rodeo. Let’s put it another way:

The Vice Chairman of the Board of the world’s largest rodeo association was secretly video recorded violating the association’s own rules and covertly committing animal abuse and score tampering at the World Series of Rodeo, involving the “superstars” of human contestants and supposedly involving only the very best “Born to Buck” horses the world of rodeo has to offer, with over five million two hundred eighty thousand dollars ($5,280,000) in prize money on the line.

If this isn’t the biggest story in the history of rodeo, what is?

Throughout the 2007 season, SHARK exposed rodeo animal abuse and humane violations at some of the rodeo world’s biggest events, including but not limited to the Cheyenne Frontier Days, the Pendleton Round-Up, the PRCA’s National Steer Roping Finals and the National High School Rodeo Association Finals. Neither Mr. Hoffman nor Mr. Knocke has reported any of these stories.

Real sports reporters will jump at the chance to report the unglamorous side of legitimate sports. What sports reporter didn’t cover the recent steroid scandal in Major League Baseball? Gambling, drug use, cheating, corruption, not to mention the unflattering personal lives of some players, are all understood to be fair game by sports reporters. The exposure, far and wide, of quarterback Michael Vick's involvement with dogfighting is a prime example of this.

The truth is that such reporting, while painful for those who are the focus of such stories, ultimately strengthens the world of sports. Reporting on the steroid scandal ultimately will lead to forcing illegal drugs out of not only baseball, but all legitimate sports. Reporting on the criminal element in some sports will hopefully leave us with professional sports heroes who are good role models for our youth.

Real reporting doesn’t occur in the rodeo industry. This is a closed society bearing more resemblance to a cult than a sport. The dirty underside is never exposed to the public. If it was, sponsors would vanish and the crowds would thin to the point that about the only people outside of rodeo participants and their friends and family in attendance would be the same folks to be found at dogfights and cockfights.

There are numerous reasons why rodeo never has been, and never will be considered to be a legitimate sport. The brutal and inherently cruel treatment of animals in rodeos makes this more abuse-as-entertainment –much like dogfighting, cockfighting and bullfighting as observed by Human Rights Icon Cesar Chevaz- rather than sport. The rodeo industry maims and kills untold numbers of animals annually, but refuses to release injury and death reports.

Furthermore, rodeos also do not divulge information about contestants or stock contractors who violate their “humane rules”, and those violations occur right in front of rodeo judges. Fans of real sports expect players to abide by the rules, and they certainly expect judges and referees to enforce the rules, not collaborate with the rule-breakers. Additionally, there is no drug testing of either human or animal participants in rodeo.

The truth is something that is often unpleasant, but it is still the truth. Anyone who writes fluff about rodeos, but won’t write the unpleasant truth is obviously not a journalist, and has no credibility whatsoever. We would refer to Hoffman, Knocke and Wolf as the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil monkeys, but that would be a slur against monkeys. Perhaps it’s simply more appropriate to call them the “Three Stooges of Rodeo.”

These rodeo reporters do not operate in a vacuum, however. If the editors and publishers at the Las Vegas Review Journal, the Fort Worth Star Telegram and the Dallas Morning News cared about the truth, they would insist on better from their rodeo “reporters”. The sad fact is that these three newspapers and their spineless rodeo reporters are only the tip of the iceberg.

Other media sources around the country also choose to ignore rodeo cruelty and corruption as they publish or air pieces glamorizing rodeos. Local newspapers see rodeos as an opportunity to sell additional advertising space, and it’s amazing to see how quickly the issue of journalistic integrity, not to mention animal abuse that often violates state humane laws, is thrown out the window.

National media gets in on the sellout as well. Dan Rather and CBS News did a fluff piece on rodeos that should have left everyone involved from CBS News and its president Andrew Heyward red-faced to this day. Sellout national media unfortunately includes Sports Illustrated and ESPN, the latter of which is paid to air rodeos and allows the editing-out of animal injuries and deaths. The problem of unethical, sellout journalists is so widespread, SHARK created a website exposing sellout media at www.MediaVillains.com.

Fortunately, there are some true journalists who have exposed the abuse and corruption of rodeos. Some of them are to be found at www.ReportersWhoCare.com.

As they have since 1993, SHARK investigators will continue to investigate rodeos, and will demonstrate more journalistic integrity than any rodeo reporter, and much of the media in general.

NOTE: This article has been sent to Mr. Wolf, Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Knocke and their respective newspapers. Should they choose to respond in writing, we will include their entire communications, word for word, on this site.

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