My recent article about certain guys, Roger Clemens and Brett Favre being treated as good guys for so long, while other guys are shredded for the same behavior is seen in ESPN's treatment of Ben Roethlisberger.
Unlike the reporting in other cases of rape involving professional athletes, ESPN has stepped in and decided that the rape charge against Roethlisberger is not worth reporting.
Let me say first of all that I don't know that there's any truth to the accusations made against Roethlisberger and as far as I know he's a great player and good person. But I'm not really talking about Roethlisberger, I'm talking about ESPN.
Here was their first excuse for not reporting the story.
"At this point, we are not reporting the allegations against Ben Roethlisberger because no criminal complaint has been filed," an ESPN spokesman told me. "As far as we know, this is a civil lawsuit that Roethlisberger has yet to address publicly."
ESPN is showing some type of double standard regarding this story. It's their responsibility to report the news and not arbitrarily decide on what news they should conceal. Every other news outlet is reporting it but ESPN decides in this case they're not going to report it.
Philly.com's John Gonzalez reached a source at ESPN who let it all out.
"People were going insane. FOX News was doing the story. The AP had it. And they wouldn't even let us mention it. You can't ignore the story. It needs to be on SportsCenter. It makes us look bad. It's not a topic for discussion, but you have to acknowledge that it's being reported, that the story exists."
Here's what ESPN vice president and director of news Vince Doria said to the Wall Street Journal.
"Those are the things that I think are damaging to reputations, and I think you need to know more about them before you report them. As it stands right now, today, we don't think it meets our standard of reporting."
When has ESPN worried about anybody else's reputation. This smells like maybe they're working on some type of new show featuring Roethlisberger.
They're kissing his butt and destroying their reputation and brand as a true sports news leader.
