“Write what you know, not what you think.”
Andrew Marchand offered that lesson to other reporters while discussing ESPN’s decision to part ways with NFL analyst Ryan Clark. The sports-media columnist for The Athletic, a New York Times-owned outlet, was responding to what he described as inaccurate opinions circulating online about Clark’s dismissal.
He thought he was explaining the difference between responsible journalism and uninformed speculation. Instead, Marchand accidentally explained why so many Americans distrust the press.
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To be clear, his advice was perfectly sound. The problem came when Marchand revealed what he knew, how long he had known it and why he had not told his readers.
On his own podcast, Marchand claimed he had anticipated Clark’s departure since February. He went so far as to assert that he had “a story prepared in February” and received a “very strong indication” roughly one week before ESPN let Clark go.
So why didn’t he publish the report?
“Like others, you want to allow ESPN to tell him first,” Marchand explained. He said he eventually reported that Clark was expected to be dismissed because the scoop became “competitive.”
In other words, Marchand says he knew ESPN was preparing to part ways with Clark but he withheld the information while ESPN followed its preferred timetable. Then another outlet threatened to make the information public, and he published.
Marchand apparently believed that account enhanced his reputation as a responsible journalist.
It actually exposed the access-journalism game.
Before going further, it’s important to make clear that the point is not Marchand personally, or who published one Ryan Clark story first.
Legendary sports radio host Dan Patrick recently brought up another situation that exposed why access-journalism serves the people involved, but often not the public at large.
After the San Francisco 49ers disclosed that head coach Kyle Shanahan had suffered serious injuries in a car accident 11 days earlier, ESPN’s Adam Schefter posted the news one minute later. ESPN quickly followed with a detailed report.
Patrick wondered whether ESPN and Schefter already knew what had happened but waited until the 49ers authorized its release.
“This isn’t journalism. Not really reporting,” Patrick said. “They’re giving you the information” and then effectively saying, “Okay, now you can tell everybody.”
Patrick didn’t prove ESPN had been sitting on the story. But he identified the central problem with the modern insider economy: What is the public value of privately knowing something if the institution involved decides when the public may know it?
That’s not journalism. It’s public relations.
And while we don’t know exactly what happened between Schefter, Kyle Shanahan, ESPN, the NFL and the San Francisco 49ers, we do know exactly how the Marchand-Clark situation played out and it illustrates Patrick’s point.
As I detailed last week, my colleague Bobby Burack and I developed separate lines of reporting that ESPN was preparing to part ways with Clark. Four sources in total confirmed the information.
We contacted ESPN at 4 p.m. ET on Monday and gave the network until 5 to respond. ESPN asked us to delay publication until 5:45 while it was “trying to chase this down.” We declined but offered to add anything the network provided.
Clark then disappeared from “NFL Live,” ESPN unexpectedly told us at 4:49 that we could “stick to” our original timeline, and Marchand published a two-paragraph report 14 minutes later. OutKick’s more detailed story followed one minute after that.
That looks damning because it appears Marchand rushed out a short and incomplete story just to beat OutKick to the news.
Marchand has now explained his side, and his explanation makes the sequence harder to defend.
Recall that Marchand claimed he had “a story prepared in February.” But his initial report didn’t resemble a completed article that had been waiting since February. It consisted of two hurried paragraphs and included a typo.
Whatever “prepared” meant, his comments in a separate interview with Puck’s John Ourand established the more important point: Marchand had the information, intentionally waited on ESPN and published only after OutKick’s reporting forced the company to act.
“ESPN knew, I knew,” Marchand told Ourand, explaining that the network had been trying to keep the Clark decision “close to the vest.”
Then, Marchand said, “another entity called up” with the information and informed ESPN that it intended to publish. According to Marchand, ESPN became concerned and decided to tell Clark immediately rather than risk having him learn about the decision online.
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Marchand didn’t identify the other outlet, but he was describing precisely what OutKick had done. Our inquiry didn’t merely make the story abstractly “competitive.” By Marchand’s own account, it forced ESPN to accelerate its timetable.
Once ESPN had informed Clark, Marchand rushed out his two-paragraph report and made sure to note afterward that he had “reported it first,” while the other outlet published “a little bit after.”
Marchand didn’t explain who alerted him that OutKick was preparing to publish or who told him Clark had been informed. Nor does his account prove ESPN asked us to wait specifically to help another reporter publish first.
And there is nothing inherently improper about giving a company a brief opportunity to notify an employee before he learns online that he has been let go. Reporters should consider the human consequences of publication.
But Marchand didn’t describe granting ESPN a few minutes of courtesy. He said he possessed strong information for roughly a week and waited until competition threatened the arrangement.
Marchand went further in his interview with Ourand. He described himself as “being respectful” by waiting for ESPN and said he tries to wait “as long as you can” before publishing layoff news.
He then suggested that being a good reporter and being a good person “go hand-in-hand.”
Marchand isn’t simply admitting that he honored ESPN’s timetable. He is presenting that deference as evidence of his moral and journalistic superiority.
But OutKick didn’t recklessly publish unconfirmed information or deny ESPN an opportunity to respond. We independently confirmed the story through four sources, contacted the company and gave it a firm deadline.
Marchand’s definition of responsible journalism appears to require something more: allowing the corporation at the center of the story to determine when the reporting may become public.
Responsible journalism means giving the subject of a story an opportunity to respond, as OutKick did when we offered ESPN one hour to comment.
But it does not mean giving the subject control over when the story becomes public. And it especially doesn’t mean allowing the subject to dictate the framing of the news.
That’s the difference between responsible journalism and access journalism. It seems that Marchand and many other insiders confuse the two quite frequently.
