Jemele Hill Blasts Former Employer ESPN For ‘Soft’ Coverage of Dana White Slapping His Wife

The Atlantic‘s Jemele Hill dropped the hammer on her former employer ESPN for what she called the company’s “soft” coverage of UFC President Dana White slapping his wife.

White and his wife got into a physical altercation while they rang in the New Year at a nightclub in San Lucas, Mexico. White’s wife, Anne, slapped him, and he slapped her face before others separated the two.

In 2019 ESPN started to broadcast UFC events after they agreed to a five-year deal. Hill was at ESPN for 12 years before she left for the Atlantic in 2018, and on Tuesday, she wrote a column that criticized her former employer for the coverage of the incident between White and his wife.

“The issue isn’t that ESPN has ignored White’s situation entirely. It’s just that the coverage of the incident has overall been pretty soft,” Hill wrote in The Atlantic. “Having worked at ESPN for 12 years, I know intimately the difference between cursory coverage and nonstop national conversation fielded by the massive sports media machine.”

Hill pivoted and used the example of ESPN’s coverage when Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving decided to share a clip from a documentary that contained many anti-Semitic tropes. ESPN covered Irving heavily after he shared the clip and when he was suspended by the Nets for his lack of empathy when given a chance to apologize.

“The most recent example of the latter is the Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving, who became a daily fixture in ESPN’s news coverage and commentary after he was suspended for posting a link on his social media to an anti-Semitic film,” Hill added.

Hill felt it was weird that many people stood up for White, even after White went on TMZ Sports and admitted his actions were wrong.

“The grand irony of all of this is that White doesn’t actually seem eager to accept the graciousness that others are so willing to give him,” Hill continued.

“White isn’t offering any excuses, so why is almost everyone else doing it?” Hill questioned.

Hill’s tone is similar to another former ESPN employee, Dan Le Batard. The podcast host believed ESPN’s coverage of White was lackadaisical because “they’re compromised here by business interest.”

Current ESPN employee Stephen A. Smith admitted that he and White were close friends but thinks White’s punishment should be the same as if White disciplined one of his fighters for the same crime.

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