Everything you need to know about Shaun White sexual harassment allegations

American snowboarder Shaun White won gold in Men’s Snowboarding Halfpipe. But the world wants to know why NBC failed to mention his sexual harassment allegations.

The world watched and celebrated as Shaun White won gold in the Winter Olympics Men’s Snowboarding Halfpipe Final. But NBC’s primetime broadcast didn’t include one element of his journey: the sexual assault allegations that have hung over White for the last year leading up to this moment.

There were two directions NBC could have taken its coverage of White’s attempt to win his third Olympic gold medal over the last few weeks.

NBC could have made it all about White, the snowboarder — how he earned his first snowboarding sponsorship (Burton) at age seven; how he won back-to-back gold medals in Turin (2006) and Vancouver (2010) before placing fourth in Sochi in 2014; how he suffered two nasty crashes in training in the months leading up to Pyeongchang 2018.

But NBC chose to make its coverage largely about White, the person — and, in turn, made him the face of its Winter Olympics coverage.

“Redemption for Shaun White,” its Twitter account screamed after his gold-medal run, which saw him drop back-to-back 1440s for the first time in his career:

The disconnect that resulted was in NBC going all-in on White’s personal history while visibly ignoring the tarnishes on his golden past, highlighted by the sexual assault allegations brought against him in 2017.

There are countless snowboarding competitions throughout the calendar year: the FIS Snowboard World Championships, the Winter X Games, the Grand Prix. But snowboarders rarely catch the attention of the mainstream media — or sports fans — until the Winter Olympics roll around every four years.

And for that reason, many people who tuned in to the Men’s Halfpipe Final on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning were surprised to learn about the allegations against White for the first time on social media.

They certainly didn’t learn about it from the NBC broadcast, which had Mike Tirico, who has his own long history of sexual assault allegations, sit down with White to talk about his “redemption” — on the halfpipe and only on the halfpipe.

What, exactly, is White accused of doing, and what, exactly, happened to him as a result?

Lena Zawaideh is the former drummer of White’s band, Bad Things. In 2017, she brought a lawsuit against White alleging he breached their contract for failing to pay her salary. She later added sexual harassment allegations  to her suit, included instances of White “sending her sexually explicit and graphic images, making vulgar sexual remarks and other crude behavior.”

White denied the harassment allegations in a statement: “Many years ago, I exchanged texts with a friend who is now using them to craft a bogus lawsuit. There is absolutely no coincidence to the timing of her claims, and we will defend this vigorously in court.”

In May 2017, White and Zawaideh did eventually reach a settlement out of court. The terms of the settlement have not been released.

As the world celebrated White’s win, many on Twitter expressed their discomfort with NBC’s complete glossing over of this crucial storyline. While it’s unlikely the network could not have handled the story in a way that would have been satisfactory to anyone, choosing to ignore it outright was a misguided strategy.

After the Halfpipe Final, White gave a press conference, where, to his credit, ABC’s Matt Gutman gave White an opportunity to address the allegations. After all, NBC’s entire broadcast was built around the concept of White as a person, not as a snowboarder, so why shouldn’t the rest of the press feel free to ask questions in that same vein?

In that press conference, however, not a single female reporter was called on to answer a question.

That in and of itself is a problem, of course. But perhaps an even bigger problem? White and/or his press team assuming that any female reporter in attendance would be asking White about the allegations.

This female reporter, for one, would have asked him about landing back-to-back 1440s for the first time in his career.

In the second-day story pipeline, ABC and CBS have continued to explore the issue thoughtfully. After all, as much as the world may want to see things in black-and-white, there’s a hell of a lot of gray here, and we should be able to talk about that gray area respectfully, thoughtfully and intelligently.

NBC, however, is sticking to the party line:

Next: Shaun White's messy 'redemption' tour, on and off the halfpipe