Tuesday on a late broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” Howard Kurtz, the host of the network’s show “MediaBuzz” and its top media critic, ripped ESPN for a decision it made to remove one of its announcers from its broadcast of the University of Virginia versus William & Mary football because of his name Robert Lee.
Kurtz called it “political idiocy and journalistic malpractice.”
“It almost seems like a parody,” Kurtz said. “This was just not political correctness by ESPN. It’s political idiocy and journalistic malpractice to boot, and I’m surprised the network is now defending this ridiculous overreaction. I mean, if you played football for years without a helmet, would anybody when they see this guy, Robert Lee, think that he was in anyway a decedent of the late Civil War general. I mean, it is such an overreaction, oversensitivity by a network whose own ombudsman has said had moved too much into politics on the liberal side. I really can’t believe that ESPN, one did this — benching this guy who had nothing to do with the problems in Charlottesville to call the University of Virginia game and two, is now defending it.”
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