Lakers print reporter claims ESPN anchor stole story

If he used cut and paste this time to start his script, then I'm guessing this is a regular practice for a lazy anchor who moves around a few words in other people's works and reads it on TV.

 

I've had a couple of pretty esteemed casual industry friends/colleagues claim this over the years, and because I respect them, I'm not one to be saying it's not true.

Having written that, I'll write this: There's no confluence of events and circumstances where I could see myself repeating something verbatim from someplace else and not remembering that I didn't write it myself.

 

Bingo. I mean, the same day you wrote your copy, how do you not remember what you wrote? That seems impossible to me, unless you're in the habit of writing at lightning speed and then not even proofing it or reading through it before you go on the air -- but, I grant you, that may be exactly how this anchor writes his script.

 

Well, to be fair, in some of these cases, it occurred in stories that were reported over long periods of time and came out of notebooks filled with information from a lot of sources.

That said, I STILL can't imagine ever writing something in a story and not remembering that I didn't originally write it in the first place. But I haven't reported a big story like that in years and years, and maybe it's perfectly plausible.

 

I wonder if there's anyway to go back and look at his past work and see if this has happened before. I hope someone at ESPN is on that.

 

Unless ESPNews has a script archive, that would be very difficult. With the network on 24/7 (albeit with hours of repeats overnight), it's not likely a complete archive of actual broadcasts exists.

 

I'll be curious to read what the ESPN ombudsman writes about this.

 

He'll probably barely address it and say ESPN did the right thing.

 

Not saying this guy didn't do wrong, ethically speaking. This is like a cheating student who turns in a regurgitation of somebody else's term paper.

Nonetheless, I think I'd be just a little bit complimented, and validated, that ESPN (or anybody else, for that matter) lifted something of mine verbatim.

I also think I'd laugh a little bit -- at ESPN -- that it lifted, verbatim, something like this, which isn't even anything that's earth-shaking, or that's in need of hard ownership because of any exclusive or otherwise important news-breaking that was involved.

 

I guess I'm surprised by this as the on-air anchors at ESPN, almost to a person, have to write their own lead-ins to highlights.

I would think any anchor with any pride would insist on this. I probably anchored about 6,000 sportscasts and relished (cherished?) the leads I'd write. That was "my time" to add some flair and throw in something interesting.

I can only imagine the enjoyment I would get writing my own leads for a show people actually watch... Ugh.

 

I agree with exmediahack. My favorite part of anchoring was writing and delivering those on camera lead-ins.

Maybe what happened was that he liked the lede and meant to use that idea to write his own similar thing...( Perhaps that's unacceptable to many of you as well, but the fact is, people who write for a living do get ideas from things they read...). ...so he cut and pasted but forgot to rework it.

That being said, when you're anchoring and you see something in prompter you know shouldn't be there, you don't have to say the damn thing.