Sunlight is the best disinfectant, supposedly. That is what people say when they are touting the virtues of transparency. The idea is that if bad behavior is brought out into the public eye — if it is exposed to sunlight — then someone will stop it.
This is not a controversial idea. Transparency is such a universally accepted virtue that it’s one of those things both major political parties will claim they want. And it comes up repeatedly throughout the investigation into the work culture at the Washington Commanders. Both sides of the House Oversight Committee profess to be working to bring about transparency; perhaps more importantly, almost all the witnesses ALSO invoked transparency as their reason for coming forward:
Tiffany Johnston: “I sit here before you and hope that my words will have a lasting impact, as these events have had on me so we can work to hold all employers accountable for ensuring a safe and professional workplace. Transparency should be the standard, so that accountability follows.”
Brad Baker: “All we are asking for is transparency. That is all we have ever wanted.”
Rachel Engleson: “There must be transparency, and only then can we have real accountability.”
Emily Applegate: “The same as every day, I am asking for transparency and accountability.”
Over and over again, the same idea repeats itself: that transparency and accountability are so strongly linked that they are almost the same thing, and that accountability necessarily follows transparency. Indeed, that is the entire premise of these hearings, since the committee has no real authority to discipline the NFL or Dan Snyder, and all it could do was investigate and make its findings public.
And in some ways, this investigation does show how transparency leads to accountability. After all, pressure has mounted against Snyder in the fallout of all this reporting on the working conditions inside the Washington Football Team, and it seems he may finally be forced to sell the team. (Although, it should be said that as of now Snyder is only soliciting bids on the Commanders, and could easily back out of the process. It’s easy to imagine him using this as a strategy to wait until the bad press dies down.) But this whole story also shows the failures of sunlight as a disinfectant, and how transparency can actually be weaponized by people like Snyder to protect themselves against accountability.
If you are only familiar with one aspect of the Snyder investigation, it’s probably the offensive emails that ex-Raiders head coach Jon Gruden sent to Washington’s former General Manager, Bruce Allen. The emails, which were sent between 2010 and 2018, caused quite a stir when they came out in October of 2021. They had the sort of memorable details that have been mostly absent from the rest of the Snyder investigation: racist memes, crude/sexist/homophobic language, and revelations about personal beefs within the NFL. And because they were private emails, their exposure allowed people to get a sense of how bigwigs in the league talk behind closed doors. Plus, of course, Gruden was a famous, public face, and the emails led to him resigning less than halfway through a massive, 10-year, $100 million contract.
But you might have forgotten what any of this has to do with an investigation into sexual harassment and discrimination within the Washington Football Team. The answer is: basically nothing. Gruden never worked for Washington (although his brother Jay did, and Gruden worked with Allen while both were in Tampa Bay, which explains why the two had an email relationship), and had nothing to do with any of the incidents discussed in the testimony about Snyder or Allen’s management of the team.
The only reason it came out was that Snyder had access to Bruce Allen’s emails, and wanted to embarrass him by making these emails public. There are two possible reasons Snyder did this, which are probably each true to some degree.
First, a key part of Snyder’s defense in this whole process has been that if there were any problems in the franchise, they were Bruce Allen’s fault. Snyder isn’t conceding there actually WERE problems, but IF there were, then they were definitely because of Bruce Allen, and firing Allen definitely solved these supposed problems. That’s the party line, and throughout his testimony, Snyder insists that bringing in head coach Ron Rivera and team president Jason Wright in 2020 fixed whatever cultural problems existed in the organization. Wright in particular replaced Allen, and in doing so became the first Black team president in the league.
It’s worth saying that this is pretty revisionist. Bruce Allen and former head coach Jay Gruden were pretty clearly fired for football reasons in 2019: The pair had not won a playoff game in six years, and had only two winning seasons in that stretch. And Snyder’s explanation of why he felt Allen was responsible for the cultural problems is not very persuasive:
Q: So what culture are you referring to when you say that there was a workplace culture and you're suggesting that Mr. Allen was responsible for it in 2019?
[Snyder]: I believe it’s four or five days prior to termination of Jay Gruden, who was on TMZ smoking marijuana. And we knew we had a problem, obviously. He was the head coach.
