The WNBA has surged in popularity since the arrival of young stars such as Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, hitting a 26-year regular-season viewership high, averaging 771,000 viewers per game. Those strong viewership numbers carried into the playoffs, even after Clark’s Indiana Fever were eliminated in the first round, with Game 1 of the WNBA Finals on Saturday between Reese’s Atlanta Dream and the Golden State Valkyries averaging 2.1 million viewers, the most-watched WNBA Finals Game 1 ever.

However, even as the league continues to set records in viewership and game attendance, veteran sports broadcasters Jemele Hill and Cari Champion can’t help but wonder if its growth is being suppressed by the censorship of journalists and reporters covering it.

“I think there’s some media policies that they need to address,” Hill said on Flagrant and Funny, the podcast she co-hosts with Champion. “Because I think some of them, frankly, are stifling to the growth of the league.”



“I believe in the semifinals, a reporter made note of the fact that the Valkyries, they went three days without media availability,” Hill continued. “I’m like, it’s the playoffs. What are you doing? Every single day, you want people talking about these women. You want them writing about these women. You want all the press, especially during what is your signature time of year.”

Champion pointed toward the stereotype that women can’t handle criticism and the very real aversion franchises have toward being criticized as causes for how the media covers the league.

“A lot of it has to do with the fact that we have heard from critics that women can’t take the critique. And a lot of journalists are tiptoeing around honest stories because franchises, the front offices, don’t like to be criticized, don’t like to be talked about in this way, don’t want to hear what people are saying, the good and the bad. There might be some truth to that.”

Hill recalled an instance from June in which the Fever revoked Scott Agness’s media credentials because he reported on an injury that the franchise wanted to keep under wraps, as evidence that there might be some truth to Champion’s assertion. The WNBA, which is expected to add three new expansion franchises by 2030, will have major changes coming to its leadership, with commissioner Cathy Engelbert stepping down after this season.

Champion is hopeful that the new commissioner will be a better steward of the surging league.

“I think that they’ve used that approach for a very long time where they’ve tried to quietly bully certain journalists and/or people who cover them and, you know, let them know that they’re not welcome to the party if they don’t cover them the way that they want to be covered,” she said. “And you can’t do that, not when it’s growing up, and it’s being big.

“You got to take the good hits with the bad hits. The people behind the scenes, the folks who are working in the communications department, that entire infrastructure needs to have a mind update. This is not the W of 30 years ago. This is the W of today. And technology is different, personalities are different, people are moving different, and you’re gonna have to adjust. And I hope that this new commissioner brings that mentality in as well.”