Podcast host Dan Le Batard declared sports journalism “dead” this week during a segment about Amazon’s studio crew criticizing ESPN insider Shams Charania for breaking the league’s MVP award before the official announcement.
“I’d like that time to live forever. [Sports journalism] is dead. It’s not dying, it’s dead,” Le Batard said. “These streamers have no interest, none of them, none of them, have any interest in doing journalism and that’s why I’m telling you this war, the journalists have already lost it.”
Whether sports journalism is actually dead is one topic. Hearing Dan Le Batard make the declaration is another entirely.
ZERO BS. JUST DAKICH. TAKE THE DON’T @ ME PODCAST ON THE ROAD. DOWNLOAD NOW!
Le Batard was once a respected columnist and investigative reporter at the Miami Herald. He built a reputation as a sharp, witty voice in sports media. He deserves credit for that work. But few people have done more to undermine the integrity of the industry in recent years than he has. Few have blurred the lines between journalism, activism, performance, and selective outrage more aggressively.
Consider his coverage of women and domestic violence.
In recent years, Le Batard has publicly framed himself as someone with zero tolerance for the mistreatment of women. He forcefully condemned UFC President Dana White after White was filmed slapping his wife, and he repeatedly weighed in on allegations against former Ravens kicker Justin Tucker.
“From the franchise that gave you the Ray Rice elevator video, we get this flailing bulls— making it sound like Justin Tucker was the victim,” Le Batard wrote on X after Baltimore released Tucker. “‘We’ve released Justin Tucker’ would have sufficed. Football players don’t respect kickers. But the Ravens respect this one, who was bad last year, more than they do women.”
On the surface, those comments sound like the words of a journalist taking allegations seriously and holding powerful people accountable.
The issue is the hypocrisy.
CAN VICTOR WEMBANYAMA BE THE TRUE FACE OF THE NBA AS A EUROPEAN? | BOBBY BURACK
A month before the 2024 presidential election, the Daily Mail published allegations from an ex-girlfriend of Doug Emhoff, husband of then-Vice President Kamala Harris. The woman, who claimed witnesses could corroborate her account, accused Emhoff of “forcefully slapping” her during an incident in 2012.
Emhoff’s first major interview after the report was not with CNN or MSNBC. It was with Dan Le Batard. And yet, Le Batard never asked about the allegations. Not once.
Instead, he opened the interview with a question about love.
“Tell me what you’ve learned about love from your wife,” Le Batard asked.
“Communication,” Emhoff responded.
To be clear, no one expected Le Batard to conduct a hostile interrogation. The interview was clearly intended to humanize Emhoff and help rehabilitate the public perception of the Harris campaign. Fine. That happens in media.
However, refusing to acknowledge the allegations represented an embarrassing abandonment of basic journalistic standards.
Even openly partisan networks would almost certainly have asked Emhoff for a response, if only to satisfy the minimum obligation of addressing a major allegation involving a national political figure.
OutKick asked Le Batard on Tuesday about declaring journalism “dead” while simultaneously conducting interviews like the one with Emhoff. He did not respond. We will update the story if he does.
The hypocrisy of the Emhoff interview was not an isolated contradiction.
Years earlier, Le Batard hired Howard Bryant to work for Meadowlark Media. Bryant had previously been arrested after allegedly assaulting his wife in public in front of their 6-year-old son. According to reports, witnesses told police Bryant was seen choking his wife. Bryant was also charged with assaulting a responding police officer.
Given Le Batard’s repeated public declarations about violence against women, his decision to employ Bryant raised obvious questions. Questions he has never seriously addressed, despite our repeated inquiries.
It’s also worth noting that Le Batard’s executive producer, Mike Ryan, defended the Emhoff interview earlier this year by dismissing critics as “pedos” for supporting Donald Trump. In other words, he had no defense at all.
And when it comes to the kind of journalism Le Batard appears to value, he was the only notable media figure to defend Deadspin after the outlet falsely framed a 9-year-old Chiefs fan as wearing blackface. The family later filed a defamation lawsuit against Deadspin, after which The Dan Le Batard Show’s official X account quietly deleted the clip.
OUTKICK IS NOW ON THE FOX APP: CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD
This history makes Le Batard’s eulogy for sports journalism difficult to take seriously.
If sports journalism is dying, it’s because figures like Dan Le Batard abandoned the core principles in favor of partisan politics and hackneyed culture war theater.
The fact that he now casts himself as the ombudsman of the industry is insulting to the few people left trying to practice sports.
We now await Le Batard to land the first interview with Diddy after he is released from prison, only to ask him about “love.”
Read the full article here