ESPN
- Thread starter sd'sker
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tschu
Banned
Precisely.
Everyone on the list is just a reporter with a few inside sources. Great for general info, but not for hard-hitting journalism. Even Jeremy Schaap just covers stories that have been well-documented and played out in other media outlets previously but aren't well-known on the national stage.
huskerscott
Starter
And Stephen A. SmithThey're not journalists they're analysts! Just ask this guy...
Everytime he talks it feels like he is yelling at me.
ZRod
Heisman Trophy Winner
He can actually have valid points, which is refreshing since he's not Skip Balless, but the way he constantly yells I can't stand to listen to them. He's more of the reason I don't watch their shown anymore than Skip is
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Neither does Yahoo! Sports or Fox. If you follow a breaking news trail, most of these huge stories (the Sandusky Case being a perfect example) start at a very low level in a way completely unrelated to any major news organization. It's then picked up and confirmed by larger and larger news organizations until it gets all the way to the top - ESPN. ESPN is huge, but they're not everywhere. They rely on their reporters keeping in contact with other reporters and following other news outlets in order to pick up on the day's news.
Also, this is sports - it's not hard news. Although we've had tons of crazy stories pop up in the last few years, stories like Te'o's are few and far between. ESPN still does a good job with other forms of breaking news (injuries, firings, hirings, etc.) They may not be to the grand scale of things like Te'o or Sandusky, but it's still breaking news.
That said, they're not devoid of blame. I for one am EXTREMELY curious how this Te'o story, for example, went so long unchecked. Why did nobody ever try and do a feature on Lennay Kekua's family? Why were her friends never contacted? Why was Stanford never contacted at any point? But this doesn't just fall on ESPN. This Te'o grandma/girlfriend story was huge, and nobody ever checked up on the finer details, not even on the local levels. That baffles me.
Anyways, just offering a different perspective. I'm not a huge fan of ESPN, and there are plenty of reasons to criticize them, but a lot of these big stories never come from major sports organizations, as I stated. They start on smaller levels and eventually get picked up.
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huKSer
All-American
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Hingle McCringleberry
Starter
This is a double edged sword. If they had dug into the Te'o story, and it turned out to be true, people would be bashing them for disrespecting the girls family, and how this is proof that they are just a pack of blood sucking vultures that are looking to get ratings from a tragic story.
To play devils advocate for a minute, why would they dig, who would make something like this up. Mix that with the potential criticism for disrespecting a families privacy, I can see how this could be missed.
Well, I'm not even saying they had to do a lot of digging. As a viewer, I'd be interested to hear from her family and hear about their relationship with Te'o, perhaps what he means to them now that their daughter is gone, etc. Reporters go up to the families of murder victims all the time, and although a lot of people see this as heartless, it's part of the job reporters have. From that stand point, I'm surprised nobody did the digging.
Of course, you raise a good point. Te'o's performances and the media darling he became definitely overshadowed the actual deaths of his grandma and fake girlfriend. Still, I'm very surprised.