Titans stadium could require $1.3B public subsidy, maybe, all numbers just melt into air

One of the basic principles of media criticism is the concept of framing: The news is the news, but which element of the story reporters choose to present as the main takeaway can be even more important than what they choose to report.

And with that in mind, let’s take a look at Nashville’s WKRN-TV’s latest story on a proposed Tennessee Titans stadium and how it might be paid for. The headline:

Titans’ ownership group willing to put $700 million toward new stadium, Speaker Sexton says

Great news, everybody! Titans owner Amy Adams Strunk is willing to put a whole bunch of money into, uh, her own project that will benefit solely her, but still, $700 million is a undeniably a whole bunch of money. (Assuming Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who is the sole source on this, is accurate in his description of how much money Strunk will actually put up.) How does that make the overall stadium funding plan shape up?

News 2 has learned where some of the estimated $2 billion is coming from to fund the project. Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton told WTN 99.7 this morning that the Adams family, the Titans’ ownership group, is willing to put $700 million toward building a new stadium. The $700 million comes in addition to Governor Bill Lee’s proposal of $500 million from the state.

WKRN leaves the heavy math as an exercise for its readers, so let’s help them along a bit: $2 billion minus $700 million minus $500 million leaves around an $800 million funding gap. In a separate article, WKRN says, “the Titans and Metro Nashville would have to come up with the rest of the money,” which seems like a major omission, and worthy of a headline more like “Titans stadium could require $1.3B public subsidy.” (Got you covered there, WKRN.)

Now, there are still many known unknowns here: That $2 billion construction figure is a guesstimate, for starters, so the budget hole could be smaller, or larger, than $800 million. And, you know, it’s always possible that Strunk (or Sexton) isn’t counting naming rights or seat license fees as going toward the Titans’ share, even though team owners invariably like to include those things as part of their “private contribution,” regardless of who actually owns the stadium whose name is being sold.

Sports Illustrated’s Titans fan site, meanwhile, writes that “the combined commitments from the Adams family, the city and the state amount to $1.9 billion, which is consistent with estimates of the cost of a new stadium given recent comparable projects across the country” — this while Nashville Mayor John Cooper told WKRN, “There is no commitment by Metro. It’s unclear what the costs actually are and they won’t be a better estimate for a while, likely this summer.” The fog of stadium war is thick, indeed, but one would think that the whole point of having news media is to try to cut through some of that, or at least point out when elected officials are just throwing numbers around without any real details. No? It’s just about chasing clicks? Oh, well, carry on then, I’m sure there won’t be any important implications for democracy or anything.