NEW YORK — The NFL Players Association called for curbs on locker room interviews on Friday, saying that they were an invasion of players’ privacy and urging members to seek interviews outside the locker room during the week.
Reporters regularly mingle with players in the locker room on game day and on practice days, putting members of the media in close quarters with athletes courtesy of media policies that the players association called ‘outdated’.
‘Players feel that locker room interviews invade their privacy and are uncomfortable. This isn’t about limiting media access but about respecting players’ privacy and dignity,’ the NFLPA said in a statement.
‘We, the NFLPA Executive Committee, urge the NFL to make immediate changes to foster a more respectful and safer workplace for all players.’
The NFL did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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The Pro Football Writers of America said in a statement: ‘NFL players asking to speak outside the locker room has always been a part of the league’s media access policy.’
‘We are continuing discussions with NFLPA executives regarding the media access policy,’ the statement said. ‘The goal is to make everyone comfortable in locker room settings and to have players and clubs follow the NFL media policy.’
NFLPA player representative Ted Karras, a center for the Cincinnati Bengals, told reporters this week that players’ discomfort with locker room interviews has been a longstanding issue.
The topic was brought back to the fore, he said, after ‘a couple guys (were) naked on camera this year.’
Karras said the hope was that each team could come up with a plan to conduct interviews outside the locker room on practice days during the week, in order to ‘get cameras off guys in private moments’.
‘This has been a topic of discussion since COVID – with the COVID protocol where no one was in the locker room – it’s been brought up several times since then,’ said Karras. ‘And now we figure it’s the time to do it.’
