Earlier this week, ESPN broke the story that ex-New York Mets general manager Jared Porter continuously sexually harassed a foreign female reporter back in 2017. Porter was fired by the Mets almost immediately after the news broke. The ESPN report was co-authored by Jeff Passan and Mina Kimes.
Beyond the bombshell report, things get even more interesting. Craig Carton, a radio host for WFAN in New York, called out Passan for his poor handling of the Porter story. The rant is available below:
I would recommend watching the full video, but here’s an important excerpt:
But don’t claim to care about how the victim was mistreated by Jared Porter, when, if you found out two weeks ago, you didn’t say a damn word about it.
Whenever it is that you found out, you sat on it. A day, three days, five days. And potentially, more women were put in harms way because you wanted to break a story.
Worry about guys getting traded and how much their contracts are for. Stop trying to pretend you’re out here to save the world and make the workplace safer for women. Guess what? Guess what Jeffrey Passan did?
By not telling the New York Mets, the minute he found out, that they have employed a predator, he failed every single woman that works for the New York Met organization.
Craig Carton, “Carton and Roberts”, WFAN
On December 12, Jeff Passan put out two tweets endorsing the New York Mets’ hiring of Jared Porter:
The Problem: Two Scenarios
The problem here, as Carton brought up, is that there are only two possible scenarios:
- Passan knew about Jared Porter’s misconduct as early as 2017. ESPN decided to sit on the story until Porter was elevated to a higher position so the report would get more buzz.
- Passan, as he claims, did not know about Porter’s misconduct until recently. Instead, he jumped onto Mina Kimes’ story, essentially marginalizing the work of a female coworker.
Let’s roll with the first scenario. Passan claims he did not know about the misconduct and that it was not his story. He did not work for ESPN until 2018. That raises the question of why Passan is now taking credit for breaking the news. Taking credit implies that he did know about the misconduct and just chose to sit on it until the story was big enough to release.
In the second scenario, Passan is telling the truth. However, his taking credit for the story is essentially stealing the work of Mina Kimes, who has worked on this scoop (gathering sources/information, etc.) since 2017. By his own admission, he did none of the initial reporting of the story, so why is he taking it over now?
Passan appeared on ESPN’s “The Michael Kay Show,” blasting WFAN for what he referred to as “irresponsible garbage”:
Passan says the story was not released until the primary source, the anonymous female reporter, was ready for it to be released. This is an important comment to make, except it still doesn’t solve the problem of Scenario 2. Either way, it’s a bad look.
While stories like the Jared Porter story are very difficult to handle properly, the importance of doing so is paramount.
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