Of Blogs, Sources and Ethics

Yesterday, popular sports blog Deadspin.com rocked the sporting news world with divulging what amounted to little more than rumors about the sexual exploits of a few people at ESPN. What happened, in brief, is this: ESPN commentator (and former Mets GM) Steve Phillips was suspended after an affair with a staffer turned ugly. The New York Post broke the news. Police were involved, charges were filed.

Deadspin (Motto: "Sports News without Access, Favor or Discretion") had heard rumor that this was coming but got no comment from ESPN PR folks. In his rage at being scooped by the Post, and misled by ESPN, Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio went forward with a handful of stories about other ESPN employees' exploits. The "sources" were negligiable, the people at the heart of the posts barely qualified as public figures. Dauelerio admitted as much, saying, "And since the tenuous connection between rumor and fact for accuracy's sake has been a little eroded here, well, it's probably about time to just unload the inbox of all the sordid rumors we've received over the years about various ESPN employees."

Now, this is precisely the kind of thing that blogs are admonished for, exactly the type of decisions that journalists use to dismiss bloggers. As much as Deadspin is known for dirty jokes and little deference to media powers, this seemed a surprising call.

All of this is very interesting and brings up questions of blogger ethics. But to me the most interesting part is that just last week I read a story about Gawker Media (which owns Deadspin) head honcho Nick Denton saying in the past his family of sites had been too hesitant to publish certain items. Clearly Deadspin's decision to publish what they did seems to be related to Denton's comments.

I have tried to play the devil's advocate in class, saying the decision to sit on something is much easier to make that the decision to run it. But even I would be hard-pressed to justify Deadspin's actions. I don't think it's realistic to expect blogs to conform to the ethical standards of old media, but this is something else entirely.