DC’s local reporters cannot hide their sports pride. Should they try harder?

Shomari Stone stopped jumping, readjusted his handheld microphone and stared into the camera.

“They want the cup,” he said, gesturing toward the sea of red jerseys behind him. “One more win! One more win!” The crowd followed his lead and began to chant, too.

Stone, a general assignment reporter for NBC4 Washington, was in seventh heaven. The Washington Capitals were one win away from securing their first Stanley Cup.

On June 7 that win came. The Capitals defeated the Vegas Golden Knights to bring home DC’s first major sports championship since the Washington Redskins won the Super Bowl in 1992. The win marked the Capitals’ first Stanley Cup victory — they last appeared in the finals in 1998, only to be swept by a Detroit Red Wings team led by the legendary Steve Yzerman.

For the mass of red jerseys, the excitement was palpable. And justified. The Districtwide drought had been long and painful.

But in this case the leader of the pack wasn’t just a fan. He was a reporter. How could Stone report on the fire if he was the one dousing it with gasoline?

That’s the question Paul Farhi, the media reporter for the Washington Post, had for Stone.

“Seriously, leading cheers is news reporting, @shomaristone? C’mon, just show the pics and tells us the facts,” Farhi tweeted Monday.

Stone posted the video to his Twitter profile for all to see, like a trophy all its own. The clip is laden with the first-person, plural “we.” “This is the win that we needed,” Stone says on camera. “We are headed back to Las Vegas.”

Farhi doubled down on his criticism in the days following his tweet to Stone.

“Clearly, some objectivity goes out the window when the local sports teams are going for a championship,” he wrote in an email to The DC Line. “A certain amount of hometown boosterism is to be expected, I guess. But leading cheers? I thought that was embarrassing. He’s a reporter — so please report, don’t become a participant. Think of a parallel: Does he applaud the cops when they arrest a wanted fugitive, or when firefighters put out a big fire? Of course not. His job is tell people what’s happening, not to fire up an already fired-up crowd.”

Stone did not return multiple requests for comment, but NBC4 news director Mike Goldrick did.

“I think Shomari got caught up in the moment — a lot of people did,” Goldrick said. “I’m confident that our reporters and anchors would be able to report the news about DC’s sports teams, both good and bad, and the audience would accept their reporting as true and fair. When our teams are going through tough losses or there’s an off-the-field issue, we cover that, too.”

This enthusiasm is not unique to Stone or NBC4. Local media, especially local broadcast stations, often amplify hometown sports teams. The hashtag #ALLCAPS has been a constant across Washington media. WUSA9 has been displaying a large banner with the hashtag on its building in Tenleytown. WAMU placed a playful bet with fellow NPR affiliate KNPR in Las Vegas. The Washingtonian temporarily painted its logo red online. WUSA9, too, has outfitted its logo with a hockey stick, puck and the omnipresent hashtag.

Reporters from various stations donned Capitals jerseys and T-shirts throughout the playoffs and during the victory parade.

“The CAPS are our hometown team and we support their success in the Stanley Cup finals,” Mitch Jacob, news director for ABC 7, wrote in an email to The DC Line.

Jacob, whose employer has changed its Twitter picture to an image of the Stanley Cup with the ABC 7 logo in it, signed a recent email “#ALLCAPS.”

Goldrick was more ambivalent.

“Rooting for the Caps in this case is also rooting for DC,” he said. “I think our viewers watch us because so many of our people are from the area. … It’s part of what makes them uniquely qualified to cover this town. But there is a fine line between support and losing objectivity. I feel confident that our folks stayed on the right side of that line.”

Whether news organizations should be rooting for hometown teams is one question. The line is drawn when such fandom detracts from their ability to report on the team. So did Stone cross that line by wading into the story?

“Contrast his manner with Leon Harris’ at the same event,” Farhi said, citing the NBC4 anchor who joined the station in spring 2017 after rival station ABC 7 let his contract lapse in 2016. “Harris was and is a pro — certainly, he was conveying the festive mood of the crowd but he was also doing his job by reporting the who-what-when, etc.”

It’s important to note that neither Stone nor Harris is a sports reporter.

“Our sports reporters cover the teams like any reporter in our newsroom covers their beat,” Goldrick said. “So, yes, I would think our audience would be concerned with our sports reporters coming across as too much of a ‘fan.’”

George Solomon, director of the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism at the University of Maryland at College Park, stressed the importance of restraint and objectivity in sports reporting.

“The word ‘giddy’ comes to mind,” Solomon said. “But 26 years between major sports titles is a long time and perhaps [being] giddy isn’t so bad, especially since in the past 18 months there hasn’t been much giddiness nine blocks north of the arena, at the corner of 16th [Street] and Pennsylvania Avenue.”