Picture this: A top-three-five player in a star-studded league demanded his billionaire owner fire or trade his successful general manager and hall-of-fame coach. Even crazier, this got out and became public information in a way that forced this owner to tweet in support of this GM and coach.
What’s crazier than all of this: a company that proudly calls itself “The World Leader in Sports” seems to have chosen not to cover it.
For nearly six hours (an eternity in news time) after Shams Charania reported the details of Kevin Durant’s meeting with Joe Tsai, ESPN went radio silent on the biggest sports news of the day and perhaps the news highlight of a busy NBA offseason. They eventually got it, but not until Sean Marks and the rest of Nets management were offered Tsai’s public support.
Even then, ESPN chose to highlight Tsai’s tweet rather than the story that compelled it, thus painting Marks in a more positive light at the expense of the larger story.
This comes after ESPN essentially sat on the Miami Dolphins manipulating in a way that got their owner suspended, fined and cost them a first and third round pick. Heck, this isn’t even the first time ESPN has contradicted itself to provide beneficial coverage for Sean Marks.
In all of these cases, the relationships that ESPN’s top reporters — Adam Schefter in the NFL, Adrian Wojnarowski in the NBA — built with those they cover appear to have been prioritized over the coverage itself. Even more, the entire company followed suit as giant stories were broken up and further detailed by competing platforms.
And look, reporters protecting sourcing is nothing new (especially in today’s journalistic and media environment), but the biggest sports news entity on the planet is doing its best to ignore two of the biggest sports stories important events of the year in basically a month? It’s the kind of thing that questions its coverage across the board, even as it acknowledges the incredible journalism that has been done at ESPN in the past.
That was always the risk when entire news teams are defined by a couple of newsmen who most people mistake for reporters. Schefter and Wojnarowski have amassed so much power (and credit for doing so) at the most powerful news organization in the industry that I can make an almost indisputable case that these two are capable of deciding what is and isn’t news. .
Maybe that’s just who ESPN is now and what journalism in general is becoming. The last thing powerful people seem to want around them is honest coverage. And hell, maybe it’s stupid of me to expect journalistic integrity from the corporate partners of these leagues with billions of dollars at stake. But most sports fans won’t make that distinction.
At a time when people pick and choose what they consider facts, this seems dangerous. Socially speaking, powerful people buying favorable coverage is not new or productive, but this is a much larger discussion that goes far beyond sports.
Decades of incredible journalism have made ESPN an entity people trust. And to be clear, the stories they choose to cover are unapologetically done by supremely talented people: some of the greatest journalists who have achieved more than I can dream of. But ESPN’s recent trend of deciding what to cover and what not to cover based on the relationships of two reporters who have gone so far as to buy access through dinners and gifts has become impossible to ignore.
In the grand scheme of things, a professional athlete issuing an ultimatum really isn’t that important. There are no social ramifications to Durant’s trade request. In today’s NBA, such demands have become almost commonplace. We’ve also gotten to a place where almost no one relies solely on ESPN for their sports coverage. So if ESPN misses a story here or there for whatever reason, chances are they’ll find most of them.
But as the lines between journalism and PR continue to blur, arguably the biggest platform in sports drifting further and further towards the latter is an unfortunate development for us all.
In a rare two-episode week, I welcomed Ethan Strauss to “The Anthony Irwin Show” to discuss his coverage of Woj’s selective reporting, how independent journalism on platforms like Substack can help keep things honest of ESPN and the like, and if most people even care. about things like this. We also discussed the Lakers-Warriors side of LeBron James, the Stephen Curry rivalry and more.
You can listen to the full episode below, and to make sure you don’t miss a show, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast channel on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Podcasts.
And for a quick recap, check out Lakers Lowdown, in which Anthony Irwin recaps the previous day’s news and prepares you for the day ahead in LakerLand, every weekday morning on the Silver Screen & Roll Podcast.