The sports-media giant has repeatedly fought back against claims of a liberal bias. ESPN President John Skipper wrote in a January 2016 memo that ESPN personalities “should refrain from political editorializing, personal attacks or ‘drive-by’ comments regarding the candidates and their campaigns (including but not limited to on platforms such as Twitter or other social media).” At a March shareholders’ meeting, Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger said “the charge that ESPN is exhibiting significant political bias is just a complete exaggeration.” Burke Magnus, ESPN’s executive vice president of programming and scheduling, told the Sports Business Journal Opens a New Window.in June, “We have no political agenda whatsoever.”
Still, ESPN has stumbled into one controversy after another. Host Jemele Hill’s attacks on President Donald Trump reignited criticism over the politics of ESPN and how its management team have responded.
- Hill called Trump a “white supremacist” whose election victory was “a direct result of white supremacy.”
- Nick Kalm, founder and president of Chicago-based crisis management firm Reputation Partners, said ESPN’s decision to launch opinionated programming may have backfired.
“If they continue to lose subscribers, and they can tie that back to their decision to be more political, then they’re going to have to abandon it. At the end of the day, it’s a business,” he said. “The biggest problem in the work I do in crisis management is acknowledging you have a problem, and they haven’t done that. …
Perception is reality, and the perception is that ESPN is “overly politically correct.”
Allegations of a liberal bias at ESPN accelerated in 2015, when ESPN’s ESPY Awards gave Caitlyn Jenner the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. In April 2016, ESPN fired baseball analyst and former pitcher Curt Schilling, an outspoken conservative, for a social-media post on transgender bathroom policies. “Men should use Mens room” & Ladies should use Ladies room”.
Reality check is ESPN viewers don’t like the leftist Politically Correct version of Sports forced on them. Period….Corporate Leadership has lost touch with it’s Core Customers they serve to provide entertainment.