John Kosner spoke with Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw about the Deshaun Watson case

Original Article: Bloomberg, by Lucas Shaw, April 25th, 2021

In the five weeks since more than a dozen women accused Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson of sexual assault, sports media has been tongue-tied.

ESPN's “First Take” and “Pardon the Interruption” have spent more time on the NCAA Tournament and the NBA playoff race. Talk radio has gone long on the NFL trade market and the Masters. It's not just sports media. While coverage of the allegations picked up after two women came forward with their stories -- prompting Nike to drop Watson -- the story has yet to appear outside the sports section of national newspapers.

Several senior media executives have expressed surprise at how little coverage the case has gotten thus far. Watson is one of the best players in the most popular sport in the U.S. His demands for a trade received wall-to-wall coverage at most of the major sports media outlets. But allegations of sexual abuse, not so much.

“It’s not been nearly as big a story as the merits of it warrant,” says Pablo Torre, host of the ESPN Daily podcast.

Torre’s podcast has been a notable exception, having now devoted two full episodes to the story. In the first episode, he interviewed investigative reporter John Barr about the case, and then spoke with Texans beat reporter Sarah Barshop. In the second episode, Barr returned to talk about the “conflicting narratives” now that some women have come to Watson’s defense.

The muted coverage contrasts with that of recent entertainment scandals. National newspapers like the New York Times and Los Angeles Times have run a series of front-page stories about toxic cultures at institutions like the Magic Castle and the Friars Club. Both the Hollywood Reporter and New York Times just this month published long investigations into producer Scott Rudin for being an abusive boss. (The Rudin story ran on the front page of the paper.)

Media executives cite many factors for the subdued coverage of the case thus far, including the relative anonymity of football stars, a long history of false accusations against Black men and the profession of the accusers. Watson is accused of sexual assaulting his massage therapists. While they are trained professionals, it has led some to dismiss the case as “tabloid fodder.”  

 “If you go to the NFL page for ESPN, it’s there. But I haven’t really seen coverage in leading newspapers I look at,” says John Kosner, a longtime sports media executive who used to work at ESPN and the NBA. “I suspect at the moment they are going on the information available to them.”

The story has received more coverage in the Houston market, though the tenor of that coverage has missed the mark, according to Texas Monthly's Dan Solomon.

One reason this story is still relegated to the B block is the evolution of sports media, which now prioritizes “the take” above all. A take is an interesting opinion, an angle on a story that no one else has discovered. It is the foundation of all the biggest sports media personalities on TV.

Stephen A. Smith is the maestro of the outrageous, if not always correct, opinion. Skip Bayless, his former partner-in-banter, built his entire career on takes. Bill Simmons, Colin Cowherd and Mike Francesa all have loyal followings because their listeners want to hear their take on a given topic. 

It’s hard to have a good take on the Watson case. If you make it about the football impact, you may dismiss the allegations themselves. If you believe the women, you risk being the latest bigot guilty of falsely accusing a Black man. If you don’t believe the women, you have even bigger problems. Top sports hosts have often resorted to say things like, “This doesn’t look good for Deshaun Watson.”

None of these concerns have ever stopped cable news pundits from speculating or commenting on ongoing legal matters, but sports media treads more carefully. ESPN has a policy distinguishing between a civil trail and a criminal trial. Criminal trials merit closer coverage.

The investigations into Watson are still ongoing. The Houston police department and the NFL are looking into the allegations. The Texans haven’t punished him either.

“When there is active litigation, civilly -- and you don’t have obvious conclusions to draw about what’s true and false -- it would be irresponsible to do so. I don’t fault the shows that are run on takes for not diving into this through their lens,” says Torre, who is also a  frequent guest on “Around the Horn” and co-host on “Pardon the Interruption."

And yet, ESPN showed no such reluctance to cover the outcome in the case of Derek Chauvin. The network, which just a couple years ago vowed to stick to sports, spent more than an hour of “First Take” on the trial’s verdict, and made it the biggest story on its website’s homepage.

Most members of the media cheered this coverage as a sign of how the activism of professional athletes has forced ESPN to adapt. That story has little to do with sports. But professional athletes cared about it, and spoke out about it, which means their teams had to pay attention, which meant the leagues and their media partners had to pay attention.

But in the case of Watson, his teammates, the Texans and the NFL would prefer this story just go away. -- Lucas Shaw