THE BOTTOM NEWS STORY OF THE DAY.

A Washington Post reporter called Ben Strauss files it.  "A reporter keeps asking about Caitlin Clark. Players want her banned."

It's the usual Culture Wars stuff.

One day last week, with her team, the Connecticut Sun, in a first-round playoff series against WNBA star Caitlin Clark’s Indiana Fever, guard DiJonai Carrington was surrounded by a group of reporters. Carrington had swatted Clark in the face while reaching for the ball in the previous game, leaving her with a black eye.

USA Today columnist Christine Brennan had a question: Did you do that on purpose?

Brennan followed up: Were you laughing about it later in the game?

“I just told you I didn’t even know I hit her,” Carrington said.

The exchange came at a thrilling but tense moment for the league, which has long been powered by women of color but has seen its recent success largely attributed to Clark. The attention on the league has never been greater, but players during the series were subject to upticks in online harassment, and security was added at Connecticut’s home arena.

It was with this backdrop that the questions didn’t sit well in the Connecticut locker room, and a few minutes later, the Sun’s DeWanna Bonner confronted Brennan.

Brennan repeatedly tried to introduce herself and explain what she said as Bonner implored the columnist to treat her teammates like humans. After nearly two minutes of mostly talking past each other, Bonner returned to the locker room. (Brennan confirmed the confrontation to The Washington Post.)

Brennan, who is working on a book about Clark and routinely appears on TV, approached the other reporters and remarked that something like that wouldn’t happen in the NFL. She asked why the WNBA was so sensitive and told multiple reporters that if anyone had questions about her awareness of the racial dynamics at play, they should read her coverage of former NFL quarterback and activist Colin Kaepernick, among other work stretching back decades. (Brennan is White; Carrington is Black.)

Three days later, the Women’s National Basketball Players Association issued a statement calling for the league to revoke the credential of Brennan, one of the most recognizable sports journalists in the country.

“To unprofessional members of the media like Christine Brennan: You are not fooling anyone. That so-called interview in the name of journalism was a blatant attempt to bait a professional athlete into participating into a narrative that is false and designed to fuel racist, homophobic, and misogynistic vitriol on social media. You cannot hide behind your tenure,” the statement read. It added: “You have abused your privileges and do not deserve the credentials issued to you.”

Good grief.  That sounds like your typical campus struggle session, with the reporter taking the place of the professor, and the players' union taking the place of the student protest community du jour,  right down to the accusations of thought crimes, the "hide behind your tenure," and the accused reporter pointing to her civil rights bona fides, which might or might not justify the fact-checking she was engaging in.

What's more amusing is that people in women's basketball are suggesting Christine Brennan is fangirling for Caitlin Clark the way any number of Washington journalists fangirl for Flibbertigibbet.

Brennan, 66, is a pioneer in sports journalism. She was the first president of the Association for Women in Sports Media in the 1980s (when she worked for The Washington Post). She remembers going to her editors and asking why the paper didn’t cover the major women’s golf tournaments or the women’s Final Four - and promptly got some of those assignments.

“I cannot tell you the number of times my male colleagues - and some of them dear friends - have teased me or ridiculed me for my coverage of women’s sports,” she said.

Brennan said her upcoming book, “On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports,” is “unauthorized” and that she has not done a sit-down interview with Clark. It’s expected to be published next season. Its scope goes beyond Clark, but she is its driving force.

Clark helped the league secure a huge increase in its new broadcast deals and her games have set attendance records and driven TV ratings spikes. Fox Sports executive Mike Mulvihill posted on social media recently that the audience for Clark’s national TV games during the regular season averaged 1.178 million but was 394,000 for all others.

Still, some reporters and league stakeholders have bristled at what they see as the narrowness of Brennan’s coverage, which has focused almost exclusively on Clark. Reporters pointed to an April column in which Brennan asked why players are “frosty” toward Clark. And she was deeply critical in stories, on TV and on social media about Clark being left off the U.S. Olympic team.

Brennan wrote another piece from the Olympics after the U.S. team advanced to the gold medal game, headlined: “US women’s basketball should draw huge Paris crowds but isn’t. Team needed Caitlin Clark.” The announced attendance was 11,919, only around 300 fewer fans than the U.S. men’s semifinal comeback victory against Serbia the day before.

Brennan said she did not write the headline and agreed it was misleading. She said the column itself highlighted the lack of media attention and VIPs at the game, adding: “The whole point of saying Caitlin Clark should have been on the team was to bring eyeballs that this team so deserves that it just never gets.”

“Her coverage has gone way beyond what is normal,” said Gregory Lee Jr., a former editor at the Athletic and professor at Loyola University New Orleans, who said he wouldn’t speak with Brennan for her book even though she reached out. “The way she’s covering Caitlin Clark, you’re asking, ‘Is she Caitlin Clark’s PR agent?’” (Lee is a former editor at The Post.)

Added Terrika Foster-Brasby, the sideline reporter for the Connecticut Sun: “I think it’s wonderful she wants to write a book on Caitlin Clark, but I do think it’s a gross misuse to use those media availabilities to gather content for your book and make players uncomfortable.”

That close is amusing.  Ask yourself whether sports reporters interviewing coaches after a loss or political reporters interviewing favored politicians ask the easiest questions.  And for goodness sake, maybe Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark and DiJonai Carrington will suit up on the same Team USA in future.  "Leave all the WWE Smackdown hype and any Culture Wars stuff out of it and let the kids play."