Wesley Minke
wm598119@ohio.edu
If I were to tell you to flip on a television and watch sports what channel would you turn on? Your answer likely would be ESPN, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, it proves the known point around media, and sports in particular, that ESPN dominates the world.
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| Photo via https://archives.cjr.org/the_audit/espns_journalism_problem.php?page=all Many sports fans' favorite networks are becoming less and less relevant as ESPN signs more and more lucrative deals with the nations top organizations. This makes it hard for any game to get spotlight when a media giant like ESPN is leaving everyone else in an unfillable shadow. This doesn't just hurt the other networks who want to be able to produce like ESPN. It makes them have to side with companies like ESPN to be successful at all. Often networks will partner up to become bigger, but when sports networks do such with ESPN, it makes them only larger, and gives them more eyes on them at all times. We all love to see independence and variety, but it is growing increasingly more unlikely that we will see much of that in the future with all the underlying obligations many places will owe to each other. This becomes a bigger issue when something cannot be brought to light as it should be, because of obligations to not make someone look bad. Or the opposite of that, where some organizations have an obligation to cover one thing more than anything else. These 3 examples I just listed in the links above show how in the past ESPN has shown bias to teams or even products while on air. It is simply mind boggling, and you would have to be crazy to think they can post these things, and support the things they do, and then independently and freely go cover something that has a direct correlation to what they just promoted or demoted. I just think ESPN in particular, but really all networks need to reevaluate what they stand for, and what really looks best when it is representing an entire company and community. Deciding to breeze past a huge scandal, or not focus on a huge story from a team that is signed under contract with your brand could prove to everyone where you stand. Sometimes things are bigger than business, and independence needs to come into play for us to really be able to see and hear the truth that is needed in the world today. My hope for the world of sports, but more importantly the world of journalism, is that we would stop fearing the what-if's of the world, and we would start doing the job the world needs of us. We have a duty to inform the world of what goes on, and it's about time we pick up on that responsibility and take it for what it is worth. |
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