Usually sports radio hosts are in the business of forming opinions on available evidence, but sometimes being a journalist takes precedence as they gather their own information.
For over a month, Carrington Harrison of Kansas City’s 610 Sports Radio held a recording of the full 11-minute recorded conversation between Chiefs wide-receiver Tyreek Hill and his fiancée, Crystal Espinal privately discussing domestic abuse allegations. The tape, released by 610 Sports earlier this week may have swayed the court of public opinion about Hill’s alleged involvement, but for Harrison the process of releasing the audio wasn’t easy.
Unable to share how he received the audio, Harrison did acknowledge he wasn’t holding onto it by choice. Although saving it for the dog days of summer helped create content during a slow period for sports, the time-frame for when to release the 11-minute recording was not dictated by Harrison. Acquiring the audio on June 7th, Harrison and 610 Sports didn’t receive clearance to release the recording until Monday July 8th at 4:40pm CST.
“I was explicitly told if I went against our legal team’s orders to not play the tape, it would be violating a direct order for my superiors,” Harrison told me.
In an attempt to gain clearance for the recording, Harrison reached out to Tyreek Hill’s attorney, agent, the Johnson County District Attorney and the Overland Park Police Department, but neither would verify the audio. It was not until these efforts were exhausted that Entercom, which owns 610 Sports, stepped in and paid for the audio to be independently verified last week.
“I personally went to Hill’s attorney to speak with him. He would not meet with me,” Harrison said, noting he was told to set an appointment which they declined when he attempted to do so. Harrison even had his personal attorney contact the DA, but he too would not verify the audio.
During the course of the last month, Harrison never believed any other media outlet had access to the tape and would release it before 610 Sports gained clearance to do so. Kansas City’s CBS affiliate, KCTV5 publicly shared excerpts from the 11-minute recording in April, but declined to release it in full. Since the full recording was made public, some have questioned why KCTV5 and their news director, Casey Clark chose select clips to release back in April.
“I couldn’t live with myself if we had taken a chunk of something like that and given life forever,” Clark said on-air, referring specifically to the part of the recording where Hill told Espinal he didn’t want to have children. “I just felt like it was best for us if we took the parts that were relevant, put them on the news.”
When I asked Harrison if he had any moral hesitations about releasing the full recording knowing the potential firestorm it would create, the radio host said, “I had a few, but they did not slow down the process of playing the audio and getting it authenticated.”
Whether or not releasing the full audio vs only select clips paints Tyreek Hill in a different light is up to the court of public opinion. For Harrison, it was important to put in the necessary work to give the public that option of forming their own opinion with the available evidence.
Carrington Harrison and Sean Levine host The Drive on 610 Sports every weekday from 2 – 6pm.
Brandon Contes is a freelance writer for BSM. He can be found on Twitter @BrandonContes. To reach him by email click here.
