
Jemere Hill has been outspoken about ESPN’s controversial ‘conservative culture’ following an infamous tweet about former President Donald Trump.
“I wasn’t the right fit for the SportsCenter culture. I definitely wasn’t the right fit for the management team that was overseeing SportsCenter at the time. And I got tired of fighting every day to be myself. I’m really tired,” Hill said Thursday on Kenny Main’s podcast “Hey Main.”
Hill, 46, joined ESPN as a columnist in 2006. She started co-hosting her ‘His & Hers’ podcast in 2011 with Michael Her Smith. A popular podcast, in 2013 she became an ESPN2 show. Hill and Smith were promoted in the evening. February 2017 “SportsCenter” anchor.
“‘SportsCenter’ was the most high-profile job I ever had at ESPN,” recalls Hill. “It was the best paying job I ever had at ESPN, but it was also the worst job I ever had at ESPN.”
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After winning the coveted role, Hill said many “veteran ‘Sportscenter’ anchors,” including Maine, Mike Greenberg and Scott Van Pelt, gave her and Smith the same advice. : “Don’t let them change you”.
“There’s an implied caveat in giving us this advice, too. It became apparent really quickly,” Hill said. I was already having creative issues… when it happened and my tweets and all the fallout and controversy happened, it accelerated something I thought was already underway. I just let it.”
In September 2017, Hill called Trump a “white supremacist” in a series of tweets. ESPN said Hill’s views “do not represent ESPN’s position.” She was suspended a month later after owner Jerry Jones called for a boycott of Dallas Cowboys advertisers after he said he would bench players who kneeled during the national anthem. .
Hill said ESPN is “trying to play on both sides of the fence,” denying claims that the network is liberal.
“ESPN is a conservative culture and the idea that ESPN is run by Flower Children is a lie,” said Hill. “No. Rather the opposite. As we all know.”
“When[the critics]started looking at my face, Michael’s face became more prominent…and suddenly ESPN became too liberal. It’s on TV every day, which means that this company has indeed succumbed to the liberal brigade.”
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As a result, Hill said management “was so concerned about headlines, being written about, all the right-wing media constantly coming to our shows that they sucked all the personality out of our shows. I wanted to
Hill even caught the attention of Trump himself. In 2017, the former president tweeted:
“The next thing we know is that they didn’t really want Mike and I on camera. They just wanted a more traditional ‘SportsCenter,'” Hill said. rice field. “That’s not what we signed up for. We signed up to do something different. We wanted to bring the craziness of our previous show, ‘His & Hers,’ to ‘SportsCenter.’ But they didn’t want it.”
Hill believes her true self is “too much for the ‘SportsCenter’ audience to handle.” She said ESPN was “only worried about the reaction.”
“It wasn’t fun for me, so I left,” she said.
Hill left “SportsCenter” for ESPN’s The Undefeated in January 2018. She left the network entirely and in October 2018 she joined The Atlantic.
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