Mary Kate Cornett, a then-18-year-old student at the University of Mississippi, moved into emergency campus housing not long after sports talk show host Pat McAfee, whose ESPN show has 2.8 million subscribers on YouTube, spread a wholly unsubstantiated and vicious rumor on a February broadcast about an unnamed freshman on that campus he said “allegedly” had sex with her boyfriend’s father.
When a phone number for the teenager, who vehemently denies the rumor, circulated online, she began receiving hateful messages, including messages instructing her to kill herself. In what NBC News confirmed was a “swatting” case, police showed up to Cornett’s mother’s house with their guns drawn. For amplifying a nasty rumor that has made her family’s life hell, Cornett and her family told NBC News they intend to take legal action against McAfee and against ESPN, which licenses McAfee’s show.
In what NBC News confirmed was a “swatting” case, police showed up to Cornett’s mother’s house with their guns drawn.
Thus, McAfee is once again embroiled in a conversation about sports media, “journalistic standards” and the responsibility that comes with a platform as enormous as his. Cornett spoke about her ordeal this month, first for a lengthy piece by The Athletic’s Katie Strang, and then later to NBC News’ Tom Llamas.
Cornett is the victim of a sports media environment that prioritizes salaciousness and seems disinterested in distinguishing between what’s true and what’s false. But as she rightly told NBC News, she’s not a public figure, and McAfee should have never amplified a campus rumor that seems to have originated on YikYak, an anonymous, message-based gossip app popular among the college set, before spreading to X. And no responsible adult, especially not one with an audience of millions, should be mining social media for salacious rumors to discuss nonpublic figures. Even nonjournalists used to agree that some subjects were off-limits, especially private citizens and children.
McAfee appeared to address the controversy for the first time in a live show Wednesday night, saying he never wants “to be a part of anything negative in anybody’s life” although he did not elaborate further. Neither McAfee nor ESPN has commented more explicitly about the case, but McAfee’s defenders are quick to note that he didn’t name the woman during the segment and that he repeatedly said “allegedly”— as if that automatically absolves him of responsibility when discussing a nonpublic figure to his millions of followers. In the past, McAfee, who has a history of amplifying misinformation, has repeatedly denied being a journalist and has mocked the idea that he be held to “journalistic standards.”
There’s therefore a slight irony in his repeated, almost derisive use of the word “allegedly”: It’s a convention almost exclusively used by journalists and, at times, law enforcement and legal professionals, to hedge while discussing accused crimes. (It should also be noted there’s considerable debate among journalists, especially those of us who often cover gender-based violence, about the use of “allegedly” when covering domestic violence or sexual assault cases; some contend that the word confers disbelief and doubt toward accusers.) Still, despite McAfee using that common journalistic standard, he insists that he not be held to journalistic standards.
I’d argue that regardless of the name or size of the platform, everyone with a microphone should have the human decency not to parrot unsubstantiated rumors involving nonpublic figures — especially nonpublic figures who are teenagers. That goes double when you have the institutional backing of an entity like ESPN. But for too long there’s been a blurring of the line between journalists and entertainers, within sports media in general, including at ESPN. Full disclosure: I used to write for ESPN and appear on the network’s shows, and can confidently assert that the network employs numerous journalists and entertainers who are very good at their jobs.
During the past year, in response to criticisms of McAfee and his apparent allergy to fact-checking, ESPN has said the company does, in fact, “bear some responsibility” for what gets put on its platform. ESPN licenses McAfee’s show, so he’s technically not an employee, although that does not automatically negate any potential legal exposure for ESPN over things McAfee says on its airwaves.
Cornett’s case is a stark example of how being flippant and unconcerned with the truth can hurt people, even if they aren’t named.
In November, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes called out McAfee and NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers when they cited a made-up stat that claimed Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff was 6-0 in games where he’d thrown at least four interceptions. After McAfee and Rodgers credulously spotlighted it, X user MisterCiv, the person who made the original post, wrote, “if you’ve ever wondered how easy it is to spread fake information, i made this stat up while laying in bed at halftime of the game.”
As Hayes said then, “Thankfully, this is a totally harmless example of disinformation and the only consequence was McAfee getting embarrassed and having to walk it back. But what happened in that exchange between McAfee and Aaron ‘Do your own Research‘ Rodgers is basically the entire story of our information environment right now.”
But McAfee devoting more than two minutes to discussing a rumor about a father-son-girlfriend love triangle wasn’t harmless. Mary Kate Cornett says his amplification of that lie upended her life.
We can’t continue to give people a pass from the responsibility of their platforms. Cornett’s case is a stark example of how being flippant and unconcerned with the truth can hurt people, even if they aren’t named.
Kavitha A. Davidson is an Emmy-winning sports journalist from New York. She was most recently a correspondent on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.” She was previously a reporter and columnist at ESPN, The Athletic, and Bloomberg.