ESPN Once Again Disgraces Itself With Its Coverage of Brett Favre Story

It only took three days (information travels slow these days), but finally, the Worldwide Leader ran a story on its Web site about the report of Brett Favre providing the Detroit Lions with information about the Green Bay Packers just prior to the two teams playing this season.

Under the link off the main page, “Favre denies report he helped Lions,” the story ran with the headline, “Favre says he didn’t give Millen, Lions any inside info about Packers.”

It even has the nice block quote, “I didn't give [Matt Millen] any game-planning. I haven't been in that offense in over a year. I don't know what else to tell you."

Great, end of story.

To quote Lee Corso, from one of the few quality shows left on ESPN, "Not so fast."

Turns out, if you actually listen to Favre, he absolutely did admit to helping the Lions, he just chose to call it by another name.

From using Favre's actual words, and not coming to your conclusion regardless of what he said, like ESPN obviously did, he admits to having a seven to 10-minute conversation with Matt Millen. He admits that Millen asked him about the Packers, and he admits to answering those questions. Sounds to me like Favre tried to help the Lions, and contrary to Favre, the report was not, “Total B.S."

Favre tries to defend himself by saying other players do the same thing, but then, of course, Favre points to players on a current team talking about a team they used to play for. A significant difference. Also, if Brett didn't do anything, as ESPN wants people to believe, what could he be talking about when he says everyone does it. It can't be both ways.

Favre also tries to make it seem like it had been so long ago that he played for Green Bay that he couldn’t possibly have anything relevant to say. Then why say anything?  And obviously, it wasn’t that long ago, and other than the QB Green Bay replaced Favre with, the rest of the offense, including coaches, is pretty much the same.

What Favre did, and it is clear he did it, was not against the rules. It just makes Favre look vindictive, childish, and really, it just makes him look bad, which is the complete opposite of the image he tries to portray—an image that ESPN has gone to great lengths to cultivate. But regardless, it isn’t the worst thing and really is not that big of a deal.

What should be a big deal is ESPN’s handling of the situation, as once again, the Worldwide Leader has embarrassed itself with how it has handled a story.

This story broke on Sunday with a report from FoxSports.com's Jay Glazer. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday went by without anything on ESPN.com about the situation.

Thanks to Profootballtalk.com, we know why. ESPN issued an internal memo instructing its employees to “Do Not Report” on the Favre talking to the Lions story. ESPN tried to hide behind their claim that they had been told the story was not true.

So what? The story is out there. ESPN needed to report on it, even if just to include the denials that it was not true. 

Does someone need to remind ESPN that reporting isn’t just spitting back what someone says in a press conference, or reprinting some press release. You are allowed to do actual reporting and provide actual analysis.

If there is a story that is out there that is not true, the story can still be printed and you add in the analysis explaining why it is not true. You would think ESPN's crack investigative reporter Mike Fish would be able to teach his colleagues at the network this bit of basic journalism.

But clearly something else is going on here.

Back in January, the Boston Herald printed what turned out to be a false story about the New England Patriots. According to Chris Mortensen, speaking on Mike & Mike in the Morning on Apr. 17, 2008, ESPN and several other outlets had the same story but would not run it because it was not credible.

Once the Herald printed it, however, ESPN ran wild. And of course, not once in any of the stories it printed did ESPN note the reservations it had about the story. So obviously, ESPN has shown in the past they have no trouble running a story they themselves could not verify.

Finally today, ESPN does run the story, and again, as Profootballtalk.com points out, they completely butchered it. ESPN waited until Favre spoke so the story could be Favre’s words and not the allegations that Glazer has said he stands behind completely.

Again, to me, the question is why is ESPN doing this?

Can you imagine how fast ESPN would have ran a story on this had it been T.O. talking to someone about playing the Eagles? Or maybe Adam Jones talking to a team playing the Titans?  Do you think, had it been T.O., ESPN would have waited three days to run anything, allowing Owens a chance to speak first and get his side of the story out there.

Also, who cares that Favre issued a denial. The man isn’t exactly known for telling the truth. There is the whole retire, unretired situation. He told Peter King the story was “Total B.S.” And now we find out that isn’t exactly true.

I don’t know why ESPN felt the need to bury this story. But they did. 

