ESPN has been touting the network’s expansive SportsCenter coverage going all-in for the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquaio fight in Las Vegas. This has produced some unique moments in the history of ESPN’s flagship program, including live coverage of Pacquiao getting off his bus.
It’s also produced, on a more serious note, an approach to covering the controversial past of Floyd Mayweather that’s been a lightning rod for ESPN. Bristol has produced very critical coverage of Mayweather’s domestic violence history… and coverage very sympathetic to him, coming from Stephen A. Smith.
On a recent conference call to promote SportsCenter’s nationwide effort this week covering the fight in Vegas and more, ESPN news chief Rob King was asked about the Mayweather coverage.
Q: Primarily for Rob, but Lindsay and Steve if you want to weigh in as well. Regarding the network’s coverage of the fight and Floyd Mayweather’s history of domestic violence, there seems to be some cognitive dissonance on ESPN with some personalities telling the audience to boycott the match and some being much more promotional and almost mouthpieces for the fight. So my question is what would you say to the victims of domestic violence and other people who feel that ESPN has hyped up the fight on balance more than they’ve paid attention to Floyd may weather’s history of domestic violence?
ROB KING: I think survivors of domestic violence deserve their story to be told. I think that survivors of domestic violence routinely see the breadth of the world kind of walking past their experience. And I think ‑‑ I know that we have taken very seriously, for quite some time, the responsibility to tell these stories in depth.
I think that the first part of your question about the divergence between some of our commentary voices regarding how people should respond to the fight actually reflects, I think, the realistic diversity of the way in which the sporting world and the world of popular culture and the rest of the world views what’s coming up this week.
It’s multi faceted. I do think that we as a network, as a company, pledge to serve sports fans, should continue to cover sporting events as such. I am proud of the efforts that a number of our voices, a number of our shows have undertaken in making sure that even in the midst of serving sports fans we are citizens of the world. Proud of that work.
I think it’s easy for me here sitting here, taking the question, to reflect, knowing everything that we’ve done. And I do think we will continue to be in this space. I mean, even today we have some folks wondering whether a baseball game will be played and other folks wondering what’s happening in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. And that intersection of sports and popular culture, intersection of sports and politics or economics will continue to be something that we have to balance.
What we actually encourage our commentary voices to do is to be authentically themselves and that means they are not going to speak with the same voice. We know that there will be debate. And as I said I view that as reflective of our broader society. But I want to emphasize that survivors of domestic abuse, survivors of sexual abuse, whose stories will be part of the narrative of a lot of the events we cover over the next week are foremost in our minds and we spend a lot of time and effort making sure that when we tell those stories, we tell them as fully as possible.
That’s thoughtful commentary from King, who is one of the most respected executives at ESPN. The real question for ESPN is whether Smith’s piece with Mayweather, which was the source of much criticism, can be excused as reflecting diverging views in society… or whether ESPN needs to be held to a different standard.
Some things can’t be classified under “debate” and “two sides to every story,” which is perhaps why ESPN has fallen under fire for its Mayweather coverage in the past week.
Can Smith ignoring Mayweather’s past during an all-access feature be forgiven because it’s going to be addressed by another voice on another show. Is that good enough? Especially considering the current climate in which we reside with regards to those issues, is that enough? Can ESPN relegate the hard news and tough questions to places like Outside the Lines while SportsCenter cozies up to star athletes or do those greater issues need to always be present?
Those aren’t easy questions to answer, which is why the inward struggle for ESPN’s heart and soul rages on.
