ESPN’s Email Policy


June 14, 2002


MIKE PESCA: We're back with On the Media. I'm Mike Pesca.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield, beginning with this brief digression. The movie Fatal Attraction is a gripping thriller about a married man who's brief affair turns ugly when his lover begins to terrorize his family. Unfaithful men everywhere shuddered when seeing their worst nightmare depicted by Michael Douglas and Glenn Close on the big screen. Well that's approximately the way I reacted when I heard about Denis Horgan, Jr. Horgan was a senior producer at ESPN Radio until the network searched through some of its employees old e-mails and fired him and 3 of his pals for exchanging messages with vulgar content. The news sent a shiver down my spine, as it may be sending shivers down yours at this very moment. Denis, welcome to the show.

DENIS HORGAN, JR: Thank you, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD: All right, tell me what happened.

DENIS HORGAN, JR: There had been a previous incident about a week earlier where a fairly high profile person at ESPN had been let go for unrelated company policy. Apparently when they went through that person's e-mail after, anyone that had ever sent him an e-mail where there was any sort of inappropriate content, they then went into those people's files, and anyone that had sent that person's e--e-mail account anything inappropriate they then went into that person's file. So sort of like a spider web that just sort of expanded into a group of probably 10 to 15 different people.

BOB GARFIELD: And what was their methodology? Were there certain words and phrases? Is that how it works?

DENIS HORGAN, JR:I'm not sure what they went in looking for. What they found was conversations back and forth between male colleagues, inappropriate language may have been used that printed out on an e-mail in a piece of paper sitting on a desk in front of all your bosses looks fairly-- inappropriate, but it was-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

BOB GARFIELD:So this was not broadcast. This was not anything that the public ever saw. A communications company firing employees for--communicating.

DENIS HORGAN, JR: That's the great fear here is that e-mail has become such a second language to everybody that I think we all take for granted the fact that you can zip back and forth e-mails and--it's as if you're standing across a room talking to each other. You know, no matter how much you're warned about it or told about it, you, you'd never think that somebody was up there looking down, watching it all. And there had been no complaints from anybody. No one was harassing any other employees. These were conversations between friends, much like took place everywhere else in the company -- just not on the company's e-mail.

BOB GARFIELD:Well in fact on the company's air, because ESPN's brand image, if you will, is a kind of irreverence and a winking acknowledgement that boys will be boys--

DENIS HORGAN, JR: Right. The recent Bobby Knight movie there was graphic language that they-- promoted like crazy and-- you know they have a new comedy show that sort of prides itself on going low brow, not to mention, you know, a lot of the stuff in, in the magazine that comes out--

BOB GARFIELD: Well now that you are a martyr to guy talk, what are you going to do?

DENIS HORGAN, JR: I'm going to look for work. [LAUGHS]

BOB GARFIELD: When they told you that you were fired, did you swear?

DENIS HORGAN, JR:[LAUGHS] I have re-lived that meeting a thousand times, and I have all sorts of fantasies about what I should have done and what I should have said -- and most of it involves picking up the e-mail and saying --come on -- this is funny -- what are you talking about? Look at it -- it's funny! But I, I didn't do any of that.

BOB GARFIELD: You forgot to swear.

DENIS HORGAN, JR: I forgot to swear. Oh, well. Hopefully I'll see 'em on the street. I'll swear at 'em then. [LAUGHS]

BOB GARFIELD: Denis Horgan, thank you very much.

DENIS HORGAN, JR: No problem.

BOB GARFIELD:Denis Horgan, Jr. was the senior producer for the Tony Kornheiser Show on ESPN Radio. Officials at ESPN declined to come on our show. They told us Mr. Horgan was fired for violation of the company's e-mail policy. [MUSIC]