Jemele Hill appeared on ESPN’s “Sports Center” on Wednesday, but she reportedly was almost not a part of the broadcast.
Hill came under fire for Twitter comments in which she accused Donald Trump of being a white supremacist, and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders even suggested that she should be fired from her job.
According to ThinkProgress, ESPN tried to kick Hill off “Sports Center” on Wednesday, but her cohost, Michael Smith, refused to do the show without her. The network then reached out to Michael Eaves and Elle Duncan to see if either of them would fill in for Hill, but both of them refused.
–Jemele Hill issues statement on Trump tweet–
ESPN was then faced with the possibility of having to replace both Hill and Smith with white anchors, and they finally relented and asked Hill back on the show.
However, the network has denied this account of events.
“Yesterday was a hard and unusual day, with a number of people interpreting the day without a full picture that happened,” Rob King, the senior vice president for news and information at SportsCenter, told ThinkProgress. “In the end, ultimately, Michael and Jemele appearing on the show last night and doing the show the way they did is the outcome we always desired.”
“We never asked any other anchors to do last night’s show. Period,” ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz said in response to the story.
As for Hill, she has not taken down her tweets, nor has she apologized, but she id issue a statement saying that she was sorry that she “painted ESPN in an unfair light.”