We wrote a few weeks ago about how worthless The Athletic is as a sports-journalism entity, despite its ownership by The New York Times—a publication with a long-standing reputation for integrity and investigative reporting. Well, ho hum, here we go again … the website devoted its massive resources to uncovering a shocking scandal in sports that absolutely no one really, truly cares about: busting a rival.

That’s right: The Athletic exposed fellow sycophant ESPN for an Emmy Awards scam that no one gives a shit about in the real world … except maybe the staff at The Athletic or the Emmy-granting organization itself. Instead of digging deep where it should—you know, MLB or college football—The Athletic decided to go after its Disney-owned rival in a way that will affect basically no sports fan at all. “Well done, people,” said no one.

ESPN, of course, has been part of the problem itself for decades, and in its own attempt to be relevant and steal readers on the Internet, The Athletic has tried to undermine the “worldwide leader in sports” instead of actually exposing some legitimately problematic issues plaguing sports across the United States right now. One month from now, no one will remember this, and that’s the definition of meaningless news everywhere.

Think about what we still discuss today as a part of sports history: the Black Sox, for example, still come up almost every October as a part of the past that put a black eye on the national pastime. Somehow, baseball survived, obviously, even with subsequent scandals exposed by sports journalists (looking at you, Barry Bonds). Heck, college sports themselves have endured a lot of scandals and cheating teams over the years.

But modern sports journalists are too afraid now to bite the hand that feeds them, truly. Whereas in the past, regardless of how a scandal came to light, sports journalists would swarm on the scandal like flies to honey in an attempt to uncover more. Now, that doesn’t sell as well, since the low-IQ audience has accepted cheating for its own benefit, generally speaking. The nation has fallen a long way in the last 40 years, huh?