Stephen A. Smith Has Honest Conversation With Dan Le Batard About ESPN’s No Politics Policy
The landscape of ESPN has shifted over the years as the flagship network has gone through a massive overhaul in talent and shows, rotating them out every year or so it seems. But the one staple of the channel is Stephen A. Smith, having been with ESPN since 2003.
So we can assume that whatever he says about the history of the company would be true, right? Good, because Smith spilled the beans on ESPN’s rumored “no-politics” policy Wednesday on the Dan Le Batard Show, saying that many of his colleagues had an issue with ESPN’s stance on hard topics.
“Is this worth alienating the organization I work for? Most things are not. Some things may be.” – @stephenasmith had an open and honest conversation with Dan about working at ESPN and the difficulties of navigating the labyrinth inside the machine.
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— Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz (@LeBatardShow) May 18, 2022
“ESPN took the position a few years ago, ‘we’re not going to talk about politics’. You had some people that had a problem with that. Here was my issue: I understand [ESPN’s stance],” Smith said. “Now there are times that there are certain issues that usurp what your mandate may be. And more importantly, there’s a level of consistency that you need to exercise. You can’t let one person get away with it and don’t let the other person get away with it, the rules have to be for everybody if is truly a rule.”
The ESPN personality continued on with his surprising explanation, telling his former colleague that the audience expects to hear sports, not politics.
“When you’re tuning into a sports network, it is not beyond the pale for the consumer to say, ‘I expect to hear about sports’ okay, there’s nothing wrong with that,” Smith explained. “So I understand how the company could have that position. But then there are other issues like the George Floyd murder that took place in Minnesota. When that kind of stuff happens, well guess what, all the rules go out the window.”
Smith had a point there as the George Floyd conversation consumed the nation for the entire summer of 2020 with ESPN leading their shows with the controversial topic.
Dan stepped in here, asking Smith how far that grey line of opinion goes with different influences running amok in corporate operations.
“Where is the line on some of this stuff?” Le Batard asked Smith. “Because you can’t have a corporate policy that adheres to everyone, that keeps sports clean on this stuff. We got Saudi money running over here. We’ve got China money running over there, like there are all sorts of things embedded here that make it impossible for us to always be linear in our principles.”
Again Smith had an answer for his former ESPN colleague, citing the idea of thinking like a business, rather than an individual.
“But I think it’s important to understand that again, it might be blurry for me and you, but as a business, it may not be blurry for them. In other words, the line for them is ‘what’s going to compromise our bottom line. If something is going to compromise our bottom line, we have a right to take the position that we take as a company’. As an individual, we might disagree with that, but we also chose to work with them,” Smith said.
“‘Is this worth alienating the organization that I work with?’ Most things are not. Some things may be.”
Real corporate intellect from Smith there, starting to get a sense why he’s been with the company for so long. Regardless, it was good to see Stephen A. and Dan Le Batard grace the screen together after his exit from ESPN at the start of 2021.
