Make a Contribution to Remove NSFW Ads

Sports Biz: So much for ESPN demoting Sage Steele because she’s conservative UPDATE: She gone!

playahaitian

playahaitian

Rising Star
Certified Pussy Poster
So much for ESPN demoting Sage Steele because she’s conservative
Updated: APRIL 17, 2017 — 11:51 AM EDT


Days before the NBA playoffs, ESPN made the surprising move to replace NBA Countdown host Sage Steele with SportsNation host Michelle Beadle.

Many observers, led by conservative media outlets, claimed ESPN was demoting Steele, an outspoken conservative, because of her views. The speculation about her future became so loud, ESPN president John Skipper took the extraordinary step of speaking out publicly in support of Steele.

“Sage has done a wonderful job for us in a number of important roles,” Skipper said in a statement. “Sage definitively has a bright and long-term future at ESPN and my complete support.”


It looks as if Skipper’s support is about to pay off.

Michael McCarthy at the Sporting News reports that ESPN is shifting Steele into a prominent new morning role at the network, though no official position has been determined. ESPN declined to comment on the news.

There are a number of potential landing spots for Steele. She could land as the news anchor on Mike & Mike host Mike Greenberg’s new morning show, which will reportedly combine elements of SportsCenter with a general-interest morning show. So far, the network is tight-lipped about when Greenberg will leave Mike & Mike and when his new show will begin.

“We haven’t even hired a producer yet,” Greenberg said last month. “ I know people think I’m saying this just to say it, but we really have not officially decided to do this yet.”

Steele could also end up hosting a morning SportsCenter that would replace the Mike & Mike simulcast that current airs on ESPN2.


The news couldn’t have come at a better time for Steele, whose outspoken viewpoints have landed her in hot water among some viewers. Back in January, she was criticized by many sports reporters, including fellow ESPN talker Dan Le Batard, for complaining that a protest of President Trump’s executive order on immigration at Los Angeles International Airport caused her to miss her flight.

Steele hopped on Instagram to vent her frustration at the crowd, saying she was sad so many protesters were happy with the disruption they were causing, adding, “Yes, immigrants were affected by this as well. Brilliant.”

Steele also drew heat during the NFL season for criticizing Tampa Bay wide receiver Mike Evans for protesting the national anthem.

View image on Twitter
CxMUH50VIAAZgiy.jpg:small


Follow
Sage Steele

✔@sagesteele
Hey @MikeEvans13_ look up definition of the word DEMOCRACY & remember this pic while kneeling/exercising your right to protest #perspective

10:24 PM - 13 Nov 2016


Steele later expanded on her thoughts about the various anthem protests that occurred throughout the league in a lengthy Facebook post.

“Instead of praising or uplifting each other, way too many people of color choose to tear down, mock and spew hatred at other blacks who feel differently, think differently, or make decisions that are different from theirs,” Steele wrote. “That, my friends, is hypocrisy at its best. Or should I say, it's hypocrisy at its worst.”

Steele’s new role comes as conservative critics — Breitbart is among the loudest — have blasted ESPN for its apparent hypocrisy in how it deals with its conservative hosts. They often point to the network’s decision to fire Curt Schilling for posting conservative memes while not punishing hosts, such as Le Batard, Bomani Jones, and new SC6 hosts Michael Smith and Jemele Hill for often professing liberal views.

Last year, ESPN ordered its employees to not make political statements during the U.S. presidential campaign. But earlier this month, the network loosened its guidelines, recognizing it’s also impossible in our current environment to avoid the obvious overlap among sports, politics and entertainment.

“The network whose acronym originally stood for 'Entertainment and Sports Programming Network' seems to be metaphorically reinserting the 'entertainment' into its programming,” Billy Penn founder and current ESPN ombudsman Jim Brady wrote in a recent column. "ESPN has made it clear: It’s not sticking to sports.”

Read more by Rob Tornoe

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/...conservative-Mike-Greenberg-Sportscenter.html
 
From the piece:

Last year, ESPN ordered its employees to not make political statements during the U.S. presidential campaign. But earlier this month, the network loosened its guidelines, recognizing it’s also impossible in our current environment to avoid the obvious overlap among sports, politics and entertainment.


I wonder how this is going to work out for them in this climate. Could piss off both left and right if they let too much be said. ESPN too damn corporate for that.
 
