Last week was… a week. For fans of women’s basketball (many of whom are progressive, women, people of color, and members of the LGBT community), there was a sense of emotional whiplash as the excitement of women’s college basketball starting on Monday was quickly drowned out by the news of an incoming second Trump presidency the following day.
After an exhausting election cycle, many are left wondering when things will return to “normal,” especially for media consumers, many of whom are growing increasingly wary of the media.
So too, are longtime fans of women’s basketball. Last year’s college and WNBA season was dominated by sensationalist headlines, from speculation surrounding Angel Reese’s early-season absence from the LSU lineup in her final college season, to journalists stoking drama between Dijonai Carrington and Caitlin Clark.
The frustrations many Americans feel in all corners of the media are palpable, as faith in journalism is at an all-time low. And although the metrics of media trust are tested against mainstream media, sports media shares many unsavory characteristics.
Sports media is a symptom of a larger problem across American media: sensationalist headlines and inaccurate reporting are contributing to historic lows in trust in the media. This can be attributed, in part, to social media, where zingers and quips win over substance – and where half of U.S. adults get their news at least some of the time.
However, 40% of those users said that inaccuracy was their least favorite part about news obtained via social media and, according to Gallup, only 32% of Americans expressed a “great deal” or “fair amount of trust” in the media to accurately report the news.
It will surely take a strong cultural shift to wean ourselves off of the clickbait content that has dominated our news cycles for years now, and an even stronger shift to change the way the media operates.
This is especially true for sports media, where writers are often paid in part or in whole, based on how many users click on their articles.
Not only that, but sports and politics share significant overlaps – it’s why we play the national anthem before games, host college football bowl games sponsored by the military, and feature prominent expressions of nationalism and patriotism at sporting events like flyovers before football games. So it’s no surprise that the media covering sports and politics fall into the same patterns when it comes to coverage, even if they operate via separate outlets – especially in a media environment that thrives on division as much as our political landscape does.
This is no accident. Scholars note that politics and political media coverage is purposefully framed as a sport (that’s why it’s called a presidential “race”), because it relegates those who are not in the political arena themselves (aka the voters) to the stands as fans where their agency is reduced to spectatorship – and that’s certainly how the last few election cycles have felt for voters who feel their one vote doesn’t carry much weight in a divided nation.
Political debates have also become a sport of sorts, relying on sensationalist quotes, misinformation, and big names over substance and facts, a modern-day debate format that was originally popularized by sports media talk shows. And while it might be more forgiving for a sports outlet to spice up the headline of an article covering game outcomes for clicks, it’s questionable to use the same tactics in political coverage, where the outcome of an election carries far more weight – and it’s both dangerous and irresponsible for the media to rely on sensationalism in a country where the majority of adults have not obtained any media literacy education in high school.
For a Trump campaign that relied on misinformation, promoting “concepts of a plan” in regards to healthcare policy, and his tried-and-true tactic of decrying “fake news,” lack of trust in the media paired with a lack of media literacy paid off tremendously–62% of white women and 56% of voters overall without a college degree voted for a second Trump presidency.
And because major men’s sports organizations are largely owned by (and cater to) conservative audiences, sports media largely relies on the same media tactics used on them to draw fans to women’s sports.
However, the demographic base for most women’s sports teams couldn’t be more different than the fans sports media is more used to catering to. Women’s sports fans value substance, both in terms of reporting and in terms of the players they support. These fans are less apt to shy away from politics and, in fact, tend to demand more than just stellar plays from the athletes they support–it’s why one of the key areas of pushback regarding Caitlin Clark’s adjustment to the WNBA this past summer was her lack of response to racist and sexist vitriol that began circulating in her name (even if the rhetoric wasn’t her fault). Earlier this year, veteran sportswriter Frankie de la Cretaz reported feeling “unsafe” at a Fever game they attended in Connecticut, in which they and other fans noticed racial overtones in Fever fans’ support of Clark. Specifically, de la Cretaz wrote:
“As the game continued, the woman behind me said she’d seen Sun guard DiJonai Carrington shove Clark and became increasingly outraged about it. Then Carrington fell to the ground, and she shouted, ‘What, did you trip on your eyelashes?’… Then I noticed a woman standing up and dancing to the music two sections over. Her shirt said, ‘Ban nails’ and she was wearing cartoonishly long fake acrylic nails made out of paper on her hands. It was clear that she was mocking Carrington. There were several ‘Make America Great Again’ hats, including a man wearing a ‘Trump 2024’ hat and holding a sign that said, ‘Make Basketball Great Again #22.’”
Sports media must be aware of the incoming political shift, the effect it will have on the American media overall, and how to avoid falling into the same pattern in the coming years. Following the first Trump election in 2016, hate crimes spiked and rose steadily throughout Trump’s tenure until they hit their highest peak in 12 years in 2020. Although the media can’t fully be blamed for that, we can be aware that there’s going to be plenty of sensationalism from the Oval Office over the next four years. We don’t need to add onto the noise.
