Pat McAfee’s Mocking of ‘Journalistic Standards’ Was Not Well-Received

Pat McAfee is more showman than hard-edged interviewer, and he made it pretty clear during Thursday's episode of "The Pat McAfee Show" that he's content to not be compared to Walter Cronkite or Barbara Walters.

McAfee spent Wednesday at ESPN's headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut, where he participated in a "town hall type event with a bunch of journalists." He even broke some news by revealing that Aaron Rodgers, the New York Jets' outspoken quarterback, could resume his weekly Tuesday appearances on the show.

"I love the people who are running ESPN right now. I love the re-org," McAfee said after explaining Wednesday's absence. "And it was a blast, up until he said, "journalistic standards."

And that was the cue for 20 seconds of laughter mocking the suggestion. "Do they even have that in sports media?" McAfee asked out loud amid the guffaws from his show mates.

The "he" in McAfee's Bristol story was CNBC reporter Alex Sherman, who asked McAfee whether journalistic standards should be applied to his show.

According to Deadline, McAfee responded by saying, "Define journalistic standards," to which Sherman clarified as acknowledging and correcting mistakes. McAfee then criticized the sports media site Awful Announcing for "ripping" videos from his show.

“I understand that you may have a lot of reasons to potentially hate me,” McAfee said. “I think they’re misguided. I would appreciate if you would give me and my guys a chance. I think we’re helping out sports media as a whole in the future. I think we’re going to get some things wrong and we apologize for that. But whenever you’re ripping our s--- and trying to kill us, I think ‘journalistic standards’ certainly is problematic.

"We want to be good for sports in sports media. We want to build sports. And we’d appreciate if you just gave us a fair shot.”

To attract viewers and combat its declining cable TV subscriptions, ESPN heavily invested in talk-show personalities, first making Stephen A. Smith the face of the network with his popular "First Take" program and a fixture of its basketball coverage on "NBA Countdown." The company doubled-down on that strategy last year when it recruited McAfee and his successful YouTube show to the network for a five-year, $85 million contract.

What Smith and McAfee do well fits the digital media age, as they provide interesting commentary that is clipped and posted on social media for additional engagement. Smith, who got his start in newspapers as an excellent NBA beat reporter, discovered the changing dynamic long ago. McAfee, blessed with the gift of gab as an NFL punter, wisely capitalized on his ability to talk and entertain.

Still, the mocking of journalistic standards on Thursday irked reporters, including ESPN's Ed Werder who tweeted: "People in our business who have journalistic standards and still consider them important deserve respect — not to have you mocking them."

Sherman, the CNBC reporter who drew McAfee's ire, simply quote-tweeted with the words: "CC: ESPN journalists."