ESPN’s journalism is again coming under scrutiny after an ex-producer painted an unflattering picture in the Columbia Journalism Review.
In an article published Wednesday, former ESPN producer Nicole Noren told CJR that reporting on the company’s business partners had become more difficult in the past five-to-seven years, a timeline that spans much of the tenure of current ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro. Noren: “There was a change in leadership, and my colleagues on the investigative unit and I noticed more of a rocky path to report some stories that involved stakeholders.”
ESPN, in a statement, told Sports Media Watch that it “remains committed to journalism that serves sports fans, holds powerful interests accountable and earns our audience’s trust. Our editorial decisions are guided by news judgment and journalistic integrity, and we demonstrate this every day through the award-winning content we produce across our platforms.”
Noren told CJR that she pitched “numerous stories” examining the issues of gambling and addiction, none of which were greenlit. When ESPN did eventually cover the topic, she said, “it became very neutered. Some of the people involved intended to make it much more hard-hitting and hold the gambling companies accountable. Let’s just say the final product didn’t end up doing that.”
ESPN’s promotion of gambling was the primary focus of the piece. Noren said she left ESPN due to its integration of gambling content, which at one point included an ESPN-branded sportsbook called “ESPN BET,” and was quoted as saying that she did not want to have “blood on [her] hands.” She described the acceptance of betting within ESPN as “troubling” and described “a seeming disregard for the dangers” among ESPN executives, whom she accused of a disconnect “between making money and caring about the human impact of constantly bombarding fans with betting odds and talk.”
Separately, the overarching suggestion that ESPN is less aggressive in covering its business partners is one that has recurred throughout the Pitaro era. Replacing John Skipper in 2018 — who for better or worse was known for a high-minded approach that left some viewers and even business partners cold — Pitaro arrived with a mandate to repair the network’s relationship with its most important stakeholder, the NFL. The league, per John Ourand (then of Sports Business Journal), had soured on the company’s reporting of its controversies and inner workings.
Coincidentally or not, ESPN soon canceled “Outside the Lines” and has produced fewer of the unflattering investigative reports that seemed to arrive with regularity in 2017 and 2018. ESPN not only reached a new media rights deal with the NFL in 2021, but struck an agreement last year to acquire ownership of NFL Network and other NFL Media assets in exchange for the NFL taking a ten percent stake in the company.
ESPN reporter Don Van Natta, who along with Seth Wickersham wrote many of the pieces that irritated the NFL about a decade ago, has aggressively defended the independence of the company’s journalism. When former “SportsCenter” anchor Dan Patrick suggested last year that ESPN could not “be any further in bed with the NFL,” Van Natta upbraided him on social media for overlooking his and others’ reporting on scandals in the NFL Players Association.
ESPN has also in the past year added a number of ex-Washington Post journalists, with Ben Strauss and Robert Klemko in particular publishing unflattering articles about the Mike Vrabel-Dianna Russini scandal and NHL player Alex Ovechkin‘s ties to Vladimir Putin, respectively.
Nevertheless, the most prominent sports journalism is primarily being done outside of ESPN, and in some cases by ex-ESPN employees. Pablo Torre has won almost compulsory praise for his work over the past year, particularly on the NBA investigation into alleged salary cap circumvention by the Los Angeles Clippers. An ESPN report on that story, bylined by Van Natta, Ramona Shelburne and Baxter Holmes, focused heavily on what the investigation failed to uncover — a framing that resulted in widespread criticism after the league handed down harsh punishments shortly after.
