ESPN Tried to Sideline Jemele Hill

Apparently, after Jemele Hill’s tweet controversy, ESPN wanted to sideline the reporter for Wednesday evening’s broadcast. But her colleagues said nah. Her co-host Michael Smith refused to do the show without her, according to ThinkProgress. Sources said that producers reached out to two other Black ESPN hosts, Michael Eaves and Elle Duncan, to ask them to serve as fill-ins for the show. But neither Eaves or Duncan would agree to take the place of Hill or Smith, either. Faced with the possibility of having to replace Hill and Smith with white co-hosts, sources said, ESPN then called Hill and asked her to come back on her show. ESPN, however, refutes this account. “We never asked any other anchors to do last night’s show. Period,” ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz emailed ThinkProgress after this story was published. This morning, Donald Trump began attacking the network tweeting, “ESPN is paying a really big price for its politics (and bad programming). People are dumping it in RECORD numbers. Apologize for untruth!”  More here.