This Is The Wrong Way To Cover The Chandler Jones Story
What’s going on with Chandler Jones is very sad. Jones is a defensive end for the Las Vegas Raiders (it still feels weird to type that). As you can see from the above photo, he won a Super Bowl playing for “my” New England Patriots, where he was very good, approximately forever ago.
Earlier this month, according to Jones, the Raiders sent a crisis response team to his home. Jones denounced the team for doing that in a series of fairly manic-seeming, all-caps social media posts. He’s been away from the team since then, missing the first three weeks of the season. His coach, Josh McDaniels, described what’s been going on as “private matter” and a “personal situation,” but wouldn’t give any more details.
Yesterday his name was all over sports headlines because of an incident in which. . . well, I’ll just let ESPN take it from here:
Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Chandler Jones wrote in a social media post Monday night that he was taken to a hospital “against my will” by the Las Vegas Fire Department and later transferred to a behavioral health facility last week.
Jones was placed on the non-football illness list last week by the Raiders with what the team has described as a personal matter. He has been away from the team since Labor Day weekend when he began a series of social media posts aimed at the Raiders, owner Mark Davis, general manager Dave Ziegler and coach Josh McDaniels.
He wrote in his post to X on Monday night, “First day out but I’m still aligned,” indicating that Monday was his first day out of the facility. He attached journal entries plus a statement of “patient rights” from the Seven Hills Behavioral Health Hospital in Las Vegas, highlighting sections of the document he believes were not followed by the facility.
In the journal entries, Jones said that “5 to 7” Las Vegas Fire Department officials came to his front door and told him he had been put on a “court hold” by the Las Vegas Police Department.
“I haven’t done anything wrong. The police said people were concerned about me because of my posts online,” he wrote, adding that once in an ambulance he was “injected” with an undisclosed substance even though he didn’t give consent.
Elsewhere in the article, ESPN notes that “Jones wrote that he called Ziegler ‘6 to 7 times asking for help and I wondered if he had me put in here, but he never answered.’ He said he left voicemails with Ziegler and is just trying to figure out why the Raiders won’t allow him in the facility or to be a part of the team.”
Yahoo, the New York Post, and other outlets are covering Jones’ allegations similarly, largely by simply aggregating and amplifying them. This is the wrong approach to a very fraught story.
A key tenet of journalism is to seek comment from every major party involved in a story. In this case, substantive information will be hard to squeeze from the authorities responsible for temporarily detaining Jones. The ESPN story notes that the Las Vegas Fire Department cited HIPAA and refused to provide any further information, the police didn’t respond, and of course no decent human at a mental health institution is going to say “Oh, Chandler Jones? The football player? Yes, let me tell you all about his symptoms, history, and so on. Where do you want me to start?” (The same logic applies to indecent humans who don’t want to find themselves at the center of very expensive lawsuits.)
That’s not to say no information will trickle out, but if it does it will take a bit of time. Chandler Jones accusing his team of having him wrongly committed him is. . . well, it’s something you need to be very cautious about reporting. You can’t really ignore it if you’re a news organization devoted to covering sports, but you really need to contextualize it properly.
To be blunt: it’s very unlikely that that’s what happened. It would require an unbelievable level of ignorance and/or stupidity and/or malice on the part of the Raiders. And hey, this is professional football, so you never know, but still: our default stance, until we know more, should be that Jones really is suffering from some sort of episode, and that that might explain why he is launching so many accusations.
It’s illegal to involuntarily hold someone against their will who hasn’t been accused of committing a crime unless certain criteria are met, and it’s unlikely a powerful, high-profile person would be committed unless they’d acted in a very erratic, threatening manner. Generally speaking, the criteria that matter the most have to do with the person appearing to be a threat to themselves and others.
Here (PDF) is how it works in Nevada:
I. APPLICATION FOR A MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS HOLD (NRS 433A.160)
CRITERIA FOR MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS, NRS 433A.0175: A “person in a mental health crisis” means any person (1) who has a mental illness; and (2) whose capacity to exercise self-control, judgment, and discretion in the conduct of a person’s affairs and social relations or to care for his or her personal needs is diminished, as a result of the mental illness, to the extent that the person presents a substantial likelihood of serious harm to himself orherself [sic] or others. It DOES NOT INCLUDE any person in whom that capacity is diminished by epilepsy, intellectual disability, dementia, delirium, brief periods of intoxication caused by alcohol or drugs, or dependence upon or addiction to alcohol or drugs, unless a mental illness that can be diagnosed is also present which contributes to the diminished capacity of the person. [emphasis in the original]
I would argue that any journalist writing about this needs to at least point out that in Nevada, according to the law, Chandler Jones could have been detained only if he met these criteria. That doesn’t mean that journalists should be credulous, because of course this law (like any law) could be ignored or abused, but still: Jones, who is likely not in his right mind, is making some very serious allegations, and you’re robbing readers of an important part of the picture if you simply present them as-is, especially given how many people involved in the decision to commit him can’t or won’t provide their side, for very good reasons.
It’s of course newsworthy that he accused the Raiders of having somehow conspired to get him locked up on the pretense of a mental health crisis. If true, it would be an absolutely astonishing scandal. And if true, those details will emerge, I promise you. But in the meantime, ESPN, Yahoo, and others are spreading what is, at this point, a totally unproven set of allegations without providing readers with any of the context necessary to judge their likelihood. The average person likely doesn’t know how involuntary holds work.
It would be very easy to cover this in a more responsible manner. First, explain the law underpinning these sorts of cases. Second, quote an outside expert or two on what mental health crisis holds actually look like in Nevada, how often they are later contested, and so on. Third, make it clear, in a respectful but unflinching way, that no one knows what’s going on but Jones has been acting in an erratic manner of late.
I suspect Chandler Jones is in the midst of a serious mental health crisis. I hope things improve for him and that he can get back to playing football, but in the meantime, you’re not doing him any favors — and certainly not doing your job as a journalist — if you simply act as his stenographer.
Questions? Comments? Favorite Patriots defensive ends? I’m at singalminded@gmail.com. The photo is from Chandler Jones’ Twitter account.
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