After her second violation of the ESPN Network's social media guidelines, host Jemele Hill has been suspended.
Her second violation comes via a tweet, where she advised her followers to boycott advertisers of the Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones after he "threatened to bench any player who kneels during the national anthem."
The network released a statement saying that Jemele has been suspended "for two weeks for a second violation of our social media guidelines... she previously acknowledged letting her colleagues and company down with an impulsive tweet." This statement and decision by ESPN displays the consequences of individual actions and how as an individual, one opinion may, as a result, reflect negatively not only on the person, but ESPN as well. Hill's first violation was for calling President Trump a "white supremacist."
If ESPN had not done something to punish Jemele for her actions, it could have put their partnership in jeopardy. ESPN has a deal with the NFL to air "Monday Night Football", which has been renewed until 2021. ESPN pays the NFL around $2 billion annually just for the Monday night broadcast.
ESPN has faced this type of issue before and has even said goodbye to some of their employees as a result. In September 2014 they suspended a columnist by the name of Bill Simmons after he criticized NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell – they did not renew his contract in a 2015 announcement.
To clean up Jemele's mess and have her actions not reflect poorly on ESPN, the network also released a statement saying that her tweets "do not represent the position of ESPN."
Since then, the White House has also called for action to be taken against Hill, to have her fired. The White House has also called her tweets "outrageous" and Trump has even published some tweets directed at ESPN such as, "ESPN is paying a really big price for its politics (and bad programming). People are dumping it in RECORD numbers. Apologize for untruth!"
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