ESPN’s Adam Schefter crosses a journalistic line

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Steve Timko

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Oct 14, 2021, 11:36:14 AM10/14/21
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Tom Wolper

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Oct 14, 2021, 12:53:12 PM10/14/21
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On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 11:36 AM Steve Timko <steve...@gmail.com> wrote:
It's more important to see if anything is going to come of this or if it's just his peers telling everybody he's a bad boy. It looks like ESPN wants to make the story go away ASAP.

Doug Fields

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Oct 14, 2021, 5:05:40 PM10/14/21
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Maybe it’s just my lack of formal journalism training, but I fail to see what all the fuss is about.  Are people confusing the fact that Bruce Allen was a source for Schefter’s story, and misconstruing him as the *subject* of the story?  I see nothing wrong with consulting with somebody you used as a source and reconfirming that you’re quoting him accurately and making sure you’re correctly reporting some complicated aspect of the story from his perspective.  Let him see the complete story?  Sure, why not?…you wouldn’t be *required* to use his follow-up input…it’s just a courtesy call, to make sure you’ve got your story straight.

 

And even if he had been the subject, just about every big journalism movie has that scene where the reporter calls the Senator whose life is about to become front-page news, asking him if he has any comment on the story that’s “gonna hit the papers tomorrow morning.”  Again, unless there’s some sort of editorial approval deal in place, I still wouldn’t see an ethical problem with giving him an advance copy of the story just so you can append the usual “No comment” to the end of it.

 

Doug Fields

Tampa, FL

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PGage

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Oct 14, 2021, 5:59:39 PM10/14/21
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Right, but this is different than calling a source, telling them you are running a story tomorrow that says “X” and asking for comment. This is bad.

The questions I have is,  1) is this really just a one off for Schefter, or something he has done with some regularity? (Someone please ask him if there is even one other instance of him showing a source a story before publication) and 2) is this really just Schefter, or is this something not uncommon among the very clubby NFL insider “journalists”? It has become common wisdom to dunk on NYT political reporters for getting stories by playing up to special inside stories (yes, looking at you Maggie), but this seems to be business as usual for NFL television reporters, who mostly seem to take dictation from league sources anyway.

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Steve Timko

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Oct 14, 2021, 6:24:38 PM10/14/21
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Running someone's quote by them is kosher. Sending the whole story and letting them approve it is not. you're essentially becoming a stenographer for the powerful at that 
A simple rule for journalists is only to do things you are willing to tell the readers. Was the reporter willing to tell readers that a source vetted the entire story?
You can run buy the gist of the story without surrendering the story.

Reporting is a hard job if you have to dig up information. It looks like Schefter sold his soul to develop a relationship with an important source to guarantee the flow of information. 


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Kevin M.

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Oct 14, 2021, 7:20:46 PM10/14/21
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I won’t claim to know whether Schefter is a serious journalist, but for serious in-depth stories (where libel laws can bite reporters in the ass), it would be allowed (in some cases even expected) to send rough drafts to sources or subjects named in the piece for review. Writers shouldn’t be under any obligation to make every change suggested by the person or persons they send it to, but such practices do occur. 

If memory serves, Woodward showed Trump an advanced copy of his book about him. I assume someone helped Trump with the big words. 

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Bill Partsch

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Oct 14, 2021, 9:18:14 PM10/14/21
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When you send entire stories to sources, you get no greater benefit than from reading aloud/emailing/texting the relevant portions to them, but they get the benefit of seeing what might be inside information they hadn’t known before and then massaging their responses accordingly, i.e., covering their own asses. You would then ethically be compelled to provide the same consideration to *all* the sources in the story, at which point you’ve surrendered all journalistic integrity. 

Even giving the journalist benefit of the doubt, sending an entire story to a source is just lazy. 

On Oct 14, 2021, at 5:05 PM, Doug Fields <do...@flids.net> wrote:



Steve Timko

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Oct 15, 2021, 8:19:48 PM10/15/21
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On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 4:20 PM Kevin M. <drunkba...@gmail.com> wrote:
I won’t claim to know whether Schefter is a serious journalist, but for serious in-depth stories (where libel laws can bite reporters in the ass), it would be allowed (in some cases even expected) to send rough drafts to sources or subjects named in the piece for review. 
I know of no major news organization that toes this.  

Kevin M.

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Oct 15, 2021, 8:23:26 PM10/15/21
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Ok. 


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John Edwards

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Oct 16, 2021, 12:03:59 PM10/16/21
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Yeah, there's fact-checking, and sending quotes back for verification, but this seemed a whole other level. It's a symptom of how NFL types and the "insider" reporters are way too chummy. Also, nothing Schefter is doing is serious or in-depth, unless announcing what Tom Brady had for breakfast counts.

John 

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John Edwards
"You can insure against the weather, but you can't insure against incompetence, can you?" - Phil Tufnell
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