With the NFL selling NFL Network and other media properties to ESPN, the league needs to beef up its digital offerings with new online content.
Enter The Athletic. According to Front Office Sports, the NFL and The Athletic have discussed expanding their relationship. One possibility would be to include content from The Athletic appearing on NFL.com and NFL+.
Last year, The Athletic acquired the ability to use game footage on the subscription site and its video offerings.
The possibility comes at a time when The Athletic is (presumably) still investigating the work of its former NFL Insider, Dianna Russini, to determine whether her reporting was tainted by the actual or apparent conflict of interest that arose from her apparent or actual relationship with Patriots coach Mike Vrabel. It’s a reflection of the sky-high journalistic standards that the New York Times, the owner of The Athletic, applies to the sports arm of the operation.
How does selling content to the NFL — a league that The Athletic covers actively and aggressively — comply with those standards? Consider this portion of the editorial guidelines that apply to the reporters employed by the The Athletic: “When reporting and writing stories we do not have an agenda and it is important that our readers understand that. If our readers question our adherence to that basic tenet of journalism, our credibility will be at stake. To maintain the highest form of authority we should avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest and reveal those sources or affiliations that may put into question our ability to be credible.”
Obviously, a business relationship with the NFL, pursuant to which the NFL is paying The Athletic to license its content, creates a conflict of interest. For the same reasons the New York Times and The Athletic were concerned about Russini’s relationship with Vrabel, the New York Times and The Athletic should not be licensing content to the NFL.
It’s no different than, for example, the federal government (which the Times actively scrutinizes in its reporting) paying the Times to copy and paste content from the Times on a governmental website. There’s no way the New York Times would ever do that.
If the fecal matter ever hits the fan between The Athletic and Russini in the form of full-blown litigation, the company’s existing and potentially expanded relationship with the NFL becomes fair game for making the argument that the Times applies a double standard when it comes to actual or apparent conflicts of interest. For the reporters, it’s forbidden. For the revenue streams, it’s fair game.
Maybe that’s one of the reasons why the Russini investigation has quietly moved to the back burner, on its way to possibly sliding off the stove entirely. By wagging a finger at Russini for her actual or apparent conflict of interest, the company’s obvious conflict of interest as to its coverage of the most prominent sports league in America becomes even more conspicuous.
So how, you may ask, would something like that become a problem? If The Athletic is cashing checks from 345 Park Avenue, management at The Athletic may think twice about any reporting that would piss off the powers-that-be. And the business interests of The Athletic could prompt editorial decisions to not venture into any of the various rabbit holes that, if fully explored and exposed, could make the league and/or any of its teams or team owners look bad.
To truly maintain its independence, the Times and The Athletic should be doing no business with the NFL. And it definitely shouldn’t be striking a deal with the NFL to be paid by the league to have content from The Athletic distributed by an entity that The Athletic covers.
Then again, The Athletic has already crossed that bridge with the NBA. If nothing else, it makes a deal with the NFL inevitable — despite the clear standards that The Athletic expects its reporters to observe at all times.
