{"id":890064,"date":"2026-10-21T22:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T22:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/890064\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T22:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T22:50:11","slug":"wnba-blasted-for-trying-to-bully-journalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/890064\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA blasted for trying to ‘bully’ journalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

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,<\/a> averaging 771,000 viewers per game. Those strong viewership numbers\u00a0carried into the playoffs,<\/a>\u00a0even after Clark\u2019s Indiana Fever were\u00a0eliminated in the first round,<\/a> with Game 1 of the WNBA Finals on Saturday between Reese\u2019s Atlanta Dream and the Golden State Valkyries averaging 2.1 million viewers,<\/a>\u00a0the most-watched WNBA Finals Game 1 ever.<\/p>\n

However, even as the league continues to set records in viewership and game attendance, veteran sports broadcasters Jemele Hill and Cari Champion can\u2019t help but wonder if its growth is being suppressed by the censorship of journalists and reporters covering it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s some media policies that they need to address,\u201d Hill said on Flagrant and Funny, the podcast she co-hosts with Champion. \u201cBecause I think some of them, frankly, are stifling to the growth of the league.\u201d<\/p>\n

\ufeff<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe in the semifinals, a reporter made note of the fact that the Valkyries, they went three days without media availability,\u201d Hill continued. \u201cI\u2019m like, it\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Champion pointed toward the stereotype that women can\u2019t handle criticism and the very real aversion franchises have toward being criticized as causes for how the media covers the league.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of it has to do with the fact that we have heard from critics that women can\u2019t take the critique. And a lot of journalists are tiptoeing around honest stories because franchises, the front offices, don\u2019t like to be criticized, don\u2019t like to be talked about in this way, don\u2019t want to hear what people are saying, the good and the bad. There might be some truth to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hill recalled an instance from June in which the Fever revoked Scott Agness\u2019s media credentials<\/a> because he reported on an injury that the franchise wanted to keep under wraps, as evidence that there might be some truth to Champion\u2019s 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<\/a> stepping down after this season.<\/p>\n

Champion is hopeful that the new commissioner will be a better steward of the surging league.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that they\u2019ve used that approach for a very long time where they\u2019ve tried to quietly bully certain journalists and\/or people who cover them and, you know, let them know that they\u2019re not welcome to the party if they don\u2019t cover them the way that they want to be covered,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd you can\u2019t do that, not when it\u2019s growing up, and it\u2019s being big.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou 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\u2019re gonna have to adjust. And I hope that this new commissioner brings that mentality in as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The WNBA has surged in popularity since the arrival of young stars such as Caitlin Clark and Angel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":890065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[373161,292474,277614,274689,99,434],"class_list":["post-890064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-2026-wnba-finals","tag-cari-champion","tag-flagrant-and-funny","tag-jemele-hill","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/890065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}