After a busy week of MMA media taking heavy criticism from fighters and promoters alike, retired UFC and WEC fighter Danny Downes joins MMAjunkie columnist Ben Fowlkes to discuss how journalists should respond, and what they owe their audiences and subjects.

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Downes: Ben, Rizin FF and Invicta FC weren’t the only organizations with fights this weekend. Seems like you and your buddies in the so-called media went a few rounds as well.

First we had UFC women’s flyweight champion Nicco Montano coming out swinging against MMAFighting.com’s Ariel Helwani for tweeting that the UFC is losing patience with Montano for her continued absence from the cage. Then Combate Americas CEO Campbell McLaren blasted the media (and Kevin Iole and Ariel Helwani specifically) for their lack of coverage of his organization, alleging cultural bias.

Finally, UFC welterweight Kelvin Gastelum had a negative reaction to a recent MMAjunkie article. He took to Twitter calling MMA journalists, “some of the most sneaky, malicious, deceitful, and shifty people!”

Now, I know you want to go after him for using the Oxford comma, but try to stay focused here. Each one of these incidents had its own specific quirks, but there is a common thread that ties them. What should the response from media be? Should the journalists and outlets in question react to these accusations, or just ignore them and wait for the news cycle to pass?

Fowlkes: I don’t think ignoring them (or the Oxford comma, which I love and support) is the way to go. At the risk of sounding like I’m just standing up for my own guys, I think John Morgan handled the Gastelum situation pretty perfectly.

He replied to Gastelum’s tweet, defending the substance of the story but offering to make corrections if Gastelum could point out any specific errors. He also included the relevant video of Gastelum’s remarks, so everyone could hear exactly what he said that led to that story about him receiving and eventually cashing Tyron Woodley’s check.

So what’s he mad about? He said we reported the wrong amount, that he didn’t get $9,000 from Woodley (though he wouldn’t say how much he did get). In fairness, that was the original amount Woodley was supposed to have received from the fine levied against Gastelum for missing weight, so when he refers to “the check,” it made sense to think that’s the amount he was talking about.

Woodley said he didn’t want that money, that he wanted to give it back to Gastelum, and the story here is the lengths Woodley was willing to go to in order to do that. And Gastelum, once he had the check in hand, opted to cash it.

That’s all true, as told by Gastelum. It seems what he didn’t like was the perceived implication that this was somehow the wrong thing for him to do. Which, OK, fair enough.

What we should have done differently there is clarify rather than assume the actual amount (which, again, he won’t specify, making that part more difficult), plus maybe inspect the copy of the story a little more closely so that it didn’t seem like we were passing any sort of moral judgement where none is intended.

But when Gastelum raised those complaints, we addressed them. That’s what I think the media owes to its subjects and its readers. We might not always agree with the criticisms – and sometimes you said what you said, so don’t blame us if you don’t like how it looks on the page – but we should always be willing to listen and admit when we’re wrong – or explain why we don’t think we are.

Still, this monolithic “media” has become a favorite punching bag for some people. From the President of the United States to Twitter eggs, you hear plenty of people acting like the only reason anyone becomes a journalist is because they just love lying so much. I’m not going to say there aren’t bad apples here and there, but the vast majority of reporters in any field are just trying to get it right. They do that even with people lying to them and obscuring the truth and yelling at them for reporting facts. That’s the job.

The problem is, some people think the media only exists to relay their message exactly the way they want it. They want someone to make them look cool or help them promote their stuff, but not to ask the questions they don’t want to answer or write the story in a way that isn’t consistent with their personal brand. What those people actually want is marketing. They just want it for free.

Downes: That’s a fair statement. Whenever there’s a report about something unflattering that hurts your brand, it’s much easier to say that a reporter “took things out of context,” or simply call them liars, than to address the situation at hand. Your explanation applies to the Gastelum situation, but it doesn’t do much to explain the Helwani/Montano one.

Montano admits that she responded in the heat of the moment and shouldn’t have resorted to name-calling, but you can understand where she’s coming from. She’s been struggling through injuries and illnesses, and now she has a prominent member of the media reporting that she’s not willing to commit to a fight.

Angering a fighter is no reason to sit on a story, but we also have to consider the source. It seems obvious to me that the Valentina Schevchenko camp is the source of his information. The same way that journalists should not act as the PR company of a promoter or a fighter, it’s also wrong for them to be weaponized.

You’ve repeatedly criticized UFC President Dana White for attacking injured fighters or publicly shaming them to sign a deal that’s not in their favor. How is this any different? There is newsworthiness to announcing a title fight in the works, but the purpose of that information leak was leverage against Montano.

I realize that there’s a fine line between gossip and news (especially in the present day), but we should be wary of what gets posted. We have the data to show what stories readers actually click on. If I were a wagering man, I’d probably say that the juicy gossip stories earn a few more eyeballs. Despite that, there needs to be a higher standard. We’re frequently critical of the “money over everything” approach MMA promotions take. We should be equally critical of “clicks over everything.”

I think much of this is a result of access journalism. People with ulterior motives feed you information to hurt someone else. Additionally, some choose to sit on stories to preserve their line to information.

Your particular livelihood doesn’t require access as much as others, but with media credibility at an all-time low, how do you think journalists should respond? If you go on the attack to defend yourself, you risk alienating people. But doing nothing doesn’t seem like an option.

Fowlkes: It’s possible to defend yourself without attacking. If you feel like you did the right thing, for the right reasons, it shouldn’t be a problem to explain that.

You’re right that a media member shouldn’t allow his or herself to be used, and the bigger your audience is, the more people there are who would like to use you. You’re also right that I have the luxury of not caring too much when a fighter or a manager (usually the latter, but sometimes the former) wants to put me on their own personal blacklist for something I’ve written. I can still write about you even if you don’t talk to me. All you really guarantee is that I won’t get a chance to hear things from your perspective first.

Nobody owes the media access. Neither do we owe them the fawning coverage they sometimes seem to think they deserve – or any coverage at all, if it’s not newsworthy. If a fighter or promoter or manager thinks we got it wrong, they should say so. They don’t necessarily need to get as graphic with the imagery as Montano did, but fine, you strip that away and Montano did have a point to make.

And people should feel free to make those points when necessary. We should feel obliged to listen and address them. That doesn’t always mean we’re going to agree in the end.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Danny Downes, a retired UFC and WEC fighter, is an MMAjunkie contributor who has also written for UFC.com and UFC 360. Follow them on twitter at @benfowlkesMMA and @dannyboydownes.