Maybe ESPN is getting the message that some viewers hate mixing sports with politics.
After laying off 550 employees over the past 26 months, ESPN rallied the troops with an all-hands-on-deck meeting at its Bristol corporate headquarters Wednesday. One of the big questions was whether ESPN brass would crack down on on-air talent talking politics on social media. The answer appears to be yes — whether ESPN's opinionated employees like it or not.
“ESPN is a journalistic organization — not a political organization. We should do nothing to undermine that position,” said Kevin Merida, ESPN senior vice president and editor-in-chief of The Undefeated, according to the account of the meeting written by ESPN PR staffers for ESPN FrontRow.com. "ESPN’s focus is sports. By-and-large we are not experts on politics, healthcare policies, terrorism, commerce — that’s not what we do."
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Lest we forget, ESPN suspended "SportsCenter" anchor Jemele Hill after she suggested Cowboys fans boycott team sponsors after Jerry Jones threatened to bench players who joined Colin Kaepernick's protest for social justice. Hill previously sparked a political firestorm by calling President Donald Trump a "white supremacist" on Twitter. Trump demanded ESPN apologize while White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders thought Hill's tweets were a "fireable offense."
Over the last few years, ESPN has been ripped for its alleged liberal political bias by critics such as Jason Whitlock of rival FS1, Clay Travis of "Outkick the Coverage" and the conservative Breitbart.com. During most of its successful 38-year history, ESPN had assiduously avoided taking sides between liberal and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans.
But the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader in Sports has lost an alarming 13 million subscribers in just six years. Now that it's a target of President Trump — along with CNN and the rest of Trump's media enemies — ESPN wants to be seen as apolitical again, according to the ESPN FrontRow.com report.
Merida called on the 450 anchors, analysts, reporters and writers not to fall for trolls trying to bait them into controversial political discussions on social media. “Our audience is not looking for our opinions on the general news of the day," he said. "And believe me, I get it. It can sometimes be difficult to control impulses or ignore trolls, but that’s what we’re called to do for each other.”
But one attendee at the meeting said Merida left open one big caveat. If politicians like Trump wade into the sports arena, then those stories are fair game. So are stories where there''s a legitimate "intersection" between sports and politics, such as Kaepernick and other NFL stars protesting during the U.S. national anthem, Trump blasting the NFL, or the president's role in the release of LiAngelo Ball from Chinese custody.
Merida's words could be music to the ears of many old-school sports fans who want ESPN to focus on athletes, highlights and games.
As Bill Simmons recalled on The Ringer, the old ESPN didn't want to be involved in politics:
The bosses were always adamant about ESPN sticking to sports. They wanted ESPN to be your escape from the real world. We don’t care what you believe, how you voted or where you live. We won’t judge you. You’re safe here. Come talk sports with us. For writers and talkers and talking heads at ESPN, politics was our invisible third rail. There was no nuance. They wanted as many sports fans to consume ESPN as possible. Even when they bought FiveThirtyEight, they made it clear — this was an analytics site, not a political site.
But that changed in recent years as sports, politics and pop culture intersected.
If ESPN is toning down the political comments, that might disappoint progressive viewers who appreciate the way ESPN talents like Hill, Bomani Jones, Michael Wilbon, Tony Kornheiser, Stephen A. Smith, Michelle Beadle and Max Kellerman fearlessly tackle political and social issues.
Hill and others have argued ESPN can't avoid politics, especially in today's climate when stories such as as Trump's attacks on ESPN and Kaepernick's racial justice protest are driving the news cycle.
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No matter what ESPN does, it won't satisfy it's detractors. Conservative critics see ESPN dumping voices such as Curt Schilling, Mike Ditka and Britt McHenry — while giving an ESPY award to Caitlyn Jenner and lionizing Kaepernick — as proof it's run by social justice warriors more interested in politics than sports.
As I've written before, ESPN's problem is not politics. Commentators should be able to tell the truth as they see fit. The problem is there's no balance on the air or on the website.
Even Bob Ley, the network's inspirational North Star, has admitted ESPN has a problem when it comes to "diversity of thought." One Republican ESPN staffer told ombudsman Jim Brady that conservatives at the company fearfully speak in whispers — and are afraid to put on Fox News.
As Touré wrote in The Daily Beast:
ESPN may not be a political network but this is such a highly politicized moment in history that they couldn’t avoid getting drawn in. They’re telling the story of this hyper-politicized time and showing video of scores of NFL players kneeling for the national anthem, and rolling clips of prominent players like Lebron James and Steph Curry and coaches like Gregg Popovich and Steve Kerr bashing the president, and reporting on championship teams that refuse to visit the White House — and at some point within all of that it becomes hard for the audience to not perceive a bias. And for many, the network now seems too liberal.
The main political opinion-giving hosts on ESPN — the talent who are most often called upon to speak freely about things beyond sports — are Stephen A. Smith, Max Kellerman, Michael Wilbon, Tony Kornheiser, Michael Smith, and Jemele Hill. Most of those people are black and all of them are lefty and progressive. They’re all staunchly anti-Trump and pro-kneeling. Stephen A. Smith’s show First Take is so lefty that they hired a conservative, Will Cain, to occasionally offer some balance.
There are no major conservative voices at ESPN. There’s no host at the network who’s speaking up for, say, people who are offended by the kneeling. It could easily seem like ESPN wants to be perceived as progressive. Their on air team is diverse in terms of both race and gender — the network has women in the booth doing baseball, basketball and college football games, and it has more black hosts than MSNBC or CNN. Within all of that there’s a seemingly endless coverage of black athletes revolting against a system of oppression — they’re speaking out at the ESPYs and wearing provocative T-shirts that say “I Can’t Breathe” and kicking Donald Sterling out of the NBA and refusing to go to the White House and kneeling during the anthem and on and on. And ESPN is noticing a trend that’s frightening to them: Republican voters are leaving ESPN.
During the first half of the all-hands meeting, ESPN President John Skipper reminded his people they're still the 300-pound guerilla of the sports media business.
"At the end of this meeting I want you to be confident about the future of ESPN. I want you to feel proud about working here and I want you to feel that your best efforts are needed for that future and to feel that pride," Skipper said.
Rising management star Connor Schell, executive vice president of content, reminded his colleagues of just how much ESPN produces every day compared to competitors.
“Everyone should understand how staggering what we all create is in terms of scope and scale and the fact that we do it at the quality that we do. You should take immense pride in that,” said Schell. “Between live studio content and live events we are producing seven and a half hours of live programming for every hour in a day.”
The proof is in the pudding. Whether ESPN means what it says, remains to be seen.
Hill's paid "suspension" was more like a two-week vacation. The reason was simple: Everybody from Skipper to Disney boss Bob Iger basically agreed with her comments about Trump. It's telling that some of the most outspoken progressive voices at ESPN, such as Hill, Bomani Jones and Pablo Torre, either have or are getting their own TV shows.
When I ask ESPNers about the "liberal bias" charge, they seem genuinely befuddled. They say that they are all about sports, and ask whether any network can just "stick to sports" these days. We'll find out.