Over the weekend, we heard the horrible news of Dwayne Haskins, a young, promising, NFL quarterback, being struck and killed by a dump truck in Florida. Absolutely tragic. The first time I saw this news was when Adam Schefter, the NFL’s most reliable reporter and typically the fastest to break any football-related news, tweeted about it. The tweet, which has now been deleted after receiving backlash, read, “Dwayne Haskins, a standout at Ohio State before struggling to catch on with Washington and Pittsburgh in the NFL, died this morning when he got hit by a car in South Florida, per his agent Cedric Saunders. Haskins would have turned 25 years old on May 3.” I read this tweet and immediately wondered why he decided to critique a young man’s career in the same breath as announcing his death. It’s difficult to be an esteemed reporter for a professional sports league. There’s a lot of responsibility and a lot of the time emotion must be taken out of reports to execute unbiased takes and spread accurate news online. This tweet does not sit right with me though.
It also didn’t sit right with a lot of NFL players. Jakobi Meyers, wide receiver for the New England Patriots, tweeted, “Adam Schefter a real weirdo”, after seeing the post from the veteran reporter. I’m a fan of Schefter, but this tweet was absolutely a lapse of judgement.
This situation had me thinking about the human aspect of professional sports reporting on social media. How do you frame breaking news in a way that creates buzz and not controversy? Do reporters consider emotions of players/coaches/organizations when posting? How important is it to have a breaking story and when is it appropriate to refrain from posting news? How often does breaking a story negatively impact the reporter?
Schefter quickly changed the wording of his tweet when he began to receive backlash. The new tweet reads, “Dwayne Haskins, a standout at Ohio State before becoming Washington’s first-round pick and playing in Pittsburgh, died this morning when he got hit by a car in South Florida, per his agent Cedric Saunders. Haskins would have turned 25 years old on May 3.”
https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/1512812546184695815?s=20&t=YduMb0L7nHkZ0Skw5Y-MnQ
I feel for reporters who make mistakes when posting. The days of reading the sports section of the newspaper are gone, limiting the editing process before reporting news to the world. The idea of what’s right and what’s wrong is always changing. This isn’t the first time Schefter has made a mistake when reporting news and probably won’t be the last, but I think the lesson here is that one has to understand that there are real people on the opposite side of your computer screen. Reports, like the Dwayne Haskins news, can negatively affect a lot of people and it is important to maintain respect as you spread news to the world. How important is a breaking story when you are breaking the hearts of many of your followers?
U Penn Social Book 
Totally agree and wonder how the pressure of social media and clickbait contribute to this less-than-sympathetic tone for someone tragically killed. Is his athletic potential or lack therefore really important to the lead for the story? Methinks not. Great post.