Original article as posted can be seen here
“Cui bono,” asks Capt. George Ellerby (Alec Baldwin) in 2006’s The Departed, “Who benefits?”
According to Wikipedia, the phrase cui bono, “is a Latin adage that is used either to suggest a hidden motive or to indicate that the party responsible for something may not be who it appears at first to be.
Commonly the phrase is used to suggest that the person or people guilty of committing a crime may be found among those who have something to gain, chiefly with an eye toward financial gain. The party that benefits may not always be obvious or may have successfully diverted attention to a scapegoat, for example.”
On Sept. 24, ESPN — the self proclaimed, “Worldwide leader in sports” — suspended Grantland editor-in-chief, Bill Simmons, for three weeks, in the wake of incendiary remarks Simmons made on his podcast, “The B.S. Report.”
Grantland, founded by Simmons in 2011, has since garnered well-deserved attention and acclaim with its emphasis on thoughtful, long-form analysis of sports and pop culture, featuring noted, well-regarded writers like Chuck Klosterman and Charles P. Pierce, essayists for Esquire and frequent NPR commentators.
Simmons, speaking retrospectively after Grantland’s two-year anniversary, has expressed pride for the results of his grand experiment.
“I’d rather let our work speak for itself – we’ve built something over the last two years that means a lot to everyone involved. Our staff works their asses off, and our writers genuinely care about the site and the fantastic work they’re doing.”
In the wake of Simmons’ suspension, many have questioned ESPN’s motives in punishing Simmons and lobbied ESPN brass on Simmons’s behalf. A Change.org petition to ESPN to end Simmons’s suspension currently has attracted more than 16,000 signatures, including the creator and showrunner of HBO’s “Girls,” Lena Dunham, and 40 Year Old Virgin writer/director, Judd Apatow. Last week, a top-trending Twitter hashtag was #FreeSimmons, with numerous media outlets and individuals decrying an abusive overreach of power by ESPN executives.
To accurately analyze the ethical implications of Simmons’s suspension, one must first analyze not only the nature of ESPN’s association with Grantland, but also the somewhat-nebulous relationship ESPN has with the concept — and practice — of “journalism.”
Ty Duffy, in a June 2013 column for The Big Lead, wrote:
“The site was not a startup. ESPN affiliation offered it immediate credibility and promotion. ESPN coffers offered it cash to launch and to operate at a loss if need be. ESPN’s existing Internet infrastructure offered it multiple traffic fire hoses, including plum placement on ESPN.com and Bill Simmons’ twitter feed (now over 2 million followers). This project was more than a domain name and a dream. The floor was much higher.”
ESPN provided the funding and traffic for Grantland’s launch and has retained a significant financial stake in its commercial success. ESPN executives evidently have the authority to suspend Simmons by fiat, so they clearly retain some level of control over the content the site disseminates and, therefore, feel that the content reflects on ESPN and its editorial philosophy. The “four-letter network” isn’t boasting when it proclaims itself, “the worldwide leader in sports,” but — and this is important — neither is it promoting itself as a journalistic enterprise.
The rant that earned Simmons his three-week suspension — including a prohibition against appearing on any Grantland content or posting to his personal Twitter account, @BillSimmons — was directed at National Football League Commissioner, Roger Goodell. Some outlets have characterized the diatribe as “profanity-laced,” either willfully or unintentionally adopting a dismissive tone towards Simmons’s concerns. Here — edited for language — is a transcript of the B.S. Report segment that garnered the suspension.
“Goodell, if he [says he] didn’t know what was on that tape, he’s a liar,” Simmons said Sept. 22, “I’m just saying it. He is lying. I think that dude is lying. If you put him up on a lie detector test that guy would fail. For [Goodell] to pretend [he] didn’t know is such fucking bullshit. It really is — it’s such fucking bullshit. And for him to go in that press conference and pretend otherwise, I was so insulted. I really was.”
The B.S. Report opens every podcast with a stock disclaimer saying, “The B.S. Report is a free-flowing conversation that occasionally touches on mature subjects,” and profanity — including both censored words here — is a frequent occurrence on the podcast. ESPN, to date, has not censured Simmons’s or any other Grantland podcasts specifically for profanity.
But Simmons, consumed by righteous indignation, then upped the ante.
“I really hope somebody calls me or emails me and says I’m in trouble for anything I say about Roger Goodell,” he said. “Because if one person says that to me, I’m going public. You leave me alone. The commissioner’s a liar and I get to talk about that on my podcast.”
Some have characterized Simmons’s bluster as a dare, imploring his employers to punish him. Two days after the podcast aired, ESPN obliged, pulling the podcast from its site and suspending Simmons for three weeks. ESPN, by way of explanation, released only this anonymous, tersely-worded press release.
“Every employee must be accountable to ESPN, and those engaged in our editorial operations must also operate within ESPN’s journalistic standards. We have worked hard to ensure that our recent NFL coverage has met that criteria. Bill Simmons did not meet those obligations in a recent podcast, and, as a result, we have suspended him for three weeks.”
It’s worth noting that Simmons’s three-week suspension for criticizing the way Goodell has handled domestic abuse allegations against Baltimore Ravens running back, Ray Rice, is considerably longer, by two weeks, than the suspension levied against “ESPN First Take” commentator, Stephen A. Smith, who on that show asserted that the public should reserve judgment against Rice — despite damning video footage released by TMZ showing Rice striking his then-fiancee, Janay Rice, in an Atlantic City casino elevator, rendering her unconscious — and urged viewers to consider what Janay Rice’s role might have been in the assault.
