Is there Media Bias against Soccer in the US

I doubt soccer has the largest player participation because in addition to being the most popular sports, American football requires by far the most players per team. The newspaper you listed include nationwide papers and four cities, so keep in mind that most Americans are not in those cities. The Wall Street Journal is not where people would look for sports in general. http://nypost.com/sports/ lists the Red Bulls and NYCFC in the Hometown Teams section, while ignoring the WNBA's Liberty (women's basketball). Newsday, which is my local newspaper, doesn't care about soccer much. The sports on TV listings exclude Spanish channels even when they show games in the USA, so when the Red Bulls or NYCFC play on Unimas only, the games aren't listed. Soccer is popular in some places. The Seattle Times website has sections for the Sounders and for the Reign of the NWSL (women's soccer).

 

In short, the answer to your question is YES.

 

On BS and I'm all like:

 

Yes, American media is biased against soccer and against MLS. The media is beset by many other biases, as well, and is largely incapable of self-reflection.

 

No, it's real, unfeigned malice for MLS and its fans.

For example, after Mark Purdy of the then San Jose Mercury News (the paper has since dropped the geographic descriptor) wrote a column a decade ago bemoaning the recent drought of Bay Area pro sports championships (before the recent spate of SF Giants and Golden State Warriors titles), I emailed him and pointed out that he had ignored the 2001 and 2003 MLS Cup titles won by the San Jose Earthquakes. Purdy replied in an email, not shared with the general "reading audience" to whom he was obviously not pandering, that the Quakes' titles were unworthy of mention, being the equivalent of those of the Archbishop Mitty high school girls basketball team.

Purdy followed up his naked bias, and mean-spiritedness, by deriding me, an ordinary reader, for another email exchange in a later published column. The problem for Purdy was that he materially misquoted my email in doing so, the evidence of his fake news being electronically preserved, as I pointed out to him while copying his sports editor and publisher. Fearful for his job, Purdy frantically left me voicemails asking to have coffee, while the sports editor buried a retraction in a subsequent edition and allowed the douchebag to keep his job.

 

There certainly are plenty of these jackasses here and there, but they are getting fewer all the time. This is not just a result of writers in their 60s retiring. It's also a result of writers in their 30s and 40s getting the soccer bug.

25 years ago, a lot of newspaper writers (it seemed to be particularly the columnists who sat back and pontificated rather than the people who covered the games) were writing about how Americans should protect themselves from the hordes of club-swinging soccer fans who were going to invade our shores for the 1994 World Cup. That sort of blatant bashing used to be common. It isn't any more.

Yes, there is "real, unfeigned malice" among some people in the newspaper business, but it's incorrect to imply that this is a general condition covering the entire media. It's no longer the soccer fans in the media who are the exception to the rule. It's the haters who are the exception.

 

That may be true, but the structural legacy of past prejudice remains. At the Mercury News, for example, not only are Mark Purdy and the soccer-disdaining sports editor (Bud Geracie) still employed, but the Quakes' beat writer, Elliott Almond, who is an experienced and highly-professional and soccer-loving journalist, has explained several times to interested fans that the number and placement of Quakes stories, which he has sought to improve, is adversely influenced by the low number of clicks received for those which are reported. Of course, most Quakes fans get their team news from social media rather than the Mercury News because they have been conditioned to expect crumbs, along with outright insults (after Beckham's MLS debut in 2007 one Mercury News writer bragged, "I didn't watch and neither did you"), so it is backwards to blame the customers for the subpar and even at times offensive product.

More troubling still, the subservience to clicks is contrary to the journalistic ethos. News is not defined by what derives the most clicks. As I mentioned above, some self-reflection is in order for the profession, which seems incapable of it.

 

Sports news is a slightly different animal than the rest of the newspaper. The sports section is more about covering what the readers are interested in, whereas the news section is more about telling the readers what they ought to be interested in. I'm not saying this is the way it ought to be, but it is the way it is. Sports coverage is very much dictated by the readers.

What you say about Elliott Almond is a good example of something that happens elsewhere, too. I know someone in at an East Coast paper who used to write great stuff about soccer 20 years ago, but who gave up because he was tired of fighting with editors for space. He'd rather write about stuff that is an easier sell to editors.

It's getting better. It's not as bad as it used to be. However, I'm not expecting it to be as good as I'd like it to be next week.

One thing that doesn't help is that the financial difficulties newspapers currently are in have a big effect on sports department travel budgets. I had an exchange of emails yesterday with a reporter friend who covered the famous US-Trinidad game in Trinidad in 1989. I said, jokingly, that he ought to get them to send him down there for the Oct. 10 game. His reply was "only if I can drive there." This is a guy who in the past has covered soccer games in France, Colombia, Korea and Australia. Very few American newspapers send reporters to places like that any more.

 

The Seattle Times' beat writer for the Sounders was laid off a month after they won MLS Cup. Newspapers are having trouble funding writers dedicated to a single team outside the Bigs.

 

http://archive.seattleweekly.com/news/949417-129/gastineau-sounders-soccer-sports-says-talk

If the new business realities of sports talk in Seattle helped make Gastineau’s decision easy, the amplified pressure for ratings in a suddenly crowded market, and an industry-wide trend to push NFL-dominated content, only solidified it. These days, judging by the ratings, what listeners want is not soccer. It’s football—and as much of it as humanly possible.

