A lot of questionable things happen under the guise of “aggregation.” These include poor or missing sourcing of a story, misrepresenting a story, or failing to acknowledge new information about a story. But it’s especially odd when the “news” being shared isn’t new at all, especially when many popular X/Twitter aggregation accounts emphasize that they’re the go-to source for breaking news. And that’s exactly what happened on Friday with the @NFL_DovKleiman account.
“Kleiman” (who is probably no longer Kleiman at this point) has been involved in several recent controversies, including licensing a photo of Mike Florio without attribution and being blown up by Mina Kimes. And the account was created twice in our new This week in bad aggregation column on Friday morning for copying and pasting Ryan Michael’s tweet about Bo Nix stats with limited attribution and relaying Mark Craig’s observation about an exchange between Kevin O’Connell and Jim Schwartz, but not Craig’s subsequent reporting on it.
But on Friday afternoon, something stranger appeared on the account: This tweet is about former Philadelphia Eagles players who are sharply attacking current Ohio State offensive coordinator Chip Kelly:
DeSean Jackson and LeSean McCoy asked their former #Eagle Your thoughts on HC Chip Kelly 😳
Jason Peters: “Bullshit, man.”
Brandon Graham: “He was very selfish, not wanting to give up too much power and leadership.”
Jeremy Maclin: “Garbage.”
(above @2510shows) pic.twitter.com/JKwsAztj2e
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) 23 August 2024
Those are strong comments! And even though Kelly’s tenure with the Eagles is long over (he coached there from 2013 to 2015), such remarks would still have some news value if they were, you know, new. But they are not. In fact, they come from a Show 25/10 Episode that Jackson and McCoy released on YouTube on May 9, more than three months ago. (We reported on it at the time.) Here is the full show:
Although the show’s YouTube page clearly states the release date, this is not clear from the credit given to “Kleiman.” The only link in the tweet is to @2510show’s Twitter bio. Her most recent tweet is a graphic from Wednesday about a flag football debate. The tweet before that from Tuesday suggests that the second season of this show is coming next week.
The other recent tweets there promote Jackson’s FS1 appearances. And even though the link in her bio takes you to a page that points to her YouTube page (and shows the Kelly show, rather than any of the 14 videos they’ve released since then), it’s quite a puzzle to figure out that this is an old report, not a new one.
There are a few things that make this stand out. First, the “Kleiman” account is one of the most popular NFL aggregators around, with more than 300,000 followers as of Friday, so that’s a huge potential audience for these comments. (However, this tweet only had 38 retweets and 285 likes in the first hour, which is very low compared to what you often see for the “Kleiman” account.) Second, the account focuses on “the best and most accurate NFL news and stories,” but Kelly hasn’t been an NFL coach since 2016. And third, this account was heavily criticized for regurgitating an old story about Caleb Williams as new last fall.
In this case last October, the account tweet “USC Caleb Williams wants partial ownership of #NFL team that will select him in the 2024 draft, according to @ProFootballTalk,” and finally references a July Pro Football Talk story that drew criticism from several quarters, including because the story in question pointed out that the NFL had intervened to prohibit players like Williams (and Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady) from acquiring ownership of the team, making this an impossible “wish” for Williams.
And that led to an article by AJ Perez in Front Office Sports discussing NFL aggregators and misinformation. That article actually included an interview with Kleiman (this was before the alleged sale of his account). And he said in it that he “didn’t mean to mislead” and “did it right” by linking to Florio’s article (but not the more recent and relevant Athletic article, which he cited as a reason for reviving the story). But there wasn’t much real defense of why it was worth retelling an old story that already indicated it couldn’t be done.
As mentioned, there has been a lot of discussion about the “Kleiman” account being in different hands now, so there isn’t necessarily a connection between the thought process behind tweeting the old Williams story as new and tweeting the old Kelly story as new. But it is interesting to see the same popular Twitter account doing it again and getting another round of criticism for it. Here are some examples:
Garbage, shitty content where former players stalk former teammates on their phones and ask questions to embarrass a former coach.
Nowadays, anyone with a microphone thinks they have content to share.
Just garbage. https://t.co/b01ndxcDuw— JT The Brick (@JTTheBrick) 23 August 2024
This is about 2 months old, you bot
Stop being annoying and posting spam you bot https://t.co/ocEbqlSo7C
— JRod (@13Rengoku) 23 August 2024
Why does this clip resurface as if it were new? https://t.co/4bSblnYn5J
— Isaiah (@Working2Success) 23 August 2024
In any case, the “Kleiman” account certainly doesn’t always have “the best and most accurate NFL news and stories.” And this is just the latest example of that.
(@NFL_DovKleiman on Twitter)
