Misogynists are taking the wrong lessons from the Dianna Russini story: Women aren't to blame for media issues

Misogynists are taking the wrong lessons from the Dianna Russini story: Women aren't to blame for media issues originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

When the Jazz played the Grizzlies in Game 81 of the NBA regular season, only the true sickos were paying attention. One of them was Bleacher Report’s Molly Morrison, who took an otherwise completely forgettable game and showed in a funny, original, and memorable video why that night actually contained a story worth telling.

Morrison’s video was good. So good, in fact, that it made one watcher comment, "great vid made me rethink my misogynistic views."

That may have been a tongue-and-cheek joke. Maybe it wasn’t. Either way, it was a spot-on reflection of the audience that women in sports media deal with.

Noa Dalzell, one of the most creative storytellers on the NBA beat, shared on Twitter that she received variations of Morrison’s comment "fairly often." Women’s credentials are constantly challenged in a way that simply doesn’t happen with men. The default assumption is that they are casual fans, guilty until proven innocent.

While Dalzell, Caitlin Cooper, Claire de Lune, and other brilliant women rise to the top of their respective NBA writing beats, their work has been overshadowed this week by The Athletic’s NFL insider Dianna Russini in the wake of her alleged improper relationship with Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel.

Russini and Vrabel were photographed holding hands, hugging, and sharing a hot tub in Sedona. The images went viral, sparking affair allegations, an internal investigation at The Athletic, Russini’s resignation, and a wave of online pile-ons.

If the allegations against Russini are true, then it serves as an obvious ethical breach and an unfortunate example that will be used to fuel plenty of misogynistic opinions about women sleeping their way to the top of various industries.

Here’s the thing, though. Women are not a monolith. There are great female reporters, there are mediocre ones, and there are bad ones.The same goes for men. The difference is in the volume of scrutiny.

Media ethics 'as bad as I've ever seen'

The Russini incident has forced all of us in the industry to confront an uncomfortable truth, that she is far from the only one of us with questionable ethics.

"I do hope this whole thing opens up a larger conversation about the potential destructiveness of quid pro quo in our business,"ESPN's MLB reporter Buster Olney said during an appearance on ESPN NY’s DiPietro and Rothenberg. "Because let me tell you something. It’s as bad as I’ve ever seen. As someone who’s covered the sport for a long time."

I can only speak for the NBA side, where the link between access and reporting has become so blatant that it is now routine to see NBA newsbreakers cite a player’s agent any time a big contract is handed out. Glowing PR statements are the tax that is paid for inside info.

The cost for noncompliance can be much steeper, as Bucks coach Doc Rivers recently illustrated on the Run it Back show. Heading into the All-Star break, Rivers made a joke about ESPN NBA insider Shams Charania being traded from the celebrity game.

"Shams took that so personally that he actually called the Bucks and yelled at them to take it down. It was a mess," Rivers told the show.

Rivers later shared that he had heard from 10 different people that Shams was planning to write a revenge article on him. That story came down the pipeline a few days before he was fired, where Shams called upon six different sources to vent about the Bucks coach.

Charania’s mentor, Adrian Wojnarowski, has been criticized in the past for using similar sourcing tactics during his time at Yahoo and ESPN.

"If you look closely at his columns and talk to people in the NBA, you discover that he mixes his reporting and opinion writing in improper ways, rewarding sources with flattery and punishing the uncooperative with nastiness," The New Republic’s Kevin Draper wrote about Woj back in 2014. "In fact, it often appears as though Adrian Wojnarowski lets his sourcing dictate not just the topic but also the tone of his writing."

Charania and Wojnarowski are far from the only newsbreakers that have faced criticism for their sourcing tactics. ESPN's top NFL newsbreaker Adam Schefter once sent an unpublished draft of his story to former Washington team president Bruce Allen, asking if anything he wrote needed to be changed and referring to him as "Mr. Editor."

Not all newsbreakers have these issues, and there are degrees to these transgressions (Russini's allegations being on an extreme end of the spectrum). But this is the elephant in the room that everyone who works in media knows about. Impartiality is dying.

Even for those of us who aren’t newsbreakers, there is always a transactional undercurrent in building relationships with sources. There is a line where some of that is okay, and some is not. That line has been shifting further every day.

We need to move that line back with tougher, more consistent standards and a deeper look at journalistic ethics across the board. That’s particularly true at a time when so many are losing faith in our institution. Bad actors are everywhere and they hurt everyone in the industry.

As for the good actors, talent is talent. Morrison’s video would have been just as good had a man been the voice behind it, as would Dalzell’s story ideas. There are simply too many strong voices now across genders for old tropes to hold up about women not belonging.

Of course, the men and women who would care to listen to a story about Game 81 of a 25-win Grizzlies season already know that. It’s the actual casuals who are catching up. In the worst news for misogynists but the best news for the rest of us, there are too many talented women for them to ignore.