Jemele Hill is getting candid about ESPN’s “conservative culture” that led to her controversial departure following an infamous tweet about ex-President Donald Trump.
“I was not a good fit for the ‘SportsCenter’ culture. Certainly not a good fit for the management that was overseeing ‘SportsCenter’ at the time. And I was tired. I was really tired of fighting every days to be myself.” Hill said on Kenny Mayne’s podcast Thursday, “Hey Mayne.”
Hill, 46, joined ESPN as a columnist in 2006. She began co-hosting the “His & Hers” podcast with Michael Smith in 2011. The popular podcast became an ESPN2 show in 2013. Hill and Smith have been promoted to evening. anchors of “SportsCenter” in February 2017.
“By far, ‘SportsCenter’ was the most high-profile job I had at ESPN,” Hill recalled. “It was the highest paying job I’ve had at ESPN. But it’s also the worst job I’ve had at ESPN.”
JEMELE HILL: Former ESPN presenter reveals why she had an abortion at 26
OPINION: Jemele Hill and other former black ESPN stars do it their own way
After landing the coveted role, Hill said many “veteran ‘SportsCenter’ presenters,” including Mayne, Mike Greenberg and Scott Van Pelt, all gave her and Smith the same advice: “Don’t let them not change yourself.
“In giving us this advice, there’s also an implied warning. It became really obvious very quickly,” Hill said. “So we already had creative issues with (management) before Donald Trump…Once that happened and my tweet and all the fallout and controversy, it just accelerated something that was already in run, I think.”
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 calling for a Dallas Cowboys announcer boycott after owner Jerry Jones said he would bench players who knelt during the anthem.
Hill said ESPN was “trying to play both sides of the fence” and denied claims that the network was liberal.
“It’s a conservative culture at ESPN and so this idea that ESPN is run by flowery kids is just a lie,” Hill said. “It’s not like that. It’s quite the opposite. As you know all too well.”
She continued: “Once (the critics) started seeing my face, Michael’s face became more prominent…then suddenly ESPN is too liberal because what they’re really trying to say is ‘ Oh, y’all must be liberal-leaning because you’ve got all these women and all these black people who are suddenly on my TV every day. So that means this company has definitely caved in to a liberal liberal brigade.'”
JEMELE HILL: Former ESPN staffer Jemele Hill joins The Atlantic as editor
AFTER: Former ESPN Columnist Jemele Hill Addresses Career Change Donald Trump During Conference
As a result, Hill said management “wanted to suck the whole personality out of our show because they were so preoccupied with the headlines, what was being written and all the right-wing media that was constantly coming in for our show.”
Hill even caught the eye of Trump himself. In 2017, the former president tweeted, “With Jemele Hill on the mic (sic) it’s no wonder ESPN’s ratings have ‘tumbled’, in fact, so badly that it’s being talked about in the media. ‘industry !”
“The next thing you know, they didn’t want as much as Mike and I did on camera anymore. They just wanted a more traditional ‘SportsCenter,'” Hill said. “That’s not what we signed up for. We signed up to do something different. We wanted to bring the craziness of ‘His & Hers’, our previous show, to ‘SportsCenter’, and they didn’t want not that.”
Hill said she thought her authentic self “was too much for the ‘SportsCenter’ audience to handle.” She said ESPN was “only concerned about the reaction”.
“It wasn’t fun for me and that’s why I left,” she said. “I wasn’t kicked out, I chose to leave because the experience was no longer fun for me.”
Hill left “SportsCenter” in January 2018 for ESPN’s The Undefeated. She left the network entirely to join The Atlantic in October 2018.
USA Today