But we're crazy for thinking that maybe they're doing this on purpose

Only the most recent occurrence of this.

Steve Gleason said Monday comments attributed to him in an HBO feature story to air on "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" today have been misrepresented and mischaracterize his true feelings.

Yesterday, ESPN ran with the misapplied quote.  Today they note Gleason's correction, but manage to get that wrong as well.

"The real problem was no one seemed shocked," Gleason was quoted previously. "There was no discussion of, 'Wow, did we just hear that?'"

However, Gleason says in his email to the media outlets that his exact words were: "The group I was with ... no one seemed shocked," which narrows the scope of his comments from the entire room of Saints defensive players to just the group he was near.

What's left out of that description is the "group he was near" refers to Gleason's brother, filmmaker Sean Pamphilon and other guests.  In other words, Gleason was surprised that none of these outsiders who aren't used to filtering out Williams' schtick  seemed shocked upon hearing it for the first time.  This is particularly noteworthy because Pamhilon would go on to write a robust "essay" about how affected he was by this speech and how it inspired a string of historic text messages and a deep deep concern in him for children everywhere. Gleason is merely telling us that if, in fact, the Greatest Love Of All was happening to Pamphilon in that moment, the evidence wasn't there on his face.

The way ESPN presents this, even today, still suggests that Gleason expected Saints players to be "shocked" even  in a story where he is trying to tell them otherwise.