Dianna Russini’s return to NFL media was only a few hours old when Adam Schefter was asked, on the airwaves of the city where Mike Vrabel coaches, whether he would trust anything she reports.
Schefter joined WEEI’s Rich, Ken and Ted on Wednesday afternoon, shortly after Russini resurfaced on The Russini Report, her new weekly show with offshore sportsbook BetUS. The hosts noted that while ESPN’s top NFL insider is usually first to the news, there are times when colleagues beat him to a story, and he ends up confirming their reporting after the fact. And with Russini back on the air and promising scoops again, they asked whether he would trust her reporting.
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“I would treat her like everybody else,” he said. “I have to verify everybody’s information before I report it, so I don’t think of it as anything different. I don’t think of circumstances like that. That’s me. I’m thinking the way I have thought to do my job, the way I need to do my job, whether it’s Dianna Russini or anybody else doing it. I don’t care who’s doing it. Like, I don’t care who it is. I’m not reporting it until I know that it’s true, period.”
The Boston trio followed up by asking whether someone who crossed the line with a source should still be considered an insider at all, and whether Russini compromising herself with a source made Schefter worry that audiences now regard everyone in his profession with more suspicion.
“I mean, I haven’t thought about it like that,” said ESPN’s senior insider. “And just because somebody in talk radio does something stupid, does that reflect on you?”
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The hosts, unpersuaded by the analogy, countered that remarks made on talk radio have upended entire companies and prompted new rules for everyone on staff, insisting that one person’s misstep absolutely reflects on the colleagues who share the airwaves.
“OK, well, again, I come back to what I say,” Schefter continued. “I do my job, and I’ve got enough to worry about with my own problems and issues. I don’t need to worry about somebody else’s. I just try to do my job the right way.”
Schefter’s own problems and issues have included scrutiny over how he handles sources. In 2021, emails revealed that he sent then-Washington executive Bruce Allen an entire unpublished story for approval, addressing him as “Mr. Editor,” which Schefter later admitted he shouldn’t have done. He has since been accused of carrying water for sources after relaying Dalvin Cook’s side of a civil lawsuit, protecting Dolphins owner Stephen Ross in his Deshaun Watson coverage, softening his reporting on Watson’s legal troubles, vouching for Sherrone Moore and passing along Carnell Tate’s 40-yard dash time in a report Mike Florio suggested came straight from agent Drew Rosenhaus.
Schefter’s own track record aside, Russini returned to the fray this week after seven months out of public view. Her downfall began at her own front door in Bergen County, New Jersey, where, according to Ben Strauss’ reporting for ESPN, a New York Post reporter informed her the paper had photos of her and New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel together at an adults-only resort in Arizona. Russini enlisted a crisis communications expert and coordinated with Vrabel on how to respond. The Post signaled it would soften the story or spike it altogether if either could provide compelling proof that other friends had joined them, but neither did. Page Six published the photos on April 7, showing the pair holding hands with their fingers interlaced, embracing and lounging side by side in a hot tub at Sedona’s Ambiente resort. Both are married, and both dismissed the images as innocent. The Athletic initially rushed to Russini’s defense before opening an investigation and asking her to substantiate her account with text messages or photos of the friends she said were in Arizona, and Strauss reported, citing three sources, that she never produced sufficient evidence.
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Russini resigned on April 14 while that investigation was still ongoing. Vrabel, by contrast, kept his job, as the NFL confirmed it was not investigating him for any potential violations of the league’s personal conduct policy. The Athletic’s standards review, released in September, branded the relationship a “clear violation” of the outlet’s standards and found that, at times, Russini’s writing about Vrabel was “in hindsight … awkward or even uncomfortable.”
Despite The Athletic’s findings, Russini pushed ahead with her comeback, and it got off to an inauspicious start. The Russini Report was slated to premiere at noon Wednesday on offshore sportsbook BetUS, but the debut stalled almost immediately. Viewers who logged on were met with elevator music, a rotating carousel of Russini photos and a “show starts soon” banner that lingered for more than half an hour. Anyone who went searching elsewhere came up empty, since the show’s YouTube channel carried no livestream and BetUS’s Vimeo account had been set to private. The episode finally surfaced on Vimeo nearly 50 minutes behind schedule. Once it rolled, Russini kept the hour trained on football alongside guests Bill Parcells, Damon Amendolara, and Spike Eskin, and despite opening the episode by promising to keep an eye on viewer emails, she never entertained the question most of them wanted answered.
Russini was far more forthcoming with news than with answers. On the eve of her show’s debut, in her first tweet since April, she reported that the Vikings checked in with the 49ers on the availability of backup quarterback Mac Jones, adding that “the price is too high right now” and that Kirk Cousins was “the name everyone keeps coming back to,” as Schefter had reported. Minnesota ultimately acquired Cousins from the Las Vegas Raiders that Tuesday.
The reach of that reporting now rests largely with the insiders and aggregators who decide whether to amplify it. NBC Sports’ Mike Florio has vowed to ignore Russini’s scoops at Pro Football Talk “unless and until it’s confirmed by someone who doesn’t have these credibility issues.” Schefter, whose Cousins reporting Russini cited in her return to X, has opted to run her information through the same verification process he applies to everyone else. Whether the rest of the NFL media follows Florio’s lead or Schefter’s will go a long way toward determining what kind of insider Russini gets to be the second time around.
The post Adam Schefter says he’ll treat Dianna Russini’s scoops ‘like everybody else’ appeared first on Awful Announcing.
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