Lapdogs Unchained

Slate (yeah, I know) has an article up on NFL sports reporting, the compromised "insiders" who turn a blind eye to scandal in order not to anger their inside sources, access reporting vs. accountability reporting. I've seen some pretty scathing things in the Rice and Peterson threads about Mortensen, King, and others who have left their true reporting for playing stenographer for The League.

It's a pretty good read to me, but I don't have the perspective you guys do. Thoughts?

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2014/09/roger_goodell_and_the_nfl_thought_they_had_the_press_under_control_not_any.html

"The Rice case is a reminder of how the nearly $10 billion-a-year NFL’s rise to cultural prominence has allowed it to shape the message transmitted to fans, both through its quasi-journalistic arms and through multibillion-dollar deals with other media. It’s also fair to say, though, that the Rice video has changed how Roger Goodell’s NFL will be covered going forward. The league’s media lapdogs have started barking, and they might not stop until the commissioner is gone."


"Meanwhile, it looks like some NFL beat reporters were used and abused by the hands that typically feed them news about free agent signings and coaches on the hot seat. The problem with access journalism comes when reporters serve as mere pass-throughs for information, especially when that information is a lot weightier than the Chargers planning to sign Doug Legursky. In July, King reported that “the NFL and some Ravens officials have seen” the video of Rice punching out his then-fiancée Janay Palmer inside a New Jersey casino hotel elevator. But then the NFL denied having seen the video, and King explained that he hadn’t done due diligence, posting a statement saying his source had told him that he had only “assumed” the NFL had seen the video.

Not every NFL reporter has been saying mea culpa. Jane McManus of ESPN reported in July that “two league sources” told her the NFL had access to the same evidence as the prosecutors, and she hasn’t backtracked an inch. Mortensen first quoted sources describing the contents of the video in May, and he did so again in July and last week. “There’s no question that the sources with whom I spoke had knowledge of the videotape and in one case had seen the tape,” he said."