ESPN reporter Jim Bowden uses fake scoop, deletes Twitter account

Do you follow former baseball executive and current ESPN reporter and radio host Jim Bowden on Twitter?

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Hold on a minute. You better double-check before you answer that question, as the situation with Bowden’s account has changed over the last few hours.

With the trade deadline on the horizon and scoops flying left and right, Bowden was one among a number of national writers who was in the mix of breaking and confirming news. Spending his whole day talking to sources and having people take what he said as truth, Bowden then made a big blunder.

The gist of the story is that one of those darn fake Twitter accounts was created and was posing as Joel Sherman of the New York Post. That fake account then provided a report that appeared genuine saying that Marlon Byrd had been traded to the New York Yankees.

In a most unfortunate and potentially damaging moment, Bowden then sent a tweet of his own saying the same, presenting it as his own report. Moments later, the real Sherman shot everything down.

At that point Bowden scrambled to cover his tracks and the fact that he apparently stole a fake report. The folks over at Deadspin have a nice timeline of some of the events:

"He first deleted his twitter photo so @JimBowdenESPNxm had an egg avatar and looked fake.He then transferred his account to @JimBowdiv, perhaps thinking no one would find him? (His Marlon Byrd tweet is was still there.)His original, @JimBowdenESPNxm account was nuked, but it is now back—with 25 followers at press time. Someone is cybersquatting the account, is using Bowden’s old avatar, and is following fake Joel Sherman and no one else.And just now, since I’ve been typing, @JimBowdiv has disappeared. We don’t know where Jim Bowden went, and he’s probably not going to receive the DMs we sent him."

At this point, you can try to find Bowden but good luck. Different accounts claiming to be Bowden exist, but it is not clear if they are really him. The backup account is gone.

A rough day for Bowden and for ESPN, as all those efforts to cover things up prevented him from breaking real news or trying to steal it from his colleagues.