It appears Chris Mortensen finally figured out how Twitter worked.
The ESPN NFL reporter has been under fire lately for his handling of an incorrect report that helped stoke the Deflategate fire. In the days following the AFC Championship Game, Mortensen reported that 11 of the New England Patriots 12 game footballs were under-inflated by about 2 PSI. The Wells Report eventually proved that report to be false.
Despite the Wells Report findings, Mortensen didn’t really address the incorrect information. In recent days and weeks, Mortensen was criticized for leaving the original tweet up and not deleting it after it was proved inaccurate. Finally, on Tuesday, he deleted the tweet.
That comes not even a full day after Mortensen went on ESPN Radio and spoke about mistakes he might have made in the process.
“What needs to be corrected has been corrected,” he said. “I didn’t correct it on Twitter, which was a mistake by the way. Twitter, I’m still trying to figure it out.”
Apparently, somebody explained it to him.
UPDATE (6:05 p.m. ET): Mortensen released a statement Tuesday night via Twitter application TwitLonger.
[tweet https://twitter.com/mortreport/status/628686604249509888 align=’center’]
Here’s the full statement:
“As I mentioned yesterday during an extensive interview with @LeBatardShow, I made a mistake in not clarifying, via Twitter, my tweet from months ago regarding the sourced information I reported about under-inflated footballs. After reflecting upon yesterday’s conversation, I decided to delete the initial tweet today. It’s a step I could have taken a while ago, when I had clarified the information on other platforms. Lesson learned.”
