Fake News in Sports

When considering the topic of fake news and misinformation, I thought about it from a sports journalism point of view. Sports journalism is based in analytics and speculation. The analytical and statistical side of sports journalism is pretty consistent and reliant on physical performances and attributed, counted metrics. Sports journalists may use the counted stats and perceived performances of teams or players to then speculate on future success or future changes. When speculation comes into play is when sports journalism can be taken as fake news, misinformation, or at the very least, heavily opinionated. Sports journalists cannot always be relied on for the most accurate representation or speculation and can most often be biased towards a certain sport, team, league, or player. There are reputable journalists and investigators who are affiliated with trusted, mainstream news outlets like ESPN, Sports Illustrated, CBS Sports, among others, who are trusted to report accurately as news happens, confirming with inside sources. Adam Schefter, who reports for multiple official news outlets tweets and writes stories about confirmed Free Agent signings and completed statistical feats in the NFL. These journalists report on and write about confirmed news and statistical data and tend to stay away from speculating, leaving that to fans and repliers.

However, there is a population of sports journalists and sports news outlets that tend to rely heavily on speculation and the anticipation/hype that they can generate from over speculating in their news stories. Sports speculation is exciting and can entertain many people but there is a fine line between speculating and overhyping and embellishing the story. Additionally, sports journalists who report on speculation can also have ulterior motives or bad intentions. For example, a sports writer in 2009 wrote a story for a popular sports media outlet “confirming” that University of Southern California football linebackers Clay Matthews and Brian Cushing had tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. While there was speculation about these players integrity and about their quick increase in size and performance, the report was actually false as neither players actually tested positive during their final year of college. The story was fabricated based off the speculation of these players actions and it was actually written to damage the players’ reputations and NFL Draft Stock. Although Brian Cushing would later go on to test positive for PEDs in only his second year in the NFL, the fabricated news story pulled on the general public and fanbase’s perceptions to create a narrative that attempted to expose the players but in reality at the time only looked to be false and aimed to create a stir and a bad perception of these players. The story would gain more merit and would be reexamined after Cushing’s positive test 2 years later but the author still made up the fact that they tested positive in the last year of their college careers in order to create a stir and damage the reputations of otherwise hyped up players.