ESPN and the Hostile Media Effect

Abstract

Recent layoffs at sports media giant Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) have caused some commentators to question whether the network’s forays into social and political commentary are at the heart of shrinking revenue streams. Several conservative political commentators have accused ESPN of a liberal bias in their recent coverage of social issues within and related to sport. This study examined the political perception of ESPN by audiences, by applying a perceptual theory of communication known as the hostile media effect. Prior research of the hostile media effect has found that audiences with strongly held beliefs subjectively perceive media bias relative to their own beliefs, whether or not any actual bias is being demonstrated by the media source in question. Through a nationwide survey, study subjects were asked about their political leanings, media consumption, and views on ESPN. Statistical analysis found that individuals with conservative political leanings were more likely than others to view ESPN as hostile to their political beliefs, and those who perceived ESPN as hostile media were less likely to trust ESPN to cover social and political issues fairly.

Keywords

hostile media effect ESPN politics bias television

In late April 2017, sports media industry behemoth Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) laid off more than 100 well-known employees, including long-time reporters, analysts, and commentators (Harris, 2017). This was the second major round of layoffs for ESPN in a short period of time, as the company had previously laid off approximately 300 personnel in late 2015 (Drape & Barnes, 2017). The newest round of layoffs surprised media observers, many of whom had assumed that ESPN’s financial might had insulated it from the kind of belt-tightening that much of the rest of sports media industry had endured over the previous decade.

There were legitimate financial concerns that led to the layoffs. A New York Times article cited a loss of more than 10 million cable subscribers, impacting ESPN’s bottom line at a time when they had committed nearly US$35 billion in rights fees to the National Football League (NFL), NBA, and College Football Playoff (Drape & Barnes, 2017). ESPN’s unique revenue structure has always rested on the dual streams of advertising dollars and subscriber revenues, from which ESPN receives more than US$7 per subscriber, the highest in the cable television industry (Vernon, 2017).

Multiple media commentators seized upon the ESPN layoff news to allege that the network’s financial difficulties and falling subscriber rate were a direct result of the company’s recent forays into mixing sports with politics (Strauss, 2017). Included in these forays were the network’s decision to give an athlete award for courage to Caitlyn Jenner, a retired Olympic decathlete, who had recently revealed her identity as a trans woman, the network’s extensive coverage of Michael Sam, the first publicly gay player to be drafted in the NFL, and their coverage and support of NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, whose refusal to stand for the U.S. national anthem caused significant and nationwide controversy.

ESPN’s television coverage of these and other topics has demonstrated a political perspective that the network’s leadership appeared to admit in late 2016, couching it in a promotion of the values of diversity and inclusion (Brady, 2016). Many conservative political commentators have accused ESPN of politicizing sport and of refusing to “stick to sports” by inserting a perceived liberal bias into its coverage of certain sports and social issues (Freddoso, 2017; McLaughlin, 2017). Some sports media commentators drew a direct line between ESPN’s purported shift to left-wing political commentary and coverage and the network’s struggles with its current business model (Travis, 2017; Whitlock, 2017).

ESPN found itself at the center of yet another politically charged controversy in mid-2017. The New York Times reported in August 2017 that ESPN pulled announcer Robert Lee from play-by-play duties of a University of Virginia football game (Haag, 2017). ESPN made the move out of a fear that the similarity of Lee’s name to Confederate General Robert E. Lee, would prompt “social hectoring and trolling” (Deitsch, 2017, para. 10) in light of the events earlier in the month at a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, home of the University of Virginia (Wong, 2017). According to the Times, the incident was “the latest episode of the cultures wars to wash into sports, and the news media that cover it…” (Tracy, 2017, para. 1). The charge that ESPN’s move was motived by fear of offending people was popular among conservative circles (Travis, 2017) and from many independent outlets (Deitsch, 2017; Grossman, 2017). According to the Times, the incident “…provide[d] new fodder for those who accuse ESPN of liberal bias, a charge leveled this year after the network laid off dozens of employees” (Tracy, 2017, para. 11).

