Audrey Dahlgren ahead of an interview with Michigan State coach Mel Tucker in July 2023. Audrey Dahlgren ahead of an interview with Michigan State coach Mel Tucker in July 2023. (WLNS on YouTube.)
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This story contains discussion of sexual harassment. If you or someone you know is experiencing sexual harassment or sexual assault, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or www.rainn.org.

The discussion around Michigan State’s firing of head football coach Mel Tucker has taken on plenty of media dimensions. The latest one of those comes around Audrey Dahlgren, who appears to no longer be with Lansing CBS affiliate WLNS, but retains her role with Big Ten Network. That controversy comes around some of the tweets she sent on claims from Tucker’s attorneys about Brenda Tracy.

To recap, back in September, reports emerged that Michigan State was investigating Tucker for sexual harassment. On September 10, Kenny Jacoby of USA Today then revealed disturbing details of the allegations against Tucker from Tracy, a sexual assault survivor who now works on educating teams and players about sexual assault (and had done so at Michigan State).

In particular, Tracy alleged that Tucker made unwanted sexual comments about her and masturbated during a phone call. Tucker disputed that that was harassment, claiming the encounter was consensual. That then led to Brett McMurphy reporting that day that the Spartans had fired Tucker. But they only publicly announced a suspension for him at that point and an upcoming hearing, which led to Nicole Auerbach criticizing McMurphy’s reporting.

The following day, Tucker put out a statement through his attorney that many described as “scorched earth.” That statement claimed that Tracy’s “allegations of harassment are completely false” and that “the University’s ‘hearing’ scheduled for October 5-6 is so flawed that there is no other opportunity for the truth to come out.”

A week after that, on Sept. 18, Michigan State announced it was starting the process of firing Tucker for cause. (Which led to McMurphy claiming his previous reporting was correct and the decision had been made on Sept. 10, although the “fired as” language he used then is far different from “the school has decided to fire.”) That then led to Tucker offering an even more fiery statement, claiming Tracy had “manufactured false allegations against me.” Tracy then shot back with a statement of her own, calling Tucker’s statement “lies” and saying “Coach Tucker has been delaying and trying to stop the investigative process since the beginning. He can’t afford to go to a hearing that determines credibility of the participating parties.”

Last Thursday, Michigan State did hold that hearing, with Tracy participating virtually and Tucker declining to participate. Tucker’s legal team released a letter partway through saying that he and his lawyers would not participate thanks to an unspecified health issue involving him. That letter also included excerpts of text messages taken from the cell phone of Ahlan Alvarado, Tracy’s assistant and good friend who died in a car crash earlier this year. And that led to the tweets at issue from Dahlgren, who was WLNS’ sports director at that time. (Tracy’s legal team got a court injunction Friday prohibiting Tucker’s team from releasing further texts for the moment, but the ones released Thursday are what led to the discussion here.)

On Thursday, Dahlgren (seen at top ahead of a one-on-one interview with Tucker at Big Ten Media Days in July) sent several tweets around the information released by Tucker’s lawyers. Most of those remain up. Here’s how that started:

That then was retweeted by YouTube host Justin Spiro, who said that if this was true, the larger problem than the relationship would be Tracy lying to the Title IX investigator:

Dahlgren then responded to that with a tweet she later deleted, saying “She did lie.” That tweet was screengrabbed by Matt Reigle at OutKick:

An Audrey Dahlgren deleted tweet.

That particular tweet drew significant criticism for its presentation of Tucker’s attorneys’ claims as fact. Dahlgren then said it was “misinterpreted,” and initially said she would leave it up, before later deleting it entirely. But her tweet about that “misinterpretation” took its own criticism, including from USA Today‘s Jacoby:

That then led to Dahlgren firing back at Jacoby:

Beyond that, Dahlgren’s other tweets on Tucker’s legal team’s claims remain up. Here are some of those:

Those are Dahlgren’s latest tweets on the Tucker situation. Her tweets also carry links to two articles on WLNS’ website. However, neither of those links currently carries her byline:

On Tuesday, Tony Paul of The Detroit News reported that WLNS general manager Marci Daniels had personally apologized to Tracy for Dahlgren’s tweets, and that added to the evidence that Dahlgren is no longer at WLNS (including her editing her LinkedIn profile to indicate her time with them ended this month). However, Paul wrote that Dahlgren referred all comment to her attorney, who didn’t answer requests for comment, and WLNS also declined to comment on her employment status.

Marci Daniels, general manager for WLNS, personally apologized to Tracy following a series of social-media posts from sports reporter Audrey Dahlgren last Thursday, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.

The confirmation of the apology from the station comes amid growing indications that Dahlgren is no longer employed by WLNS. Her LinkedIn profile, in which she had been identified as WLNS sports director, now identifies her as a “sports broadcaster” and indicates her employment at WLNS ended in October 2023 but continues at the Big Ten Network. Her title with the station also has been removed from her profile on X (formerly Twitter) and she no longer appears on the station’s staff list on its website.

