BOB GARFIELD:

Le Anne Schreiber is the new ombudsman for the cable sports channel ESPN, which will soon find itself in Barry Bondage. But till then, there has been more than enough to keep Schreiber occupied, which she understood loud and clear the first time, in her new capacity, she tuned in.
LE ANNE SCHREIBER :
It was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and I had found myself in the midst of a two-hour shout-fest through four different programs, and I found it a little bit overwhelming.
BOB GARFIELD:
All the shouting unnerved you, but it also seems to be true of TV sports programming pretty much worldwide. Isn't that the formula?
LE ANNE SCHREIBER :
Yes. I should make one thing clear. I'm not talking about the shouting of announcers in a moment of genuine excitement during event coverage. I'm talking about shouting heads uttering opinions.

I think it's taken over sports media in large part because of the 24/7 programming. Shouting heads are probably the most economical form of television production. You don't have to send camera crews out. But the constant opinion programming requires constant topics on which to deliver opinions, and I see a real likelihood, and sometimes also the actuality, of rumor going straight from the forum of Internet blogs – or also not just blogs, but, say, the comment sections of sites like ESPN.com, to hosts of talk shows who present that rumor as a topic on which the talking heads can opinionate.
BOB GARFIELD:
Let me give you an example from one of your own posts, that of an episode in which Atlanta Falcons’ quarterback Michael Vick was stopped at an airport security checkpoint with a water bottle that had a secret compartment.
LE ANNE SCHREIBER :
I believe it was a security guard at the airport who had offered the information that there was some particulate in this secret compartment which had an aroma of marijuana.

Well, within hours this information was fed to the afternoon, you know, sequence of opinion shows, and about 12 people delivered their opinions on the character of Michael Vick, the stupidity of Michael Vick, the presumption of guilt of Michael Vick. Within a week, Michael Vick was exonerated of any wrongdoing, but in the meantime the opinionators had had a week's heyday of sort of publicly flogging one of their favorite targets.

About two months after the initial confiscation of the bottle, he finally did a press conference in which he said the reason he has a bottle with a secret compartment, to stash jewels while he goes from hotel room to hotel room as a traveling athlete, which makes a certain amount of sense.
BOB GARFIELD:
As you mentioned in one of your posts, a channel like ESPN is awash in conflicts of interest and potential conflicts. For instance, it pays huge money in rights fees to broadcast, let's say, the NFL games. It may not necessarily want to be too harsh in its coverage of the league. And then there's the ratings imperative to pander to the lowest common denominator of mouth-breathing fan with exactly the kind of irresponsible shout-fests that so unnerve you.

In that environment, are you sure that ESPN really wants an ombudsman as opposed to, you know, some window dressing?
LE ANNE SCHREIBER :
The reason that, I think, ESPN has grounds for an ombudsman is because from the day ESPN bought the first rights to air an event, which it would also cover as news, it has existed in a climate of conflict of interest that's almost unprecedented in media. It's as if CNN had bought exclusive multi-year, multibillion-dollar rights to cover the war in Iraq.

But they do seem to care about news credibility, and therefore the role I'm sort of carving out for myself is looking at it from the vantage of, is what you're doing enhancing or eroding your credibility as a news organization? What they do with that is up to them.
BOB GARFIELD:
So far, what kind of reaction have you gotten in house?
LE ANNE SCHREIBER :
To my surprise, I've had a fairly positive reaction. I think partly they would rather hear the criticism from me, the relative politeness of it, than taking it in through the sometimes low blow and slamming of the world of sports bloggers.

So in some ways the often-vicious personal attacks made upon ESPN that floats about out there on the Internet makes it easier for me to not pull my punches and to have my criticisms heard.
BOB GARFIELD:
Le Anne, thank you very much.
LE ANNE SCHREIBER :
Thank you, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD:
Le Anne Schreiber is the new ombudsman for ESPN.