As is apparent from their changing reactions to the perception of their content, ESPN appears sensitive to these accusations, including the commissioning of a private research study to evaluate the claims that the network has lost viewership because of liberal biases in coverage (Blyn, 2017). ESPN’s research claimed that only 30% of viewers saw a political bias in ESPN’s coverage, but of that number, 63% saw a liberal bias, versus 30% who saw a conservative bias (DeCosta-Klipa, 2017). With that said, a longtime member of ESPN’s talent circle, anchor Linda Cohn, stated on a radio show that she believed viewers were becoming turned off and disengaged from the network by political insertions into sports coverage (Withiam, 2017). In early 2017, former ESPN tennis commentator Doug Adler sued the company for branding him a racist after they fired him for comments he made about Venus Williams. Adler alleged the firing was a result of political correctness run amok (Gaydos, 2017). Furthermore, ESPN’s ombudsman noted that ESPN employees of all political stripes worried that the company’s politics had become too apparent and that conservatives in the company “feel the need to talk in whispers” (Brady, 2016, para. 14).

Political and social issues have increasingly entered into sports media commentary, and both this commentary and the media and audience reaction to this commentary have become phenomena deserving of scholarly inquiry. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the audience perceptions of ESPN from a political and social perspective.

Literature Review

The attention paid to ESPN’s political stances and the effects those stances may be having on their subscriber numbers is relatively new in sports media but fairly standard in the world of political media. The first decade-plus of the 2000s has seen a shift in the way that news and issues are reported, with coverage often taking a much more partisan approach than in previous decades. As noted by Feldman (2011),

The proliferation of opinion and overt partisanship in cable news raises questions about how audiences perceive this content. Recent research has examined how the expected ideological leanings of cable network “brands” like CNN and Fox cue audiences to perceive news bias even when none exists. (para. 6)

Feldman goes on to note that for many cable news outlets, point-of-view-based news coverage is a business and ratings decision that yielded success. Travis (2017) argues that ESPN’s shift into obvious political stances is a business decision and that it has backfired against the company.

Hostile Media Bias

Perception of certain media as “hostile” has been studied and observed in other media contexts in the past. Hostile media bias, or the hostile media effect (HME), is a perceptual theory of communication which argues that individuals with strongly held beliefs or attitudes subjectively perceive media bias relative to their own beliefs, regardless of whether any actual bias is being demonstrated by the media in question (Hwang, Pan, & Sun, 2008).

Vallone, Ross, and Lepper (1985) were the first to document a type of motivated reasoning in news consumption which they called the hostile media phenomenon. According to Perloff (2015), the HME is a phenomenon wherein various groups view the same media content in different ways. As Perloff points out, this occurrence often happens when individuals view media as biased against their point of view and in support of a contending view. Lee (2005) defines the HME as “…supporters of an issue or group tend to believe that media favor their opponents” (p. 45). Furthermore, Perloff (2015) wrote of the HME’s enduring relevance in media research:

The hostile media phenomenon is riveting because it captures a petulant, paradoxical aspect of human behavior that seems to fly in the face of social reality: the abiding belief on the part of partisans from opposing sides that their view (and only their view) is correct. (p. 703)

HME is a response to perceived media bias, rather than a direct effect (Perloff, 2015). Hansen and Kim (2011) add that when the HME is strongest, it can aggrieve partisans who “may take extreme or aggressive action when they believe they are treated unfairly in the news media” (p. 170). Within the political realm, these reactions can take the form of more devotion to political participation, outward defiance of political norms, or public withdrawal (Perlorff, 2015). According to Hansen and Kim, the HME is not only limited to partisans but can also manifest itself on an issue-by-issue basis.

The amount of attention individuals pay to an issue may not impact how negatively they view the coverage (Gunther & Christen, 2002; Hansen & Kim, 2011), though involvement does impact the magnitude of HME (Hansen & Kim, 2011). In-group mentality may also color the lens through which people discern media bias (Coe et al., 2008). The terms involvement and partisan are often used interchangeably by scholars when discussing the attitudes exhibited by individuals exhibiting the HME (Hansen & Kim, 2011; Vallone, Ross, & Lepper, 1985), though Perloff (2015) argues for a stronger focus on issue salience for an individual rather than the more difficult to conceptualize term of involvement.

As Coe et al. (2008) note, there are two types of hostile media theory: absolute and relative. In the case of absolute effects, the assumption is made that the media content is neutral. By contrast, relative effects occur when media content is legitimately biased. In relative HME, divergent points of view still see the content as biased, but in the same direction. Additionally, strong partisans from different points of view, while agreeing the content is biased, will still perceive the content as more unfavorable to their point of view. Gunther and Christen (2002) found that even when measuring perception of slanted coverage, strong partisans still found the slant opposed to their own position. As Perloff (2015) points out this relative, HME is a more “nuanced view of media bias” (p. 707) and the strength of the perception of bias is still related to the individual’s degree of partisanship.

