Christine Brennan, the USA TODAY columnist who the WNBA players’ union said should lose her credentials after a question “designed to stoke racist vitriol,” has responded to an “inaccurate” report that she had filed a complaint against a player.
Brennan sparked controversy then she asked DiJonai Carrington if she had deliberately stabbed Caitlin Clark in the eye during Game 1 of the first round playoff series between the Sun and Fever. When Carrington denied having any malicious intent, Brennan then asked whether Carrington and her teammate Marina Mabrey had laughed about it afterwards – an idea Carrington also rejected.
On Monday, espnWs Sara Spain reported on X that Brennan filed a complaint with the league after Carrington’s teammate DeWanna Bonner approached her about her interrogation.
Spain quoted two anonymous sources as saying Brennan had filed a complaint with the league.
Brennan, who appeared in Spain last week Podcast ‘Good game with Sarah Spain’quickly shot down that claim.
The WNBA players’ union called out journalist Christine Brennan in a recent statement
Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) drives to the basket defended by Suns guard DiJonai Carrington
Brennan revealed that DeWanna Bonner approached her after her interrogation of her teammate Carrington. However, the reporter has denied filing a complaint about Bonner.
“Hi Sarah, this is incorrect,” she said wrote. ‘It’s false. I have not filed a complaint. I have not contacted anyone from the League. Your sources are wrong. You and I have had a long and good relationship and that is why I always enjoy talking to you. Why didn’t you call me before posting this?’
Spain replied about two hours later: to write“Thanks for the call this morning, Christine. While I trust the sources that gave me this information, I wish I had called you last night to get your comments. My apologies for not contacting you in advance.”
During her interview with Spain, Brennan said she and Bonner exchanged a few words after the former’s interview of Carrington.
“I wouldn’t call it, um, heated,” Brennan told Spain. “I would call it a person coming to talk to me.”
Brennan later told CNN’s Jake Tapper that she wouldn’t hesitate to ask Carrington about the eye poke again, telling Spain that people were free to hate her and her reporting.
“There is nothing about me that could let go of the issues we discuss,” she said. “What happened to some out there in terms of their hatred of me is fine. It’s a free country. They can hate me. If this had bothered me, I probably would have hid under a bed in 1982 and never come out.”
Following Brennan’s controversial questioning of Carrington – which has received more than 5.5 million views on X to date – the WNBA players’ union issued a scathing statement against Brennan, whom they named.
“To unprofessional members of the media like Christine Brennan: You are not fooling anyone,” the statement read.
“The so-called interview in the name of journalism was a blatant attempt to entice a professional athlete to participate in a story that is false and designed to fuel racist, homophobic and misogynistic vitriol on social media. You can’t hide behind your tenure.’
“Rather than demonstrate the cornerstones of journalistic ethics such as integrity, objectivity and a fundamental commitment to the truth, you have chosen to be disingenuous and downright disingenuous,” they added.
‘You have abused your privileges and do not deserve the credentials provided to you. And you certainly have no right to interviews with the members of this association or any other athlete.’
The report that Brennan had complained to the WNBA was shared by Sarah Spain, seen in 2019
‘That identification means that you can ask anything, but also that you know the difference between what you are and are not allowed to do. We’ll see you.’
Notably, Brennan is writing a book about Clark’s impact on women’s basketball, and has featured the rookie sensation Clark in her USA TODAY columns this year.
While Clark labeled racist fans “trolls” after her team exited the playoffs, several players have called out her supporters for their racist treatment of them.
On her Unapologeically Angel podcast, Reese talked about how Indiana fans threatened her, followed her home and took AI-generated nude photos of her and sent them to her family members.
And following the elimination of The Fever, Connecticut star Alyssa Thomas was outraged by the racist abuse her team received from Indiana fans during the series. Fans focused on Carrington’s eyelashes, while another had a shirt that said ‘ban nails’ with large fake nails coming out of each finger.
Angel Reese (right) previously said she was the target of racist abuse from Clark fans
No foul was called on Carrington after Clark was caught in the eye. She left the court in pain, but afterwards said it was not intentional.
“It’s been a lot of nonsense. “I don’t think I’ve ever experienced the racist comments from Indiana Fever fans in my 11-year career,” Thomas said.
“We had (Carrington’s) face on a serious thing that happened in this world and it’s frankly unacceptable. And there’s no place for that and we’ve been professional all along, but I’ve never been called anything like I have on social media.”
Still, as Brennan told CNN’s Jake Tapper, Brennan has no regrets about asking the questions she posed to Carrington that have now landed her in hot water with some.
“The best thing I can do as a journalist is try to give the athlete the opportunity, which I have done tens of thousands of times, to answer the question and tell us what she thinks happened,” Brennan told Tapper. “That’s literally it.”
“And as you know, first of all, I would ask that question 100 times out of 100, I would ask it today. The athlete has every opportunity to then take that question and do with it as she wishes,” Brennan continued. . “And she clearly did. So that, I think, is the opportunity that any journalist gives an athlete when you tell a story, to give them a chance to show their side of it.”