ESPN and their False Reporting

The first thing you learn in journalism school is that as a journalist, you must accurately report the news. That is the cardinal rule. It doesn’t matter if you are the best or the worst reporter out there, you must portray the news accurately.

In some instances, it doesn’t affect very much if the news is 100% correct or not. Today, on ESPN, there is an article which ends in “Brunette has three goals in the Avs' eight playoff games this year,” when in fact, the Avalanche have only played in six playoff games (at the time the article was posted online). A few days ago, also on ESPN, an article stated that the Los Angeles Lakers had won the first three games of their series with Phoenix, and then Phoenix had won the next three. Actually, Phoenix won the first game, then Los Angeles won three, then Phoenix won two more (and went on to win game seven, but not until after the article was posted). Again, it’s not a huge mistake that will affect very much, if anything at all, but it still makes a difference. Weather it affects something greatly or not, the information needs to be correct.

The two examples weren’t huge mistakes, and didn’t affect very much, especially since they were sports stories, which don't have as big of a social impact as a murder story or a financial story might. However, those weren't the only mistakes that were made. Over the last week, there have been 5-10 discrepancies that I have noticed casually reading the site. None were overwhelmingly wrong, but in any case, ESPN needs to make sure that the information on their site is correct. They are the leader, both on TV and on the web, in providing sports news to fans. It may start out with little mistakes like this, and eventually lead to a big problem and a huge decline in their credibility.

Everyone makes mistakes, even ESPN can't be correct 100% of the time, but they need to be more careful with what the post as "official" sports news online.