From Imus Don to Pat McAfee, talk show hosts face consequences from the digital world: merchant

He is now at nearly two decades for the day, because everything has changed for talk-show hosts. The shock of WFAN and MSNBC Jock, Don Imus, called the Rutgers women’s basketball team “HOS at the head of Nappy” on April 4, 2007.

The offensive language was not unusual for imus, whose prominent dissemination career was partly due to the sensitivity of listeners. The best politicians and members of the traditional media have regularly appeared in the emission of Imus, valuing the influence of its platform on its sometimes reprehensible content.

A decade before the dismissal of Imus in 2007 of WFAN / MSNBC, Time magazine named one of the 25 most influential Americans. During the decade later, the Imus show has not changed, but the digital world did it.

For years, when journalists asked Wfan to the bands to check the comments they heard, his leaders would say there were none. The words of Imus disappear in a thin air after their dissemination, a solid strategy to avoid responsibility and disputes.

Then Youtube made every word accessible to the whole world. The philosophy of “saying anything” of sports and radio spoke had suddenly receipts. With YouTube, there was a record, and he played on an endless loop. It did not matter that the imus showed millions of people in advertising; It was finished on WFAN and MSNBC.

A large part of Sports and Talk Radio continues to be the West West because it competes with the flow of everything that is endless of internet content.

This is how Pat McAfee, ESPN and a first -year Ole Miss student named Mary Kate Cornett have arrived at the moment. McAfee, in his daily talk show licensed by ESPN, spread a false rumor on Cornett and the father of his boyfriend.

In a story published Tuesday morning AthleticsCornett and his father established how the whole mess has happened and highlighted the McAfee role, two sports personalities from Barstool and others played in the dissemination of rumor and its impact on them.

18 -year -old Cornett, who was not a public figure, said McAfee and ESPN were one of those who plan to take legal proceedings.

For traditional media societies like ESPN belonging to Disney, this exposes the fine line between staying young and upset while honoring its Values ​​Mickey Mouse, family.

The rise of McAfee in the media is an incredible story. An All-Pro bettor with the Indianapolis colts, he retired in 2017 from the NFL at 29 and with two seasons left on his contract. He went to Barstool Sports, which he used as a springboard for several jobs before landing in ESPN. His daily talk show anchors the afternoon programming world, while he appears in his emblematic pre-match program, “College Football Gameday” in the fall.

He is in the middle of a five -year agreement with ESPN which pays him more than $ 85 million. The president of the ESPN, Jimmy Pitaro, and the president of Content Burke Magnus even granted McAfee the right to swear on the antenna.

Since its creation, Sports Radio has been an ecosystem where the facts are often optional. Hosts must prove to be an omniscient, but their work is to attract attention, not to be right. None of that has changed, apart from the fact that their words are now recorded, replayed and examined.

The defenders of Imus at the time, or McAfee now, could say that the hosts joked, it is just comedy or that the use by McAfee of the word “allegedly” withdraws it from the hook. For the unconditional public of McAfee, this can be a sufficient justification. But when you read what Cornett has gone through, how his life has been irrevocably changed by a false rumor, but you look at what McAfee said, he poured gas on a fire.

Almost two decades after imus, the talk show game is the same, but the surrounding world has changed. There are receipts and possibly consequences.

(Photo of Pat McAfee: Jason Mowry / Getty Images)