Brad Sham calls out ESPN
Nothing But The Facts, Please
IRVING, Texas - We must do better than this.
And in this case, by "this," I'm not referring to quarterback play or safety coverage. And by "we," I don't mean the Cowboys.
I mean us, the media. We're doing a sloppy reporting job, and once it starts there's no telling where it ends.
And specifically, I'm calling out ESPN, The Worldwide Leader in Sports.
Don't misunderstand. This is not a bitter vendetta. I am an ESPN fan. And normally criticizing a specific media outlet is not something I endorse, not from this corner.
But on Tuesday, you and I got wrong information. We must do better than this.
Tuesday, ESPN reported from the NFL owners' meeting in New Orleans that there had to be a brewing firestorm between Cowboys' coach Bill Parcells and owner Jerry Jones. There had to be, because Parcells made the halftime quarterback change Monday night from Drew Bledsoe to Tony Romo and Jones was against it. Jones was against it, and he was publicly saying he thought his coach had made the wrong choice.
To prove it, ESPN ran a sound byte from a TV interview with Jones. Asked if he had spoken to Parcells about the change and if he agreed with it, Jones said, "We discuss all the time. I really don't know. I thought the best chance for us to be where we wanted to be, which was contending in the playoffs, was to go with the experienced quarterback, which was Drew. And I don't know that I've changed my mind about that at all."
And ESPN had their story. In SportsCenters, big stories ran about the Jerry-Bill controversy. Wednesday morning on the popular Mike and Mike in the Morning show, which simulcasts on ESPN Radio and ESPN2 television, multiple segments were devoted to the split between Jones and Parcells.
Listen, I'm a Mike and Mike fan. I mean, I'm a Mike fan and a Mike fan and a Mike and Mike fan. They're entertaining, and I believe what I hear there. I know the network's Cowboys beat reporter, Ed Werder, to be a person and journalist of quality and integrity. Werder did break the national story before the game Monday night that Romo was on alert and might come in.
But Werder wasn't part of the New Orleans or Bristol, Conn., reporting on Jones' comments from Tuesday. Too bad. Because we didn't get the whole story from ESPN. In fact, much worse happened. We got a wrong story.
The sound byte from Jones was accurate, all right, and as far as it goes it does indeed appear that he endorses Bledsoe as the quarterback. If only his entire comment had run, as it did on some local outlets later Tuesday night, and on the Talkin' Cowboys radio show on the Cowboys Radio Network and DallasCowboys.com Wednesday morning. The rest of the quote shows Jones straddling the fence in his answer, and in fact endorsing no one.
When you simply hear the rest of the answer, which in fact you could do by going to ESPN's website, you hear him say, after saying he hasn't changed his mind about the value of an experienced quarterback:
"But we've got to win games, and we've got to give ourselves every opportunity to. There's no question Romo's got more mobility, and he can mitigate some of the problems we have with Drew's mobility. On the other hand, you saw (Monday night) we give up some good stuff experience-wise, too. It'll be a tough decision."
So what's the difference? Why make a big to-do about it?
Because leaving out half the quote completely changes its meaning, and thus the story. In fact, if there's no conflict between Jones and Parcells, there is no story. This becomes highly disappointing to the national reporters (and the local ones) who have been waiting for that since the day Parcells was hired.
I'm a big freedom of the press guy. I believe that those in power, whether government or private business or the head of the family, tend to watch out for their self-interests by telling us only what they want us to know. Nothing wrong with that from their perspective. It's their job.
It's just that as consumers and/or citizens, we're entitled to more. Parcells and Jones are entitled to tell you as little as they can get away with. You, as a consumer of products like their sponsors and their tickets, are entitled to information, as much as we can get. That's where the media comes in.
And that's why it is absolutely incumbent on the media to be above reproach. We are the ones who are supposed to tell you what's really is happening, not what the people in power want you to know. How can the system work at all if we are either too lazy to tell the whole story or too dishonest to change what we report if it's not what we want to report? Sadly, there is truth in the old joking journalistic adage, "Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story."
Some of this happened in the Terrell Owens reporting in the last month. Answers to questions from a Monday were put on the questions from Wednesday, because it fit the story better. If you didn't know what to believe, you wouldn't know what to believe.
Someday Jones and Parcells will part ways. Maybe it will be amicably, when Bill rides into the sunset. Maybe it will be acrimonious, when one of them just gets sick of the way things are going. But the fact right now is that they're not fighting over this. Maybe they have different ideas, but they're not fighting. And any attempt to tell you otherwise is one of two dangerous things: It's either very lazy, sloppy reporting or it's intentionally dishonest.
I'm going to pick lazy and sloppy, because I do not wish to believe that someone with so much influence in this profession I hold dear would intentionally manipulate the facts simply because they could and wanted to.
What we should be reporting is what Jones said Wednesday in comments taped to run on the NFL Network. Asked if the change was due to the play of Bledsoe or because this particular change combined with the rest of the Cowboys' personnel on offense gave the team the best chance to win right now, he quickly responded, "I think you've nailed it right there." The public may not always like the media, but usually you trust us because you have little other choice about getting information. It's really, really bad when we let you down like we did this week.
