Bad Sports Research Paper

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Sports: The Good, the Bad and the Media
Sports play an integral role in many lives. Though, how the media decides to cover them is equally important. Stories can be portrayed under a disapproving or affirming light. People form their own opinions after seeing how the media characterizes athletes and sports teams. This pertains to the way people in the society think. Including sports, look at the songs nowadays, the movies, and even the cartoons children watch influences the way people view the world. Negativity swarms but not positivity. The sports media continues to be consumed by harsh or corrupt findings. While the truth should always remain the most important goal, journalists should not concentrate on only one aspect. Much like the news …show more content…

The poll questioned whether one would be more inclined to read a positive or negative sports story. The options included a story about Tom Brady being arrested or NFL Players raising thousands of dollars for charity. (Vincent, 2018) More than 50 people responded. The results indicated that more people are inclined to click on a negative story. Though the margins were not large. The total percentage averaged around 60 – 40. While this study is adjacent to many others, the alternative number is what’s most surprising. The numbers were expected to be further apart. Yes, this poll stands as evidence for those who crave negativity, but the opposite is equally important. The 40% proves that. This can be compared to the difference between different movie genres the public prefers to see. All sorts of movies are made each year. Entertainment ratings would decrease if all movies had a similar disappointing ending. How is sports media any different? Through the media’s lens, positive, optimistic news is frowned upon. These results verify that sports coverage is lacking content for more of its audience than anticipated. Rankings and dollar signs might be blinding the sports media, but negative bias affects viewers in ways many aren’t aware …show more content…

Stafford (2014) states that journalists are drawn to reporting bad news because sudden disaster is more compelling than slow improvements. To confirm his findings, researchers set up an experiment using a deception tactic. According to Stafford (2014), university participants were asked to come to the lab for "a study of eye tracking" where they first asked to select some stories about politics to read from a news website. However, it did not matter what they read. They were then questioned on what kind of political news they would like to read. (Stafford, 2014) The results of the experiment were somewhat discouraging. Stafford (2014) stated that participants often chose stories with a negative tone but when asked, on average they said that the media was too focused on negative stories. This study then lead to the phrase “negative bias” being shown by both the media and the population. The psychologists' term for negative bias stands as our collective hunger to hear, and remember bad news. (Stafford, 2014) Perhaps continual bad news could be an indication that people need to change what they’re doing to avoid danger and how or where they consume the mainstream headlines. Stafford (2014) concluded that when it comes to our own lives, most of us believe we're better than average, and that, we expect things to be all right in the end. (Stafford, 2014) Conceivably this

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