Was it to protect Favre because they like him so much?

Maybe it was to curry favor with Favre. At some point, let’s hope Favre will actually retire and stay that way. And at that time, I imagine, ESPN will line up with the other networks to try to get him to join their already bloated pregame shows.

Don’t you think ESPN would like to be able to say to Favre, "Remember that story about you trying to sabotage the Packers—well Fox ran with it, we defended you. Remember that Brett?"

Hasn't ESPN missed out on luring recent big name ex-NFL players like Michael Strahan, Tiki Barber, and Warren Sapp?

In addition to selectively choosing what quotes to run, ESPN also tossed in the score of the game, as if to say—look the Packers won easily, clearly then Favre is still a great guy. That Green Bay won is really not the point, and also, Detroit led the game 25-24 in the fourth quarter before a series of turnovers produced the final lopsided score.

That Favre did this is not the end of the world. My question though is from a journalistic standpoint: If ESPN would go to these lengths to try to protect the image of Brett Favre and bury a story that again isn’t that important, what are they doing with important issues they come across?

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. ESPN shamed themselves with their coverage of Favre during this past offseason. They shamed themselves with their coverage of Spygate. They shamed themselves with their story on Miguel Tejada’s age. 

They shamed themselves by printing a Jemelle Hill article with a hateful and hurtful comparison. They shamed themselves with the drunken roast they threw for Mike & Mike (another story the network quickly swept under the rug—what if that was an athlete and not an ESPN employee?). All of this within the last year.

ESPN loves to force coverage down fans' throats. Except with the Olympics, where their coverage was surprisingly measured. But of course, ESPN did not broadcast the Olympics, so maybe their lack of coverage wasn’t really all that surprising.

It has been pointed out to me that ESPN always tends to find stories to run on the breaking news scroll of ESPN News that just happen to relate to games they (or ABC) will be broadcasting. This week, shockingly there is "breaking news" on the scroll about Ohio State-Penn State, yet nearly nothing for LSU-Georgia.

When I saw the reports on Profootballtalk.com about ESPN’s refusal to cover this story, and then when I finally did see ESPN’s attempt to protect Favre, I was angered at the complete lack of standards the network exhibits.

But, I was not surprised for one second. The only difference this time was that I saw an actual ESPN memo trying to rationalize their indefensible actions.

The really sad thing though is as much as ESPN angered me with this latest example of letting ulterior motives get in their way of properly covering a story, I know I have no choice but to continue to rely on ESPN. I may not watch SportsCenter anymore, haven’t in years, but there is no way to care about sports and completely cut the network out.

ESPN knows that. And instead of using that as motivation to live up to the highest possible standard, ESPN has gone the complete opposite way. They don’t care. They know they can do things like parade entertainers in and out of the Monday Night Football booth, put Rush Limbaugh on NFL GameDay, get rid of maybe the show they did best, ESPN PrimeTime, tell everyone Favre didn’t help the Lions when Favre admitted he did—and people will have no choice.

I guess that is what bothers me the most: that feeling of helplessness. You can get angry with ESPN all you want, but if you love sports, you are stuck. That alone should matter to those who run ESPN. It doesn’t.

Sometimes when I write these articles, the most difficult part is trying to come up with a headline. This time, I didn’t have such a problem.

Author's Note:  It did not take long.  ESPN.com today has an article with the headline, "Brady has more procedures for infection; Pats upset with situation."  The article then details the repeated surgeries Brady has undergone and that he used his own doctor.  It then asserts, like the headline indicates, that the Patriots are upset with Brady because he used his own surgeon.  Only problem, where is the quote from anyone associated with the Patriots that would indicate they are upset?  There is not even a quote attributed to a source.  So again, I ask, according to who the Patriots are upset? 

Maybe they are upset.  But you cannot write this article, with that headline, and then produce for print an article that provides no support for its conclusion.  There has to be some quote, anything, from someone within the Patriots, whether for attribution or not, that indicates they are upset with Brady.  This is a major accusation to make about a team and its star, and once again, ESPN has lowered the bar for its journalistic standards.

The Patriots issued a statement completely supporting Brady and categorically denying the ESPN report.  To no ones surprise, ESPN as of 8:00 EST has failed to include the statement in their story.