As Lee (2005) points out, the HME is not about media bias itself but about the perception of media bias among certain audiences. Lee’s approach of examining general bias perception focused on whether bias is created by ideology and influences perceived coverage patterns. Lee’s (2005) research also examined how strength of partisanship, political cynicism, personal, and political cynicism impacted an individual’s trust or distrust of the media. Findings indicated that the strength of an individual’s partisanship made them more likely to perceive media bias, while politically cynical individuals and personally cynical individuals were also more likely to perceive media bias. The HME explains the negative, ego-driven reaction that individuals with strong political feelings have toward media coverage that presents facts they inherently disagree with. This disagreement leads to the individual rejecting the authenticity of the source (Hovland, Harvey, & Sherif, 1957; Perloff, 2015).

The fact that much of the criticism of ESPN’s political excursions has emanated from conservative media echoes a pattern observed in perceptions of bias and hostility in political media. Prior research has demonstrated that the more conservative people are politically, the more likely they are to think that the media are biased and hostile (Lee, 2005; Lin, Haridakis, & Hanson, 2016). Watts, Domke, Shah, and Fan (1999) found that claims of liberal media bias were influencing public opinion on whether the media was liberally biased and that news coverage that discussed potential media bias was dominated by conservative political candidates, officials, and supporters.

Kim and Billings (2017) recently looked at how strength of nationalism and outcome of a sporting event impacted the hostile media perception by conducting an experiment wherein subjects were given altered newspaper articles. Some of these articles were made to appear as if they came from domestic newspapers, while others were manipulated to appear as if they came from foreign outlets. Their results concluded that the tenor of the news—whether the result was a win or loss—had more of an impact on hostile media perception than nationalism, though feelings of nationalism still had an effect. Kim and Billings also recommended the use of a sport fandom measure in future hostile media studies.

While the original conceptualization of hostile media bias presupposed a neutral press with unbiased coverage, later scholars found that perceptions of hostile media existed even when some degree of bias existed in the media content at hand (e.g., Gunther, Christen, Liebhart, & Chia, 2001; Lee, 2005). We do not assume that ESPN is fully objective, due to the social and political content choices that are highlighted in the introduction of this piece. Therefore, this study evaluates ESPN and the HME through the lens of relative effects. Adapting the thoughts of Feldman (2011) as they related to political coverage, based on the relative hostile media perception, both liberal and conservative ESPN viewers could perceive liberally slanted coverage by ESPN as biased against conservative viewpoints, but liberals would perceive this coverage as less biased than would conservatives.

Hypotheses and Research Questions (RQs)

A series of hypotheses and RQs guide this examination into ESPN and the HME. The first is how an individual’s political ideology affects the perception of ESPN as a biased entity. The prior literature and media coverage of the network support a directional Hypothesis 1 (H1): The extent to which one self-identifies as politically conservative will positively predict perceptions of hostile media bias by ESPN.

The next hypothesis focuses on how perceptions of ESPN’s hostile bias affect an individual’s level of trust in ESPN to cover social and political issues fairly. The prior literature supports a directional Hypothesis 2 (H2): The extent to which one perceives ESPN as having a hostile political bias will negatively predict an individual’s level of trust in ESPN to cover social and political issues fairly.

A related Research Question 1 asks whether political ideology affects the perception of political slant within ESPN’s coverage of social and political issues.

The last RQs ask whether an individual’s level of media exposure affects the perception of ESPN as trustworthy (Research Question 2), whether an individual’s self-identified interest in or knowledge of politics affect their perceptions of ESPN as trustworthy (Research Question 3), whether an individual’s personal or political cynicism affected their perceptions of trustworthiness on the part of ESPN (Research Question 4), and if perception of ESPN’s trustworthiness varies by level of fanhood or favorite sport (Research Question 5).

