Good to see the Poynter Review Project, which serves as ESPN’s ombudsman, finally weigh in on a timely topic. Timely hasn’t been a strength of the current set-up.
Jason Fry and Kelly McBride reviewed ESPN’s coverage of the Freeh Commission and the fallout at Penn State last week. Like everyone else, they knocked ESPN for electing to have Matt Millen, one of Joe Paterno’s former players, have such a prominent role on SportsCenter.
They wrote: “His difficulty coming to grips with the implications of the Freeh report for Paterno’s legacy and Penn State’s culture was painful to watch.”
They correctly put the ultimate blame on the ESPN producers, not Millen.
Media critics and viewers have pilloried Millen, but we think ESPN’s producers should bear a substantial part of the blame for what went wrong. For openers, Millen is too close to the subject to offer clear-eyed analysis. The Freeh report helped show us that Penn State’s culture of reverence for its football program and for Paterno himself were gross distortions of a star system that ultimately allowed the rape of children to continue. Insider analysis that can help us understand how that happened would be helpful, but too often Millen gave us more examples of the perils of such devotion.
Besides Millen, they gave glowing praise for ESPN’s coverage among its many platforms. However, they missed one: ESPN Radio.
As I wrote last week, ESPN Radio broke for a commercial 15 minutes into the Louis Freeh press conference, and then came back to discussion about basketball. I thought that was inexcusable.
In a vacuum, ESPN’s coverage was great. Yet, all along, Yahoo! (Dan Wetzel) ate its lunch and came back for dinner, too.
Why was Mark Schwartz, a known bulldog, not set loose until he came back with information? When story after story emerged, where was the spark in Bristol to no get beaten like a rented mule, time after time? Where was the urgency in avoiding the pervasive conflict of interest in owning so many rights to so many PSU athletic contests?
If I were John Walsh or Vince Doria, I would not have rested until my operation was in the vanguard of reporting this story. ESPN was AWOL until the actual Sandusky trial commenced.