“We never talk soccer on the air,” says Grosby of his KIRO show. “Our ratings haven’t been hurt by it. . . . I don’t think soccer fans are your traditional sports-radio listener.”

Likewise, KJR station manager Rich Moore presents a programming plan devoid of the Beautiful Game, despite the approaching MLS playoffs. “We go fast. We’re playing the hits. Right now we’re talking Seahawks, Seahawks, Seahawks, and Husky football.”

It’s not a development Gastineau finds appealing. “More and more competition has led to [more NFL talk],” says Gastineau. “The NFL is just a monster. It’s a behemoth. . . . I hear the guys at KIRO 710 have been told by ESPN in Bristol to talk NFL 50 percent of the show, 365 days a year. . . . I can’t do that. I’m not going to make up stuff to talk about.”

 

In not in an MLS market, but in my area a shock jock is the only sports media who acknowledges soccer, and even then he mostly talks about Liverpool. Last U.S. story he mentioned was the firing of Klinsmann.

 

Currently, there maybe a bias but it's slowly changing into a soccer nation. Next year if the USMNT makes the World Cup local MN radio stations will be discussing the American matches.

 

If the US doesn't make the World Cup, any coverage the MNT gets will disappear into a black hole of irrelevance.

 

The World Cup occurs every four years. MLS is in season nine months of every year. Local papers should to give their local pro teams equitable coverage on a regular, ongoing basis.

 

Sadly, I am in agreement.

 

To the OP, the most dominant sport on our planet has a difficult time getting solid coverage in newspapers here in the most dominant nation on our planet. It is changing over the years but it remains what it is.

Several years back Time Magazine, irrc, ran an in depth article on Messi. Time Magazine apparently has 4 regional publications around the globe. One for Asia, one for Africa, one for Europe/Latin Americas and one for specifically the United States. Each one of those first three issues had Messi's face on the cover of their issue and were obviously going long with Messi and his global appeal. The U.S. (perhaps Canada included with us) issue had some topic on climate change on it's cover. I would bet that Time's thinking is, Messi on cover, sales soar, except in the U.S.. For in the U.S. is where even such a global icon like Messi, his image does little to move their magazine off shelves. So when talking media bias, even Time Magazine looks at the U.S. as the lone culture where soccer legends go unnoticed. Thus, there is the "why bother" reaction and instead of introducing American readers to Leonel Messi, Time's staff pull Messi from their front cover.

 

As a guy who worked in newspapers for 20 years I will say that there is definite bias against soccer coverage in most sports sections and personally from most sports editors and writers I know. I worked in the Seattle area and even there the sports editor was like "soccer is stupid. no one cares" despite the obvious on-the-ground proof to the contrary.

That said, I think it doesn't matter much. Newspapers are increasingly irrelevant in US society. I don't know anyone who subscribes to a newspaper anymore. I don't know anyone who relies on their sports results and/or coverage from a newspaper anymore.

If this thread was about television coverage I think we'd be having a more important discussion. TV remains the biggest gorilla in sports - though one has to think that eventually it will suffer the same way newspapers have at the hands of Facebook, Google, and the Internet.

 

If there's bias against soccer, there are obviously other biases in the media, a fact which matters a great deal. The increasing irrelevance of the media is partly because the general public has caught on to the problem and chooses to discount sources of information previously presumed credible.

 

You can look at websites for American channels that show soccer to see how much they care about soccer compared to other sports:

http://www.espn.com/ (and http://www.espnfc.us/ just for soccer) (has two English channels that show many games, ESPNU which shows college sports and has shown U-17 and/or U-20 FIFA tournaments, ESPNews which rarely shows games, and ESPN Deportes in Spanish; has some United States men's and women's games, MLS, some UEFA WCQs, and some UEFA Champions League some of which is only shown online)

http://www.beinsports.com/us/ (one English channel and one Spanish channel; has La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1, some CONCACAF WCQs, CONMEBOL WCQs, and CAF WCQs)

http://www.foxsports.com/ (two easier-to-get English channels, one Spanish channel, and a la carte Fox Soccer Plus; has MLS, UEFA Champions League, Europa League, Bundesliga, some CONCACAF WCQs, CONCACAF Gold Cup, some UEFA WCQs including England's home games, English FA Cup, Scottish Premier League, and FIFA tournaments)

http://www.nbcsports.com/ (has one cable channel, occasional soccer on broadcast NBC, and two Spanish channels that are mostly not sports; has English Premier League, used to have MLS)

http://www.univision.com/ (at least four Spanish channels that show soccer, includes Liga MX, MLS, some CONCACAF WCQs, some UEFA WCQs, and CONCACAF Champions League)

That is not a complete list.

 

You're not missing anything. MLS has been doing well with ticket sales, but TV ratings are still not where they need to be and the sport is badly neglected when it comes to TV news, local papers, sports talk radio, etc. Even sports highlight shows on ESPN tend to overlook MLS, unless there is a spectacular goal that makes their top 10 highlights. They give more coverage to the WNBA than they do MLS. That needs to change for the sport to truly catch-on.