Sunday, September 07, 2008

Bad journalism 101

This is just poor form by ESPN:

After the Patriots-Chiefs game, in which QB Tom Brady suffered a game-ending and likely season-ending injury, reporters interviewed Pats star WR Randy Moss and brought up the play in which Brady suffered his injury.  Moss said he thought the tackle was dirty.  ESPN played the clip in which Moss made that claim at the top of its broadcast and again in the lead-in to the weekend football analysis show The Blitz.  To get the picture, viewers also watched the Moss clip again in Bob Holtzman's location report on the Pats-Chiefs game.  Moss even said he doesn't know how to play dirty and really cannot tell if a given play is dirty (he's a receiver, it's not like he's wrestling in the trenches with the fat boys).  

Only in Holtzman's final discussion did we learn that Moss was really the only person in the Pats' locker room who thought the play was dirty.  The rest of the team did not share that opinion -- they thought it was one of those tragic plays that happens in football.  And replays indicated that -- the Chiefs safety didn't hit Brady late, didn't aim to hit Brady in the knee and certainly didn't go out of his way to cause harm.

But the Moss audio sounds better, even if it's just one opinion of a distressed teammate.

Bad journalism by ESPN.

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