Brandon Marshall's Pissed, But What Did ESPN Do Wrong, Exactly?

ESPN's newsmagazine show E:60 broadcast a segment on Bears receiver Brandon Marshall tonight and he is pissed off about it. Marshall took to Twitter to air his grievances before the show even began:

The timeline here is a bit complicated. The original E:60 profile of Marshall actually aired in October 2012, and was about Marshall's history with domestic-violence and his mental-health advocacy. As the story points out, Marshall has been involved in a dozen incidents of alleged domestic abuse since entering the NFL in 2006. Shortly after the 12th incident, Marshall was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, a psychiatric illness characterized by volatile interpersonal relationships. He went into therapy, and since then he hasn't had any known incidents off the field. Given the salience of the issue, ESPN decided to remix the original profile with some footage from Sunday's Bears-49ers game and a clip of Marshall no commenting questions about Ray Rice, and aired it tonight.

According to his tweets, Marshall's understanding was that the original profile was supposed to be about his football camp (seen in this NFL.com video) and a "community weekend," not just about domestic violence. But of course ESPN is under no obligation to tell the story Marshall wants told. And in fact the story the network aired—about one of the league's more thoughtful and self-aware players attacking the psychological roots of his abusive behavior—is a story that on some level Marshall should want told, given both his mental-health work and the violent impetus for ESPN's re-airing of the profile. But no one wants his name showing up next to Ray Rice's right now.

Photo via Tasos Katopodis/Getty