I hate this bitch, she used her Black conservative, whoa is me, angle to move up. Hustle hard
 
The thing i hate about people like her is they forget that they are black first and you don't see other races of people criticizing their own race and front of the whole world. Well maybe they do but I have not seen it .
 
Ugly Dispute Involving Multiple ESPN Anchors Goes Public: TRAINA THOUGHTS
JIMMY TRAINAJUL 22, 2020
1. ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro has taken every opportunity he's had over the last few years to say "stick to sports," even though that was never a realistic option.
Pitaro always made sure to throw in the obligatory, "ESPN will cover politics if it ever intersects with sports," line, even though politics are always part of sports.
Obviously, things have gone to another level in this country over the past couple of months as far as politics and social issues are concerned.
ESPN could no longer ignore things and publicly scold employees for voicing their opinion on matters much more important than sports. Keep in mind, this is the same company that made sure to give Dan Le Batard a talking to because he, the son of immigrants, spoke on his radio show about Trump supporters chanting "send her back" at a 2019 rally.
Well, that Le Batard dust-up seems like a walk in the park compared with the latest controversy surrounding ESPN.
According to The Wall Street Journal, SportsCenter anchor Sage Steele claims she was kept off a recent network special on race by colleagues Elle Duncan and Michael Eaves.
The WSJ says Steele went to management to voice her displeasure with being kept off The Undefeated Presents Time for Change: We Won’t Be Defeated, which aired June 24. ESPN management denied Steele's claim that she wasn't used on the special because of Duncan and Eaves.
Here's what Steele told the WSJ: “I found it sad for all of us that any human being should be allowed to define someone’s ‘Blackness.’ Growing up biracial in America with a Black father and a white mother, I have felt the inequities that many, if not all Black and biracial people have felt—being called a monkey, the ‘n’ word, having ape sounds made as I walked by—words and actions that all of us know sting forever. Most importantly, trying to define who is and isn’t Black enough goes against everything we are fighting for in this country, and only creates more of a divide.”

Here's what Duncan and Eaves told the WSJ in a joint statement: “We wish we had more than an hour to include more of the many strong voices we have at ESPN; however, we are hopeful that this doesn’t distract from the important message conveyed that night.”
Some takeaways:
1) ESPN fired Adnan Virk because he leaked some meaningless information to Awful Announcing. This leak seems way more egregious, and ESPN must be livid.
2) Obviously, Steele confirmed the WSJ report with her quote. It will be fascinating to see how ESPN handles this. The network denied Steele's claim, but then Steele went public with an on-the-record quote that contradicts her bosses. If Steele's claims were true, the network wouldn't want to discipline her. They'd just want the matter to go away quietly. But with Steele publicly contradicting management, it doesn't seem the issue with go away quietly.
3) This is now a he said/she said situation. Steele says Duncan and Eaves kept her off the show. ESPN says they did not. He said/she said battles usually don't end well.
4) No matter how hard ESPN tries, it will never ever be able to just "stick to sports."
 
deadspin.com

Deadspin | ESPN replaces Sage Steele with the woman she tried to get fired

Deadspin | ESPN replaces Sage Steele with the woman she tried to get fired
deadspin.com deadspin.com

ESPN replaces Sage Steele with the woman she tried to get fired

Carron J. Phillips
Today 5:19PM




Sage Steele has been moved from her 6 p.m. SportsCenter gig.Image: Getty Images
Karma always finds a way to win.
Sage Steele will no longer be anchoring the almighty daily 6 p.m. edition of SportsCenter. According to ESPN: “Steele will move to the noon ET edition of SportsCenter as co-anchor after the College Football Playoff and will add a new periodic ESPN+ interview program to her slate.”



Steele is being replaced by Elle Duncan — the Black woman she recently tried to get fired, or at least demoted. Duncan will take over in February and co-host the show with Kevin Negandhi Monday through Friday. Despite how the press release reads, this is a demotion for Steele.



ack in July, Steele told the Wall Street Journal that two of her fellow Black colleagues, Duncan and Michael Eaves, allegedly worked to keep her from taking part in a special that took place in June, called Time For Change: We Won’t Be Defeated. The show was hosted by SportsCenter anchors Duncan, Eaves, and Jay Harris, along with Maria Taylor, as they led a conversation that “explored Black athletes’ experiences with injustice.”




When a journalist goes to another publication with allegations about their coworkers, it’s not to get them promoted. It’s to tarnish their reputation, damage their credibility, or get them fired.


