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Credit: The Dan Le Batard Show
Nick Wright, a mainstay on FS1’s First Things First and host of What’s Wright? with Nick Wright, appeared for his regular spot on The Dan Le Batard Show on Wednesday, Aug. 5, and unintentionally caused a stir.
Wright and the Le Batard crew started discussing Kevin Durant comparing LeBron James joining the Philadelphia 76ers to when he signed with the Golden State Warriors — and throwing shade at his former teammates.
Wright used that as a natural off ramp into commentary on Durant’s, in his words, “very odd” pattern on social media, citing the saga around Durant allegedly using a burner account to criticize his Rockets teammates last season. For the record, Durant has never confirmed his burner accounts and dismissed this as “Twitter nonsense” in February.
But litigating what Durant did or did not do was not the interesting part of Wright’s appearance on The Dan Le Batard Show. Rather, it was a fascinating, real-time look at the increasingly blurred line between pundit and reporter in sports media.
Amin ElHassan interjected to say it not been confirmed that it was Durant’s burner, to which Wright confidently responded, “Yes, we do. I do!”
“I am doing far more than circumstantial evidence, but because I haven’t paid the $799 to take Pablo Torre’s ‘How to be a Journalist’ class, I’m not sure exactly if I can say I’m reporting it,” Wright said.
Le Batard clarified that Wright “has information,” not just “gas-bagging,” and reiterated for the audience that Wright has legitimate sources.
“You’re saying something is so that I have not heard confirmed and have thought it is unfair to Kevin Durant without the confirmation — these burners and everything else,” Le Batard said. “What do you know what is true, and how can you talk around reporting it while understanding that you’re not quite a journalist, but you’re not just a gasbag, either? You get information.”
Wright referenced his popular bit on First Things First that he invokes when he’s about to give commentary based on inside information but stops short of outright reporting it.
“This is when I say I’m putting on my fake news hat. The hat is fake; the news is real,” Wright said. “So I put on my fake news hat. That was Kevin Durant in those DMs. First of all, it obviously was. Second of all, I’m telling you it was.”
ElHassan noted confirmation bias epidemic in American news as it relates to speculating on Durant’s social media activity based on his career-long reputation as the NBA’s premier social media poster.
Wright said he “was told by someone who absolutely would know” before sputtering awkwardly, and Le Batard jumped in to note, “I am so unaccustomed to you being tongue-tied.”
“Because you’re right,” Wright said. “I do a vice-riddled, gambling problem version of [the Brian Windhorst meme] sometimes. There’s things I know that I have no interest in talking about because I’m more interested in gathering some information and being in the circle of trust. Occasionally, I hope the discerning viewer or listener or consumer of my content can tell when I am going way further out than I normally would on things that aren’t just who’s going to win a game that no one can see in the future. Rather than that, what I’m doing is saying things that have happened or things that I have very good reason to believe will happen.”
“I know a handful of random things, and when I think it’s either relevant to the audience or helpful, I try to make it very clear [that] this is not just me guessing,” Wright added. “This is what I would call very informed speculation. […] I thought that was resolved fact, essentially, that Durant torched the locker room.”
“This is what bothers me, though,” Le Batard said. “That things become fact without anyone confirming it in a way that’s verifiable.”
Wright is not a journalist, so he hasn’t done anything wrong when lacing inferred inside information within his opinionated analysis on First Things First. But in a time where media literacy is at an all-time low, he may be wrong in his assumption that his viewers can read between the lines.
This issue recently surfaced when Laura Rutledge visited The Pat McAfee Show and poked fun at her NFL Live teammate Dan Orlovsky. More specifically, his habit of positing ideas on television without considering that the audience will assume it’s fact if it comes out of his mouth on ESPN.
“I don’t know if Dan-O has actual sources,” Rutledge said. “There have been a few times where he’s come up with stories like this, and we’re like, ‘Dan, where are you hearing that?’ And he’s like, ‘I just think that it would be a good idea.’ Like, OK, well, you can’t say as if it’s true because then people believe it.”
As for what this means for Wright, well, we may be due for another What’s Wright? segment in which he reads from his DMs with Durant to clear the air.
The post Nick Wright puts on ‘fake news’ hat for Kevin Durant burner breakdown appeared first on Awful Announcing.
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