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Subject: "Sage Steele claims black coworkers excluded her from ESPN race special" Previous topic | Next topic
BrooklynWHAT
Member since Jun 15th 2007
85433 posts
Wed Jul-22-20 09:19 AM

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"Sage Steele claims black coworkers excluded her from ESPN race special"


  

          

if so then salute Elle Duncan and Michael Eaves. the black community dont fuck w/ Sage

https://awfulannouncing.com/espn/sage-steele-claims-she-was-excluded-from-espn-race-special-thanks-to-colleagues-complaints.html

The latest ESPN controversy centers around SportsCenter anchor Sage Steele, who has now lodged complaints about how she was not chosen for the network’s June 24 special “Time for Change: We Won’t be Defeated.” That special, presented by The Undefeated, (ESPN’s recently-expanded platform covering race, culture and sports) was billed as “exploring Black athletes’ experiences with injustice,” and it was hosted by SportsCenter anchors Elle Duncan, Michael Eaves and Jay Harris and college football reporter/studio host Maria Taylor. Joe Flint of The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Steele (pictured above) claims Duncan and Eaves kept her from participating in this show, and that she complained to ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro about this. Here are some key lines from his piece:

ESPN anchor Sage Steele has told management she believes she was excluded from a special the network aired on race last month because she wasn’t considered by certain Black colleagues to be an authentic voice for the Black community, a person familiar with the matter said.

Ms. Steele, one of the network’s most prominent on-air personalities, voiced her concerns to ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro in early June, saying the incident showed the network has a divisive work environment, the person said.

Ms. Steele said colleagues told her she was considered for the special by the executive in charge, Michael Fountain, until two of the other on-air personalities involved, Elle Duncan and Michael Eaves, complained, saying Ms. Steele wouldn’t be accepted by what they considered the Black community, according to the person familiar with her account to management.

This has led to a lot of statements from a lot of people. To start with, ESPN disputes the logic here from “the person familiar with the matter,” with Flint’s piece including that “An ESPN spokesman denied that Ms. Steele wasn’t invited to participate in the special because of a campaign by colleagues to undermine her or that her views played any role in Mr. Fountain’s decisions.” And Kevin Merida, the ESPN senior vice president and editor in chief of The Undefeated (who was heavily quoted in ESPN’s release about this special) told Flint “At The Undefeated, we don’t have litmus tests for Blackness. ESPN has a tremendous range of Black voices, and we’ve been honored to work with many of them. …We had already talked to Sage a number of times about working together, and look forward to that opportunity.” Meanwhile, Eaves and Duncan offered a joint statement to Flint:

“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.”

And Steele offered her own statement to Flint:

“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.”

The exact behind-the-scenes events that led to Steele not being involved in this particular special are not clear. Flint’s report is from “a person familiar with the matter,” and it only includes the reasons Steele “believes she was excluded,” with an ESPN spokesman denying those reasons. And there are other possible reasons not to feature Steele on this special. For one, that special would end up going with four anchors, which is a lot for any program, and it certainly didn’t include all of ESPN’s Black employees.

Beyond that, this special was billed as “part of The Undefeated’s ongoing, unprecedented coverage of the protests and social justice reform efforts that have come to the forefront following the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks.” And Steele has made a lot of headlines over the years for her criticisms of various protests, from blasting then-Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Mike Evans in 2016 for his protest during the national anthem to complaining about airport protests against an executive order banning immigrants from particular countries in 2017. Steele has also complained about the backlash she received for those criticisms.
So Steele is far from an uncontroversial figure, especially for a special focused on popular protests. Whether she should have been picked for this special is ultimately a decision for ESPN management figures like Fountain, though. And while the “person familiar with the situation” relayed Steele’s belief that she wasn’t chosen because of her colleagues’ thoughts about her, ESPN has denied that it played out that way. Perhaps Steele’s belief (or what this source relayed as her belief) is in fact accurate, or perhaps it isn’t. It’s certainly not an undisputed narrative.

It’s far from assured that any of this ultimately leads to anything. Even if you buy the account from the “person familiar with the situation” that Steele believes it was ESPN colleagues who kept her off this special (and it’s notable that Steele doesn’t explicitly say that in the statement from her Flint quotes, and that the “person familiar with the situation” is not named), there have been countless feuds between ESPN colleagues over the years, and most of them have meant very little. And the main ESPN-on-ESPN criticism the network tends to concern itself with is when that criticism is aired publicly (such as Bill Simmons blasting First Take while he was still under the ESPN umbrella). But thanks to the “person familiar with this situation,” this internal fight (or at least one person’s interpretation of it) has gone quite public.

