Outkick founder Clay Travis gave The Washington Post a rhetorical dropkick this week for what he calls an “agenda-driven hit piece” designed to tarnish the reputation of popular sports website.
At issue is a Sept. 3 article titled “Trump and the right loved Clay Travis. The fight over college football sealed their bond,” along with a correction writer Ben Strauss made after publication.
“I spoke with the Washington Post for over an hour,” Mr. Travis wrote Monday. “The transcript of our conversation filled 28 single-spaced pages. This morning I published the audio file of the entire Washington Post interview on our Outkick the Show podcast so anyone who wants to listen to the audio of their questions and my responses can do so. Almost nothing of what I said to them was included for their profile.”
The radio show host posted nearly 75 minutes of audio, which included a warning about taking him out of context.
“It’s totally your prerogative to record it,” Mr. Strauss says. “I’m just like, are you planning to then release it or what?
“I have found that I like to do live media, right? So if I’m going to talk for 20 or 30 minutes, I would rather do it live so that everyone can hear it entirely in context, and I hope you’re going to write a great article,” Mr. Travis replies.
The Post sportswriter then acknowledges that he understands Mr. Travis’ concerns.
“So it’s like, ’don’t quote me out of context and I have the receipts to prove it and then also, potentially, I want to share it with my audience,” the reporter says.
“100%,” the Outkick founder replies.
The Post’s piece described Mr. Travis as the branding mastermind behind a website “rooted in attacking progressive athletes and accusing ESPN of liberal bias. But this summer, as the pandemic, protests over racial injustice and the approaching election collided with the return of sports, Travis’s nascent mini-media empire has morphed into the go-to platform for Republicans hoping to win over sports fans.”
A section about the White House having a lot of “fans” was also corrected.
“This story has been updated to reflect that Travis, in an interview with the Washington Post, said he has a lot of ’listeners’ in the White House, not a lot of ’fans,’” and update to the story reads.
Mr. Travis asked readers to reflect on media bias and how it likely affects those without a large bully pulpit.
“The only reason any of you even know this error occurred — or about how dishonest and untrue the piece they wrote was — is because I own my own media company and can demonstrate all the dishonesty in their work by publishing a transcript and response on this site,” he said. “Put simply, the paper, which allegedly prides itself on journalistic accuracy, mischaracterized and misconstrued everything I said to them and even though they only used 94 words from me, they couldn’t even correctly quote what I said and publish it in their article.”
He concluded with a simple question: “If this happened in a relatively inconsequential article about me, how often does it happen in more consequential articles about people much more significant than me?”
The @washingtonpost wrote a 2300 word hit piece on me. I recorded the interview & posted the transcript to prove they’d quoted me out of context & inaccurately. You need to read this: https://t.co/50T1C3xYwM
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) September 7, 2020
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