Sage Steele is ESPN's Candace Owens, and It's Time For Her To Go
Timing is everything.
Read more
According to WSJ, Steele believed that Duncan and Eaves told management that she “wouldn’t be accepted by what they considered the Black community,” while leaving out the fact that arguably the two biggest Black voices at ESPN, Stephen A. Smith and Bomani Jones, didn’t participate in the program, either.

“I found it sad for all of us that any human beings should be allowed to define someone’s ‘Blackness,’” Steele told the Journal. “Growing up biracial in America with a Black father and a white mother, I have felt the inequities that many, if not all Black and biracial people have felt — being called a monkey, the ‘n’ word, having ape sounds made as I walked by — words and actions that all of us know sting forever. Most importantly, trying to define who is and isn’t Black enough goes against everything we are fighting for in this country, and only creates more of a divide.”

Black people are not a monolithic group. We are very diverse. It’s one of the reasons why we look out for each other, especially in this business of sports journalism.

But you will be hard-pressed to find a Black person in the industry with glowing things to say about Steele. Her allies of color are few, and it’s not hard to understand why when you consider what she did to Eaves and Duncan.

“The disappointing part for me seeing a story like this, is that as far as I know, that whenever Sage has been caught up in various controversies I don’t recall any of her Black colleagues going out of their way to amplify those controversies,” Jemele Hill told Deadspin back in July.

“To pin it on Elle and Mike as if they made a decision like this in a vacuum, it just seems to be taking an unfair shot at your colleagues for no reason,” Hill said.

When that controversy took place during the summer, it was a Black ESPN employee who initially informed me about it. And shortly after, it was another Black employee that called me from their car and was so infuriated by Steele’s accusations that they “almost got into an accident.” A senior producer in the ABC/ESPN family previously confirmed to Deadspin that they had to “convince panelists to do a Black History Month speaker series that Steele was a part of,” which featured other prominent Black female voices like Maria Taylor, Pam Oliver, and Lisa Salters.

But, as good as Steele is at her job, her greatest talent is her tone-deafness. This is what the Indiana alum tweeted earlier this month.




According to CBS Sports, at least 135 football games have been postponed or canceled this season due to COVID-19. And according to the CDC, over 300,000 Americans have died from the virus, while there are over 16 million American reported cases.

Way to read the room, Sage.

The tweet was just another to add to her long list of public remarks that prove that she doesn’t care about anything else besides her own self-interests.

In 2016, she attacked Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ wide receiver Mike Evans for sitting during the national anthem. In 2017, she complained about her flight being delayed due to people protesting Trump’s immigration ban at LAX, and told a crowd in Florida that the “worst racism I see comes from Black people.” Later that year, Steele had expressed how she didn’t want to hear about Charlottesville on SportsCenter, defended NFL owners for not signing Kaepernick, and told the world why ESPN needed to “stick to sports” — only to publicly accuse Eaves and Duncan of blackballing her from a program that didn’t “stick to sports” less than three years later.

This is who Sage Steele has always been. During the summer, I labeled Steele as ESPN’s version of Candace Owens and suggested that FOX News would be a better fit for her.

The person that Owens and Steele’s ideologies both line up with recently lost the presidential election. It wouldn’t be a surprise if all three of them were looking for work in the near future.
 
Dumb bitch didn't know when to shut the fuck up.

Fuck ESPN for giving Steele all that rope to begin with.

Meanwhile, they gave Jemele all kinds of shit for speaking her mind.
 

Make a Contribution to Remove NSFW Ads
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

ViCiouS
Molly Qerim's 'Insulting' Salary At ESPN Has Leaked Online
2 3
Replies
95
Views
2K
Helico-pterFunk
Helico-pterFunk
The Catcher In The Rye
Sage Steele-- "The Next Bill Maher"? In talks to host a podcast on his network (+ sidebar: are Black conservatives treated unfairly?)
2
Replies
40
Views
1K
RoomService
RoomService
woodchuck
Creamsicle Caligula wants the Commanders new stadium named after him.
Replies
10
Views
129
ScorpDiesel
ScorpDiesel
lightbright
Dr. Phil’s media company ordered to liquidate after losing bankruptcy case with ‘no hope for rehabilitation’... lololol
Replies
5
Views
100
Mr. Met
Mr. Met
Maxxam
Joy Reid’s MSNBC Show Canceled in Major Shake-Up
5 6 7
Replies
211
Views
7K
HNIC
HNIC
Back
Top