ESPN Reporter Apologizes After Locker Room Altercation With Buccaneers RB: ‘I Was Too Caught Up In Trying To Get The Full Story’
ESPN reporter Jenna Laine has apologized for her role in a locker room back-and-forth with Tampa Bay Buccaneers running back Giovani Bernard.
The Buccaneers led 17-3 to start the third quarter. On a fourth down, the Buccaneers called for a fake punt, Bernard fumbled the snap, and the Bengals recovered the fumble inside the Buccaneers’ 20-yard line. The Bengals scored 31 unanswered points and beat Tampa Bay 34-23.
After the game, members of the media, including Laine, searched for answers from Bernard about his fumble, which started an awkward back-and-forth between him and the reporters.
As Bernard walked away, Laine shouted, “You were also injured for most of the season, too.”
Bernard quickly turned around and said, “Woah, wait. Can I go to my family that I have outside? And all of a sudden, now?”
Bernard did return after he met up with his family and took ownership of his fumble.
Laine and two other reporters in the locker room received criticism from Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant after he praised Bernard’s handling of the altercation.
“We can survive without spoiled, entitled clickbait media… there are some good people who simply love to cover the sport,” Durant wrote in a tweet Monday afternoon.
Late Wednesday night, Laine apologized on Twitter for her role in the locker room altercation.
Her apology read:
Didn’t want to post something here until I 1) I apologized to Giovanni Bernard first, personally telling him I am SORRY, which I did and 2) Until I fully understood the missteps I took in postgame Sunday, as I didn’t want this to be some hallow apology lacking sincerity. Obviously I afforded myself a period of grace that Giovani didn’t get to have when asking him to talk postgame. He’s a better person than me. For many reasons.
The first misstep was posting a video of our interaction with Giovani (“our” being myself and two other reporters). My intention wasn’t to make it some ‘gotcha’ moment, but to illustrate how tense things can get in the locker room when a team isn’t meeting its expectations. In full transparency, I now see that there was no benefit to doing it. It captured him in a vulnerable moment, the optics of it are all wrong and it didn’t tell the whole story.
The second misstep – my very defensive comments after. My intent was that these athletes didn’t get to where they are with hand-holding, they’re some of the toughest people on the planet and accountability is part of their daily lives. I realize that it came off as cruel and insensitive. In no way was I attempting to weaponize his injury against him either by pointing it out. I was reminding him of us not being able to talk to him previously because the team doesn’t make injured players available.
The most difficult thing about this has been that in this moment I became what I swore I would never be: lacking empathy, and that was something that was very much needed here. I’ve always wanted nothing more than to humanize the people I cover – it’s literally why I do this – and in that moment, I lost touch of it. I was too caught up in trying to get the full story and meeting deadlines and in my own “stuff.” I didn’t take into consideration what HE needed from me in that moment. So I clearly have some growing to do.
