Did The NFL Put Pressure On ESPN To Divorce Frontline?

 

For those in the journalism community, it was a shocking end to fruitful collaboration, and by Frontline announcing it before ESPN did, it left those in Bristol in a defensive public relations stance. Then things got even more interesting.

 

“One of my emails when I woke up on Friday read “Oh, My God, check the New York Times,” recalled Aronson-Rath in an interview with SI.com. “That’s when I saw the piece.”

 

The piece, co-written by reporter James Andrew Miler, the author of a best-selling book on ESPN and arguably the most-sourced reporter covering the network, questioned the early narrative being offered by ESPN on why the partnership had ended. The network said that because ESPN was not producing nor exercising editorial control over the Frontline documentaries, there would be no co-branding involving ESPN on the documentaries or their marketing materials. (“The use of ESPN’s marks could incorrectly imply that we have editorial control,” the network said, in a statement.)

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