Barta asks WHO-TV for apology

Iowa athletics director Gary Barta has asked WHO-TV to apologize for a piece it ran on "SoundOFF," the station's Sunday night sports show.

The piece, produced by sports reporter Chris Hassel, singled out Iowa guard John Lickliter, a walk-on and son of head men's basketball coach Todd Lickliter. The spoof was a movie promo with fake quotes trumpeting "Little Lick, Lotta Bite."

"I'm going to stand on my feeling that it crossed a line," Barta said Thursday night. "It called out a student-athlete who didn't deserve it. It's one thing if we're struggling and there's something wrong and someone needs to report on it and if someone wants to get creative and call out me or call out our coaching staff, that's one thing. But when it goes into highly criticizing a student-athlete, to me that's just crossing the line."

Barta told the Presidential Committee on Athletics that he sent WHO-TV a letter asking for the station to issue an apology to John Lickliter.

Thursday night, WHO-TV news director Rod Peterson deferred comment on Barta's letter to Dale Woods, station president and general manager. Woods was unavailable for comment Thursday night.

Lickliter is a 5-11, 170-pound guard. He's played in 12 games, averaging 11.2 minutes and 2.7 points with 14 assists and six turnovers.

Barta called WHO's piece "discouraging." He said he had seen the clip, which is about a minute.

"They took a student-athlete and did a parody or satirical piece and really were critical and ripped on the student-athlete," Barta told the PCA committee. "I've written a letter to the station, basically asking them to apologize to the student-athlete. It went far beyond, in my opinion, what would be deemed as acceptable."

Barta was asked where the line is?

"If it's talking about the play and it's constructive criticism and it's based on fact, that's probably appropriate, but when it starts to satirically or creatively just flat out make fun of somebody, then, to me, it crosses the line," he said.

Barta said doesn't think he could penalize the station, which regularly covers Iowa football and basketball games and coaches news conferences.

"I just wanted to make sure my voice was heard on it," Barta said. "There's probably isn't really anything I could do than to say I disagree with it, stop it, I'd love for you to make an apology, but there's probably nothing more than that I could do."

"SoundOFF" is an sports/humor/pop culture/opinion show that airs Sunday nights at 10:35 p.m. It's co-hosted by WHO sports director Keith Murphy and Andy Fales, a WHO sports anchor and reporter. The show has been on WHO for 14 years. It's not part of WHO-TV's newscast.

Here's a snippet of its description from WHO-TV.com "It's a good entertainment option for insomniacs, barflies, raccoons, opossums and anyone else who would still be awake and in the mood to watch television at 10:35 p.m. on a Sunday."

Also, "If your desire to share your boring, unintelligible thoughts on sports and pop culture overrides your sense of dignity, then why not? Send us an email, voicemail, fax, letter-- or if your phone hasn't been turned off, give us a call."