John Skipper, the President of ESPN, has released a memo to employees addressing the recent firestorm caused by Jemele Hill tweeting out a denouncement of Trump and his white supremacist leanings.
In the memo, Skipper reminded ESPN employees that they are to only speak of sports and not politics on their social media accounts, writing, "ESPN is not a political organization." Skipper said, "[W]e have social media policies which require people to understand that social platforms are public and their comments on them will reflect on ESPN. At a minimum, comments should not be inflammatory or personal." He continued, "We had a violation of those standards in recent days and our handling of this is a private matter."
Ironically, Hill's tweets call out exactly the position Skipper and ESPN has taken in the memo. Hill remarked that white people are afforded the privilege of being apolitical under a white supremacist society as the violence, bigotry, and hate that stems from such a system does not hurt the group that is in power. She wrote, "The height of white privilege is being able to ignore his white supremacy, because it's of no threat to you. Well, it's a threat to me."
Trump himself responded to the firestorm, as he has a lot of time on his hands, not that he's the president or anything. He tweeted out a condemnation of Hill rather than one of the white supremacy she called out. Trump, in typical Trump fashion, claimed without any proof that ESPN's ratings were suffering due to Hill's comments, writing, "ESPN is paying a really big price for its politics (and bad programming). People are dumping it in RECORD numbers. Apologize for untruth!"
You can read Skipper's full memo, which was obtained by CNN, below: