Hating the media?

Fischer hated press — sometimes for good reason
Saturday, July 19, 2008 2:59 AM
By SHELBY LYMAN

The media were the bane of Bobby Fischer’s existence. He avoided them, fled from them, even once asked a friend whether it was legal to kill a journalist.

Friends were warned never to give reporters information about him. Those who did were summarily excluded from Fischer’s life — forever. Whether the interview was negative or a glowing account didn’t matter.

After he became world champion, his aversion seemed to worsen. A lifelong chess associate, fellow grandmaster Robert Byrne, was cut off when he became a journalist — as was this writer, a much more casual acquaintance. We were journalists, and that was it.

Usually, the media had trouble getting their facts straight about Fischer. The American grandmaster Yasser Seirawan once declared that most of what he had read about him was simply wrong or misleading.

Fischer’s naive directness offered succulent grist for the media mill. He was brutally honest.

A contemporary reader would cringe at an archival Harper’s interview of the teenage chess prodigy that included politically incorrect remarks about gays, girls, working-class subway riders and poorly dressed Jewish chess players.

By any measure, of course, Fischer was extraordinarily individualistic. He had his own slant on virtually everything and typically and stubbornly insisted on doing things his way. The independence, even defiance, made him especially vulnerable to media misunderstandings and caricatures.

His reflection in the media — often cruelly unfair — frequently caused him painful embarrassment.

Source: dispatch.com