Clay Travis
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According to the New York Post ESPN fired Adnan Virk for failing to comply with an investigation into leaking information to the media.
Quoth the Post:
“Virk is accused of leaking confidential company information to the media on multiple occasions, according to sources.
When ESPN investigated the allegations, it felt that Virk failed to fully cooperate.
He recently signed a new multi-year contract.
“Adnan Virk no longer works at ESPN,” ESPN vice president Josh Krulewitz told The Post.”
The news, which was leaked to the media by ESPN just before the Super Bowl kicked off, is absolutely ridiculous, primarily because, as I just pointed out, ESPN leaks to the media ALL THE TIME. Do you think it was a coincidence that this story came out just as the Super Bowl kicked off? Of course not, ESPN was hoping to bury this firing in the attention surrounding the Super Bowl.
But this is a crazy ass story.
First, what did Virk leak? It’s not like we’re talking about Watergate here.
I don’t even remember any major ESPN story coming out in the past week or so. I suppose it could be about Baseball Tonight being canceled, but come on, is that really that big of a story?
Second, and this is important, how can you fire a guy for leaking when you are leaking that you are firing him?! I mean, this is such hypocritical behavior. You’re allowed to leak that you fired him, but he’s not allowed to leak truthful information?
Trust me, I get the importance of keeping information quiet — I don’t think I’ve ever been an anonymous source for any story ever, if I won’t say it publicly, I don’t say it — but we’re not talking about untrue information or information so damaging to the company that it has a long term deleterious impact on ESPN’s corporate governance.
We’re talking about, at best, small media stories. (And that’s assuming Virk even did anything wrong. He might just have not wanted to cooperate in an internal investigation into company leaks).
Furthermore, I’m not sure any media group leaks more than ESPN employees leak about their company, they’re a sieve, a constantly dripping faucet of information coming from all directions at all times.
Now I know a ton of you are probably reading this and thinking, “Oh, he must have been leaking info to Clay Travis!”
And while I wouldn’t tell you if that was true anyway — it isn’t true. In fact, I’d probably ignore the story if he’d been my source. But the truth is, I’ve never met or talked to this guy in my life. We’ve never emailed or texted or even interacted in any way on social media.
Aside from watching him on television and thinking he was pretty good at his job, I don’t know him at all.
But if you had any doubts, while I’ve been breaking stories from inside ESPN for years I haven’t had any recent scoops inside ESPN and presumably that’s what they are investigating.
But regardless, this is just insanity and awful for internal morale.
You know things have gone off the rails when you’re investigating your own employees for whether they shared truthful information with someone else. This isn’t a good look for ESPN and I’m sure many of their employees, who naturally talk with other people in the media all the time about media related issues, are bothered by this investigation as well.
I need to know way more about this story.
Reach out to Outkick…if you dare.
