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Jake Garretson
UWRT 1102
7 April 2015
Professor Dagher
Bias Reporting in Mainstream Sports Media
We have all watched the news, watched some sort of sporting event, or seen a
form of sports media. But not everyone notices that in the media there is a bias among the
journalist and that media group as a whole. People do not see behind the scenes and do
not understand that the news is being reported in a way supporting one side of the story.
Some people can see through the stories but in most cases in order to do so you must
have some sort of prior knowledge. I have been watching sports news for my entire life
and I have always noticed the biased reporting and the lopsided ideas conveyed in the
mainstream media. This is because of a long history of watching sports. I believe in the
case of sports media the bias is much easier to conceal and is much more likely to occur.
In todays media, referring to sports journalism, you can see the bias through unbalanced
reporting, a prejudice for teams/race/gender, and by a bias belief of a media group as a
whole.
Now you probably think that this is insignificant and that this in no way actually
affects society but it does in many ways. The media is biased not just in cases of sports
journalism but in all journalism. It just so happens that a bias in sports media is much
easier to pick up on because of statistics and facts. For example there are statistics for
how well a player does throughout a season, points, assists, and rebounds. But when
referring to politics you can not necessarily measure how well a politician does during his

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term therefore a prejudice is harder to confirm. But if we can find a solution or find a way
to spot a prejudice reporter through spots media than we can ultimately use those same
methods for political and other news media.
The most common thought when it comes to media bias is referring to race or
gender or some sort of discriminatory method. I do not believe personally that this is an
example that occurs most often but it is by far the most talked about. Many people will
first think of racism as a form of bias, which is very common, but gender bias is also
another large contributor. First I want to discuss a prejudice when referring to race. Jacco
Sterkenberg, Annelies Knoppers, and Sonja Leeuw discuss the prejudice referring to
Usain Bolt as a male role model and as a black role model in which the prejudice seems
to be directed in the right direction. This however is not one of the negative forms of bias
I wanted to discuss. It is evident that many sports journalist have a prejudice for race but
the media that, projects sports events on live television follows the same trail.
Susan Eastman and Andrew Billings wrote that the commentators during
basketball games would show examples of racial stereotypes. They would typically refer
to African American players as more athletically talented and as someone born with their
ability; they would then refer to white players as hardworking and skilled players. Now
we know that this is not always true, African American players can be equally hard
working and white players can be equally as talented. But the problem may be deeper
than just the comments. Susan Eastman and Andrew Billings suggest that may the ideas
or thoughts could be in the subconscious and they may be unaware of the stereotypes
they have made.

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The other form commonly thought of would be gender stereotypes, which
surprisingly do not seem to be as present in the media other than the lack of coverage on
women sports. Most of the comments on gender stereotypes can be summarized as
women being referred to as inferior to men. But I want to focus on the lack of coverage
on womens sports. In organizations such as the WNBA (Womens National Basketball
Association) or LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association) for example, the amount
of coverage by the press is obviously inconsistent with the coverage of male sports.
The least talked about bias is probably the prejudice amongst sports reporters
when it comes to teams or certain players. Like I said when speaking about gender bias a
lot comes from lack of media coverage and this also applies to a prejudice of teams or
players. Some teams may receive more coverage than others and some teams may receive
coverage reflecting them in a better light than others. Michael Slater discusses media
selectivity in and he states that the media will select what they report on and how they
report about a subject based largely on the interest of the public. I believe that this would
cause the media to report on subjects that they believe have the largest following and
maybe even stories involving the most drama. I think that this can cause the media to
report more on certain teams or players based on their following.
In turn this can cause the reporting to be slanted towards one team. This would
mean that one team or one player will receive all of the reporting and the viewers or the
audience will only receive news reporting on the same subjects. This can be seen when
watching sports news and seeing how the reports seem to trend around one topic or one
teams news.

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That leads me into my next suggestion that unbalanced reporting is a major
problem in the sports media. Dave DAlessio and Mike Allen state that this can lead back
to media selectivity, the amount of coverage each party will see, and an all around bias of
the reporters. They call the amount of coverage each party will receive a coverage bias
and they call the favorability of one party as a statement bias. They discuss the bias in the
media when referring to the presidential election. They also state that a bias is of no
importance or is not relevant if it does not have an influence.
The media has been accused of a bias many times, most cases would be assuming
that the media has a coverage bias and a statement bias. One example would be the case
of Rush Limbaugh accusing the media of reporting only in a positive way towards
Donovan McNabb. In a study conducted by David Niven these statements were proven to
be untrue. But they can be applied to other situations. Many people believe that the media
has a bias towards certain players or certain teams. This would in turn cause them to
report mainly about those teams and with a positive or negative attitude towards those
teams.