Another day, another journalist banned by ESPN.
The list of banned people by ESPN The Politburo is getting lengthier than the list of Chris Berman's nicknames.
The latest added to the banned list are reporters from the New York Post. The Post ran a story about the horrid treatment of Erin Andrews, and accompanying the story were images of Andrews from the pervert video. The ban was originally reported by Newsday.
Should the Post have used the footage? No. Hell no. Neither should have CBS or Fox. Bill O'Reilly used snippets of the video on his show this week.
That video should be destroyed and burned to a crisp, sent to cache hell.
So far, so good.
But there are several significant issues with how ESPN has handled itself regarding Andrews.
First, there are ESPN personalities who engaged in extreme sexual harassment of other ESPN employees and haven't been banned by the network.
ESPN has a decades-long history of sexual harassment in which numerous women have suffered and the network has never publicly held itself accountable for the treatment of those women, the way it just demanded public accountability from the Post.
The network's banning of individuals (and now entire media organizations) who do something with which the network disagrees has also now reached ridiculous numbers. According to several people at ESPN, there are as many as 100 people -- mostly journalists -- who have either been banned or are currently banned by ESPN. The number could be higher.
(I'm informed the banned list is different from ESPN's enemies list, which I've written about before. Not exactly sure why, though the enemies list is some sort of super-banned list, like the FBI's most wanted.)
In the history of modern media, there has never been a media company that while enjoying its own First Amendment protection has acted so Stalinesque in its treatment of dissenting opinions.
Many journalists believe the exact same thing I do, but they're afraid to say so because they desire to work for ESPN. So the network is allowed to act with impunity and serve as a free-speech squelcher despite enjoying its own constitutional protections.
I was banned by ESPN for writing a book about the network which in small part detailed a long history of sexual harassment at ESPN. Apparently I'm in excellent company. Many of us are a band of banned brothers.
Incredibly, the network is so ban happy that former ESPN executives have gotten in the ban act. One of the former top executives at ESPN who is now helping to run the NFL Network has banned me and many other journalists from that network because of what we said or wrote about ESPN.
There goes my career as Cris Collinsworth's production assistant.
You would've loved me, Cris.
The banning is something done mainly by executives. Lower-level producers are usually completely unaware of the various bans until they attempt to have a banned journalist on.
Several years ago, a producer spoke to me about co-hosting a show on the NFL Network, unaware of my exile. After that, another producer called me to discuss the New York Giants, but later called back, apologetic, saying he was unaware I was banned until he was informed by a high-ranking member of management.
The NFL Network has apparently banned dozens of journalists who've been critical of either ESPN or the NFL Network, according to an NFL Network producer who spoke with me.
Some of you might not care about the inner workings of a network or how it treats its enemies. That's fine. Except that in its 30-year existence ESPN has morphed into something larger than a sports television network. It has become arguably the most influential and recognized media entity in existence. It has incredible reach and power.
What happened to Andrews was awful. ESPN's ban-happy handling of the matter is making things worse -- and who would've thought that was even possible.
