Don't worry folks, plummeting viewership and the latest round of layoffs won't get ESPN to start covering sports instead of social justice.
Ley, who has worked at ESPN since its inception in 1979, even sees a tinge of hypocrisy in the criticism that the company is “too political.” The host of the popular “Outside The Lines” program, which focuses on deeper coverage of sports issues beyond the playing field, said it wasn’t long ago when sports fans and pundits wanted athletes to be more aware of the world around them.
Ten years ago, people were screaming, “Hey, where are the athletes who care? Who is the next [Muhammad] Ali? When is Michael Jordan going to speak up about the conditions making his sneakers in Vietnam?” Ley said in a recent interview.
It wasn't "people" who were demanding that. It was leftists.
Leftists aren't interested in sports. They're interested in sports only as a vehicle for their politics. Now they're killing ESPN. But they don't care because to the left everything exists only to be politicized.
Ley believes ESPN naturally skews liberal ― largely because it was founded in Connecticut ― and he has said in previous interviews that the company could use more “ideological diversity.” But “there’s no cabal,” he said, adding that the network’s reporters are capable of covering political issues comprehensively and fairly.
As much as CNN, MSNBC or the Daily Worker and Pravda.
"The idea that we’re talking too much about Colin Kaepernick seems wrongheaded to me. It was arguably the biggest off-field NFL story of last fall. How are you not going to talk about it?” asked Schaap, who came to ESPN in 1993 and is the lead host of “E:60,” a televised news magazine program. “What kind of political decision would it be to say, ‘We’re not going to cover Colin Kaepernick’s protests?’”
It would be a decision to focus on sports instead of pushing left-wing politics? And the treatment of Colin's racist anti-American garbage was very different from Kyrie Irving's flat eartherism. Because ESPN sympathizes with one, not the other.
That's not coverage. It's propaganda. Look at what happened to Curt Schilling.
Some journalists and media observers have also questionedESPN’s commitment to rigorous and ambitious sports reporting amid the layoffs, since many of the employees who lost jobs last month were high-profile journalists.
But the company’s executives insist ESPN remains committed to sports reporting, and Schaap and Ley may be the best evidence they have to support that argument.
They're an argument that ESPN is committed to politics over sports reporting.
The opening episode will feature a nine-month reporting project covering the Syrian national soccer team’s attempt to qualify for the 2018 World Cup even as the country remains embroiled in a complex and brutal civil war.
Because... sports. It's in no way a shameless effort to find a sports angle on a political agenda.
“I was at the Barclays Center when LeBron James decided to wear the ‘I Can’t Breathe’ t-shirt,” Schaap said. He came to the Brooklyn arena that night in 2014 to cover a visit from Prince William, but James’ unexpected decision to join NBA-wide protests over the death of Eric Garner ― an African-American man killed by an NYPD officer ― forced him to focus on a contentious political issue instead.
“News broke out,” he said. “What were we supposed to do, not talk about it?”
Yes, you make the news. And then you insist you have to cover the news you manufacture.