The Oakland Raiders seem to have a bone to pick with ESPN.
Last week, Outside the Lines, an ESPN show that tracks off the beat sports issues, ran a story accusing Tom Cable, the Raiders head coach, of also being physically abusive to his former ex-girl friend and wife, suggesting that his preseason assault on his assistant coach is not an isolated incident.
While Cable admitted to hitting his ex-wife 20 years ago with an open hand, he said he never did so again any other time in the marriage.
Since the report ran, the Raiders have accused the world’s most trusted leader is sports news of being bias against their team and that report featured many quotes that were taken out of context.
To be honest, the Raiders have been an easy target for all media outlets, considering how poorly their team stinks but my guess is they are trying to deny the facts in the report and putting the onus on ESPN.
Still, it begs the question, would ESPN ever falsely report a story, or do poor reporting in order to break some juicy gossip?
Odds are that the ESPN report was accurate, as Cable’s incidents seem to be stemming from a history of past assaults. But the accusations made by the Raiders brings up an alarming situation that could hurt the network somewhere down the line.
In the age of twitter, facebook and the instant need of breaking news, it is so easy for any news outlet to fumble a news story, or perhaps make some quick assumptions based off of poor evidence and quick reporting. Just last year Selena Roberts of Sports Illustrated was accused of doing some shady things in breaking the Alex Roriguez steroids story, thus placing a bad name and a sore thumb into SI’s reputation.
Today, websites like deadspin.com are growing high ratings because of their juicy gossip sports stories, although something tells me they do not due the most honest reporting. Hopefully, ESPN will never fall down this path. They should always strive to be the ultimate standard and last work on a sports story, regardless if they were the first to break it. While ESPN is the most respected sports news medium they are also the most trusted. I would hate if they one day succumbed to anything less.
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ReplyDeleteGreat post! As a generation that is somewhere between an older generation who has just recently been introduced to the effects of new media, and a younger generation who really only knows new media, we have a unique outlook and can probably most accurately analyze and record these changes within new media outlets. In regards to your Deadspin.com comment, I think that it is a new media that probably does influence more "credible" news sources such as ESPN and ESPN.com, and with a world that is increasingly moving online, how could it not sway these sources (especially when you have the older generation I mentioned earlier, "blindly" exploring the Internet looking for "information"). Also, in regards to gossip influence, I agree that traditionally respected news outlets like ESPN do have an obligation to filter and uphold the "gold seal" standard of sports media and reporting, and internally draw a bold line between DUTY and what most media have been founded on, PROFIT.
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