The Ringer Says ESPN Discriminates Against Black People – OutKick

In a 4,000-word profile about failed TV and radio host Bomani Jones, The Ringer claims that ESPN is racist in opposition to black individuals.

“There are detailed accounts of the discrimination black workers have skilled at ESPN,” mentioned some man writing for The Ringer.

“Among the community’s most high-profile black expertise—Jemele Hill, Michael Smith, Cari Champion, Maria Taylor—has left in recent times. As a result of despite the fact that the community presents nice alternatives (i.e., you may get paid), it may be restrictive to the purpose of exhaustion. ‘They signal my test, so I can’t simply go open hearth on ESPN once they do one thing I don’t like,’ Jones [said].”

This whole paragraph is dishonest and uninformed. Let’s take it step-by-step:

The Ringer hyperlinks to Maria Taylor’s contract negotiations to offer a “detailed account” of discrimination in opposition to black workers. Properly, if Taylor’s state of affairs is an instance of discrimination, everybody ought to hope ESPN discriminates in opposition to them subsequent. The hyperlink doesn’t exhibit discrimination however privilege.

ESPN provided Maria Taylor $5 million a yr, $4 million greater than any competing community had provided her. Taylor turned down this provide as a result of she wished $8 million a yr, equal to Stephen A. Smith. Plus, ESPN had compelled a number of skills to take a pay lower through the pandemic, so it was already making an exception by providing Taylor a major increase.

Taylor’s crew tried to extort cash from ESPN by releasing a year-old audio clip of Rachel Nichols saying ESPN picked Taylor to host the NBA Finals over her as a result of she is white and Taylor is black.

ESPN is so racist that it selected Taylor, a black girl, over Nichols, a white girl, after which fired Nichols for noticing. That’s The Ringer’s first instance of the discriminatory practices at ESPN.

Although The Ringer additionally attracts consideration to different “high-profile black skills” who’ve left ESPN, it doesn’t point out the 30+ white on-air skills ESPN has launched over the identical time interval, together with Mike Golic, Trey Wingo and Ron Jaworski. And ESPN didn’t even lower Hill, Smith, Taylor and Champion anyway. They every left of their very own accord.

Taylor left ESPN to host Soccer Night time in America and the Olympics at NBC. Poor her.

Hill refused to cease injecting politics into her commentary on ESPN after which determined she wished out of the community altogether. So she agreed to a buyout value greater than $5 million.

Hill knew she may make more cash shaming main companies into paying her, as she’s doing now at CNN, The Atlantic, Spotify and satirically, The Ringer.

For his half, Hill’s former SC6 co-host Michael Smith refused to seem on ESPN programming after the community canceled his present for very low scores. Anyway, Smith additionally obtained round $5 million in a buyout.

ESPN deliberate to maintain Cari Champion, regardless of her infamous mistreatment of producers, however Champion declined an extension provide in 2020.

So not one of the skills The Ringer lists are victims. All of them selected to depart ESPN after making thousands and thousands of {dollars} for content material nobody consumed.

The entire piece reads as a favor to Bomani Jones. ESPN is paying Jones some huge cash to host a podcast whereas he works for HBO concurrently. His scores on HBO have been a catastrophe up to now, however our focus right here is ESPN. Jones is just not producing materials value seven figures. This is the reason he should situation veiled threats at ESPN executives as a substitute.

The extra that shops like The Ringer make baseless accusations of racism in opposition to ESPN, the higher the possibilities that ESPN continues to pay Jones nicely above his value. The Ringer printed this puff-piece not solely to distract from Jones’ failures however to help in his subsequent negotiations with ESPN.

This piece places ESPN on discover. Pay Bomani Jones, no matter his scores or efficiency, or threat additional claims of racism.

All people is aware of ESPN doesn’t truly discriminate in opposition to black workers. All it takes is one look at its listing of hosts and analysts to see that black persons are not, in actual fact, underrepresented on ESPN.

The Ringer lied in order that Bomani Jones can have higher job safety.