Method

An online survey was conducted in June 2017, during a period of time when ESPN’s perceived political bias had received recent media attention. The survey was designed via Qualtrics, and the survey utilized Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) service to recruit participants from across the United States. It has been demonstrated that MTurk provides a diverse sample that is as reliable as other data collection approaches (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). Participants were provided a small monetary compensation for completing the survey instrument, which they received through the MTurk system after entering a completion code. The survey ran for 2 days, at which time a sufficient number of responses were recorded. After cleaning the data set to remove incomplete submissions and to ensure that respondents were residents of the United States, the survey was found to have generated 470 valid responses.

The survey instrument asked respondents for demographic information relating to age, education, gender, race, and income. Subjects were also asked to identify the number of days a week they watch ESPN, news shows in general, and political opinion shows in general. Subjects were asked to rate their interest in politics on a 7-point Likert-type scale with 0 indicating not at all interested and 7 indicating extremely interested. Based on Lee (2005), two additional questions relating to dimensions of personal cynicism (most people are honest) and political cynicism (an honest person cannot get elected to office) were included and measured on a 5-point Likert-type scale with 1 labeled as strongly agree and 5 labeled as strongly disagree. It was decided to further extend the collected data relating to political information by asking an additional question. Being politically informed was measured through a sliding scale with the question “On a scale of 0–100 how informed would you say you are about the political issues of today?”

Respondents were also asked to identify their political beliefs, using two distinct measures. One measure used traditional American political labels and asked for self-identification on an 8-point Likert-type scale anchored by extremely liberal and extremely conservative, with an option labeled “Don’t know/haven’t thought of it” at the end of the scale. This scale was derived from Hwang, Pan, and Sun (2008). A separate second measure attempted to evaluate political conservatism on an instrument known as The 12-item Social and Economic Conservatism Scale (SECS). This scale utilizes a series of 12 issues, 7 social and 5 economic, to measure levels of overall political conservatism (Everett, 2013). When thinking of political ideology, it is helpful to understand that not all individuals who choose to self-identify on the liberal/conservative dichotomy always fall in line with the expected political behaviors congruent with that self-identification (Conover & Feldman, 1981). For example, individuals may consider themselves nonreligious but identify as a conservative, or a self-identified liberal may support a more conservative position such as limited government. For these reasons, both the self-identification question and the 12-item SECS were used to assess participants’ political ideology. Both of the SECS subscales were separately summed and averaged, and the SECS as a whole was also summed and averaged, yielding one scale total and two subscale totals for each respondent. Lee (2005) also computed correlations between lifestyle choices and ideology. The current study used correlations between lifestyle items on the SECS and HME scores to see whether Hanson and Kim’s (2011) variance by issue would emerge.

Additionally, respondents were asked two questions related directly to ESPN’s coverage of social and political issues. One question asked “Which of the following do you think best describes ESPN’s coverage of sports-related social issues?” with a 5-point Likert-type scale anchored by strong liberal bias and strong conservative bias. The other question asked for responses to the statement “ESPN can be trusted to cover social and political issues fairly,” with a 5-point Likert-type scale anchored by strongly disagree and strongly agree.

Finally, as suggested by Kim and Billings (2017), respondents were asked two questions relating to fandom. The first question asked them to identify which sport their favorite team participated in, utilizing a categorical variable that provided respondents with a choice of the five most popular sports in the United States (e.g., football, basketball, baseball, soccer, and hockey; Luker, 2011), as well as an option for other. The second question asked respondents to rate their self-perceived level of fandom on a scale of 0–100.

Hostile Media Bias

We measured hostile media bias with an index adapted from prior HME studies, including Lee (2005), Hwang et al. (2008), and Lin, Haridakis, and Hanson (2016). Respondents rated their agreement (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) to 3 items evaluating their perceptions of ESPN’s willingness to give opposing political viewpoints too much air time, perceived bias and hostility against the respondent’s held political beliefs, and perceptions of ESPN being influenced by political special interests. Responses to these 3 items were summed and averaged to produce a single index score. The 3 items of this HME index were evaluated for scale reliability. The Cronbach’s α from the analysis was .845, indicating a reliable scale.

An ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple regression analysis was performed with the 3-item HME as the dependent variable. The independent variables of age, education, gender, and household income were entered first to judge their impact on perception of ESPN’s bias (Model 1). Then, the independent variables of ESPN viewership, news show viewership, political opinion show viewership, interest in politics, personal cynicism, political cynicism, and self-identified political ideology were entered (Model 2). Lastly, the same independent variables in Model 2 were entered again but with the 12-item SECS score instead of the self-identified political ideology score (Model 3). This approach mirrored the HME-related work of Lee (2005).

