ESPN Does Not Have a Liberal Bias, it Merely Respects Free Speech

If I ever want to see highlights from a walk-off home run, a Hail Mary, or a buzzer beater, I know to turn to ESPN. The undisputed leader in sports television broadcasts an incredible amount of content every day from tennis tournaments to NASCAR races. Flamboyant personalities like Stephen A. Smith lock horn on First Take, while intricate NFL tactics are broken down on NFL Matchup. Simply put, it is a sports fan’s virvana that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This makes the recent allegations of liberal partisanship against ESPN even more alarming. Sports are supposed to be the last refuge from the political conversation that has roiled households across the United States.

Nestled inside deeply democratic Bristol, Connecticut, allegations of liberal bias within ESPN make sense. It is owned by Disney, whose CEO is a Democrat. Jemele Hill, a prominent African-American host of SportsCenter, recently called Donald Trump a “white supremacist” on her private Twitter feed. A media firestorm soon ignited, with White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying Hill’s tweet was “a fireable offense.” Conservative outlets rallied to this cause, saying that Hill’s comments were wrong and offensive toward the President and the U.S. as a whole.

However, ESPN’s critics failed to recognize the basic rights Hill is entitled to as a private citizen. Free-speech laws in the Connecticut State Constitution say that a company cannot fire its employees for exercising their First Amendment rights. Moreover, Hill should be allowed to express her own views. She didn’t say anything about Trump or politics on air at all; this was merely her private Twitter feed.

As a counterpoint, conservative commentators have noted ESPN’s dismissal of Curt Schilling, who was fired for highly prejudiced comments about transgender people he made on social media. But Schilling’s comments crossed the line between opinion and bigotry. He posted an extremely offensive meme accompanied with a grotesque description of transgender people. If Jemele Hill started making comments like this, then ESPN would be right to fire her as well. This was not Schilling’s first run-in with politics and ESPN either: he compared Muslim extremists to Nazis and said Hillary Clinton should be buried under a jail for her e-mail usage.

Similarly, ESPN fired radio host Colin Cowherd for calling Dominicans dumb. These comments sparked widespread outrage for insulting a whole ethnicity and for demeaning the level of intellect required to play baseball.

ESPN does accept conservative commentators as well as liberal commentators. Just look at Will Cain: he’s an “arch-conservative,” as described by Wikipedia, and has been a contributor to E:60 and First Take. In an appearance in Real Time with Bill Maher, Cain denied the existence of climate change, saying people who believe in it are “intellectually dishonest.” This is an absurd comment, but it’s not discriminatory or harmful. As long as a person is not a blatant bigot like Curt Schilling, ESPN has consistently protected personal free speech.

Data supports ESPN’s claim that it does not have a liberal bias as well. In a research study conducted in May 2017, conservatives gave ESPN a score of 7.2 out of 10, while liberals gave ESPN a score of 7.0 out of 10. Conservatives and liberals alike both watch and care about sports. ESPN would be foolish as a business to alienate a major segment of their consumers, especially as the rate of cord-cutting increases in the United States.

Michael Jordan once said, “Republicans buy shoes too,” when asked to endorse a Democrat in a political campaign. He sold his shoes to everyone, regardless of their political affiliation. This rings true for ESPN as well: they are the Worldwide Leader in Sports, not a political organization, and they do not pretend to be one either. It makes sense for ESPN business-wise to limit political speech as much as possible if such speech turns away viewers. Yet ESPN has also protected the free speech rights of its employees to the best of its abilities, even if it was not advantageous to do so. The balance between principles and profit is tough, but ESPN has handled this well despite being used as a conservative bogeyman for political correctness.