One recent article that I read on ESPN.com was about two basketball players, Antoine Walker and Eddy Curry, who were robbed in their own houses. The article grabbed my attention because it discussed how black athletes are shown negatively in the American sports media. Citing examples as the Pacman Jones and Michael Vick issues, the author discussed how something like this happened to a black athlete, and since he didn't commit the crime, it did not get as much attention as the other cases.
Although I think that the author was right when he said most of the time black athletes are shown in the media it is in the negative light, I do not think that these two occurrences were downplayed because of their race. These are two mediocre basketball players, at best, who were robbed. If it had been a star like Kobe Bryant or Shaq, I could understand an uproar if people were not informed of that. People get robbed every day and most likely it is not reported, and I feel like it even being mentioned in a news paper is sufficient.
This brings me to the negative news in sports media. I believe that most of the articles that are shown on TV and read on the Internet are over exposed, and mostly negative. I remember just two weeks ago I couldn't turn on a TV without hearing something about Michael Vick. The author of this article mentioned this, and my response is that Michael Vick is the highest paid player in the NFL, and could have quite possibly thrown away hundreds of millions of dollars on a poor mistake, which seems to me and probably most sports fans to be bigger news than a mediocre basketball player being robbed. Is it fair that the viewers and reporters treat the stars like that? No. Since when has news been fair?
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