Today’s media has gotten completely out of control. The 24/7 news cycle is becoming overwhelming. In particular, sports media has become quite ridiculous. Members of the media publish blogs and stir up rumors all the time, when in reality nothing is happening. They cause anxiety for fans, problems for players, hurt team owners and really only serve to benefit sports agents. The constant rumor mill swirls over all sports. In baseball, news outlets reported that the Pittsburgh Pirates were shopping their two top Major League talents. Multiple newspapers reported that Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutchen were being used as trade bait in an effort to rebuild the Pirates team. Instead, nothing happened. The Pirates basically remained the same only adding Sean Rodriguez and George Kontos on waivers after the deadline. These stories are completely fabricated. Hockey and football reporters are slightly more tame, but in soccer, the media has reached the point of ridiculousness. The media in the sport, mainly in England, is off the charts. Some of the things they write are absolute fantasy and purely a product of their wildest imagination.
The British media generally have a tendency to sensationalize everything. They may turn a discussion between a coach and a player during an intense game into a headline reading “Weekend Row between Player and Coach Signals Player Wants Out” for example. That seems a bit extreme, since the writer probably has no clue what was said. These rumors could be damaging to the player and coaches', relationship and force the player to leave the club because of a false situation. They start trouble when there is nothing to talk about with shouts of fire and smoke with no signs of a blaze. All times of the year, they publish article after article with little regard to facts and more focus on controversy to gain readership. There is little basis in fact or accountability to provide readers with the truth. News spreads like wildfire, and so people should take it upon themselves to ensure that they report things correctly when it is their job to report on things.
The main problem is that many reporters want to generate their own credibility and peddle their own opinions as fact. Bloggers and reporters write sensational pieces with little research and barely anything more than their own opinion. They include statistics and a few far-fetched connections to make people worry or get excited depending on whether you support the team losing a player or the team signing a player. Ninety-five percent of these rumors are entirely false. They only serve to get the writer more page views. If the article is based on opinion, writers should write opinion-based pieces which are actually entertaining reads. The can use words that alert the writer of the difference between fact and fiction.
This morning, British media reports linked Belgian midfielder Marouane Fellaini to Juventus if they could not sign French midfielder Blaise Matuidi from Paris-St. Germain as Matuidi was on the plane to Italy to take his medical test for Juventus. There were no rumors linking Fellaini to Juventus yet the media drummed up a story because there was not much else to talk about. They think; Juventus needs a midfielder and a popular British team has an underperforming and poor quality midfielder so why wouldn’t they take trash from Manchester United because we said so. They did not have all the facts. Juventus was completing the signing of Matuidi as they were writing about Fellaini with no facts or sources.
There has to be a way to hold writers more accountable. They should police themselves and distinguish between fake news and real, well researched facts. Headlines pop up everywhere with no true substance or utterly incorrect information.