<--- Big Baller World Order

  

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Sage Steele claims black coworkers excluded her from ESPN race special [View all] , BrooklynWHAT, Wed Jul-22-20 09:19 AM
 
Subject Author Message Date ID
damn, I like Elle and Michael...
Jul 22nd 2020
1
Good for them. Nobody wants to hear Steele’s bullshit.
Jul 22nd 2020
2
she is miserable
Jul 22nd 2020
3
http://youtu.be/t9LdMPUWV-Q
Jul 22nd 2020
4
Jalen's reaction gets me every time
Jul 22nd 2020
6
😂😂😂 he couldn’t contain himself
Jul 22nd 2020
9
Same. His and Doug’s fist bump was great too
Oct 08th 2021
61
they absolutely had no idea what was going on lol...
Oct 08th 2021
63
Forgot about this, LOVE this
May 24th 2022
73
ha ha.
Jul 22nd 2020
8
LMAO, totally forgot about this
Jul 22nd 2020
11
LMAO 😂 😂😂. Jalen is the best.
Jul 23rd 2020
16
this is all the evidence you need...
Jul 24th 2020
20
lol
Jul 24th 2020
30
LMAO
Oct 08th 2021
60
lol
Jul 22nd 2020
5
she thinks people don't like her because of her politics
Jul 22nd 2020
7
^^^ all of this
Jul 22nd 2020
10
she had no problem shading the arcade fire dude for his politics.
Jul 22nd 2020
12
      wow i'd never seen that
Jul 24th 2020
24
      lmao. didn't expect arcade fire lead singer to be a hooper
Jul 26th 2020
34
i knew she wasnt a real sista when she let chael sonnen do this:
Jul 22nd 2020
13
are we going to act like this isn't a factor?
Jul 23rd 2020
14
It’s not, nor should it be. Plenty of Black people don’t lose
Jul 23rd 2020
15
LOL. No.
Jul 23rd 2020
17
if it is for you let that be your problem
Jul 23rd 2020
18
I didn't exclude her from anything genius.
Jul 24th 2020
22
No. It’s her conservative ass political opinions.
Jul 24th 2020
21
cute family
Jul 24th 2020
23
not at all
Jul 24th 2020
25
She brought this on herself...
Jul 23rd 2020
19
it's probably both
Jul 24th 2020
26
I keep hearing people say "her politics" but have never seen or heard...
Jul 24th 2020
27
I think people are referring to this:
Jul 24th 2020
28
RE: I keep hearing people say "her politics" but have never seen or hear...
Jul 24th 2020
29
Good catch, I had forgotten all about that shit I had written her off...
Jul 24th 2020
31
When Jemele got in hot water for calling DT a racist...
Jul 24th 2020
32
Yup, she's vile.
Jul 24th 2020
33
RE: When Jemele got in hot water for calling DT a racist...
Jul 26th 2020
35
      when the travel ban came down
Oct 05th 2021
44
she has a twitter feed, you can pull it up
Jul 27th 2020
36
Sage Steele, if you need her...
Oct 05th 2021
37
you wanna hear a gem of a Sage story...
Oct 05th 2021
38
when in the podcast is it?
Oct 05th 2021
41
      RE: when in the podcast is it?
Oct 05th 2021
45
this woman is sick af
Oct 05th 2021
39
wow, it is funny that what goes around comes around lol...:
Oct 05th 2021
40
Dusted off Linda Cohn and Suzy?
Oct 05th 2021
43
      RE: Dusted off Linda Cohn and Suzy?
Oct 05th 2021
46
           When was this?
Oct 05th 2021
51
The transition of these 2 paragraphs...
Oct 05th 2021
42
That is just.....wow.
Oct 06th 2021
57
lmao @ sorry, ma'am!
Oct 05th 2021
53
I just watched the interview to get some context,
Oct 05th 2021
54
      Put the Candace Owens comment in context for me
Oct 06th 2021
56
      nah.. that Obama shit was goofy af and down right ignorant
Oct 06th 2021
59
Taken off the air…
Oct 05th 2021
47
Good
Oct 05th 2021
48
RE: Taken off the air…
Oct 05th 2021
49
      She’ll be doing a PTI-style show with Will Cain, by November
Oct 05th 2021
50
      yeah. feels like she has been posturing for something outside ESPN
Oct 05th 2021
52
      yeah.. I bet she ends up on OAN or one of those networks
Oct 06th 2021
58
Fuck her
Oct 06th 2021
55
Never forget…
Oct 08th 2021
62
wow I had forgotten about that lol...
Oct 08th 2021
64
WTF!!!??!!
Oct 08th 2021
65
John Rahm with golf shot of the year
May 20th 2022
66
ball dont lie.
May 20th 2022
67
^^^
May 22nd 2022
72
LOL
May 20th 2022
71
luka supposedly has/had some unidentified illness.
May 20th 2022
68
wrong post.
May 20th 2022
70
.
May 20th 2022
69

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