Mike Florio: Timing of ESPN’s NFL reporting will be telling regarding editorial influence of equity stake

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Ever since ESPN completed its deal to acquire NFL Media in exchange for a 10 percent equity stake in the network earlier this year, questions about how the league’s ownership of the network would influence ESPN’s editorial output have been a regular topic of conversation. ESPN and the NFL have regularly insisted that the equity stake will have no bearing on the network’s reporting of the league.

So far, that seems to be the case. The network recently re-signed investigative reporter Don Van Natta Jr., who has reported on the NFL aggressively for 15 years since joining ESPN in 2011. And just last month, ESPN published a triple-bylined investigative report on the NFL’s Rooney Rule that offered a very critical look at the efficacy of the league’s hiring protocols. If ESPN was planning to neuter its reporting on the NFL because of its new equity arrangement with the league, it hasn’t been very overt about it.

But there’s one way in which the network might attempt to take the sting out of its more critical reporting about the league, Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio suggested on a recent episode of The Varsity podcast. Florio believes that ESPN may very well continue to report on the NFL just as it always has, but he wonders if the network will put that reporting behind the megaphone like it once did.

“Here’s the thing to watch. When they have a deep-dive investigative story that may make the NFL and or one of its teams look bad, what do they do with it?” Florio posed. “When do they release it? How do they showcase it on the various ESPN car wash of shows? There was a time when they would strategically pick, in my view, maximum disruption for dropping one of these stories. And the person that wrote it would be on every ESPN show you can imagine talking about it. So, they may still check the box on journalism, but let’s see how much of a spotlight they shine. Let’s see how strategic they are about putting it at a good spot instead of maybe burying it on a Friday afternoon. That’s the thing to watch as it relates to ESPN’s journalism of the NFL.”

At some point, ESPN will be tested on this front. Reporters like Van Natta Jr., Seth Wickersham, or Kalyn Kahler will eventually report a story that shakes the NFL. The level to which ESPN covers those stories across its more popular mediums like television and social media will be telling as to whether the NFL’s equity stake in the network has any sway over the network’s editorial decisions.

And, as Florio notes, timing of these stories can be everything. A Rooney Rule report published in late July isn’t necessarily as impactful as one published at the height of the NFL coaching carousel following the season. That’s not to say ESPN is strategically timing reports to avoid maximal damage to the NFL. But it’s something that, as time goes on and there are more examples of what ESPN’s NFL reporting looks like after its equity deal with the league, is certainly worth paying attention to.

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