Thus is the state of sports "journalism" these days. Every sports show/analyst wants to be able to provide coverage for all sports at the pro and college level. That's a ton of coverage needed, and not a lot of time to do the research needed to make sure the coverage is accurate. So what a lot of them do is "borrow" others opinions and restate them as fact, without bothering to fact-check. This way they can provide coverage on stuff they don't actually research themselves, to broaden their audience. Also, now that the public has countless options to get their coverage from, these "journalists" are competing for viewership - and a negative, over the top headline, such as "UNC academic fraud rampant throughout University keeping thousands of athletes eligible, are banners coming down?" will generate more clicks, and therefore revenue, than "UNC academic situation still unclear, awaiting further investigation".
We've seen several instances of what happens when the media overreacts to a story. And they're never reprimanded or lose viewership for an incorrect story. We've seen it in this situation. We saw it in Deflategate when ESPN and the like ran with incorrect stories smiting the Patriots for a bunch of stuff that was later proven to be inconsequential, or just straight up false. ESPN never had to atone for their misprints in that situation either. Similar story with the Duke Lacrosse fiasco - a bunch of media jumping the gun on a situation. The problem with all of these is that even after it's proven the stories are incorrect - the headline making news sticks with people, and that's what they remember from the situation.
