ESPN's Schefter Faces Criticism For Allowing NFL Exec To Edit Story

ESPN's top NFL reporter Adam Schefter is facing blowback from some in the sports journalism community after it was revealed this week he sent an unpublished story to a source for review before submitting it to his editors.

The Hill reports the story, written in 2011, was sent to former Washington Football Team President Bruce Allen, according to the Los Angeles Times, and was revealed as part of a wide-ranging investigation and report that the league conducted into the workplace culture of the Washington franchise. 

Adam Schefter

As he sent Allen the story, which focused on the lockout between players and the NFL that year, Schefter wrote to Allen, a high-level source close to team owner Dan Snyder, “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. . . .” Schefter added.

The email from Schefter to Allen was highlighted by NBC Sports NFL reporter Mike Florio on his Pro Football Talk blog, which noted Allen had previously insisted in a sworn statement as part of a defamation case with Snyder that he “maintained a low profile with respect to the media” and that he “never served as an anonymous source for any news or media reports.”

Schefter addressed the Times's reporting on Wednesday morning while speaking on local sports talk radio in Philadelphia. 

Adam Schefter Previews Eagles-Buccaneers https://t.co/iiE81lsFce

— Tom Benson (@Tombenson1) October 14, 2021

"I’ve learned for a long time in this business not to discuss sources, or the process or how stories are done," he told WPEN 97.5 The Fanatic. "But I would just say that, basically, 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 again 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.” 

ESPN issued a statement supporting its highly paid scoop-chasing journalist, who has been with the company since 2009. 

“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," the company said. 

Schefter's decade-old correspondence with Allen sparked a debate online among sports journalists about the ethics of balancing objectivity in reporting against the importance of checking facts and effectively extracting information from sources with key information.