By Taylor James Staff Writer
Sports Journalist Howard Cosell once said, “Sports is the toy department of human life.” This still applies today within American sports media.
Many Americans are losing faith with national media. According to an article from Axios, a news website based out of Arlington, Va., Americans’ trust within mass media has been declining since 1972. Only 32 percent have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust with the media. A record high, 39 percent of Americans do not trust the media at all. This poll came out in 2023, so this information and poll is recent with the times. Conservative talk show host Chris Stigall said this about the national media, “Journalism is more about political camps and now people watch through who’s biased. The days of impartial Journalism are over.” Where does sports media come into all of this?
When the Kansas City Chiefs took on the San Francisco 49ers in last year’s Superbowl there were more than 120 million viewers. When President Trump debated Vice President Harris there were 67 million viewers, which is the most ever watched Presidential debate as of now. These statistics were found in an article produced by Sportico, a sports business newspaper. Even though Americans are losing faith within the regular news media they are still tuning in to sports. St Bonaventure and Siena did research on this topic in Feb. of 2023. They found out that out of 3200 people 70 percent of them are sports fans. 81 percent of sports fans were men and 61 percent were women, 26 percent of the sample were “avid” sports fans. Avid, according to the data, means fans that watch sports multiple times a week, tune into sports talk, talk about sports, and are engaged with sports several times weekly.
The NFL just like politicians have an agenda they want to push. The NFL is a multibillion-dollar company and always will push an agenda because people have inherent biases. Nothing can truly be unbiased because everyone is a human being and humans make many mistakes. There are examples of people who can be neutral about politics but sometimes a celebrity may endorse a candidate. Stigall mentioned Patrick Mahomes and liked how he told voters to get registered and stay informed. Stigall also said, “When the NFL weighs in on politics it gets more attention than it used to.” Is the NFL becoming another place where politicians can be endorsed?
Sports media is just another branch within media but at the same time, more Americans are coming to trust what an athlete has to say, rather than someone who delivers the news to them on cable news. Americans are more concerned about what Taylor Swift has to say about a topic now, instead of a well trusted news anchor such as Walter Cronkite. These are the days where Americans need to be aware of what is going on in their world because of all the misinformation that can spread quickly because of new technologies. Americans need to be aware of what is going in their world. Perhaps, they’ll find a voice of reason, somewhere whether it is someone in sports or it could be a friend from church.
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