ESPN's Adam Schefter has a history of "sketchy, unethical behavior"

The Daily Beast

In a statement released Wednesday, ESPN NFL insider Schefter admitted he went "a step too far" in allowing the then-Washington Redskins general manager Bruce Allen to check out an entire story 10 years ago before it was published (a journalistic no-no), referring to him as "Mr. Editor." As The Daily Beast's Robert Silverman points out, Schefter -- a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism -- has a history of unethical behavior. "Over the past decade, while serving as ESPN’s most influential football reporter, Schefter has engaged in other forms of behavior considered anathema to most reporters," says Silverman. "He’s appeared in commercials, invested in gambling concerns alongside an NFL owner, joined the board of a fledgling NFL developmental league, and for a hot minute in 2013, anyone with $3,000 burning a hole in their pocket could have paid to hang out and watch a game with Schefter. After all, Schefter’s job is to crank out NFL-approved gossip and carry water for the multi-billion dollar entertainment enterprise he’s ostensibly charged with covering. Excelling at this kind of access journalism often isn’t pretty. Schefter and others of his ilk have to maintain and properly nurture chummy, transactional relationships with the NFL’s power brokers and agents, doling out choice bits of information and hip-pocketing others. In exchange for their clever horse trading, they’re rewarded with tidy exclusives about looming trades and ongoing contract negotiations. Fans, the type of fans who enjoy placing a wager or who dig fantasy football, eat this stuff up. As such, Schefter has been granted a lofty perch at ESPN. If putting this much-prized product out means Schefter will on occasion defend a domestic abuser or push the NFL’s preferred politics while claiming to be apolitical, well, that’s the at-times grim cost of doing business."