Dan Le Batard welcomed Stephen A. Smith to his show on Wednesday. While Smith has been at the root of several of Le Batard’s bits over the years, the two have talked openly many times about how much they like and respect each other.
As is often the case when a current or former ESPN employee joins the show, Le Batard asked Smith about working for the Worldwide Leader. The two debated the merits of ESPN telling its hosts to stop talking about politics a few years ago.
While Le Batard has always valued the freedom to talk about whatever he wanted, Smith didn’t find the rule objectionable. He said as long as it was applied fairly, it was good for the viewers.
“The rules have to be for everybody if it is truly a rule,” he said. “But my biggest issue is this: When you’re tuning into a sports network, it is not beyond the pale for the consumer to say ‘I expect to hear about sports,’ okay?”
Dan Le Batard countered by saying that capitalism can make the idea of what topics are and are not third rail issues “blurry”. He pointed to the number of companies that broadcast entities do business with that are owned by the governments of China or Saudi Arabia.
Morality is not the measuring stick for ESPN according to Stephen A. Smith.
“The lines are unquestionably blurry, and you’re totally right about that,” he said. “But I think it’s important to understand Dan, it might be blurry for me and you but as a business, it may not be blurry for them. In other words, the line for them is ‘What’s gonna compromise our bottom line? If something is gonna compromise our bottom line, we have the right to take the position we take as a company.’ As an individual, we might disagree with that, but we also chose to work for them.”
