OT: More Bruce Feldman and ESPN's (lame) response
ESPN and their Poynter Review Project has published a response to the Bruce Feldman affair. You can check it out here. Though if you don't want to get pissed off, I suggest you avoid it. It's a wall of text that does little more than fellate ESPN and attempts to pin blame for the "misunderstanding" on "gossip sites" like SportsByBrooks, who initally broke the story, and on Feldman himself, for not being responsible enough to realize that his book might make ESPN brass angar.
Awful announcing has a great post up that thoroughly fisks the Poynter piece. I like to say fisk. Fisk fisk fisk. But they're very much correct. The old ESPN ombudslady was awesome. She actually challenged ESPN on issues and tried to preserve some shred journalistic integrity. All they have now are a few snivelling lap dogs who'll do anything short of an old-fashioned to please their masters.
It's odd how ESPN continues to fuck this up at each step of the way. ESPN has grown too powerful, and it shows in the way it treats both its employees and its customers. They believe that they are above the rules of journalistic ethics and integrity, and that they can use their own media platform to cover their mistakes. At this point, I hope the other major networks are able to get a decent sports network off the ground, so that we have a second option (I'm looking at you, NBC/Versus and CBSSports).
I didn't think the Poynter piece was that bad. Except for the part where they serve as the mouthpiece for parsing the distinction between "suspended" and "asked to take a break." Because ESPN is a media institution, their impact is when their voices are heard, so shutting down one of their writers has the exact same impact on reporting whether the writer is "suspended," "asked to take a break," or "shot in the head by hired goombas and left in a ditch." It is semantics despite what Poynter claims, and shame on them for parroting a party line. "Asking him to take a break" is just a cop-out way to silence him without having to answer uncomfortable questions.
The OP either
1. Did not actually read the full piece and is just regurgitating something his friend told him
2. Never gave the article a fair chance and prejudged it.
So ESPN says it's ok for Craig James work the Alamo Bowl, but it's not ok for Bruce Feldman to work with Mike Leach on his book? No, that's not a hypocritical double standard at all...
There really is a big difference, IME. Craig James gets paid by ESPN to call games, and while journalistically you can question the decision, there's no monetary conflict of interest. Feldman earned money from someone who is suing his employer and he did it specifically in a way that could hurt that employer in the lawsuit. It really is not a good situation. If you ask me, Leach is mainly at fault for dropping a lawsuit on the primary employer of the man he'd contracted to write his book, which put Feldman in a tough spot. ESPN should've pulled Feldman from the deal at that point and Feldman should've been compensated by Leach for his troubles.
This whole thing pisses me off. Yeah both sides probably made some mistakes, but the whole thing about ESPN figuring out what Bruce can report out independently is ridiculous. Yeah he shouldn't cover Leach or probably Texas Tech, but what about all those other ESPN guys who don't report independently. It just seems so hypocritical. ESPN is just too powerful these days, and someone needs to start a competing sports network to do things the right way.
Well, if you want to talk about someone having a conflict, let's make sure Craig James doesn't do any games with OSU, USC, or any of the other schools that have had issues with players getting impermissable benefits.
This whole situation is just a cluster fuck that could have been avoided had Craig James and his pussy son simply lived their lives somewhat humbly like 99% of us do. Unfortunately, they are part of the 1% that fucks things up for everyone else.
/endrant
While they should have talked to Feldman about the book once Leach sued ESPN, Feldman really should have checked in with ESPN after that happened. ESPN conducted a quick review once the book was released to conduct a quick review to see if they needed to begin disciplinary proceedings, opted not to go with them, and left it at that. This doesn't seem to be in any way improper to me.
The larger issue, obviously, is that they acted improperly with regards to the Craig James covering Texas Tech, which damaged their credibility, not to mention the other issues we a all have with ESPN. However, that doesn't mean that they were wrong in this instance.
Also, to make a quick note, the issues with ESPN's credibility do not even approach the issues surrounding Brooks' credibility. Brooks routinely tweets and posts rumors without bothering to confirm them or investigate other angles so that he can be the first person to report a story. He is wrong far more often than not.
see, the issue is that Poynter shouldn't even be considering what Brooks is doing. it shouldn't matter what Brooks said. the fact that ESPN had to resort to an ad hominem attack on Brooks (calling Brooks a "gossip" column amounts to such) in order to try and discredit their story makes me feel as if they really do have something to hide.
also, and this has been brought up before, why did it take ESPN so fucking long to address the rumors that Feldman had/hadn't been suspended. this is the age of the internet. i see no reason why, if ESPN can post breaking news within minutes, they couldn't have posted a short blurb or even a few lines on twitter.
if ESPN truly had just asked feldman to hold on for a day, why didn't they just say that? it would've been so easy to release a statement along the lines of: "due to current litigation between ESPN and mr. leach, and the recent book authored by mr. leach, with the assistance of one of our writers, bruce feldman, we are reviewing mr. feldman's current assignments, so as to avoid legal complications and conflicts." and im not even a lawyer.
the thing is that we really don't know what happened. the only people who do know are ESPN brass (who'll never say anything), and Bruce Feldman, who also might never say anything about this. with that, we, the general public, are left to speculate and try to see the truth between the lines of smoke, spin, and falsification. and from what i've seen so far, given the combination of
1) absolute silence from any and all espn journalists
2) uproar from the rest of the journalistic community
3) extremely defensive nature of espns response to the situation,
the entire thing reeks of a cover-up.