ESPN’s Adam Schefter became the latest NFL personality to be named in emails that have came from the NFL’s investigation into the Washington Football Team.
Earlier this week, the New York Times published a story showing details of an email from Schefter to former Washington executive Bruce Allen where the NFL Insider asked if any of the included information should be “changed” or “tweaked” for a story.
“Please let me know if you see anything that should be added, changed, tweaked. Thanks, Mr. Editor, for that and the trust. Plan to file this to espn about 6 am,” the email reportedly read.
Journalist from all around have now weighed in on the story and that includes former ESPN reporter Jemele Hill.
“I’ve been a journalist for over 20 years now,” Hill said on Twitter. “I’ve never let a source proofread, preview or edit any story. Majority of journalists I know have never done this either. That is a huge journalistic NO-NO.”
Schefter explained why he ran details of the story past his source on his weekly radio hit on 97.5 The Fanatic:
“I’ve learned for a long time in this business not to discuss sources, or the process, or how stories are done,” Schefter said.
“But I would just say that it’s a common practice to run information past sources. And in this particular case, during a labor intensive lockout that was a complicated subject that was new to understand. I took the extra rare step to run information past one of the people that I was talking to. You know, it was an important story to fans; a host of others, and that’s the situation.”
