ESPN struck the right tone with its Damar Hamlin breaking news coverage
Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen pauses as Damar Hamlin is examined during the first half against the Bengals on Jan. 2, 2023, in Cincinnati. Credit: AP/Jeff Dean
There are two things the public should expect from a news organization during a traumatic, breaking event: information and empathy.
ESPN deftly handled both tasks when it encountered an unprecedented crisis on its biggest stage on Monday night.
As Bills safety Damar Hamlin lay on the turf in Cincinnati, then was transferred to a local hospital, ESPN abruptly flipped the switch from game to news coverage.
Its hosts and reporters told us what they knew — and did not speculate on what they did not know — while their analysts took us into the minds of NFL players.
There have been other times over decades where sports journalists showed they can be journalists, period, such as the 1972 Olympics massacre in Munich and the 1989 San Francisco earthquake during the World Series.
But this one unfolded in an era of instant information — and of instant opinion-sharing — which makes restraint more difficult than ever.
On the news front, play-by-play man Joe Buck, sideline reporter Lisa Salters, studio hosts Suzy Kolber and Scott Van Pelt, studio reporter Adam Schefter and field reporters Coley Harvey, Ben Baby and Alaina Getzenberg sought to stick to the facts.
That eventually included news that Hamlin had suffered cardiac arrest after making a tackle and required CPR on the field, but beyond that, everyone was careful not to overstep.
Rather than linger on the field or show repeated replays, ESPN kept cutting to commercial breaks as it awaited information. (Some of the ads were cringy and incongruously playful under the circumstances.)
Buck said on the air that the NFL initially gave the teams five minutes to compose themselves before a potential restart. The league later denied that ever was the plan, but ESPN asserted that it merely was reporting what it was being told by league and game officials in real time.
But given the information fog that often envelopes these kinds of events, it appeared the news end of the operation acted as responsibly as possible.
That left the playing field open for analysts Troy Aikman, Booger McFarland and Ryan Clark to shine.
McFarland and Clark did a particularly good job providing the audience with former players’ perspectives on something even hardened pros had not seen before.
McFarland was up first and made it clear before the NFL officially suspended the game that it had to do so.
“Football is played as entertainment,” he said. “I don’t think anybody is in the mood or the spirit to be entertained tonight . . . We’ll figure out the football game at some other point in time, but it’s time for the NFL, the Players Association, whoever needs to make the call, we’re done playing football tonight. We’re done. Let’s move on.”
Booger McFarland with the most wise words on how the NFL needs to handle the Damar Hamlin situation. pic.twitter.com/r7qVCcZOca
— JMK 🟢 🗞️ (@JMKTVShow) January 3, 2023
Later, Clark joined Van Pelt in studio. Clark, a former Giants safety, suffered a life-threatening episode as a Steeler in 2007 that required his spleen and gall bladder to be removed.
“This is about Damar Hamlin, and it’s about a young man at 24 years old that was living his dream, that a few hours ago was getting ready to play the biggest game of his NFL career and there was probably nowhere else in the world he wanted to be,” Clark said. “And now he fights for his life.”
He later added, “We use the clichés: ‘I’m ready to die for this. I’m willing to give my life for this. It’s time to go to war.’ And I think sometimes we use those things so much we forget that part of living this dream is putting your life at risk, and tonight we got to see a side of football that is extremely ugly, a side of football that no one wants to see or never wants to admit exists.”
Watching Bills players cry on the field reminded Clark of teammates visiting him in the hospital in 2007 and crying by his bedside.
“The next time that we get upset at our favorite fantasy player or we’re upset that the guy on our team doesn’t make the play and we’re saying he’s worthless and we’re saying, ‘You get to make all of this money,’ we should remember that these men are putting their lives on the line to live their dream,” Clark said.
“Tonight Damar Hamlin’s dream became a nightmare for not only himself but his family and his entire team.”
Both McFarland and Clark noted that football players grow inured to common maladies such as broken limbs and even head injuries. But this was different.
“When you bring CPR out you’re trying help someone breathe,” McFarland said. “We’re talking life and death now. That’s totally different than anything that I’ve ever been used to dealing with on the field. I’ve never seen it on the field. That’s real. What we do is just a game.”
Said Clark: “This isn’t standard. This isn’t normal . . . To be speechless, to be in tears, to be gathered in prayers, that tells you how significant this moment was.”
Later Clark said to Van Pelt, “Neither of us are actually emotionally equipped for what we’re being asked to do. Imagine being in their shoes.”
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
