The quarterback of the defending Super Bowl champions is facing legal trouble, and the Worldwide Leader in Sports appears uninterested.
Steelers’ QB Ben Roethlisberger has been sued over an alleged sexual assault. The alleged incident took place in July ’08. Roethlisberger “faces one civil count of assault, one civil count of sexual assault and battery, one civil count of false imprisonment, one civil count of false pretenses, one civil count of fraud, and one civil count of [intentional] infliction of [emotional] distress.”
There has been no criminal complaint and no criminal investigation.
While several news outlets have covered the story, including FOX Sports, CBS Sports, Yahoo.com, Sports Illustrated and the Associated Press (all of which had the story by 6 AM Tuesday), ESPN has not yet addressed the situation. NBC’s Pro Football Talk, which e-mailed ESPN about the lawsuit, wonders if “ESPN [would] have squatted on the thing if a member of the NFL reporting army brought this one to the table? Or does the adage ‘if it’s not our news, it’s new to us’ still apply?“
This is not the first time ESPN ignored a highly-publicized story. While multiple outlets reported allegations that former-Packer Brett Favre gave secrets to the Lions prior to their Week 2 game against the Packers last season, ESPN sent out a memo instructing its personnel not to report on the story.
Of course, the Roethlisberger allegations are far more serious. A more similar case involving baseball player Brian Giles emerged late last year. Giles was sued by his former girlfriend over allegedly “[battering] her while she was pregnant and [causing] her to have a miscarriage.” The story was picked up by Yahoo.com, CBS and the Associated Press. The San Diego NBC affiliate even aired surveillance video of Giles allegedly beating his girlfriend.
ESPN did not report on the Giles lawsuit until a week later (with the headline “Giles says lawsuit is ‘all about money’“), and did not report on a Giles countersuit earlier this year.
Another domestic abuse allegation, this one involving Cardinals WR Larry Fitzgerald, merited only a brief mention in a blog entry.
In the Favre case, the ESPN memo said that reliable sources told them the story was not true. Unless the same can be said of the Roethlisberger situation, one wonders why such a potentially big story is on the backburner at the nation’s largest sports media outlet.
