Did Adam Schefter Inject Himself Into the Rodney Harrison and Kerry Rhodes Twitter Squabble?
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↵Of the extensive trash talk going on between the Jets and the Patriots in advance of tomorrow’s AFC East “Super Bowl”, the easily most bizarre was the Twitter exchange yesterday between Jets safety Kerry Rhodes and retired former Patriots safety Rodney Harrison. The actual war of words isn’t much worth recapping - Rhodes boasting about his team and his skills, Harrison saying his Twitter combatant hadn’t accomplished anything in his career.
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↵A more interesting wrinkle was the keen interest that ESPN reporter Adam Schefter took in the spat and the degree to which he helped stoke the drama. While Schefter didn’t send direct messages to either Rhodes or↵Harrison to goad them on, he brought more attention to their fighting and added commentary about their remarks. At one point, he voiced support with Harrison’s argument.
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↵And here opens a can of worms in reporting in the Twitter age. Does the fact that Rhodes and Harrison notice that an ESPN reporter is monitoring their exchange force them to keep the heat going? Should Schefter have kept out of it altogether?
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↵Naturally, this caused followers of his feed to question whether he was taking sides, to which Schefter replied:
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↵⇥You might↵⇥question this, but it's absolutely true. Reporters don't root for↵⇥teams. We root for people and we root for stories. That simple.↵↵There are those who would argue that rooting for individual players or team executives is a bias that's just as problematic to being a journalist as favoring particular teams. Moreover, does it bother NBC that their newest studio analyst is still carrying on as though he were still a member of his former team? In a season where the NFL is cracking down on its players tweeting, do the big media outlets going to have concerns of their own?
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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
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