For the love of God ESPN! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP!

by Brad Wells on Jun 13, 2007 12:38 PM EDT in Bad Journalism

Less than a week after having not one, not two, but all three featured articles about the New England Patriots posted on the frontpage of their website, ESPN has posted yet another Patriots fluff piece on their site. It's the second article on Adalius Thomas ESPN has run in less than a week. I guess with Randy Moss acting like a spoiled child at mini-camp, ESPN feels the need to switch gears and pump up the other Patriots off-season acquisitions. Here's ESPN's frontpage today, June 13, 2007:

Again, this is less than a week after they posted this on their site, dated June 7, 2007:

In my previous post, I showed how the Big Lead picked up our story and agreed with us. The three featured articles ESPN displayed last week were put right next to their "Ombudsman" Le Anne Schreiber's article about how the network is often guilty of holding viewers "hostage" with the tyranny of the storyline. This is a fancy way of saying ESPN has an annoying habit of constantly reporting about only a handful of teams (Yankees, Red Sox, Patriots, etc.) and not doing its actual friggin' job, which is to report SPORTS news for all teams. ESPN is also guilty of creating pre-ordained "storylines" rather than actually reporting what is happening. Schrieber explains:

At ESPN and elsewhere, there is a phenomenon I have come to think of as the tyranny of the storyline, when saturation coverage of the few results in a drought of coverage for everybody else.

...

One of the dangers of journalists becoming too attached to a pre-ordained storyline is that it is perceived as bias for or against a particular team or player. When ESPN recently telecast the NCAA lacrosse final between Duke and Johns Hopkins, the attention went not to the winning Johns Hopkins team but to the losing Duke team, because win or lose, they had the best storyline: Besieged innocence gets its day of glorious vindication through national championship, or not.

ESPN wasn't rooting for Duke. It was rooting for the storyline, but I doubt the players and fans of Johns Hopkins appreciated the distinction.

I disagree with Schrieber's last comment. ESPN was indeed rooting for Duke to win. You cannot tell me ESPN execs and SportsCenter hacks like Stuart Scott weren't wearing Duke blue under their $700 suits the day of the Men's Lacross finals. Had Duke won, it would have completed their pre-ordained storyline resulting in wall-to-wall SportsCenter coverage of Duke "overcoming the toughest of obstacles" and winning it all. Instead, they lost, and the news of Johns Hopkins winning got barely a mention on ESPNews and SportsCenter. A storyline was still there with Duke losing, just not the one ESPN wanted. Incidentally, ESPN didn't give a crap about Mens Lacrosse before the Duke "scandal." Now, with this same Duke team in the finals, suddenly they care? The bias was so thick you could cut it with Linda Cohn's nose job.

This is exactly what we are seeing with ESPN's NFL coverage, which seems to focus solely on the Patriots. According to ESPN's pre-ordained story, the Patriots are now supposed to win in all, and if they get their butts kicked again by the Colts (or any other team in the playoffs), the story won't be "Colts win!" but rather "Why did the Patriots lose?"

Also, the fact that ESPN has an Ombudsman is a joke. I know ESPN is an entertainment media outlet more so tha a news outlet. It's just the pretense of making themselves "seem" like a news outlet that bothers me. If you're about entertainment, then be that! Don't try and pull my leg with this false gesture of objectivity. A real Ombudsman would never have tolerated EPSN buying equity stakes in the Arena Football League and then, a short time later, start airing AFL highlights and scores on their SportsCenter broadcasts. Any real Ombudsman would have railed against this, saying doing so completely undermines the credibility of ESPN as a "news" organization. Then, they would quit for ethical reasons. Ombudsman only have a place if they are keeping the news outlet objective. ESPN clearly is not objective, and this pretense of an Ombudsman is a friggin' joke.

So now, in the span of six days, there have been four featured articles about the Patriots on ESPN's frontpage. This goes right along with the ESPN storyline of "Go Pats!" and gives the rest of us NFL fans the shaft, per usual.