Results

Demographic results for the survey sample found a mean age of 33.97 (SD = 10.750), with a range of 18–74. The majority (53.8%) of respondents indicated that they had received a 4-year college degree or better, with 89.4% indicating at least some college completed. The sample was 62.3% male and 37.7% female. Whites made up the majority (74.5%) of the sample, with Black/African American (11.5%) and Asian (7.9%) comprising the next two largest racial groups. The median reported household income was US$50,000–59,999 per year.

On the traditional 8-point political scale, 106 respondents (22.6%) self-identified as moderate, while 44.9% identified as slightly liberal, liberal, or extremely liberal, and 31.5% identified as slightly conservative, conservative, or very conservative. Only five respondents (1.1%) indicated that they did not know their political beliefs. Utilizing the 12-item, issue-oriented SECS, the mean value for social and economic conservatism was 56.27 (SD = 19.793) on a scale of 0–100, with a slightly lower mean (M = 55.5) for the social subscale and a slightly higher mean (M = 57.5) for the economic subscale. Scores closer to 100 indicate a higher degree of conservatism, while scores closer to 0 indicate less.

The lowest individual mean of the items in the HME index was from ESPN is hostile to my political viewpoints (M = 2.73, SD = 1.180), followed by ESPN gives too much airtime to political viewpoints that I disagree with (M = 2.83, SD = 1.104) and ESPN is influenced by powerful special interests that I oppose politically (M = 3.03, SD = 1.191).

Table 1 presents the results from the three OLS regression models. Hypothesis 1 stated that self-identifying as a political conservative would lead to a higher perception of hostile media bias by ESPN. This hypothesis was confirmed when political beliefs were determined by self-selection (β = .391, p < .001) and when determined via the issue-based SECS (β = .327, p < .001). The more conservative a person is, the more likely they are to perceive a media bias from ESPN. The second model demonstrated a significant regression equation, F(11, 458) = 10.481 p < .001, with an R ² of .201. The second model also demonstrated a significant regression equation, F(11, 453) = 7.519, p < .001 with an R ² of .154.

Table 1.

Factors Affecting Perception of Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) Media Bias.

	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3
Variables	β	β	β
Age	.003	−.046	−.038
Education	−.059	.000	−.018
Gender	−.045	−.039	−.061
Household income	.067	.008	.020
News consumption		−.089	−.142*
Political opinion consumption		.070	.114*
ESPN consumption		−.084	−.109*
Interest in politics		.128**	.056
Personal cynicism		−.016	.039
Political cynicism		−.182***	−.168***
Political beliefs		.391***
SECS			.327***

Note. SECS = Social and Economic Conservatism Scale.

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Hypothesis 2 posited that a greater level of perception of ESPN as politically hostile would negatively predict an individual’s level of trust in ESPN to cover social and political issues fairly. A significant regression equation was found, F(1, 468) = 142.322, p < .001, with an R ² of .233. The higher the level of HME, the lower the level of trust in ESPN (β −.548, p < .001).

Research Question 1 asked whether political ideology affected the perception of political slant within ESPN’s coverage of social and political issues. Pearson’s correlation analysis found a weak negative correlation between political identification and perception of ESPN’s political and social coverage, r = −.253, n = 463, p < .001. As people’s political beliefs became more conservative, their perceptions of ESPN’s coverage became more liberal. The utilization of the SECS demonstrated a more pronounced negative correlation, r = −.372, n = 463, p < .001.

Research Question 2 asked whether a person’s consumption of ESPN, news shows, and political opinion shows affected their perception of ESPN’s media bias. Consumption of ESPN (β = −.109, p < .05), political opinion shows (β = .114, p < .05), and news shows (β = −.142, p < .05) had effects when individuals were assessed via the SECS, but not when their political beliefs were determined through self-identification.

The third research questioned if an individual’s perception of media bias from ESPN is affected by their interest in politics. Interest in politics was found to have an effect when individuals self-selected their political affiliation (β = .128, p < .01), but not when judged by the SECS (β = .056, p > .05).

The fourth RQ asked whether personal or political cynicism affected views of ESPN as hostile media. Political cynicism was found to have an effect (β = −.182, p < .001) in both the self-identify model and the SECS model (β = −.168, p < .001), while personal cynicism affected neither the second model (β = −.016, p > .05) nor the third (β = .039, p > .05). People who are cynical about politics are more likely to see a hostile media bias in ESPN.