Q: Mr. Allen was the head coach?
[Snyder]: No. I’m referring to four or five days prior to the termination of Jay Gruden at a press conference where Bruce Allen said, ‘we have a damned good culture’, it was on TMZ, Coach Jay Gruden was smoking marijuana on a sidewalk somewhere. Crazy video. And we knew that it was an obvious signal there was a culture problem.
Q: The culture problem that you’re referring to is Mr. Gruden smoking marijuana on TV?
[Snyder]: No. I’m referring to, as I said, when Bruce Allen said -- answered the question, a damned good culture, we just didn’t believe him.
Q: So what did you believe the culture to be when Mr. Allen defended the culture of your organization?
[Snyder]: Not what he was saying.
[...]
Q: Other than the marijuana incident, what else can you point to that led you to believe there was a culture that Mr. Allen was responsible for, apart from him defending the Washington Commanders?
[Snyder]: We just thought we had some work to do on the culture, and what we needed as a head coach was a mature culture-setting coach. We started there.
There’s also little in the testimony of other Washington employees to suggest that Allen was the cause of the team’s culture problems. He didn’t help the situation, but nobody besides Snyder suggests he was the main problem. It seems clear that what really happened is that, once the allegations against the team became public in 2020, Snyder decided the easiest thing to do was blame the guy he had just fired. And releasing these emails, which certainly make Allen look like he could have been responsible for a toxic workplace culture, helps support this theory.
But the SECOND reason Snyder likely leaked those emails is that he was simply trying to intimidate Allen, and anyone else who might testify against the team. Allen said this quite explicitly to the committee:
Q: In the lead-up to this deposition, is there anything that Mr. Snyder or anyone acting on his behalf did, in your opinion, to discourage, threaten, or otherwise intimidate you in connection with your testimony?
[Allen]: Well, leaking my emails randomly that involve family and friends and personal issues to different media outlets I think is – it’s despicable, but I think it’s also trying to send a message.
Q: And what message do you think it’s trying to send?
[Allen]: “Be careful.”
Q: Be careful about what?
[Allen]: There’s – in these exhibits, I see there’s things I don’t remember from 10, 12 years ago that occurred. It’s just saying he owns me with these emails, which affect my coworkers, the alumni, my family and friends. So it hurts every time it goes out.
“He owns me with these emails.” This is what I mean by weaponizing transparency. Snyder used his ability to publicize embarrassing things about Allen and other current and former employees to deflect responsibility away from himself and intimidate anyone who might want to testify against him.
And it worked! The release of these emails WAS devastating, not just to Gruden, who was forced to resign, and Allen, who is unlikely to ever be hired by another team, but to the NFL itself, which saw one of its most high-profile faces dragged down by the story. Some have suggested that the reason the league covered up their own investigation into Snyder’s ownership is that they were worried Snyder might release MORE sensitive information about the league, specifically facts related to the Colin Kaepernick lawsuit.
The reason this strategy is so effective is that, once something has been exposed to sunlight, it’s hard to unsee it. Once you know about the emails Gruden/Allen sent, you can’t unlearn it, and so it becomes difficult to defend them, or insist that their privacy has been violated. I certainly have a tough time feeling bad that either of these guys lost their job.
But it IS bad to selectively wield personal information in this way. And while it may seem good to throw back the curtain on how NFL teams operate, and expose the racism, homophobia, and misogyny in team front offices, this is not actually a good way to address those issues. Does anyone think bigotry has been expunged from the NFL now that Allen and Gruden were fired? Of course not — now people are just more paranoid about the emails they send.
I wrote about this same thing back in 2021, when ESPN fired Rachel Nichols over some stupid comments she made in her hotel room. Privacy is an important value that is worth defending, even when the things people say in private are ugly or offensive. Exposing every stupid thing an employee ever said might be “transparent,” but it is not something we should want.
The people who really benefit from this are owners like Snyder, because now workers realize that if they report their boss’ abusive behavior, then every embarrassing thing they’ve ever said or been associated with might be made public. For Snyder, transparency is embarrassing and inconvenient. For an anonymous employee, it’s potentially ruinous.
