The following is one of the most unusual media stories of the last year.
On Friday, Esquire Magazine posted a blistering piece bashing ESPN written by the publication’s news editor Ben Collins. It was entitled “ESPN has a problem with women.”
While the column centered on the suspensions of Bill Simmons and Stephen A. Smith, the lead produced some exclusive details about coverage plans for Monday Night Football. Namely, the network would be having a domestic violence panel featuring 11 different voices. All men. Our bold emphasis has been added.
On Monday night, a panel on a two-hour pregame show for Monday Night Football will, among other things, address domestic abuse. This panel will discuss, once again, the appropriate penalty for hitting a woman.
The panel for that discussion will include the following people: Chris Berman, Cris Carter, Mike Ditka, Adam Schefter, Tom Jackson, Keyshawn Johnson, Jon Gruden, Mike Tirico, Stuart Scott, Steve Young and Ray Lewis.
Up to 11 men, all between the ages of 39 and 74 will sit at the table for a domestic violence discussion on ESPN. Zero women. Victims of domestic violence in America are most likely to be women aged 20-24.
When the show has updates from the field—brief reports about injuries and the upcoming game—they’ll cut to female sideline reporters, Lisa Salters and, on some weeks, Suzy Kolber.
These people are not allowed at the table.
How Collins got that information, whether through his own sources or ESPN itself, was never shared with Esquire readers. Nevertheless, the “11 men” theme kept coming back throughout his piece as a tentpole of outrage.
The existence of ESPN’s 11 men domestic violence panel, and the anger towards it, spread slowly throughout the weekend. Deadspin has a nice recap of how far the story reached as it was noticed on Twitter and reblogged across the internet, with one feminist organization even putting the network on blast based on the Esquire article in a press release.
Of course, ESPN is not having an 11 man domestic violence panel tonight. The network has explicitly and publicly called the Esquire story false as documented below.
But just examining this story from the outset, there was plenty to be skeptical about in Esquire’s story.
First of all, ESPN has covered domestic violence and the NFL at length while involving women in the discussion. Jane McManus has been a consistent presence on ESPN airwaves and ESPN has a deep bench of female commentators that have talked about the issue on the air. You can criticize sports networks for not involving women in more prominent ways, but ESPN at least appears to be trying to make an effort here. McManus defended the network on Twitter:
Since the Rice story broke, ESPN has featured several women prominently, including myself, @katefagan3, @SarahSpain @jemelehill etc.
— Jane McManus (@janesports) September 29, 2014
Tonight's regular MNF panel will be hosted by Suzy Kolber. It was never meant to be a single-issue discussion of domestic violence.
— Jane McManus (@janesports) September 29, 2014
Second, in light of those tweets, there’s no mention of Suzy Kolber – who will be one of the hosts on Monday Night Countdown tonight. If there’s any panel discussion happening tonight, wouldn’t she be involved?
Third, it’s easy to make fun of ESPN and the gratuitously absurd amount of NFL analysts the network employs. But who in their right mind would conduct an 11 person panel on a topic like domestic violence? That’s not something that even Nancy Grace and the cable news networks would be silly enough to do.
If we’re to believe this Esquire story, Chris Berman would be moderating an 11 person panel discussion on domestic violence including everyone from the game announcers to reporters. It’s nonsensical. Not even ESPN would be that dense.
Bristol began the counter-offensive today. The network released their coverage plans for Monday Night Countdown tonight. And in a move straight out of the ESPN PR Playbook, they also highlighted women’s contributions to their coverage of the NFL domestic violence crisis.
A rare public statement from John Wildhack, one of the highest on the ESPN Executive Food Chain, also disputed the Esquire report/column/rant/guesswork…
Contrary to published reports in Esquire, there was no panel on domestic violence ever planned for tonight’s Monday Night Countdown. We will present our normal Monday Night Football pre-game show, with Suzy Kolber hosting. ESPN is proud of the work it has done covering the issue of domestic violence, and is committed to continued coverage. Much of that work has been informed by several talented female colleagues from our television and espnW platforms, including Hannah Storm, Jemele Hill, Jane McManus, Kate Fagan, Sarah Spain and more.
So how did this happen? It’s simple. Haphazard and reckless writing at Esquire gradually began to be taken as fact.
There never were plans for an 11 men panel to discuss domestic violence on Monday Night Countdown. Collins merely listed the talent that would be working the show and assumed the topic would come up at some point during the evening in an unbelievable failure in communication through the written word.
Collins explained his position in greater detail on his Twitter page:
https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/516441664198836224
That’s a pretty far cry from what Collins actually wrote in his article which made it abundantly clear there would be a special domestic violence panel with enough men to field an entire football team. “Up to 11 men, all between the ages of 39 and 74 will sit at the table for a domestic violence discussion on ESPN.” There’s no ambiguity in that statement.
100 out of 100 people would read that sentence and think ESPN would be televising a large all-male panel discussion specifically focused on domestic violence tonight. How does someone who is a news editor at a major publication blur the lines of truth and fiction so badly?
https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/516441889097400320
https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/516442035549900800
https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/516442753530871808
Had Collins stuck with that last tweet he would have had the basis for a decent column and a valid criticism worth raising. But because of the overall sloppiness of the Esquire piece, that point was missed entirely. Instead, a lot of people have wasted a lot of time talking about an 11 men domestic violence panel that never existed.
UPDATE: Esquire has amended their story and offered a lengthy statement of their own, clearing up the confusion over the initial article and removing references to the mythical 11 man panel.