IRVING, Texas - We must do better than this.
And in this case, by "this," I'm not referring to quarterback play or safety coverage. And by "we," I don't mean the Cowboys.
I mean us, the media. We're doing a sloppy reporting job, and once it starts there's no telling where it ends.
And specifically, I'm calling out ESPN, The Worldwide Leader in Sports.
Don't misunderstand. This is not a bitter vendetta. I am an ESPN fan. And normally criticizing a specific media outlet is not something I endorse, not from this corner.
But on Tuesday, you and I got wrong information. We must do better than this.
Tuesday, ESPN reported from the NFL owners' meeting in New Orleans that there had to be a brewing firestorm between Cowboys' coach Bill Parcells and owner Jerry Jones. There had to be, because Parcells made the halftime quarterback change Monday night from Drew Bledsoe to Tony Romo and Jones was against it. Jones was against it, and he was publicly saying he thought his coach had made the wrong choice.
To prove it, ESPN ran a sound byte from a TV interview with Jones. Asked if he had spoken to Parcells about the change and if he agreed with it, Jones said, "We discuss all the time. I really don't know. I thought the best chance for us to be where we wanted to be, which was contending in the playoffs, was to go with the experienced quarterback, which was Drew. And I don't know that I've changed my mind about that at all."
And ESPN had their story. In SportsCenters, big stories ran about the Jerry-Bill controversy. Wednesday morning on the popular Mike and Mike in the Morning show, which simulcasts on ESPN Radio and ESPN2 television, multiple segments were devoted to the split between Jones and Parcells.
Listen, I'm a Mike and Mike fan. I mean, I'm a Mike fan and a Mike fan and a Mike and Mike fan. They're entertaining, and I believe what I hear there. I know the network's Cowboys beat reporter, Ed Werder, to be a person and journalist of quality and integrity. Werder did break the national story before the game Monday night that Romo was on alert and might come in.
But Werder wasn't part of the New Orleans or Bristol, Conn., reporting on Jones' comments from Tuesday. Too bad. Because we didn't get the whole story from ESPN. In fact, much worse happened. We got a wrong story.
The sound byte from Jones was accurate, all right, and as far as it goes it does indeed appear that he endorses Bledsoe as the quarterback. If only his entire comment had run, as it did on some local outlets later Tuesday night, and on the Talkin' Cowboys radio show on the Cowboys Radio Network and DallasCowboys.com Wednesday morning. The rest of the quote shows Jones straddling the fence in his answer, and in fact endorsing no one.
When you simply hear the rest of the answer, which in fact you could do by going to ESPN's website, you hear him say, after saying he hasn't changed his mind about the value of an experienced quarterback:
"But we've got to win games, and we've got to give ourselves every opportunity to. There's no question Romo's got more mobility, and he can mitigate some of the problems we have with Drew's mobility. On the other hand, you saw (Monday night) we give up some good stuff experience-wise, too. It'll be a tough decision."
So what's the difference? Why make a big to-do about it?
Because leaving out half the quote completely changes its meaning, and thus the story. In fact, if there's no conflict between Jones and Parcells, there is no story. This becomes highly disappointing to the national reporters (and the local ones) who have been waiting for that since the day Parcells was hired.
I'm a big freedom of the press guy. I believe that those in power, whether government or private business or the head of the family, tend to watch out for their self-interests by telling us only what they want us to know. Nothing wrong with that from their perspective. It's their job.
It's just that as consumers and/or citizens, we're entitled to more. Parcells and Jones are entitled to tell you as little as they can get away with. You, as a consumer of products like their sponsors and their tickets, are entitled to information, as much as we can get. That's where the media comes in.
And that's why it is absolutely incumbent on the media to be above reproach. We are the ones who are supposed to tell you what's really is happening, not what the people in power want you to know. How can the system work at all if we are either too lazy to tell the whole story or too dishonest to change what we report if it's not what we want to report? Sadly, there is truth in the old joking journalistic adage, "Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story."
Some of this happened in the Terrell Owens reporting in the last month. Answers to questions from a Monday were put on the questions from Wednesday, because it fit the story better. If you didn't know what to believe, you wouldn't know what to believe.
Someday Jones and Parcells will part ways. Maybe it will be amicably, when Bill rides into the sunset. Maybe it will be acrimonious, when one of them just gets sick of the way things are going. But the fact right now is that they're not fighting over this. Maybe they have different ideas, but they're not fighting. And any attempt to tell you otherwise is one of two dangerous things: It's either very lazy, sloppy reporting or it's intentionally dishonest.
I'm going to pick lazy and sloppy, because I do not wish to believe that someone with so much influence in this profession I hold dear would intentionally manipulate the facts simply because they could and wanted to.
What we should be reporting is what Jones said Wednesday in comments taped to run on the NFL Network. Asked if the change was due to the play of Bledsoe or because this particular change combined with the rest of the Cowboys' personnel on offense gave the team the best chance to win right now, he quickly responded, "I think you've nailed it right there." The public may not always like the media, but usually you trust us because you have little other choice about getting information. It's really, really bad when we let you down like we did this week.
posted by The Gryphon at 9:02 PM
<< Home