Indeed, a key part of this story is the “shadow investigation” Snyder allegedly launched to find the sources for the original Washington Post story. Back in 2020, Snyder filed a defamation lawsuit against a website based in India that ran a bogus story about him.* On the one hand, this story and the subsequent lawsuit had nothing to do with the Post’s story and the sexual harassment report — except that Snyder used his lawsuit to subpoena witnesses and request records from former and current employees who might have been in contact with the Washington Post. The committee refers to this as a “shadow investigation” to find and retaliate against the sources used by the Post; clearly he was also just trying to dig up any dirt he could find that could be used to discredit or intimidate people who might speak out against him.
*Given the timing and the subsequent legal actions, it’s entirely possible that Snyder himself planted this story so he could file his lawsuit.
And it’s important to say that all this stuff is wielded completely cynically. Does anyone really think Daniel Snyder was offended by the comments in the Gruden/Allen emails? Of course not — he just knew he could use the emails to distract people from his own misdeeds and slough blame onto Allen.
There’s a point in Allen’s deposition where his lawyer, Stephanie Quincy, gets tired of this. The Republicans on the committee (reminder: the Republicans opposed the entire inquiry, calling it a Democratic witch hunt, and so used their time to defend Snyder, which meant attacking witnesses like Allen) are questioning Allen about the emails, and she can’t help but interject:
Q: And this email is from June 2, 2013, from [REDACTED], to Bruce Allen at your… email. The email is quite offensive, and we will just introduce it into the record, but if you could please read it to yourself so you have an awareness. It makes comments about immigrants; it appears to be people of the Muslim faith – things along those lines. The subject says, “The English language spells,” and then goes into all of these very offensive terms. And, Mr. Allen, you respond: “Great one.” Do you remember getting this email?
A: No.
Q: Who is [REDACTED]?
[...]
Ms. Quincy: By the way, I just want to note for the record, you’re working for the Republican minority, correct?
Q: Correct.
Ms. Quincy: And you find making disparaging comments about immigrants and Muslims inappropriate. Did I hear that right?
Q: I am just a counsel. I am not a Member of Congress. And so my political affiliation, thoughts, and feelings are not the subject of this investigation.
Ms. Quincy: Ma’am, I just asked you to confirm what you just said. That’s all. That is what you said on the record to my client.
Q: I –
Ms. Quincy: No, no, no. Before we go there and use another email from some woman who has nothing to do with the team to try to drag my client through the mud, I want to confirm what you said, that disparaging comments about immigrants and Muslims would be inappropriate to you.
A: I’m not going to respond to your comment right now. We can discuss that off the record after I’m done with my questioning.
The whole situation is absurd. The Republicans on the committee (and Daniel Snyder) are trying to embarrass Allen with offensive comments about Muslims and immigrants that they themselves are unwilling to acknowledge being offended by! It’s so clear that these emails are being used disingenuously that it’s hard to get too worked about them, no matter how bad they might be.
And this is why transparency can be of limited value. It’s very common for people to say things like, “If people only knew about this, they’d be outraged!” about whatever issue they care about. But often people know plenty about that outrageous thing — they’ve just grown jaded and skeptical that anything can be done about it. And if people don’t think something can be changed, they’re unlikely to waste their time getting upset about it.
Similarly, I don’t think many NFL fans have been surprised by the revelations of this investigation: that Dan Snyder is a creep who mostly hires and protects other creeps. But why should we bother getting worked up about that if nothing is going to be done about it?
Obviously transparency is an important value, but so is privacy, and often “transparency” is just a code word for an invasion of privacy by your boss. People also have too much faith in transparency, always insisting that if wrongdoing is made public then somehow accountability will inevitably follow.
But now, despite years of investigations and exposes and reports and more transparency than we know what to do with, Daniel Snyder still owns the Commanders. The biggest punishment he may face is that he might end up selling the team for 10 times what he paid for it, despite being arguably the worst owner in American professional sports, presiding over mismanagement and abuse for decades. And maybe not even that!
Our faith in transparency rests on the premise that problems persist because people don’t know about them. But people know — they are just powerless to do anything about them in a system that gives absolute power to the owners of capital…