…Dahlgren, who reports regularly on Michigan State athletics, particularly football and men’s basketball, has not posted on X about Michigan State since the series of posts that drew criticism. Her bio was removed on WLNS’s website Friday, and on Tuesday, Dahlgren removed any mention of her being sports director at WLNS on her bio on X. She hasn’t been on the air at WLNS since the posts Thursday, and she hasn’t been at Michigan State football media availability this week.

The Detroit News has reached out multiple times to Dahlgren over the last several days for comment. In a direct message to The News, she said “all correspondence” with the media will go through her attorney.

Dahlgren’s attorney, Bloomfield Hills-based Joseph Bellanca, hasn’t responded to multiple messages from The News. Daniels, general manager at WLNS, has declined to comment in multiple phone calls with The News. Daniels didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment Tuesday.

Paul also noted that “Dahlgren has faced criticism from some in the media for her coverage of the Tucker saga over the last month,” and that some of that has come around her perceived closeness to him from hosting his coach’s show. “Since Tucker’s arrival as MSU head coach in 2020, Dahlgren hosted a coaches’ show with him, often getting behind-the-scenes access, like touring his home and riding along on a drive in a Polaris Slingshot.” He wrote as well that Dahlgren did appear on Big Ten Network Saturday covering the Rutgers-Wisconsin game, and that that BTN did not return a request for comment on Dahlgren’s status with them.

Dahlgren had been at WLNS since October 2018, starting as a sports anchor and reporter. She was promoted to sports director there in October 2019.

The discussion of Tucker’s firing following these allegations from Tracy remains a complicated one. The sides have presented widely-different and incompatible claims. There are also several overlapping layers of legal action and potential legal action, including Tucker against Michigan State in an employment case and possibly Tucker and Tracy against each other in a defamation case.

Amidst all that, there are also particular challenges in this situation with sourcing. Thus far, much of what has surfaced comes from claims from Tucker and Tracy (often through their respective attorneys). The school’s seven-month investigation into Tucker has not been fully made public, although parts of it have come out in reporting (including a report from Jacoby in September that Tucker “repeatedly made false statements to the investigator and misled her about basic facts,” based on “a USA TODAY review of more than 1,200 pages of case documents”). And last week’s hearing has not yet produced a conclusion: hearing officer (and outside attorney) Amanda Norris Ames has 20 days from that hearing to conclude if the evidence from the investigation and hearing “is sufficient to establish that Tucker violated school policies against sexual harassment and exploitation.”

It’s also worth noting that both sides have significant issues with the information that has come out. Tucker has accused Tracy of leaking particular information to the media and “manipulating” coverage against him. Tracy has disputed that and said that she was unhappy this became public, saying she only spoke out to present her side when it became clear it would go public. And Tracy and her team have taken exception to Tucker’s team’s release of these texts, claiming that phone was “acquired illegally from Alvarado’s husband, Agustin,” which led to that eventual temporary restraining order Friday prohibiting the release of further texts.

With that, it’s crucial for media covering this situation to be transparent about where the information they’re relaying is sourced from. It’s also important for them to indicate if that is from a complete file or from a partial one selected by one side, and if and how it is disputed by the other side. And it’s understandable why many had particular issues with Dahlgren’s initial “She lied” tweet.

To some, that tweet might not seem that different from Jacoby writing that Tucker “repeatedly made false statements to the investigator and misled her about basic facts.” But Jacoby’s writing there was based on his own review of Michigan State’s investigation case files (although it’s unclear if he obtained absolutely every file). Dahlgren’s claim was based on material released publicly by Tucker’s attorneys, which Tracy’s camp disputes as selective.

As with Jacoby’s piece looking into Tucker’s statements to the investigator, though, these claims from Tucker’s camp about Tracy’s statements to the investigator are absolutely worth investigating. And they’re worth presenting in full if possible for audiences to examine themselves, with it made clear that they come from Tucker’s camp. And WLNS’ web piece on this (by Skyler Ashley) does just that, including presenting the full 106-page heavily-redacted letter from Tucker’s lawyers, making it clear what they’re alleging about Tracy, but making it clear that these are their own allegations, not anything verified by WLNS.

That’s where Dahlgren eventually somewhat got to with her own Twitter coverage. But her initial coverage of this is what particularly drew blowback. And it appears to have led to her parting ways with the station (although how and under what circumstances remains unclear, and that could wind up as another legal battle). It at the very least led to station GM Daniels making that personal apology to Tracy. (And this is the latest case of Twitter’s challenges as a platform for covering complicated and disputed issues, and journalistic organizations‘ responses to how their employees cover those situations on Twitter.)

From a media perspective, it’s remarkable how many impacts the Tucker situation has had well beyond him, Tracy, and this specific case. It already led to that aforementioned reporting dispute between Auerbach and McMurphy. It led to further drama for ESPN’s Paula Lavigne, with Tucker claiming at one point that an anonymous associate “told him that ESPN investigative reporter Paula Lavigne was investigating how Tracy ‘goes about her business’ by claiming to be a rape survivor.” (Lavigne denied that Tracy was a target of any of her investigative reporting, telling USA Today she was “perplexed that Mel Tucker would respond to a complaint of sexual harassment by involving me or ESPN.”) And now, it appears to have led to this change for Dahlgren and WLNS. And that may not be the last media impact here.

[The Detroit News]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

View all posts by Andrew Bucholtz