ESPN’s Matt Schick calls Bleacher Report “another website that specializes in videos”

Several years ago, ESPN repeatedly came under major fire for not properly crediting stories broken elsewhere, from plagiarizing Pro Football Talk to not crediting the likes of Tim Brown, Luke Winn, SI and Draft Express, Bruce Feldman (after he worked for them), Jay Glazer, Brooks Melchior, Deron Williams’ Twitter account, and many more.

The Worldwide Leader largely appears to have turned over a new leaf here, and they mostly credit the likes of Glazer now, but there have still been some controversial moments, such as a Johnny Manziel fight story in 2014 and some of the times they’ve used “ESPN and media reports.” One of the biggest in recent memory happened Wednesday on the ESPNU Signing Day Special, the part of it which actually aired on ESPN, where host Matt Schick referenced a Bleacher Report commitment video about Jarez Parks as something from “another website out there that specializes in videos”:

Here’s the second part of that:

This isn’t acceptable attribution at all, and ESPN rightfully got lit up on Twitter for it:

Y'all can't even say Bleacher Report, ESPN? "A website that specializes in videos"?

— Matt Miller (@nfldraftscout) February 1, 2017

I can say your name, ESPN. You can't say "Bleacher Report?"

— Barrett Sallee 🇺🇸 (@BarrettSallee) February 1, 2017

And for those u wondering… @espn pathetically wouldn’t say the name @BleacherReport on the air. Absolutely ridiculous.

— Andrew Coppens (@TheCoppensShow) February 1, 2017

There have been concerns raised about ESPN’s attribution (or lack thereof) to recruiting websites throughout signing day coverage, too:

Nothing worse than ESPN’s NSD coverage to be honest. Act like no other recruiting services exist & refuse to credit them when used.

— Andrew Coppens (@TheCoppensShow) February 1, 2017

Look, this isn’t 2012, and ESPN has become much better overall about correctly attributing and sourcing stories since then. However, this particular moment doesn’t look good for them at all. There’s no reason not to say “Bleacher Report” here; in fact, it takes much less time than the convoluted “another website out there that specializes in videos.” Hopefully this is just an isolated incident and not a return to the Dark Ages of sourcing, but it’s not something that reflects well on ESPN. They should be, and usually have been, better than this.