I'm not sure what being ignorant would prove. Example "conferences that Katz attends for a reporter to grill him about the Oilers and the frustration level of the fans." Does the reporter know anything about owning a NHL club? Being a NHL GM? If Craig Button, Doug MacLean, or Mike Milbury knew better than MacTavish, they would have his job. Katz paid for a club that has almost moved in the past, and has gone even further by investing in the city. What does he need to prove or explain to any fan. If you don't like it, cheer for another team. When this thing turns around, don't come back. Media could learn from our guys like Gene Principe, who reports the positives, and doesn't pretend to know how to fix the negatives. And i'm going to go on a limb when I say Gene Principe knows the inner workings better than anyone on here.
A reporter probably knows very little about owning a club or being a GM but he/she should know a lot about being a journalist. Don't you agree? And in that job you should do research and based on that research ask questions about whatever subject your supposed to report on. Journalism today has become more about presenting your own ideas and less about reporting and asking questions but the latter is what the job is actually about. Not acting like a know it all and not being a cheerleader.
Katz has done a lot of good things as far as investing in the team and putting a longterm financial plan in place but his hockey hirings are what is and should be questioned.
The "what does he/she know about this and that to be asking question" is such a high horses kind of a attitude. If things aren't working you have every reason to ask why the hell not and question the strategies behind it.
You have to question an owner who puts a guy in charge of hockey operations who fails to deliver results year in year out. You have to question a president who hires his buddy as GM without interviewing other candidates if the results are bad. You have to question a GM who hires a disaster of a head coach and fails to add the right players when the results are continously bad.
Yes we don't have any inside knowledge but we do know the results are bad to terrible and we do know that there are decisions made that looks really odd from an outside perspective. The reporters job is to get info on the thought process behind those decisions and to question the men making the calls.
There are ofcourse things that MacT et al can't tell us for different reasons but the questions still need to be asked. I actually think MacT has gotten better at making himself available for questioning as the season has passed, I don't understand his thinking all the time but I applaude him for at least trying to explain the thinking that went into his decisions and I actually agree on some of it.