Essentially, Stephen A. Smith was trying to — at least — hint that Janay Rice might have been to blame for a brutal assault by a man literally almost twice her size that left her wholly unconscious on the floor of a casino elevator. Smith was roundly — and rightly — criticized and suspended for a week (likely with pay, though ESPN is not forthcoming about personnel matters).
Ben Collins summarized Smith’s position in a Sept. 26 article in Esquire , “Smith had seen Ray Rice dragging a lifeless body out of an elevator and assumed the victim was somehow asking for it.”
Never mind that, not two months later, Smith offered this analysis when presented with a partial statement from National Organization for Women (NOW) President, Terry O’Neill, calling for Goodell’s resignation.
“I’m sorry, I think this woman is off her rocker. I think she’s lost her mind. That’s right, I said it. This is the most ridiculous nonsense I’ve ever heard in my life. Roger Goodell deserves to lose his job?” he said. “That’s crazy. That’s crazy.”
Smith was not reprimanded or punished for his remarks towards O’Neill.
Some media outlets have characterized the Simmons suspension as a First Amendment issue, citing Freedom of the Press as a defense of Simmons’s rant against what he characterized as the NFL’s policy of, through its figurehead, Goodell, arrogantly and flagrantly disinformation and obfuscation.
Goodell, for his part, has often spoken of his personal and professional crusade to ‘protect the Shield,’ a reference to the NFL’s logo.
In response to those First-Amendment analyses, I offer a famous quote by journalist A. J. Liebling, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”
Citing “journalistic standards,” ESPN suspended Simmons three weeks. No mention of journalistic standards was made in the wake of Smith’s controversial and insensitive remarks about O’Neill, nor were any made in explanation of Smith’s suspension — considerably less severe than Simmons’s — for implying that Janay Rice was likely at fault for the beating she took at her now-husband’s hands.
Cui bono?
Simply put: ESPN has no financial or commercial prerogative to protect Terry O’Neill or NOW. The same cannot be said of the NFL and its mouthpiece, Roger Goodell.
ESPN currently holds a contract with the NFL — worth a reported $15.2 billion, or roughly $1.9 billion a year — to broadcast “Monday Night Football,” the highest-rated show on cable television, through 2021. ESPN, itself — in the words of ESPN Inc. President and Chairman, John Skipper — is open about what, and to what degree, the NFL contributes to ESPN’s entertainment brand.
“The value of the NFL to us is the ubiquity of the sport across our platforms all the time,” said Skipper, “It’s just stupendous for us. It’s daily product — we don’t have a day without the NFL. We do not have a more important deal than the NFL,” Skipper said.
And therein lies the problem: ESPN has too large a financial stake in the NFL to risk alienating the league with its coverage. Again, while ESPN may be “the worldwide leader in sports,” the network makes no claims as to its journalistic integrity, outside of its justification of Simmons’s suspension. Nor should it. ESPN has exhibited zero integrity in its enthusiastic dive into a profound conflict of interest. On the one hand, there is money to be made investigating and condemning Roger Goodell, but on the other hand, doing so with too much zeal or truth could threaten ESPN’s relationship with its corporate partner, the NFL.
ESPN is straddling an ethical fence, and is happy to do so. When it suits ESPN, it fancies itself a paragon of journalistic effort and integrity — such as in the Outside the Lines report Simmons was discussing, which provided strong, circumstantial evidence that Goodell was, in fact, lying — but the craven network executives demur when the “reporting” threatens ESPN’s financial well-being.
Simmons took a stand when he justly castigated Goodell on his podcast. Good for him. He was, perhaps, overbold in daring his bosses to punish him, but he did so because he knew what everyone now knows — that ESPN takes care of its own, even if “its own” includes a possibly criminally-negligent NFL Commissioner committed to protecting the NFL brand at the expense of abused women and even children, in the case of Minnesota Vikings running back, Adrian Peterson, who was placed on the NFL’s punitive “Exempt/Commissioner’s Permission List” after whipping his four-year-old son with a tree branch, leaving visible cuts and bruises that were photographed four days afterward.
Simmons was insulted by Goodell’s brazen denial of any culpability or responsibility in the NFL’s mishandling of its Rice investigation.
I am insulted by ESPN’s brazen suspension of Simmons, in the interest of furthering its monetarily beneficial relationship with the NFL.
ESPN’s behavior, ethically speaking, is reprehensible, but stockholders likely don’t take issue with the organization’s stance. I, personally, have chosen to boycott all ESPN content and material — including my beloved Grantland — to demonstrate my disappointment with the lack of sound moral judgment in the network’s treatment of Simmons. I encourage you to do the same.
It’s clear that ESPN holds itself to its supposed “journalistic standards” only when it benefits its bottom line. ESPN — owned by Disney — answers to only one higher authority: Disney stockholders.
So I am trying — in my own small way — to communicate my disapproval and condemnation of ESPN’s policies and politics to them in the only language they understand. I refuse to willingly or knowingly put my money into their pockets while their suspension of Simmons stands.
Cui bono?
At the moment, with Simmons silenced, we have all lost the benefit of his lone, honest voice, amidst the wilderness of babble ESPN has propagated in deference to the NFL and its figurehead, Roger Goodell.
It is imperative — if you believe, as I do, that even ESPN holds an ethical obligation to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, whether it conveniently brands itself as “journalism” or not — that ESPN not benefit any further from its deplorable mishandling of Simmons’s “rant” against Goodell.
In the words of John Stuart Mill, “[Evil] men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
Kevin Cook - CV 