ESPN ombudsman takes WWL to task on Vick coverge...

... specifically on the WWL's stubborn insistence for nearly 10 hours on sticking by its "scoop" that Vick would plead guilty, but not admit to killing dogs, which proved not only wrong, but wrong for a long time, since Vick had signed a summary of facts admission three days before.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=schreiber_leanne&id=3009796

Then, you gotta love her following take:

"Why had it been so hard for so many anchors and so many producers to understand Vick's guilty plea? I am personally convinced that if ESPN had never been spun by its own scoop, the news of Vick's written plea and summary of facts would have been presented all day long in a far more lucid and straightforward manner. Intentionally or not, both producers and anchors got fixated on a few euphemistic circumlocutions in the documents that salvaged a slight shred of credibility for the previous night's scoop."

"The scoop was seriously misleading, if not dead wrong, which is always the risk one takes with a single anonymous source, especially when the source has a vested interest in how the news is presented. And when such a risk is taken, it is important to be as forthcoming about it as you can. I wish the original news story had described the source as "close to Vick's defense team," as I was later told he was, and not just "close to the case," so viewers and readers could surmise spin motives for themselves. I wish the story had carried a byline, not just a "told ESPN" tag, which makes everyone and no one at ESPN accountable for it."

 

Hope she enjoys banging her head against a wall.

 

Sounds like just what Mort did with the Eli Manning out for a month "scoop."

 

Must be liberating to know you only have to be right about half the time -- and the times you are right are when the crawler says "ESPN's Chris Mortenson has learned..." by reading the wire, along with everyone else.

 

By essentially forcing Mort to keep jumping through smaller and smaller eyes of needles, they're not being fair to Mort, but this is the business they've chosen . . .

 

Nothing will change. Wait, scratch that -- it will only get worse, in spite of ombudslady.

 

I don't doubt that. I just got a vicarious thrill to see it written down, on their web site...not that any of those humps would even read it.

 

It's a perfect situation . . . she REALLY gets it, and they couldn't care less.

Make her over/under 1/1/08.

 

[blue]Why does ESPN care about what radio station WWL does?