Covering sports today has suddenly become controversial, especially in terms of covering women in sports. Transgenders entering the sporting world have been polarizing and taboo.
One ESPN journalist found herself being fired for covering the subject, but now she is telling all.
This all got started when Lia Thomas made national headlines as a swimmer for the University of Pennsylvania.
As a male athlete, Thomas was a middling performer, nothing special. As a woman, Thomas was winning races and setting school records.
There were also some rather disturbing stories about Thomas' alleged conduct and comments in the ladies' locker room, which only brought my scrutiny as the legitimacy of Thomas' transition.
There was immediate outrage, with the integrity of the sport now in question, not to mention the safety aspects of it for full-contact and combat sports.
Trump added even more fuel to this five-alarm fire after taking office, issuing an executive order to ban biological men from women’s sports.
I have made my position on this pretty clear, believing that if we are to allow transgenders in women’s sports, why even bother segregating sports by gender?
That idea, of course, has been called absurd by my liberal friends, yet they seem okay with random men entering women’s sports as long as they declare themselves as women.
Sports journalists have been arguing both sides of this argument, but one claims she was fired for addressing this.
Samantha Ponder was fired by ESPN, but she has pretty much gone underground in terms of revealing what happened and why she lost her job… until now.
Ponder joined Sage Steele on her podcast and spilled the beans. She covered a story on Lia Thomas, and apparently, the powers that be were not happy with Ponder's narrative. She explained, "I didn’t really think that was going to get much of a response, but it did.
"They were uncomfortable with me talking about the trans women in women’s sports issue and that they weren’t going to allow me to misgender people."
Ponder admits that was not the only reason she was likely terminated, but it was likely the straw that broke the back, so to speak, as ESPN had been making massive budget cuts. After her comments, her salary surely became a focus for a cut. It’s just a shame that a reporter gets fired for telling the truth, especially in this day and age of so much information coming from the mainstream media.
