Tweet Reveals ESPN Ignoring Viewers' Complaints on 'Too Much Politics'

Despite years of complaints from viewers that the network has drifted too far to the political left, sports news network ESPN seems to be thoroughly ignoring its customers by continuing to delve into politics at the expense of sports coverage. A tweet of ESPN’s video archive page tells the tale.

Sean Davis, active Twitter user and co-founder of TheFederalist.com took a poignant screen shot of ESPN’s “Outside The Lines” video archive page which reveals just how little sports seems to be on the sports network.

Of the seven videos that appeared at the top of ESPN’s archive listings, only two could be fairly termed a sports story with all the rest strictly political coverage.

The first story covers Florida Senator Marco Rubio talking about the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse Act. Following that were two stories featuring ESPN columnist Jayson Stark attacking Major League Baseball for refusing to wallow in left-wing social activism. Then another exploring the anguish of a transgender wrestler who is being accused of beating girls even though she is pumped full of steroids and testosterone, which was followed by a discussion of public opinion of transgender “rights.”

Out of the seven shown in the tweet only the story about the problems among members of the family that owns the L.A. Lakers and the story on girls from USA Gymnastics talking of sexual abuse by coaches even approach actual sports reporting — and even those are not strictly sports stories.

The tweet about the program archive highlights complaints from viewers that the network has become far too political. The grousing from fans grew loud enough for ESPN’s ombudsman, Jim Brady, to make a furtive attempt to address the complaints in a November piece exploring the network’s seeming bias against conservative political views.

In the face of the obvious recognition that fans are getting tired of all the politics at ESPN, though, Brady concluded that there is no problem with the network’s programing. Despite Brady’s self-serving conclusion, though, the network is still losing millions annually.

Early in February it was reported that ESPN is losing up to 10,000 subscribers a day and weeks later it was announced that the network was gearing up to eliminate millions in salaries by planning a big round of layoffs in a desperate attempt to stanch the financial bleeding.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.