ESPN Defends Decision To Hold Off Reporting Favre/Lions Story
By John Ourand, Staff Writer
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ESPN VP Doria Says Decision To Hold Off On
Reporting Favre, Lions Story Was A "Close Call" |
ESPN has caught a lot of flack for its decision to hold off on reporting the story that Jets QB Brett Favre advised the Lions prior to their Week 2 game against the Packers. But even as media critics questioned ESPN's motivation, Senior VP & Dir of News Vince Doria told THE DAILY that he would not change his decision if he had to do it all over again. "I can't go by that stuff," he said, regarding the amount of criticism from media reporters and blogs. "The really easy thing would have been to just report it. It was a close call. It could have gone either way." The story was first reported on Sunday afternoon by Fox Sports' Jay Glazer. ESPN did not mention it until yesterday, when Favre addressed the allegations in a press conference. Doria cited several reasons why he wanted to be careful with the story. First, he considered the allegations that Favre was advising against his former team as an attack on Favre's character, which meant that ESPN wanted to verify the story on its own. "Typically, we're very cautious with those types of stories," he said. He also wanted to double check elements of Glazer's story, which Doria said lacked specifics about what Favre was telling the Lions and appeared to be based on second-hand sources. "This was never about ESPN saying the story was wrong," Doria said. "Jay Glazer is a fine reporter. We've credited him in the past. We'll credit him in the future."
DEFENDING THE MEMO: But in a memo leaked to ProFootballTalk.com, ESPN said it had "been told by reliable sources that this report is not true," and that ESPN was "not reporting it [Monday], because that would mean airing the erroneous report." Doria called the memo a standard internal news document that goes out to ESPN reporters and shows stories as they are being reported. "It doesn't mean that we will report that information," he said. "At the time, we were being told the report wasn't true. We didn't report that." Doria called the idea that ESPN is too cozy with Favre "absurd," pointing out that Glazer, not ESPN, broke the story about Favre being traded to the Jets earlier in the summer. He also pointed to the fact that Favre had a sitdown interview during that time with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren, not ESPN. "He didn't help us much with that story," he said.
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