Jemele Hill interviewed Janay Rice for this essay that was published in ESPN’s magazine and on its website.
No matter what anybody tells you, never allow a source to approve a story before it gets published. Your credibility as a journalist gets crushed if you allow a source to control a story, no matter how hard you might attempt to explain that nothing important was removed.
This is why I am bothered by ESPN’s interview with Janay Rice, wife to suspended NFL running back Ray Rice.
Last year, Sports Illustrated allowed LeBron James to review a story, but the magazine did not offer approval rights. Still, avoid this approach as well, because readers will question your integrity, believing a source probably did have some control over the final product. As outlined in the Society of Professional Journalism’s Code of Ethics, we must remain independent.
This single story won’t quash my respect for Jemele Hill, someone I’ve followed since she started working for my old newspaper, the Orlando Sentinel. She’s a tenacious reporter and a talented writer. But at a time when so many question journalists’ credibility, we should avoid such conflicts of interest. It’s a shame that ESPN put a fine reporter in this situation, and, further, that the writer agreed to go along. Ultimately, what’s to be gained? Perhaps, a tainted exclusive. What’s to be lost? A lot. Sources might now try to negotiate control over their stories, leveraging various media sources against one another in order to see who will allow them to have the most control.
Of course, as-told-to stories are not unprecedented. Writers do this all the time, especially in books. The interview with Janay Rice is more jarring because it involves a news story and not some game once played years before. If we continue to allow such stories, journalists and the news media will lose even more integrity down the line.
I’m very disappointed that a leading journalism ethicist for one of the leading training grounds for journalists said she was not troubled that ESPN and Hill allowed Rice the final approval. Kelly McBride, vice president for the Poynter Institute, told Sandomir: “I’m O.K. with sources seeing regular stories ahead of time as long as there are boundaries about why you change it. It has to be only if something is wrong, not that the source is troubled by the tone.” Readers already distrust journalists, so why give them another reason to question our ethics?
That’s exactly what happened here.
Here are some other perspectives on this story.
Hill explains the situation behind the story in her own podcast.
Hill tells sports media critic Richard Deitsch that she would never do anything to compromise her journalism integrity.
ESPN’s Hill is more a stenographer than a journalists, says Mediaite.
The New York Times’ Richard Sandomir details how Janay Rice’s PR team decided which media outlets would get this story.
A Baltimore Sun critic says that ESPN sold out, trading its credibility rather cheaply for its story.
Jemele Hill tells CNN the interview was a collaboration.
This entry was posted in Sports Media Ethics and tagged ESPN exclusive, Janay Rice, Jemele Hill, journalism ethics, Poynter, Richard Deitsch, Richard Sandomir, sports journalism, sports journalism ethics, sports media relations. Bookmark the permalink.