ESPN last night sent its employees a set of written guidelines on when and how to give attribution on breaking news stories, including ones that other outlets break. ESPN has been criticized for not giving credit when other news sources break stories. Under guidelines that take effect today, ESPN will put “according to” a specific media outlet on stories that it has not confirmed. Once confirmed by ESPN, the Bristol-based company will state, “The story was first reported by [a specific media company] and confirmed by ESPN.” ESPN will use "according to multiple reports” on stories that are broken at the same time. “Our standard for ‘first reported’ is approximately one minute if another entity breaks news (online, on Twitter, etc.) and we are not vetting it at that time or don’t hear from one of our reporters within approximately a minute,” the written guidelines say. “First reported should NOT be used for exclusive interviews. We could cite the entity ('Tom Brady told MMQB’ for example).” The guidelines were written by a group of people at the ESPN news desk.
