It wasn’t long ago that sports served as the ultimate unifying force in the world.
However, in recent years, the far-left has obviously used sports to advance their political agenda and divide the country.
That fact was proven yet again recently, as ESPN tried for the third time in a few weeks to spread a major lie to sow racial division before finally issuing corrections.
With a verdict on the horizon in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who has been charged with murdering George Floyd, we have seen an increase in the media’s desire to sow racial division in order to increase the response to any verdict that’s handed down.
Even supposed sports outlets like ESPN, which has recently tried their hardest to spread a lie that is verifiably false, have taken part in stoking the flames of racial unrest.
Less than three weeks ago, ESPN’s Mark Jones twice claimed that Jacob Blake, who was injured when he was shot by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin in August, 2020, was “unarmed.”
The problem with that claim is that it is blatantly false, as Blake himself has admitted that he had a knife during his encounter with police.
“Yeah, I had my knife,” Blake told investigators in audio tapes released in January.
Regardless of that fact, ESPN never bothered to correct Jones’ false reporting.
Then, on Sunday, ESPN NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski, who was obviously emboldened by the fact that ESPN never corrected Jones’ lies, also claimed that Blake was “unarmed” in a piece reporting that the NBA has warned players to prepare for the verdict in the Chauvin trial.
Outkick founder Clay Travis was the first to point out that ESPN had published false information, and at that point, had left it up on the front page of their website for roughly four hours.
This may be giving too much credit to ESPN, by the way, to say this is simply an egregious error. Given the woke sports playbook it’s also possible ESPN just wants to continue to spread divisive lies and doesn’t care about facts at all. Equally as likely.
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) April 18, 2021
Within 20 minutes of that Tweet exposing ESPN’s journalistic malpractice, the outlet edited the piece by removing the word “unarmed,” but refusing to include that Blake was in fact armed.
By simply removing the word “unarmed” but keeping the rest of the piece the exact same and refusing to admit Blake was armed when he was shot by police, ESPN was obviously attempting to avoid being called liars while still misleading the public to think that Blake was totally defenseless and that police didn’t act in self-defense, as a court of law has now declared.
Outkick reached out to ESPN on Sunday afternoon about their false claim, but was told by the network that they would not be commenting on the fact that they published false information.
Upon Outkick publishing a story on ESPN’s refusal to comment, ESPN updated the Wojnarowski piece for a second time, and finally admitted, rather sarcastically, that they “incorrectly reported that Jacob Blake was unarmed when he was shot seven times by Kenosha, Wisconsin, police.”
Of course, even though they admitted that they lied, they still couldn’t bring themselves to accurately state that Blake was armed.
This sequence of events and ESPN’s history with refusing to issue corrections when their network reports false information, specifically with stories that have absolutely nothing to do with sports, makes it hard to not believe that ESPN was actively trying to spread misinformation.
You simply do not have multiple prominent talents repeat the exact same verifiably false claim, and have to make multiple attempts to accurately report rather basic facts, unless there’s an agenda.
Furthermore, this piece was up with either completely false or misleading information for five hours – FIVE HOURS!
Even after ESPN made the correction, the majority of their audience that was going to read that piece had already read false information.
If ESPN truly cared about the truth and didn’t have an agenda, the piece would have been corrected or taken down long before.
Literally no one who read that piece is going to see the correction, which neither ESPN or Wojnarowski mentioned to their millions of combined social media followers after sending the misinformation out to those audiences.
Quite frankly, this entire ordeal simply proves that ESPN is exactly who most people thought they were.
ESPN is the MSNBC of the sports world, as they’re more concerned with pushing a narrative that advances the far-left agenda than reporting actual facts, or sports.
They simply cannot hide from that any longer.
Sports with Balls will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
