The anchor who was punished by ESPN for expressing her opinion on politics and the COVID jab revealed some inside details about how politics became a major issue at the sports network on the latest edition of the “The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special.”
Sage Steele, a longtime reporter and “Sportcenter” host, left ESPN last year after settling a lawsuit with the media company following allegations that ESPN retaliated against her for making negative comments about COVID vaccine mandates and former President Barack Obama. But political shifts at ESPN began taking place years before her lawsuit and departure, creating an environment that was extremely unfriendly to those who pushed back against leftist talking points, Steele told Shapiro.
“Sports was a uniting factor. … You could go to a party with people you didn’t even know, and you could just talk about sports and it’s a totally safe space where nobody’s going to get offended. It was going to be just kind of a fun thing to do and it made a turn,” Shapiro said, asking, “Where did the sporting world lose its way and decide that politics had to become such a part of the coverage?”
Steele, who joined ESPN in 2007, said that when Barack Obama ran against and defeated Republican candidate John McCain the next year, politics wasn’t a major concern at the network, but there was a “huge turn” in 2016.
“I remember being on Twitter and watching the posts from my bosses, executives making huge decisions for ESPN, tweeting about Donald Trump winning,” she said. “And I remember being blown away like, is this okay that our bosses are doing it? And it just was allowed to stay. And then, it was gloves off. Everybody said whatever they wanted, especially, you know, not just Trump winning, but Hillary losing.”
WATCH THE FULL ‘SUNDAY SPECIAL’ EPISODE WITH SAGE STEELE
Steele added that John Skipper, ESPN’s president at the time “was kind of fine with people spouting off.” She said the president’s decision to allow political opinion, which was nearly exclusively from those on the Left, was mind-boggling to her.
“Like any business, I don’t care if you’re a television network, if you’re like a local hardware store, I think we want money from everybody, not just people that we align with, like, why draw that line? It’s just bad for business,” she said, adding “This is the place where people come to escape that crap.”
Steele told Shapiro that she was happy when ESPN’s new president James Pitaro took over in 2018 and said “enough with the politics.”
“I thought it was awesome,” she said. “And I personally thanked him for that because he felt the same way as far as [politics] just doesn’t belong in sports. And then COVID hit and then George Floyd, and the rest is history.”
“And they could not put that genie back in the bottle,” Steele added.
Steel’s departure from ESPN hasn’t stopped her from continuing her career as she recently launched her podcast “The Sage Steele Show” on Bill Maher’s Club Random Studios platform.