It's lunchtime on Wednesday, and ESPN.com STILL does not have any mention of the lawsuit against Ben Roethlisberger anywhere on its homepage.
ESPN says they have a "previously established" policy of not reporting on civil suits involving sports figures. "Previously" here means "less than two years ago," given that ESPN had absolutely zero problem reporting on the fall 2007 sexual harassment lawsuit filed against former Knicks coach Isiah Thomas. "Previously" must also mean "sometime since last November," when ESPN's NFC South blog mentioned a lawsuit filed by the Falcons' Grady Jackson against a diet pill manufacturer. Or maybe "previously" means "two days ago," which is when ESPN.com first posted this story (since updated) about - you guessed it! - a civil lawsuit filed against Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.
And that's not even getting into ESPN's history of covering such vastly-more-newsworthy-than-a-current-Super-Bowl-champion-being-accused-of-rape, like "Spygate," what Brett Favre's doing right this minute and anything Terrell Owens has ever said or done, ever. Then we have A-Rod's divorce and numerous mentions of Tony Romo's love life in blog entries and podcasts.
ESPN can do and has done some great sports journalism. But every minute they stay silent about this news when every other media outlet is reporting it - I'm not talking about Deadspin here, I'm talking about the Associated Press - they lose a little more credibility.
UPDATE: Speaking of Deadspin, this post says all this (far more articulately) and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment