Why Local Sports Media Isn’t Biased Against Your Favorite Team

The world of social media has connected us in more ways than anyone could have possibly ever imagined. This has helped in generating some outstanding stories and examples of people working together toward a common goal or initiative. It’s also brought out some of the worst in people and exposed us to a world of really, really bad takes.

Twitter can be a bit of an echo chamber at times, especially for sports fans. Many times we can get caught up in following too many people with the same beliefs and ways of thinking. This doesn’t help us grow as individuals it only seems to validate our own opinions as reality.

When fall rolls around, one of the popular narratives that will rear its ugly head in the social media world is media bias against particular sports teams. Play by play announcers and color analysts are some of the main targets of what can at times be considered no less than harassment from fans upset with their tone during a particular game. Sports journalists who write and broadcast their thoughts aren’t immune to this attack either.

We brought in Andy Garman, KCCI Sports Director, to help us explore the topic of media bias and whether or not it exists. Garman, a University of Iowa graduate, had some really good thoughts on the matter and put things into perspective for both Cyclone and Hawkeye fans.

“It wouldn’t make sense for me to alienate half of our viewers by favoring one team over the other. Ultimately, if we are covering one team that means we aren’t covering another and that is a problem to some fans,” Garman said.

While we had Andy on the podcast, we discussed our holdout in starting Game of Thrones, who the most interesting Cyclone in the world was, and what the future holds for Matt Campbell and Iowa State football.

We thank Andy Garman for taking the time to chat with us and look forward to continuing the conversation down the road.

What do you think Cyclone fans, do sports media personalities show bias?

You can catch up on a couple of recent podcasts below as well.

John Walters, Voice of the Cyclones

Shelby Mast, USA Today Bracketologist