Ian Rapoport pushes back on NFL insider criticism amid Dianna Russini scandal

Ian Rapoport has had about enough of the conversation that has followed the Dianna Russini-Mike Vrabel situation.

On the Between the Tackles podcast with former New York Jets beat writer Manish Mehta, the NFL Network insider weighed in on the criticism that has surrounded insider reporting since Russini resigned from The Athletic last month. The resignation came after Page Six published photos of her with Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel at an adults-only Arizona resort, triggering an investigation at The Athletic and a very public debate about whether the access game at the heart of insider reporting compromises the journalism it produces.

“I have been for sure frustrated at a lot of people talking about what they think the job of insider is without actually knowing,” Rapoport said. “That’s been frustrating to me over the last month or so.”

🎙️@RapSheet on criticism of NFL Insiders after Russini-Vrabel story:

“I have been for sure frustrated at a lot of people talking about what they think the job of Insider is without actually knowing. That’s been frustrating to me over the last month or so.”

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— Manish Mehta (@MMehtaSports) May 22, 2026

“The job is still the same,” Rapoport continued. “It’s finding out news. It’s touching base and talking to all parties, as many as you can. It’s confirming it, making sure that it comes out in the most accurate and truthful way possible, while also doing it as fast as possible and giving the reader or viewer as much information as you can.”

Is Rapoport right that a lot of the criticism has come from people who don’t fully understand how insider reporting works? Probably, but the overall criticism of the insider model didn’t come from people who stumbled onto the story through Page Six.

A year prior to the Russini-Vrabel scandal, Mike Florio had already written at length about insiders functioning as external PR reps for agents, trading favorable coverage — reporting inflated contract numbers, crediting agents by name, leaving teams out of their own transaction stories — in exchange for access to the group texts that drive the entire ecosystem. Nick Wright had called out the biggest platform insiders for publishing team and agency PR instead of actual news.

None of that is the same as accusing Russini of what she’s actually accused of, and Rapoport is right that a lot of the discourse has conflated the general access-journalism critique with the specific allegations against her, which isn’t fair to her or particularly useful as media criticism. But the Russini situation gave the public a closer look at how the insider ecosystem actually operates than it has ever had before, and that conversation isn’t going away just because one of its most prominent practitioners finds it frustrating.