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ESPN; USA Today's For the Win Column; Awful Announcing

Suspended ESPN Baseball Analyst Who Was Also a Top Major League Pitcher Now Taken Off Air For the Rest of the Season. Read Why

Sep 3, 2015  •  Post A Comment

ESPN, earlier today (Thursday, Sept. 3rd, 2015) posted the following on its website:

Curt Schilling won’t appear on ESPN baseball telecasts for the rest of the season.

Schilling was removed from broadcasts on Aug. 25 after he sent a tweet equating Muslim extremists with Nazis in Germany. This week, an email exchange between Schilling and editors of the sports blog Awful Announcing regarding the tweet, and subsequent reaction, were published online.

“At all times during the course of their engagement with us, our commentators are directly linked to ESPN and are the face of our brand,” ESPN said in a statement. “We are a sports media company. Curt’s actions have not been consistent with his contractual obligations, nor have they been professionally handled; they have obviously not reflected well on the company. As a result, he will not appear on ESPN through the remainder of the regular season and our Wild Card playoff game.”

After he was taken off the Little League World Series broadcast on Aug. 25, Schilling said in a statement: “Bad choices have bad consequences and this was a bad decision in every way on my part.”

According to the USA Today sports column For the Win, Schilling wrote in an email to the sports blog Awful Announcing “that he refuses to ‘apologize for the content of the tweet.’ Schilling contends that he was comparing ‘radical’ Muslims to Nazis, not ‘peace-loving’ Muslims.

“‘The forum was about as poor a choice as I could have made in trying to elicit a potential discussion on that topic. I did not, and will not apologize for the content of the tweet. If you, or anyone else, can’t wrap your head around your native language enough to understand that omitting words, or adding them, is plain and simple lying when it comes to journalism.’”

For the Win continues, “You can read Schilling’s entire email at Awful Announcing….An ESPN spokesman told For The Win that ‘we weren’t aware of Curt’s plan to craft or send this email.’”

Interestingly, a number of reports on this story noted, as Yahoo Sports did, that before Schilling’s conversation with Awful Announcing was made public, “ESPN was reportedly giving Schilling the green light to return this week.”

Schilling,CurtCurt Schilling several years ago on ESPN

4 Comments

  1. In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a truly revolutionary act.

    George Orwell

  2. Schilling’s tweet was offensive to all Muslims, not just extremists. No one forced him to take a high-exposure job at a public company. With that decision came an agreement to specific contractual obligations, including staying out of the limelight of highly controversial issues. ESPN (and its parent company, Disney) has the right as an employer to create the atmosphere it believes will be the most prosperous for the network.

  3. Is ESPN defending Muslim extremists or is it defending Nazis?

  4. This is why Trump is so popular… tooo much Political Correctness in our society.

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