The Media Is Biased: I Know You Are But What Am I Edition

I had a moment, watching Game 2 of the Phillies vs. Mets MLB playoff series with my wife (and dog*), where I thought, “These announcers are doing a pretty great job consciously flipping back and forth critically between positive and negative thoughts about each side.”

Yes, this is going to be a post about “media bias.”

No, it’s not going to get all whiny about it.

I cherish local-side baseball coverage in the regular season. Hearing the regional network announcers, full of unrelenting bias and loyalty, it adds to the experience.

When we’re out of town and catch a game on TV, I even love hearing their announcers with their biases too. It’s like sampling an area’s favorite foods. It gives you insights about how the locals are wired. It gives you insights to the flavors or weird you can find.

Plus, there’s the ecosystems around fandom. I love imagining how comments and calls are winding up everything from the post game analysis to the next morning’s sports talk radio or morning commute DJs. It’s an audible warm blanket to me somehow. Every conversation-worthy opinion has reach.

Does this mean I’m pro-media bias? In sports—yes? I guess it does. It’s a spoonful of sugar when you’re losing. It’s a cherry on top when you’re winning. The responsibility of the announcers is to the fans. It’s a pure form of analytical fan service, if nothing else because, “you can’t always get what you want.”

Now, the out-of-network games, which—if you’re a fan, you know it as those times when a stranger enters your living room via your TV to call a game, they’re a really weird experience.

Not necessarily bad weird, but they’re strange. Every time. First you have to get over where the onscreen data has been moved to (“I see the score, but who’s on base? Oh, these guys don’t tell you?! Argh, OK, I’ll pull it up on my phone”). But then you have to adjust to how they talk about the game. You miss your people. It’s like a friend couldn’t make it to watch the game with you.

Especially when your friends are people like John Kruk and Tom McCarthy. For my non-Philly readers (which appears to be most of you), here’s maybe the greatest mid-game announcer moment of the 2024 regular season:

You’d get why we’d miss them in the post-season. They’re on our side and they’re part of the experience. 162 games and almost six months out of the year, that’s a lot of quality time.

So when you make it to the post-season, and all the live coverage moves to national from regional, you prepare yourself. Your biased media is out, and a new (national) media is in.

Will they be biased against you? Yes, or at least, maybe. But the real expectation level set we need to remember is: they won’t be as biased for you as you’re used to.

Welcome to the honest impossibility of being considered universally “good” in the post-season, bias-tamped down media reality of calling professional sports.

We root for our home teams. We spend the whole season with media mostly on our side. These October interlopers who have suddenly invaded our living rooms are decisively not from our homes and we know it. But their responsibility is not to the fans of our team, it’s to the fans of the game, and commenting in that style is a different game altogether.

Remembering all that is how I found myself, on our couch, not hating them the other night, but appreciating how hard of a job they have.

It’s a reminder that media bias is definitely real. You can find it everywhere. It’s part of having a perspective, even when you’re reporting straight facts. However, it’s ok to appreciate some bias. It’s ok to look at how good or how bad, or how fair or unfair, or how normal or how weird something feels.

We have to see bias in layers. We have to see bias in ourselves and in others. We have to see bias in terms of what we judge as responsible or irresponsible for our home team and the broader game itself.

I had the moment on our couch where I thought the Fox announcers, Adam Amin on play-by-play, Adam Wainwright and AJ Pierzynski as analysts, and Tom Verducci as the reporter, were doing great work.

They next morning I saw this tweet and knew I was right.

You're supposed to draw larger analogies from this. I won't do it for you. Just please, think about it.

It's all relevant for big games in other sports coming up this November too.

Step back and recognize when your bias is working for you, and when their bias is working against you. All of life is a game, don't forget to enjoy it.

*The dog was mostly watching the hot wings and wondering why that chicken was off limits. It didn’t stop my wife from finding some Buffalo-less goodness for him. At least we know he’s not a Bills fan.