The fifth RQ asked if level of fanhood impacted HME. A correlation between level of fandom and HME found a negative correlation which approached significance (r = −.084, p = .069). It does not appear that level of fandom for one’s favorite team significantly impacts one’s perception of ESPN’s media bias. To test whether a person’s favorite sport possibly impacted their perception of media bias, a χ² test of goodness of fit was performed, χ² (60, N = .464) = 60.183, p = .469. It does not appear that a person’s favorite sport impacts their perception of ESPN media bias.

Additional correlations were tabulated between subject’s HME scores and the various issues measured on the SECS scale. These correlations revealed that a desire for limited government (r = .332, p < .001) and an appreciation for gun ownership (r = .331, p < .001) were the 2 items with the highest Pearson correlations. Because of the sample size, correlations between the HME scores and 11 of the 12 political ideology questions on the SECS were significant at the .05 level. Only the responses relating to the family unit (r = .081, p > .05) were not. The economic conservatism subscale demonstrated a higher correlation (r = .361, p < .001) than the social conservatism subscale (r = .223, p < .001) with a perception of ESPN bias.

Discussion

This study attempted to ascertain how an individual’s perception of media bias on the part of ESPN was affected by political ideology, cynicism, and television consumption. The results indicate that one’s political ideology, whether measured through self-identification or on an affiliation scale (Everett, 2013), affects one’s perception of ESPN’s media bias. Additionally, cynicism about the American political system and interest in politics appear to have an impact. These results expand the application of the HME to the realm of sports media’s biggest entity, ESPN, while also demonstrating how the HME manifests itself in sports communication. The composition of this study’s sample was particularly robust. The racial breakdown closely mirrors U.S. census numbers from 2016. The sample was more educated than the general population when considering completion of a bachelor’s degree (53.8–23.9%), but in line with U.S. median household income of US$53,889 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2016).

From a political perspective, the results of this study skewed more liberal than overall political numbers found in recent polling. Data collected by Gallup in 2017 indicated that 36% of Americans self-identify as conservative, 34% as moderates, and 25% as liberals (Saad, 2017), whereas nearly 45% of respondents in this poll self-identified as liberal. According to a March 2017 report from the Pew Research Center, 48% of the U.S. population considers themselves Democrats or Democratic leaners, 39% consider themselves Republicans or Republican leaners, and 11% consider themselves independent (Maniam & Smith, 2017). If Democrats and Democratic leaners are seen as “liberals,” in the broadest sense, and Republicans or Republican leaners are seen as “conservatives,” then the ideological composition of the sample also closely mirrors the U.S. population.

The finding that individuals with conservative political beliefs perceive ESPN as hostile is not surprising in light of previous research on strongly held beliefs and perception of media bias (Hwang et al., 2008; Lee, 2005; Lin et al., 2016), particularly when coupled with the hostility exhibited toward ESPN by certain members of the conservative media. As observed in the findings relating to Hypothesis 1, there is a clear relative effect in terms of perceived ESPN bias and political leaning, meaning that even left-leaning individuals perceive some bias, though not as much as right-leaning individuals. This is to be expected, since ESPN’s purposeful entry into covering issues with a political or social basis removes the expectation that audiences are perceiving ESPN’s content as neutral. The findings from this study demonstrate that liberals and moderates do perceive some degree of bias in ESPN’s coverage, but to a significantly lesser degree than conservatives. This finding is a clear example of the relative HME (Perloff, 2015) at work.

It is interesting that ESPN has recently chosen to strongly deny any degree of political slant in their coverage (Ourand, 2017) after seeming to embrace a more socially conscious political perspective in earlier commentary on their coverage approach (Brady, 2016). Quite possibly, ESPN was satisfied with taking a more progressive tack on political and social issues until that approach became an effective cudgel in the hands of their opposition. Regardless of the origins, the data from this study illustrate an environment where at least some of ESPN’s audience perceives them as politically hostile. It is possible that ESPN’s documented issues with falling subscriber numbers are not related to an actual political slant in their coverage, as some have speculated (e.g., Travis, 2017; Whitlock, 2017), but instead are due to audience perceptions of slanted coverage. Since the perception of media bias can often lead to drastic actions among strong partisans (Hansen & Kim, 2011), one of these drastic actions in this case may be cord cutting or the reduction of one’s cable package to a package without ESPN (Putterman, 2016).

