Jake Yono 

6/19/25 

JY Journalism

 ESPN Is A Horrible Example Of What Flagship Sports Media Should Be

The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) has been atop the sports world since its release under Disney in 1979 and they have almost become a monopoly due to its 4 sports networks available on all major cable and streaming platforms: ESPN, ESPN News, ESPN 2 and ESPNU where they host shows, live games, previous games and analysis where they stream all 4 major American sports. It has the largest library of website-only networks, such as ESPN+, featuring shows and podcasts. They also have the largest sports journalism presence in the world, but my critique of this amazing company is that they look at things with the glass half empty instead of the other way around by putting up silly headlines from irrelevant times when other great sports moments are happening and there taking the fun out of sports, meanwhile, I don't think these sports should be treated like this. This company wants fans to see journalists writing about negativity and share it with others to create more tension. They could easily mask this by showing episodes of SportsCenter or the Pat McAfee Show, which are generally positive shows overall. In this article, I will be showing you how they execute this high-grossing business model, but improving on how it should stop focusing on negative things with recent examples. 

Just yesterday, on the first take, one of the headlines was Lebron James commenting on "Ring Culture" on an outside podcast and why everyone is so obsessed with it in the NBA, stating, "We're blaming individuals for losing a team game". I understand if this was after a game or series that didn't go his way, but this was 1.5 months after the L.A. lost to Minnesota in the first round. LeBron can see whatever he wants on a podcast, but ESPN should not be endorsing this and spending 6 minutes speaking about it. Instead, the Florida Panthers won their 2nd straight Stanley Cup the night before, and First Take posted nothing about it; instead, they posted about this. I understand that Chris Russo, Brian Windhorst, and Stephen A. Smith don't study hockey, but that's what they're putting out there 3 times on their pages, while they only posted hockey analyst P.K. Subban 1 time after the Stanley Cup was won for a 1-minute clip. I'm not opposed to off-season content, but this needs to go away. If the "King's Speech" was so important, they could have talked about the Lakers' future and the NBA draft, and they could have tied it into something positive, such as the charity work James is doing or something good. This is ridiculous to post 3 times about and to only post stuff about a Stanley Cup champion crowned the night before, once and talk about it less on the show (Also, this connotation was negative as they only posted blaming the Oilers for losing and P.K. arguing with Stephen A and Get Up did the same thing posting about Conor Mcdavid before this. (Is it McDavid’s fault?). 

Another example of this is outside of television where ESPN sends negative things to get reactions out of people like yesterday I got 2 notification that Grizzlies center Zach Edey and Browns rookie Shadeur Sanders were charged for going 40 over the speed limit and all that's been in the news about Sanders is if he was a waste of a pick or not and his dad complaining to the media about him, nothing about his potntial or development and this is a more postive message because in Michael C. Wright's writeup on this he stated Edey's stats his rookie season and mentioned updated news about his injury (Zach Edey Faces Reckless Driving Charge) but I think this stuff should be handled under Grizzlies team matters and it shouden't be realesed to every fan that has NBA notifications turned on in the ESPN app and the same thing goes with Shedeur Sanders as all NFL fans who had "NFL" news notifactions turned on received this and this is not NFL news in my opinion it's just something for fans to talk about that isen't related to anyhing going on that implies fans to think negativitly. On the show Getup the only thing posted to their social media account was the fight between the Fever and Sun and they talk nothing about other WNBA action just a fight to get fans in the mix that never was there in the first place when again they could have highlighted or posted more WNBA highlights on their show butseeing that the only thing they posted was a reaction to a fight is pathetic.

All of these stories were from June 18th only from the company and every day is like this at the top sports media company in the world while greatness is happening all around sports ESPN decides to highlight these negative experiences which still can be talked about but must be limited to in terms of length on broadcasts, and posting on teams social media. They also should only post crimes when a player gets punishment related to the team participating in competation because then everything has to be adjusted for statistical purposes, but in the offseason, with no punishing issues is a waste of time. Default Positive is an up-and-coming sports media company started by Adam Doucette that argues that sports were made to be fun and ESPN is taking the joy and fun out of sports and replacing it with negativity, harsh criticism, and arguments that lack any context for what's happening within the current period of these athletes of teams. I agree with Adam that this must be changed, and the things ESPN endorses on their page are not the standard of the best sports media in the world, as sports will further turn into political fire already seen on news networks, where no one finds a happy medium and everyone is constantly arguing, and it consumes the whole network. There still must be debate and negative news in sports, but sports were created to be fun and positive, and that's exactly what Adam and I are vouching for. (Default Positive).