Back in February 2017, ESPN had made history with Jemele Hill and co-host Michael Smith as the first all-Black anchor team on SportsCenter. However, after Hill decided to call out president Donald Trump as a white supremacist, ESPN has been dimming their light on Ms. Hill as an anchor. Her hosting duties at “SportsCenter” ended and she decided to take on a new role in writing for ESPN’s Undefeated website. Now, ESPN has told the reporter that her time with the company is over.
According to other sports news websites, the former anchor for Sportscenter will accept a buyout of the remainder of her contract with the network. Hill’s deal with ESPN apparently still has two years to run and she stands to walk away with millions of dollars from ESPN parent Disney while she pursues other career opportunities, sources said.”
And every part of the buyout deal, Jemele Hill deserves.
The firing of Ms. Hill was not much of a shock considering Jimmy Pitaro, the new president of ESPN, said he didn’t want any of the commentators to have political opinions, implying he will be kowtowing to whatever the NFL wants. Pitaro told did an interview expressing on August 17, “I’ve spent a lot of time with league executives. The relationship is incredibly important to us. That programming cuts across everything we’re doing on the studio side, on the original content side. And we’ve made that very clear to the NFL.”
He also said, “If you ask me is there a false narrative out there, I will tell you ESPN being a political organization is false. I will tell you I have been very, very clear with employees here that it is not our jobs to cover politics, purely.”
The road will not end for this strong African American reporter. Jemele Hill will have a bright future and soon become one of the top reporters this generation has seen.
