The good for Adam Schefter is that he wasn’t saying anything crazy in his emails.
There are no racial slurs or homophobic language, but it is interesting that Schefter would let an NFL executive proofread his article before it went up on ESPN.
He isn’t the only reporter to run a story by a GM, coach, or player, but it sort of peels back the curtain on how certain journalists can have such good sources inside of a team.
This was brought to light by the LA Times.
Several emails between Allen and journalists are part of the filing too. In one of them from July 2011, ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter sent Allen the draft of an unpublished story that was published later the same day.
“Please let me know if you see anything that should be added, changed, tweaked,” Schefter wrote. “Thanks, Mr. Editor, for that and the trust. Plan to file this to ESPN about 6 am ….”
ESPN responded to this by releasing the following statement.
“Without sharing all the specifics of the reporter’s process for a story from 10 years ago during the NFL lockout, we believe that nothing is more important to Adam and ESPN than providing fans the most accurate, fair, and complete story.”
There is a reason the NFL, and probably some media people, don’t want all 650k emails to be released is because, in 2021, a lot of those emails will get people fired.
I think the only reason the Gruden emails were released was that he went after Roger Goodell. If he didn’t do that, I don’t think they would have been leaked.
If he had just stuck to the racist emails, he would still have a job today, but once they saw he called Goodell a “F*ggot” it was a wrap for Gruden.
Flip the page for copies of the wild emails.