Just days after USA Today columnist Nancy Armour’s controversial Caitlin Clark column caused widespread backlash, the publication has found itself in another Clark-related controversy. This time, there was a report claiming that the Indiana Fever star skipped the WNBA All-Star Orange Carpet for a salon appointment. Except that was far from the truth.
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“Caitlin Clark skipped the WNBA Orange Carpet on Thursday, opting to get her hair done in her hometown of Des Moines,” Clark Report on X shared a screenshot of a USA Today’s now deleted post.
However, the real reason for Clark’s absence was that she was busy hosting a charity dinner in her hometown through the Caitlin Clark Foundation. The foundation whose mission is to “uplift and improve the lives of youth and their communities through education, nutrition, and sports.”
The story by USA Today seemed to portray Clark as someone superficial. Someone who would give more importance to her hair appointment than the Orange Carpet. Moreover, nowhere in the initial article did they mention the real reason Clark wasn’t able to attend.
However, since the now-deleted post, USA Today released a clarification and made changes to the column, adding an editor’s note about added information. But what’s done is done, and it has gained plenty of backlash since.
The backlash is even greater given this comes just days after another USA Today piece also went viral for controversy. On July 22, Nancy Armour, a USA Today sports columnist, published an opinion piece criticizing Clark’s on-court behavior.
Ahead of the ongoing WNBA All-Star Weekend, Armour wrote an opinion column discussing Clark’s tendency to argue with officials and what she described as “flopping” to draw fouls. However, the most controversial part of the piece was where she attempted to link Clark’s on-court actions to racial violence in American history.
The piece drew immediate backlash. In fact, prominent media personality and Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy described the passage as the “dumbest paragraph… in the history of sports.” There were also widespread calls for Clark to sue the publication for defamation.
In reaction to the backlash, Armour eventually acknowledged that the Emmett Till comparison was “inartful” in a statement on Instagram, and USA Today also edited the piece for greater clarity, adding another editor’s note.
However, Armour did not take a fully apologetic stance. Instead, she doubled down on her broader claim regarding the online abuse directed at other Black players in the league.
While Clark has not addressed the USA Today controversies, she recently spoke to ESPN about media mischaracterizations of her personality.
Caitlin Clark’s Response to Media Criticism Comes to Spotlight Amid USA Today Backlash
While Caitlin Clark has not addressed either of the two recent USA Today controversies directly, she recently spoke about the media and inaccurate representation of her personality in the media. She did this during a sit-down interview with ESPN’s Malika Andrews, which aired on Friday as the WNBA All-Star Weekend got underway.
“I think there’s just like a false characterization of who I am sometimes. And I get it. Like, as a reporter or as a blogger, you can write an opinion piece, and that’s your job and whatever. But at the same time, you don’t know me. We’ve never had a conversation. I get people to have a job to do. But at the same time, don’t make accusations about my character and who I am when you don’t know me.”
In the same interview, Clark also emphasized the media’s responsibility in shaping public narratives and expressed concern about how coverage can sometimes drift away from reality.
“I understand this is your job and this is your profession, and this is what you get to do,” she added. “Basketball is my profession, what I get to do. And the reason I play it is when I step in between the lines, I love it. And that’s what’s so fun about it for me is like, I get to compete. This was always my dream. And nobody should ever try to take that away from me”
This season especially has featured one controversy after another involving Clark. The most notable so far was a foul by Phoenix Mercury forward Alyssa Thomas, which Clark herself addressed in the interview, also stating that the incident should never have deviated beyond basketball.
And now comes the latest controversy, one that was not directly tied to any on-court action at all and instead stemmed entirely from false claims about why she missed the WNBA All-Star Orange Carpet.