Framing in Sports Media

A lot of the discussion of hegemony, agenda setting and framing in the textbook and during lecture was focused on news and information sources in media.  Something that's less discussed is the influence of these same factors on entertainment media.  I believe you can clearly see an agenda (political, social, etc.) in some entertainment programming, especially in sports media.

Framing of sports media can reveal a network's sport or regional bias, but sometimes it can even extend to a possible political bias.

Take for instance ESPN's reporting on the NCAA Basketball Tournament in 2009.  Once the bracket was released and it came time for people to make their picks, stories came up on ESPN.com about newly elected President Barack Obama's personal tournament bracket.  Apparently the Administration hosted an event at the White House, with many sports journalists in attendance, to witness the President making his tournament picks.  There was much in-depth discussion with the President on his individual picks: why he chose certain upsets, what players he liked to make a difference, whether his picks were politically motivated, etc.  There was a very playful, light-hearted atmosphere about the whole thing.  The article on ESPN.com printed out to five pages with photos and an eleven minute embedded video.

A gushing online ABC News article this year chronicled "hoopster-in-chief" Obama's picks for the 2010 NCAA Tournament at a similar event.  A three-page story (+ embedded video) described the President as "[taking] a little time out" from "perhaps the most critical week of his presidency."  I even remember, when top-seed Kansas lost to Northern Iowa, the SportsCenter lead-in following a commerical break: "The President's pick to win it all, upset in the second round..."

All this coverage struck me as strange because I couldn't, for the life of me, remember a media frenzy over President Bush's tournament bracket.  Maybe, if he did make a bracket, he didn't feel the need for the press to come watch him do it personally.  Maybe that wasn't a priority for him.  I just found it odd that a sitting president could host a media event during self-admitted very difficult times for the country, without so much as a raised eyebrow from a journalist.  Bush certainly couldn't have got away with it if he'd tried.

So why would ESPN and ABC (sister companies owned by Disney) feel the need to extensively report on the President's brackets?  Perhaps the editors and producers found Barack Obama more personally likable than his predecessor.  Maybe it was an attempt to connect President Obama more with the people of America, to show him as an everyman much like the rest of us.  Maybe it was meant as a diversion, reminding voters what they loved about him in the first place, and trying to distract them from his actual policy decisions.  It's not easy to find out what their motivations were, but they clearly reported on it all for a reason.  Maybe we'll never know.

"Presidential pick 'em at the White House"
'Barack-Etology': President Obama Picks Kansas to Win NCAA Tournament
"Barack-Etology 2010"