ESPN Ombudsman on TO Story

"'We had an obligation to cover this story live from the time it broke,' said Norby Williamson, ESPN's executive vice president for production. 'We felt the need to track its twists and turns and stay with it. Our concern was not how much we did, but to be careful not to speculate over Owens' state of mind.'

My gripe was that, in hindsight, some of the information that got on the air proved to be inaccurate. In general, the network's producers and editors need to be more restrained. It's better to be right -- even if it means being second to the competition. Meanwhile, many ESPN viewers, via e-mail, said the coverage of Owens this past week on ESPN was just too much -- a belief that had merit."

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Wouldn't it be nice to see a story saying: "We were late to report because we wanted to be right. . . " Instead we see lots of after-action reports like this but never any change before the next runaway train wreck. . .