Kyle Shanahan Reporting Uncovers ESPN-NFL Corruption; Bad Look for 49ers and their beat writers
Schefter, McAfee taking full advantage of ESPN’s new direction. 49ers accidentally showed us all.
Kyle Shanahan was involved in a car accident 11 days before the incident was reported. The accident itself was brutal. Chris Simms, who’s close friends with the Shanahans, described the extent of the injuries on PFT Live.
While there’s a lot that others will surely unpack in the coming days, weeks, and months as it pertains to Shanahan’s injuries, the incident did reveal what to expect from ESPN now that the NFL owns 10% of the sports media company.
And that’s where we’ll begin.
ESPN is not a sports news organization. Their employees are not journalists. They are cogs in the league’s public relations machine. Look no further than the timeline for the proof.
On Saturday, July 25th at 12:00 PM ET, the 49ers released a statement, informing the public that Kyle Shanahan had been involved in a car accident on July 14th.
At 12:01, ESPN/NFL Insider Adam Schefter posted a detailed explanation of the incident to Twitter X.
At 12:02, Adam Schefter and Nick Wagoner posted an article to ESPN.
Schefter’s Twitter X post was 73 words. The article he collaborated with Nick Wagoner on was 746 words. Unless Schefter not only can type and post at record breaking speeds, but do it while collaborating with another writer, this release was clearly a coordinated effort.
The synchronized PR stunt between Schefter and an NFL team can be expected for the foreseeable future. Though, the NFL/ESPN partnership may not be the sole reason Schefter was willing to sit on the story.
Schefter and the Shanahan’s have a relationship that spans more than a quarter decade. Schefter wrote a book with Kyle Shanahan’s father, legendary NFL Head Coach Mike Shanahan in 1999.
Presumably that makes Schefter a long-time family friend. Sitting on a story about someone you’re close to makes sense on one level. On another level, it’s a betrayal to journalism. Journalists have a responsibility to their audience, some of whom are paying north of $30 a month for their reporting.
Having said that, betraying a friendship isn’t the only option for a journalist caught in a conflict of interest. Conflicts of interest aren’t inherently bad. We all have them. The right thing to do when they come up is to recuse yourself, and hand the story off to someone who doesn’t have a conflict. With ESPN’s relationship to the NFL, they don’t have the ability or inclination to do that, making honest journalism impossible for the network.
This isn’t the first conflict of interest concern that’s been raised when it comes to Adam Schefter. For years, many have taken issue with the fact that Schefter is an investor in Boom Entertainment. Critics of Schefter’s involvement with the sports betting company point to his influence over the sports market, to the tune of 11 million followers on Twitter X.
Others point to the fact that Schefter’s conflict of interest extends to the Patriots, because owner Robert Kraft is also an investor in Boom Entertainment.
That conflict became particularly glaring when Schefter, and ESPN for the most part, avoided the biggest controversy of the offseason - the alleged affair between Patriots’ Head Coach Mike Vrabel and former NFL Insider, Dianna Russini.
Of course, ESPN and the NFL don’t seem to mind conflicts of interest. The NFL allows Tom Brady to work for Fox, interviewing several teams throughout the season, despite being a part of Raiders ownership. In a similar vein, Troy Aikman is allowed to work for the Dolphins and ESPN this season, essentially providing the exact same services (and conflict) as Brady.
Last week one of ESPN’s biggest names, Pat McAfee, bragged on his show that he knew LeBron James was going to make his announcement on Friday because ESPN’s top NBA Insider requested to be on the show that day. That prompted McAfee to make a bet on the top four destinations, one of which was the 76ers squad James wound up signing with (Insider trading? Conflict of interest? Unethical journalism? Take your pick).
Bottom line, at this point it’s clear that ESPN not only doesn’t care about journalistic standards, ethics, or conflicts of interest, but they actually embrace them. Once again, the NFL owns 10% of the network, who in turn run the league’s media entities. ESPN in and of itself, is a conflict of interest.
ESPN aren’t the only ones, though. We know why Adam Schefter and ESPN sat on the Shanahan story. But it’s not like Schefter is the only one that would have known.
The 49ers, like the other 31 teams in the NFL, have a plethora of beat writers that also must have known. 11 days is just too long for the writers who eat, sleep, and breathe 49er football to not know that the head coach was in a horrific car accident and hospitalized.
A few of them have admitted to knowing Shanahan was going to miss the start of training camp, they just claim they didn’t know why. Which means they are either bad journalists or they’re lying to cover the fact that the 49ers asked them to sit on the story. I mean, why wouldn’t you have any journalistic curiosity over your head coach missing the start of camp?
For years it’s been known that beat writers sit on stories to preserve their access to teams and players. Before the NFL/ESPN teamup, this wasn’t that big of a deal. Even when the beat writers sat on a story, you could count on the national media to catch it and report on it in a timely manner. In fact, I’d guess that oftentimes the beat writers were the ones slipping information to national media outlets. Think about it; the beat writer gets to preserve their relationship with the team, while proving their useful information to large sports media companies they could some day make the jump to.
The Shanahan incident shines a light on a new reality. Beat writers are either going to have to get back to being the true journalists that ask the tough questions, and report the truth on their teams, or we’re going to be left with media as muddy as the political field, where you accept half truths provided by, and in defense of, the subjects of the coverage.
-Written by Seattle Mike