Lower Standards, Diminished Credibility

ESPN Bigfoot reporter Adam Schefter is collateral damage in the email dump that’s part of the NFL’s investigation into the Washington Snydermen franchise that cost Jon Gruden his job. Schefter shared a piece about efforts to end the league’s lockout in 2011 and corresponded with then-team president Bruce Allen, emailing: “Please let me know if you see anything that should be added, changed, tweaked. Thanks, Mr. Editor, for that and the trust. Plan to file this to espn about 6 am. . . .” 

Schefter is catching heat for violating a foundational point of journalism: reporters do not share stories with sources before they’re printed. If a reporter wants further clarification from a source before printing? Fine. If a reporter or source wants to negotiate what and how something will be presented? No problem. But sharing a story with a source? Can’t happen. 

To be sure, the Schefter-Allen “arrangement” is a minor transgression compared to the racism, misogyny, homophobia and general assholery that the Gruden emails conveyed. But it’s a bad look for Schefter and troubling for several reasons. One, sharing stories with sources and permitting them to edit erodes the ideal of a free and independent press. The Founding Fathers thought that important enough to include in the Bill of Rights’ First Amendment. 

Now, some in the audience may be thinking, “Lighten up, Francis; it’s sports, not treason or state secrets.” But the NFL is a multi-billion-dollar behemoth and long ago quit being about just sports. We live in an era when public figures – politicians, executives, athletes, celebrities, even corporations and professional sports leagues – want to craft their own images and messages. They want to be seen as attractive or sympathetic or responsible, and they’re increasingly able to do so through P.R. types and contracted storytellers and various social media platforms that bypass the traditional press. Because access is so important, some reporters make ethical rationalizations about what they choose and choose not to report, about how chummy or forgiving they are to sources and subjects. 

The NFL hasn’t exactly been progressive on many fronts – concussions and head trauma, domestic violence, minority hiring, social justice and recognition of player concerns, to name a few areas. It’s fair to wonder how much Schefter and other reporters overlook certain subjects for the ability to report injuries, depth charts, player movement, juicy quotes from unnamed sources. Since the Gruden fallout was a result of a broader investigation into an entirely different franchise, it’s also fair to wonder to what extent the email dump is a cover for other people and organizations. Guaranteed that Gruden isn’t a one-off or outlier. 

Sharing stories with sources also skews the boundaries for other reporters. For example: Reporter, to source: “I found out such-and-such. Can you confirm?” Source: “I’d need to see the story first.” Reporter: “I can’t do that.” Source: “Why not? Schefter did it.” Full disclosure: In my newspaper days, I ran phrasing past a lawyer or two for a couple of stories for the sake of precision and proper language. Before I depended on an audio recorder in interviews and often relied on written notes, on rare occasions I ran a quote past a subject to double-check its accuracy. I never shared an entire story with a source. 

Under this gravestone, there is rolling

For his part, Schefter issued a statement that said the criticism is fair, and that he uncharacteristically
shared the story because of its complicated nature. He said that he was wrong to do so, and that he would never cede editorial control or final say about a story to outside sources. Schefter has reported plenty of complicated stories. Was that the only time he shared one with a source beforehand? We’re supposed to believe that he would never concede control to someone to whom he referred as “Mr. Editor”?

As award-winning journalist and author Tommy Tomlinson pointed out, no reporter has ever referred to a colleague as “Mr. Editor” unless there was an expletive between the two words. Schefter has broken dozens of stories over the years, through dogged reporting and a humongous contact list. But what he did, at least once, failed journalism, and the entire profession suffers for it.