Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [275]
JOHN SAUNDERS:
To ESPN’s credit, they allowed Tom to come on and say his thoughts, but I think it would have also been helpful if they would have just picked up the phone and said, “John Saunders, Robin Roberts, Stuart Scott, what do you think about this story? What do you think about how we’re reporting this story?” When Charles Barkley made his comment about hating white people and we made a huge deal of that, huge deal, even demonized him at the time, I called up somebody who was on the assignment desk and said, “Are you people aware that Charles’s wife is white?” And they were like, “What?!” I said, “I guarantee you Charles, in making a statement like that, is only talking about how he feels in certain situations. He’s not saying he hates white people as a whole; you need to do your homework and examine it.” There have been several instances like that over the years that have bothered me.
ED DURSO, Executive Vice President of Administration:
I do think the Limbaugh episode was ultimately of some benefit to us. It raised our awareness and sensitivity to issues of race in sports and how we handled them. It made clear that we needed to have a deeper understanding and broader perspective. I think it showed up in our later coverage of issues like Imus and Michael Vick. I believe we did a better job of reporting and offering perspective from the African American community coming off the Limbaugh episode.
TOM JACKSON:
We received a letter—it was just kind of crazy—that there was going to be a session of sensitivity training for people who were on air so that we wouldn’t have the kind of blunder that had occurred with Rush on TV. And it said to see your department head: they would have scheduling for them, and it would be a session that would be rather lengthy, five or six hours. My department head was Bob Rauscher, and Bob got in touch with me and I immediately told him—and I remember this verbatim—I said, “You do know I’m not going to do that.” Bob said, “Why?” and I said, “I’m not going to sensitivity training because I haven’t done anything to have to attend sensitivity training.” Then I said, “I’ll go if Mark goes.”
We finished up at eight-thirty at night. And you know the only person who wasn’t in attendance—Mark Shapiro.
MARK SHAPIRO:
I only have one thing that bothered me about the incident, and that was that I was misquoted. I would never excuse what Rush did, but with Rush we knew what we were getting. We knew this guy had very distinct and sharp opinions. We made a deal with him to come on and talk football, and when he went outside those boundaries, he had to go. Rush Limbaugh’s going to draw some ratings, there’s no question, but maybe we were guilty of thinking he could leave everything else at the door and just do sports. That was the risk we took. That’s the whole point of taking risks. Some things were hits, some things not. What if Rush had stayed within the rules—would the ratings have gone up? They sure as hell seemed like they were going that way, and he was offering good perspective. Did he bring insight to the table, was he doing his homework each week, making phone calls to get information from the players and coaches? He was doing all that, and if he hadn’t screwed up, he would still absolutely be on the air.
Limbaugh wasn’t the only ESPN employee to offer potentially offensive commentary. Over on ESPN.com, writer Gregg Easterbrook found himself in deep water for something he wrote that had nothing to do with his specialty, professional football.
GREGG EASTERBROOK, Columnist:
I was writing about football for Slate in 2000 and they asked me to do it again in 2001, and I said okay. The day after, John Walsh, who I had never met, called me out of the blue and said, “This is exactly where we want ESPN.com to go. We’ve got to get smarter. We want to be involved in things that are witty and sort of off-the-wall and intelligent, so will you do it for us?” I said, “I can’t, I just agreed to do it for Slate for another year, but at the end of the year, then we can talk.” So