BRISTOL, Conn. (AP) — Outspoken ESPN personality Jemele Hill announced Friday that she is leaving the company after 12 years as a commentator, anchor, reporter and writer. Hill attracted attention […]
Margaret Sullivan weighs in on the controversy around ESPN anchor Jemele Hill’s tweets on President Trump, and she has little to laud in the network’s response. She says Hill isn’t a reporter of straight news but an anchor and commentator called upon to share her views. For that matter, Sullivan argues, ESPN isn’t a news network either, and “at a time in America when authoritarian tendencies are rising, shutting down voices such as Jemele Hill’s is worse than inappropriate,” she writes.
ESPN Public Editor Jim Brady looks at how anchor Jemele Hill’s tweets about President Trump — and the fallout that followed them — reflect the network’s difficult navigation of sports, politics and culture. “Media companies are simultaneously asking many of their personalities to be active and engaging on social media but not partisan or opinionated,” he writes. “It’s a line that is, at best, blurry and, at worst, nonexistent.”
ESPN President John Skipper said in a staff memo Friday that the network “is about sports” and is “not a political organization.” The memo followed anchor Jemele Hill’s tweets denouncing President Trump as a white supremacist and capped off a rough week for ESPN. “In light of recent events, we need to remind ourselves that we are a journalistic organization and that we should not do anything that undermines that position,” Skipper wrote.
The POTUS hit Twitter hard Friday morning with a salvo aimed at ESPN and its anchor Jemele Hill, who called Trump a white supremacist earlier on the platform. “ESPN is paying a really big price for its politics (and bad programming). People are dumping it in RECORD numbers,” Trump exclaimed.