Some inside the network argued that its reporters — who had initially been put onto the story by Tom Condon, Te’o’s agent — had enough material to justify publishing an article. Others were less sure and pushed to get an interview with Te’o, something that might happen as soon as the next day. For them, it was a question of journalistic standards. They did not want to be wrong.
“We were very close,” said Vince Doria, ESPN’s chief for news. “We wanted to be very careful.”
ESPN held the story, and then lost it.
That afternoon, Deadspin, a sports Web site, reported that the girlfriend did not exist. She had never lived. She had never died. She had never met with or talked to Te’o over the many months he thought he was in contact with a thoughtful, gravely ill Stanford alumna named Lennay Kekua. Deadspin strongly suggested that Te’o was complicit in the fake tale and had exploited it to bolster his bid for acclaim.
Deadspin, its editor said in an interview this week, had also received a tip about the hoax, a day after ESPN had been alerted. The Web site assigned two reporters to the story. At the heart of the article Deadspin published was a reverse-image Internet search of the photograph on Twitter that Te’o, a star linebacker, had relied upon as proof of Kekua’s existence. It had been lifted from the Facebook account of an unsuspecting California woman who had never spoken with Te’o.
“Given the same amount of information that we had, I can’t think of a media outlet that wouldn’t run with that,” Tommy Craggs, Deadspin’s editor, said.
For some, the debate within ESPN quickly gave way to regret and reflection. Three ESPN executives interviewed in recent days said they should have published on Jan. 16. The executives, who would not be identified because they did not want to second-guess their organization by name, said that the network’s focus on waiting until getting an interview with Te’o was a mistake.
“If I had my druthers, we would have run with it,” one executive said. “We’ve had a bunch of discussions internally since then, and I don’t think it will happen this way again. I wonder sometimes if perfection is the enemy of the practical.”
ESPN has faced considerable skepticism over the years about its ability to aggressively report on potentially embarrassing issues involving the leagues and universities with which it has an array of lucrative broadcast deals. Just days before learning that the Kekua story might be a hoax, ESPN televised Notre Dame’s loss to Alabama in the Bowl Championship Series title game before the second-largest audience in cable television history.
In this instance, there does not seem to be any obvious competing interest that might have blunted ESPN’s vigor in reporting the story. Except, perhaps, the value it attaches to having its subjects on camera. ESPN, as a journalistic matter, said it needed to talk to Te’o. But ESPN, as a competitive broadcaster, also dearly wanted that to happen on camera. Despite its broad expansion into radio, print and digital outlets, ESPN’s greatest strength is built on the power of video.
“On-camera is always our primary interest,” a senior ESPN executive said.
Craggs, the Deadspin editor, did not think much of ESPN’s assertion on the value of video or its invocation of standards.
“When they talk about standards, they may be talking about waiting for some kind of official response from Notre Dame or Manti, which is just idiotic,” Craggs said. He added: “This is a story about a social media hoax. As soon as the principals know we’re working on it, the story starts to change. They start ripping things down.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 22, 2013
An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the girlfriend in the hoax involving Manti Te’o. It is Lennay Kekua, not Kakua.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/sports/ncaafootball/as-debate-raged-at-espn-manti-teo-story-slipped-from-its-hands.html?partner=rss&emc=rss