How do you balance conflicts of interest as a journalist?

Michael Roth

 

Inherently, everybody has biases. Whether you want to admit it or not, you have biases. These biases could be subconscious, based on past experiences that you lived through that was different than others. You could be trying to ignore your biases because of a political or personal belief about a topic, company or person. At the end of the day, being subjective and balancing out our own personal biases is something that journalists must learn.

Eventually, some companies become so large that their own conflicts of interest become so hard to distinguish. Take ESPN, for example, in the article provided it shows how much ESPN is paying each professional sports league for television rights and the right to broadcast their highlights. How do you objectively do investigative journalism against companies that you are so heavily invested in? If an ESPN reporter found dirt on a potential story that could bankrupt the NFL, is that story ever going to make it to air? With the amount of potential money loss for both the NFL and the employer of the journalist, it's possible that stories could be swept under the rug.

ESPN used to be something that helped fuel its parent company, Disney. However, recently ESPN has become much less profitable and is now using Disney to continue expanding. With the development of ESPN's financial loss in the modern age of streaming, ESPN is more reliant than ever on the NFL to boost ratings. ESPN has been increasingly positive about the NFL's COVID-19 return season, despite the league facing significantly more positive tests than any other major sports league that returned. If ESPN, the worldwide leader in sports, wasn't so invested in the success of the NFL would their reporting of the most popular sports league in America change?

Some college football stadiums have required fans to wear masks and socially distance at games (Photo: Mobile Sports Report)

The College Football Playoff is ESPN's highest drawing national championship game that airs on the network. ESPN has the rights to this playoff exclusively until 2026. During the summer months of COVID-19, many reporters at companies like The Athletic and USA Today covered the potential consequences of potentially playing college football in the middle of a pandemic. ESPN had more neutral reporting, with little to no talking heads openly arguing for the cancellation of the college football season. 

Now reporters at The Athletic and USA Today did have things to lose, they could potentially lose their jobs without college football this season. But did these reporters have more of a security net, knowing that their employer wasn't depending on the revenue generated from the college football playoff? It's impossible to know how much of a factor ESPN's rights to the college football playoff had on their coverage of this season, but it certainly has played a factor in how the sport is covered.