Access reporters receive strategically selected information from powerful sources, honor the source’s preferred timetable and publish when the institution decides the information can be released.
The reporter receives exclusives and status. The institution receives a predictable messenger.
Marchand demonstrated that predictability during the interview with Ourand.
Although he called ESPN’s execution “horrendous,” he repeatedly insisted the company was “trying to do the right thing” and that its “hearts were in the right place.”
ESPN put Clark on live television despite planning to part ways with him, removed him only after an outside outlet threatened to publish and created the humiliating spectacle Marchand was discussing.
Yet even while criticizing the result, a reporter who benefits from staying in ESPN’s good graces rushed to defend management’s intentions. The execution was bad, Marchand conceded, but ESPN’s motives, in his view, remained pure.
That instinct points to the second half of the access bargain. It’s not only about allowing a source to control the timing of information. It’s also about how aggressively a reporter is willing to scrutinize the people providing it.
A reporter who depends on one corporation for a steady stream of scoops has a powerful incentive not to challenge that corporation too aggressively. The next exclusive depends on the same executives and communications officials continuing to take his calls.
Marchand does criticize people associated with ESPN. But notice who draws his criticism and when they draw it.
His most sustained criticism has focused on Pat McAfee, an independently powerful personality whom ESPN does not fully control and who has repeatedly clashed with people inside the network. One Marchand report contained several petty and embarrassing details about McAfee that clearly came from ESPN insiders. Sports Illustrated described it as a “pretty brutal inside job.”
That was technically reporting critical of an ESPN personality. It also demonstrated how an insider can serve one faction of a corporation against another.
Marchand criticized Ryan Clark after ESPN had decided to fire him. He wrote that “Around the Horn” had lost its way during the show’s final week, months after ESPN publicly announced its cancellation.
Even Marchand and Katie Strang’s substantial investigation into former ESPN executive Lee Fitting arrived after ESPN had let him go, when scrutinizing Fitting no longer threatened his standing inside the network. The report documented conduct that employees said went unchecked for years, but its target was already outside the building.
The discarded executive received scrutiny. The executives who still controlled access received credit.
That doesn’t prove a formal quid pro quo. But it doesn’t need to.
The institution supplies information. The reporter supplies predictability and favorable coverage.
The same arrangement becomes far more consequential when the subject is not a sports network but a government official helping shape national policy.
Newly released diary entries from Dr. Anthony Fauci showed just how cozy relationships between powerful officials and the journalists covering them can become.
Fauci wrote that he was building a friendship with CNN’s Jake Tapper and documented dinners at each other’s homes. He wrote that he “gave Jake some questions to ask” another health official during a CNN interview.
Dana Bash sent Fauci an encouraging message after a confrontation with a Republican lawmaker. George Stephanopoulos praised Fauci privately after an interview, while Andrea Mitchell called to apologize for failing to book him.
Reporters need sources, and friendly relationships can produce important information. None of those described interactions is a problem in a vacuum.
The problem arises when access, ideological sympathy and personal friendship erase the necessary distance between reporter and subject.
During a historic public-health crisis, the press was supposed to scrutinize one of the most powerful and influential officials in the country. Fauci’s diaries raise a different possibility: that some journalists covering him had begun to view him less as a subject requiring skepticism and more as an ally whose access and approval they valued.
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The Marchand-ESPN sequence shows the access bargain in sports media. The Fauci diaries show what happens when that same bargain reaches national policy.
That’s the access bargain in its most dangerous form.
The information can be accurate and still function as PR. It can be selectively leaked, strategically timed and framed to benefit the institution or official providing it.
That’s why many insider scoops provide limited public value. Firings, trades, contract extensions and television assignments generally become public anyway. The insider’s product is often not discovery, it’s speed.
And in today’s social media world, how much value does that even hold?
The Founding Fathers didn’t enshrine freedom of the press in the First Amendment so reporters could distribute corporate announcements a few minutes early or launder government messaging from powerful officials.
They protected it because a free press was supposed to stand between the public and concentrated power.
That freedom carries a purpose: expose what powerful institutions want concealed, demand answers they would rather avoid and publish truths they would prefer remain buried.
When reporters instead allow corporations and government officials to control the timing, framing and scrutiny of the news, they are not fulfilling that founding role.
They are surrendering it.
My own career has often involved seeking access where I was not wanted. Nike stonewalled questions about a study on “transgender” youth athletes, the WNBA denied game credentials several times because they didn’t want me asking questions and reporting on a Michigan high-school volleyball controversy led to harassment and required me to have a personal security detail at several games.
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That resistance didn’t make all of my conclusions correct, but it established that the subjects weren’t controlling the reporting process. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Only 28% of Americans told Gallup last year that they trusted newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly, the lowest figure Gallup has recorded.
Media organizations often blame polarization, misinformation, social media and politicians for that collapse.
They should also examine the system they created.
Marchand thought he was establishing his superiority over reporters who lacked his access. He knew earlier, had better sources, supposedly had a story ready months before and then simply waited because that was the “responsible” thing to do.
Instead, his defense revealed the unspoken arrangement.
A powerful institution gives information to a favored reporter. The reporter protects the institution’s timeline and rarely makes himself a threat to the people providing access. When an outside outlet disrupts the arrangement, the insider rushes out the news, preserves his reputation and continues receiving information from the same sources.
Then he lectures everyone else to “write what you know, not what you think.”
Marchand should add the unofficial second half of that rule: Write what you know… as long as the corporation that told you says it is okay.
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Dan Patrick identified the problem.
Andrew Marchand accidentally showed the entire process in action.
