ESPN’s sex scandal silence

last updated 8 January 2015

ESPN ombudsman Don Ohlmeyer has been strangely silent on the Steve Phillips sex scandal and the baseball analyst’s subsequent firing. Ohlmeyer, a sports broadcasting legend who was hired earlier this year, writes a monthly column for ESPN—he filed his latest dispatch on the day the Phillips scandal broke. Shouldn’t Ohlmeyer be doing more to restore ESPN’s credibility?

Ohlmeyer needs to speak up immediately: “Hey Don Ohlmeyer, how much longer are we going to have to wait?” ask the sports bloggers at The Big Lead. Ohlmeyer’s had a week to gather his thoughts on the incident, and “surely, he’s seen this kind of thing in his many years of television.”

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Blame ESPN, not Ohlmeyer: “None of this is Ohlmeyer’s fault, really,” says Katie Baker in Mediaite. ESPN is muffling his impact by limiting his column to once a month—that it fell on the day the Phillips scandal became public is an unfortunate coincidence—and “no doubt he operates within some preordained set of parameters.” The "Worldwide Leader" would be well advised to unbind “the truly impressive man” it hired as ombudsman.

Let’s have an independent investigation, please: ESPN’s response (or lack thereof) has been a “sad display,” says St. Petersburg Times media critic Eric Deggans. After all, scandals like this are why it hired an ombudsman. “Here’s hoping Ohlmeyer or someone with his leeway is given the chance to produce an independent report for ESPN.” That’s the best way to restore sanity and integrity to ESPN’s journalism.