A few days ago, I praised ESPN for what I thought was a great report on two NFL players' experience with Ramadan and preseason. As I said at the time, the piece was important because while much of the mainstream media is fanning the flames of Muslim hatred, lending credence to this "Ground Zero Mosque" pseudo-controversy, the piece "was very sympathetic to Muslims, and tries to show what Islam really is, explaining customs most Americans do not know about, and demonstrating that observant Muslims should be respected." Exposure to something is the best way to overcome a fear of it, and Islamophobia is to a large degree just an extension of xenophobia.
However, shortly after I posted this, ESPN removed the video. I emailed them (as, apparently, did a lot of people). Here was their response to me:
Unfortunately, the video was unpublished due to NFL practice footage. Sorry for any inconvenience.Similarly, Rachel Nichols tweeted the next day:
Many of you asking about the Ramadan/NFL story - got taken down from ESPN.com bc of video rights issues. But it will re-run on TV today.To me, this did not and does not seem a very convincing reason to remove the video. ESPN shows NFL practice footage all the time, like in their 32 team NFL preseason preview. Also, they're not some fledgling network; if they did not have the rights, and there was not some ulterior motive to remove it, they probably could have secured the rights to the footage from the NFL. It's also unlikely that it was originally posted online by mistake.
The bottom line is that this really looks fishy. Good for them for at least re-airing it, but on TV is not the same as online, where anyone can view it at any time, and if Rachel Nichols's tweet is any indication, people were doing just that.
I think that if ESPN can re-air it, they should be able to put it back online, or provide a better explanation for why they cannot than "practice footage." For example, what makes this practice footage different than others? Please join me in asking ESPN do to that. I have emailed them for a fuller explanation, and you can send this post out or RT our corresponding tweets about the issue.
Update: I asked ESPN to elaborate on the "copyright" issues, and I have now received a second email from ESPN saying that the NFL owns the copyrighted footage, and it was returned. That is, they refuse to elaborate.