The three OLS regression models utilized in this study are an attempt to take a broad-based approach to evaluating the effects of political beliefs on attitudes of media hostility and trustworthiness. In an American political era where many traditionally left-wing political adherents self-identify as progressive instead of liberal, and many right-wing political adherents self-identify as libertarian instead of conservative, it was not certain whether the traditional liberal-to-conservative one question scale would provide an accurate picture of the political attitudes of the audience, or how those attitudes affect their perceptions of ESPN. The introduction of the issue-based, 12-item SECS provides a more nuanced measure of political ideology than a single self-identification question. As seen in the data, the political measures demonstrated strong positive correlations, indicating that high scores on the SECS corresponded well with more conservative self-identifications on the traditional scale. The smaller effect size of the third OLS model makes sense due to that nuance. In particular, individuals who desire to limit the role of government and support private gun ownership were the most inclined to perceive a hostile bias on the part of ESPN. The models each demonstrate the lack of impact that any of the traditional demographic variables have on perception of ESPN’s trustworthiness, which is notable. Prior research into HME (Lee, 2005) found that both gender and education had an impact on distrust of news media, but no such effect was observed here.

Previous research on HME has found that political involvement is a strong predictor of one’s perception of media bias. Much like the work of Lee (2005), Hansen and Kim (2011), and Perloff (2015), the findings in the current study, demonstrates that the more individuals watch political shows, the more hostile they felt toward media, in this case ESPN. The negative relationship between perception of bias and consumption of ESPN may help support ESPN’s contention that they are not overly political (Ourand, 2017) since it suggests that the more one actually consumes ESPN’s coverage, the less they perceive it as biased. In other words, those who watch ESPN the most detect less bias than those who watch the network less frequently.

Unlike in some previous research (e.g., Lee, 2005), political cynicism was not found to have a positive predictive impact on perception of media bias. In fact, political cynicism was found to have a weak negative predictive impact on perception of bias from ESPN. There was no correlation between political cynicism and political beliefs, which perhaps points to a broad-based cynicism of the political structure that operates separately from political affiliation. As in Lee (2005), no relationship was found between personal cynicism and perception of bias. It appears that in both sports media, as in media in general, there is little to no association between personal cynicism and a feeling of bias against one’s political ideology.

Limitations and Future Studies

This study had some limitations. Because the core assumption of the study was that ESPN was not providing completely impartial commentary and reporting, based upon their own public pronouncements, the hypotheses and data collection were constructed with relative HME in mind. An assumption that ESPN is practicing objective journalism across its content might result in different questions and outcomes. There was also no explicit distinction between ESPN’s television properties, Internet properties, and other properties, with the idea that much of the consumption of ESPN content is not taking place on a particular isolated medium, but rather across several convergent media forms.

Future studies should explore ESPN’s content choices at greater depth, utilizing both content analysis and experimental design (e.g., Kim & Billings, 2017) to evaluate how audience members perceive certain types of content, and whether or not those pieces of content contain measurable political or social bias. Additionally, audiences should be surveyed in relation to ESPN’s coverage of specific, controversial political, or social issues such as player protests or labor disputes within sport, to see whether their responses differ from the broader and more general evaluations of ESPN’s coverage found in this study. It would also be relevant to discover whether political conservatives who perceive ESPN as hostile are in fact taking the kind of drastic action mentioned by Hansen and Kim (2011) by eliminating the network from their cable package.

ESPN will celebrate its 40th anniversary as a cable network in 2019, and the media environment it exists in now has changed tremendously from the environment that existed in 1979. In the early days of the network, it would have likely been difficult to fathom that on-air content would have been the center of political controversy and hostile perceptions among viewers. However, the world of media continues to change, and the augmenting effects of social media, constant connectivity, 24-hr news cycles, and never-ending election cycles have combined to create a posttruth era media landscape (Sartwell, 2017) where everything is subject to politicization and polarization. Whether or not ESPN considers its content to be politically biased, this study illustrates that certain segments of the audience now view it as such. Barring an unexpected receding of the political tumult in the current media environment, ESPN and other media entities not strictly focused on politics will have to bear in mind that almost all content is likely to be viewed through a political lens by some observers.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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