Cross-posted:
There is no named author to that piece, instead it is attributed to ‘ESPN Staff.’
Some guy on Twitter who appears to be an ESPN editor seems to claims several writers contributed to the story:
View: https://twitter.com/mikedrago/status/1381573161943232513?s=21
The article itself is a disaster. I was happy with ESPN saying nothing beyond reporting basic facts, but that posture is now brushed aside. The thrust of the piece is essentially ‘my my this is troubling but how does one reconcile it with the fact people like Watson, he has done good things, he may be too busy to have assaulted some of all of his accusers, and he hasn’t allegedly assaulted every massage therapist he has encountered.’
The oppositional framework the piece sets up between massage therapists who have accused him and those who have not and think he’s a swell guy is particularly cheap and fallacious. Now it’s not just Watson’s word against the accusers....it’s Watson’s word AND other massage therapists’ words against the accusers. I mean, hey, Mel Gibson never called Whoopi Goldberg a racial slur while visiting her house!
Incidentally, the following line is odd. What the hell? I can’t tell if that’s intended to be a scoff at the allegations, a scoff at Watson’s position, a joke, or is just awkward writing. It’s tonally inconsistent with the rest of the piece, which could be a function of writing by committee.
‘An examination by ESPN of the 22 lawsuits and interviews with six other women who have massaged Watson reveal a
complex portrait of a man on a seemingly insatiable hunt for massage therapy and of two groups of women -- one that says he is a menacing sexual predator and one that suggests his actions must have been grossly misunderstood.’