Sports Reporting or Invasion of Privacy?

Tim Craycraft
tc581413@ohio.edu

The information age that we live in today has many positive effects on journalism. Almost any piece of information that you could think of can probably be found somewhere on the internet. Any person can get something out there through Twitter, Reddit, or some other form of social networking. The negative side of this is that not all of this information should be made public. Somehow along the way the everyone in the world became amateur "journalists".

This has been affecting the sports world as much as anything. Professional athletes have become more celebrities than they are professionals or athletes. Every detail of these athletes' lives are being watched, photographed, and written about. The question becomes what aspects of their lives need to be covered and what should be kept private.

The invasion of privacy has been a big issue with stories like the Donald Sterling saga and countless domestic violence reports. The biggest story the we have seen recently is with New York Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul. Pierre-Paul was in the middle of negotiating a contract extension with the Giants this summer when he was injured on July 4th. The Giants had offered him a 60 million dollar extension but took it off the table when ESPN's Adam Schefter tweeted out a picture of Pierre-Paul's medical record saying that he had a finger amputated.

Courtesy of ESPN's Adam Schefter

The fact that this was released to the public is completely illegal. Medical records are supposed to be confidential but someone gave this to Schefter. Obviously, someone at that hospital is going to lose their job and probably get sued by Pierre-Paul but the question is whether or not ESPN did something wrong. Legally ESPN is in the clear because they were not the ones who released the record but should that be legal. It is possible that if Adam Schefter had never received the record than Pierre-Paul could have signed the extension without the Giants ever knowing he had lost a finger.

Journalists will always walk the fine line between what should be made public and what shouldn't. The problem is that its becoming easier and easier to cross that line.