More ESPN bashing

[Tony2046]

Hi there. I am the author of this piece. Thanks to the OP and for everyone's insights. Especially this one about the OTL piece. I wanted to include it, I really did. If fact I also couldn't fit in stuff about ESPN cancelling a show due to pressure from the NFL. And of course, there were many instances on bias on the deflategate issue: the "correction" about the walkthrough"; them re-writing Reiss's article that was critical of the OTL piece and other such things.

Truth is my editors let me go about 700 words longer than they prefer (3200 words, to the typical max of 2,500). There is literally so much evidence on ESPN's bias toward the league that it is hard to fit it in an article, even of that length. Also I wrote and submitted the first draft just as that 10,000 word OTL piece came out, so I could only briefly address it (when ESPN contacted me they directed me to that article as evidence that they can be critical of the NFL, which I had to respond to).

So, yeah, unfortunately I had to leave out some compelling examples. I also wanted to make sure I didn't focus almost entirely on Patriots stuff because I am writing for a national audience (and not a sports-fan audience at that), so I wanted to try and document other examples. Obviously my byline makes it obvious I am from Boston, so I wanted to make an argument that was broader than the Patriots stuff -- the biased coverage of deflategate is really just one example of many in which ESPN is compromised when it covers the NFL.

I will say that for some of the stuff I couldn't write about I tried to include them in some of the links.

Anyway, thanks for reading, posting and for your response. You are right that OTL situation would have helped to tell this story. I wish I had found a way to squeeze it in there.

Best,

Michael

Is this the real Michael or a Bills fan trying to pay us back for the troll job they fell for last week?

 

[sambam94]

my gosh, can we stop the whiny disrespect crap..any outsider reading these thread titles would have to come to the conclusion that pats fans are whiny, paranoid babies.

Who cares about what ESPN does or doesn't do, who cares about different personal records, who cares who thinks or doesn't think Brady is the best QB of all time. Just watch the darn games on Sunday and enjoy them for what it is..entertainment.

 

[Wordsmyth]

Yet, ironically enough, your post is replete with whining.

 

[Jackson 2]

my gosh, can we stop the whiny disrespect crap..any outsider reading these thread titles would have to come to the conclusion that pats fans are whiny, paranoid babies.

Who cares about what ESPN does or doesn't do, who cares about different personal records, who cares who thinks or doesn't think Brady is the best QB of all time. Just watch the darn games on Sunday and enjoy them for what it is..entertainment.

How ironic that the final three words of your first sentence, "whiny, paranoid babies" is a much more accurate descriptor of the Patriot accusers from Harbaby to Grigson to Kensil to Tomlin to most of ESPN and the NFL Network to most of the other 31 owners, et al.

 

[meatface]

It's really too bad that espn just does the bidding of the nfl now. I know if I was a journalist that would be a tough pill for me to swallow

 

[NashuaPats]

Chad Finn did a chat on Sons of Sam horn and touched on the ESPN bias. There's an interesting bit about Polian.

"Well, there’s evidence of an agenda on ESPN’s part, sure. The skepticism is justified. Most egregiously, they never corrected Chris Mortensen’s erroneous report about 11 of the 12 footballs in the first half of the AFC Championship Game being underinflated by 2 PSI, the story that turned a minor “huh, that’s weird” story into the ridiculous summer-long drama that it became. Then you see how they keep using Bill Polian — a guy with an agenda if there ever was one; I was in the press box once when he was the Colts GM, Welker got hurt, and he blurted, “Break his —– leg!” — to comment on this while Tedy Bruschi was scarcely seen. Or how Mike Reiss’s innocuous piece reacting to the investigative piece connecting Spygate and Deflategate was edited. Or how Simmons was unceremoniously dumped after taking another bull’s-eye shot at Goodell. I don’t think it’s fair to make a blanket statement that ESPN is biased against the Patriots, because there are some very good people who work there who have comported themselves well in this — starting with Reiss, but Adam Schefter too. But it’s very, very clear that the nerve center of the organization feels some obligation to the NFL to protect it as a business partner."
http://sonsofsamhorn.com/baseball/t...qa-with-the-boston-globe-columnist-chad-finn/

A GM openly rooting for an opposing player to break his leg is sick. F Polian.

 

[meatface]

At least the nfl isn't fifa

 

[goheels22002]

my gosh, can we stop the whiny disrespect crap..any outsider reading these thread titles would have to come to the conclusion that pats fans are whiny, paranoid babies.

Who cares about what ESPN does or doesn't do, who cares about different personal records, who cares who thinks or doesn't think Brady is the best QB of all time. Just watch the darn games on Sunday and enjoy them for what it is..entertainment.

Maybe you should take a step back and look carefully at what Deflategate was really all about. It was the $9 billion corporation with a fully co-opted sports television media persecuting a prominent member of the union it seeks to control with misinformation and propaganda. Using "integrity of the game" as its rallying cry, the NFL and its beneficiary media partners fabricated facts and ignored the laws of nature to put its foot on the neck of the union by punishing its most prominent player with an out-of-proportion suspension.

The media's compliance, and dependency on billions of dollars in ad revenue, was central to the NFL's legal strategy to generate a lengthy, unsubstantiated, doctored report, and to press forward in federal court. Thank goodness there were citizens like us and a few commentators in the press who raised objections and pointed out the lies that made the persecution work initially. Even the Boston sports media played along with the NFL for months.

And, thank God, Tom Brady had the guts to stand up to the NFL and the media machine arrayed against him. His victories in federal court will be written about for decades.

This is nothing new for those in positions of immense power who have been corrupted by unlimited wealth. What the NFL owners and Roger Goodell did is no different than what Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Putin, Hugo Chavez, etc, have done over the past 120 years. Check it out:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/25/opinion/the-new-dictators-rule-by-velvet-fist.html

If it were not for "whiny, paranoid babies" you would be living in a nation of despots and not a nation of laws.

 

[ReverendMaynard]

At least the nfl isn't fifa

How do you know that? ESPN told you?

 

[farn]

NFL is very much like FIFA. Just the FBI doesn't care if they take down soccer...