During Wednesday’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Fox Sports 1’s Jason Whitlock blamed Silicon Valley and social media for ESPN removing Robert Lee from the University of Virginia football broadcast because his name is too similar to Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
ESPN cited “social hectoring and trolling” as the company’s reasoning for ultimately making the switch.
Whitlock said this story shows just how far left ESPN is willing to go to protect themselves from online “backlash.”
“[P]eople at home are mostly laughing about this story, but I actually think it’s kind of serious,” Whitlock stated. “Because it illustrates Silicon Valley’s influence over the American media. This is a Twitter-driven story. ESPN basically acknowledged [they] were worried about the Twitter reaction.”
He continued, “Were we far enough left on this position to be protected from a Twitter backlash? That’s what drove them to make this decision. How much farther left can we move so that Twitter won’t kill us? Executives, not just at ESPN, but most acutely at ESPN are making decisions based off of what type of reaction we’ll get from Twitter and Twitter is rigged by Silicon Valley to be far left, that’s the only opinion that’s tolerated there. And that’s how these decisions happen.”
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