Where did the Integrity Go in Journalism?

What happened to Sports media’s pride and honesty? 

This has been on my mind for awhile now, and I can't really pinpoint what the main reason for it is? Is it just blatant greed, getting paid to promote an agenda? Is it delusion, are they just not seeing the blatant hypocrisy they are promoting? Is it ignorance, do they just not like researching information that disproves their philosophy? 

I dont know, neither do I think the majority of journalists know either. As much as I want to hate and belittle the sports media that is being produced today, I can't help but think these people are actually just confused with the abundance of information and opinions nowadays. Which is a problem that the journalists with no pride, who worked in big corporations, have perpetuated for the last decade. This led to former players trying to do their due diligence, but don’t know how to distinguish an opinion, bias article, from a statistical, journalistic article. The former player that is scapegoated as an biased opinionated figurehead, when in reality he's trying but is being screwed over by the abundance of fake and misinformation that is promoted by multibillion dollar media companies. Being a journalist in today's day in age, where 50% of the information you read online is either exaggerated, leaving out context, or just a blatant lie. There's no longer anything holding these journalists accountable, so companies now feel free to hire someone who will bring views because of their name, instead of someone who has multiple years of journalistic experience. The mindset of these companies or the goal of these companies is to create as much attraction and attention as possible, so that it brings in engagement, which creates viewership and profit, because that's all they care about, profit. Their goal is not to put out the best, most honest, real information, no, their goal is to create as much controversy as possible so people get mad and interact. 

Why haven’t any former players spoken out about the disingenuous information they have promoted? 

I believe this has more to do with the psychology of the human mind, instead of ignorance. It is human nature that people don't like to admit their mistakes. Happens all the time and is becoming a massive problem, not just in media, but in society. A person would rather ignore the backlash, and criticism because they think they know more, and when it comes to something you're passionate about, you will never want to admit that you were wrong. The prime example of this, is when these former sports players, discredit a fact by belittling the reporter or journalist by asking him if ever played football. That question is redundant, and flat out wrong, just because you have done something at the highest level doesn't mean you're going to know the full ins and outs of the game after you retire. Football is a very visual game, by just watching the game over time and researching about the ins and outs, comparing eras, taking in all the context, politics, of the sport you will end up knowing more than 50% of the people who have a career with these big media companies. However, if a former player also does all those things as well as having the past experience of playing the game at the highest level, their statements will usually hold the most value.

(Example of no integrity in sports media)

The question is, how many of these journalists and analysts do their due diligence when it comes to research? 

I'd argue, most of them aren't even doing their own research, they are getting the credit and paid more because of their status, but I guarantee there's multiple people behind the scenes creating this research. Then it gets misconstrued when trying to communicate to the figure heads, which leads to someone saying the wrong thing and creating a terrible narrative. As a journalist making those mistakes is detrimental because you can’t take it back, that information is out there for good, you may be able to reconcile the narrative, but someone who's ignorant to the majority of media, may stumble across it one day and have no idea that it is completely fabricated. They will then spread to other people who are also probably ignorant to it being fake, and all of sudden you have a whole generation thinking Tom Brady was consider the goat is whole career, but in reality the media and NFL hated him. It wasn’t until he went to another team, and win to finally be considered the GOAT. Therefore, sports is a form of entertainment, just like movies, art, and literature. This means a lot of people are going to have subjective opinions on the teams or players they love. The difference with football is, that it is a sport, there is statistical objective evidence to create an accurate analysis of who the best players are, so when you have journalists share bias opinions it plays into the fans delusion. Again creating a ignorance to all context, and a need to pigeon whole yourself into one metric that fits the delusion. With that though, fans are supposed to be delusional but understand they are being delusional, with journalist playing on the fans delusion, it creates an tunneled mind where you don't even think you're being delusional. You are just quoting a journalist who is supposed to be factual, leading to lack of self awareness,

How can this change?

It never will until the head of these companies start caring about journalistic integrity, instead of money. 

So ask yourself, do the elite care about integrity when it comes to anything in this world, not just sports?