University of Kentucky needs work on media relations

It’s never good when a University’s media relations department is causing bad media relations.

But that’s the case right now at the University of Kentucky, where the sports information department is dealing with fallout after revoking a student reporter’s credentials to a basketball media event for asking a walk-on basketball player for an interview earlier this week.

DeWayne Peevy, director of media relations for Kentucky’s men’s basketball team rescinded the credentials as a punishment for not following the rules. National organizations have noticed and fired back, angered at Peevy’s disregard for the First Amendment.

The fact is, both sides were wrong. This wasn’t the type of story worth incurring the wrath of media relations and most sports reporters who work a college beat know it’s better to work with media relations as of

ten as possible than it is to work against them. The Herald-Leader’s beat reporter, Kyle Tucker, blogged this  about the event.

Eric Crawford, columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal wrote an interesting blog  about the situation as well, pointing out some interesting realities about the situation.

Media relations people have better ways of dealing with those who bend the rules too much and those methods should have been used against the reporter, not an all out attack. The fact that the reporter worked for the Kernel, the University of Kentucky’s student newspaper, should not be a consideration, but odds are Peevy wouldn’t have “punished” a reporter from the Lexington Herald-Leader if he or she had done something like that.

The reaction from the national press brings negative attention to another big-name national program. Media relations should not be the cause of problems. This was not a good move by Peevy.