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whaaaaaaaa...

your obsession is ridiculous.

by InBradyWeTrust @ Stampede Blue on Jun 13, 2007 3:16 PM EDT reply actions

So is ESPN's...

You can say what you want about BBS... but it's hard refute what he's said. I don't know if anyone has posted a valid counter argument yet.

Bleeding Green Nation Philadelphia Eagles Blog

by JasonB on Jun 14, 2007 2:52 PM EDT up reply actions

thus spake peter king:

we all know old peter has a perma-erection for brady. in his tuesday edition of MMQB, he posted several letters from readers who noticed the same thing. note that king (a.k.a. the man with no sense of humor) never denies that he rides the pats' jock; he does make a very poor attempt to "humorously" undercut the letter writer by asking how one actually rides a jock (i can't tell if he is trying to take a cheap shot here because the guy writing is a german fan). c'mon peter. you are a reporter, a sports reporter no less; you know what this means figuratively. it may be the case that i read king's column and missed his explanation or self-defense. he does give decent responses, or at least genuine ones, to questions about the qb situation in miami.

i'm inclined to think that peter king's boxers just might have a picture of brady's face right over the crotch; apart from drinking horseshit starbucks coffee, it might be the only thing on earth that gives this flacid fella a little tingle down there.

by tenyardfight on Jun 13, 2007 5:05 PM EDT reply actions

Peter King

generally does love the Patriots. But read his Super Bowl prediction...um, he pick the Colts.

by InBradyWeTrust @ Stampede Blue on Jun 13, 2007 11:41 PM EDT up reply actions

It does make sense

I dont know what you will make of this, but it seems that ESPN is writing about the stories that are there. The fact seems to be that the Patriots have created a lot of news over the off season, and unlike the 49'ers (for instance) the changes have occured to a team that is a perennial contender.

It fits really well into the storyline that about how the Pats came thiiiis close to making it back to the SB, and now have made all these major changes upgrading almost all the weaker points in the team. No other real contender has done the same. Teams like the Colts and Chargers have made improvements through the draft, but nothing really shocking.

by CGM on Jun 13, 2007 9:54 PM EDT reply actions

Valid points

I think everybody has valid points on this subject. Clearly the Pats have made the most big-name moves of the offseason. And we can expect that the bigger names are going to get more coverage than role players or rookies.

But at the same time, I think BBS is right that an institution of sports journalism (esp. the largest one) has a professional obligation to cover all sports news and not just the news that fits into their preconceived storylines. It's a fine but important line between reporting the news and making or shaping the news. And while ESPN does spend some time on every team, it's clearly slanted toward east coast teams. It's easy to see why, a lot of these teams (Giants, Jets, Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Patriots) play in huge markets and have had success recently. But ESPN is a national network, and it's giving the short shrift to a lot of the nation's regions.

And it's kind of a vicious circle. The 49ers are the perfect example. Here's an up and coming team that seems poised to become contenders, and has also made a lot of big moves in the offseason. But because they don't generate the interest that the east coast teams do, we don't hear as much about them on ESPN. But the reason they don't generate as much interest is because we don't hear as much about them on ESPN. Maybe a little more reporting about Alex Smith poised to potentially make the leap into stardom, or Frank Gore's goal of the single-season rushing record, or whether Nate Clements can solidify the secondary would get people interested in this team. Instead, we get 134 stories about Randy Moss -- will he fit in? Is his locker next to Brady's? Did he get mad in a press conference? Is he practicing hard? How much salary did he give up? What kind of a tree would he be? etc. etc. etc.

And so the cycle continues. ESPN is journalism and entertainment at the same time. And ratings do matter. But do the ratings come for the east coast teams because that's what the people of the nation want, or is it because that's all the people know? I argue for the latter. ESPN should focus on interesting and newsworthy stories no matter where they are found. And all too often, they don't bother to look more than a few hundred miles beyond Bristol, Connecticut.

by ctnyc on Jun 14, 2007 4:27 PM EDT up reply actions