So many sports news choices. Here’s one you can skip.

Tom Arenberg is an instructor of news media at the University of Alabama and was a news and sports journalist for 35 years. He writes a journalism blog called The Arenblog.

As you’ll read here, he shows how conflicts of interest occur in sports reporting in ways that can lead to misinformation. As is the case with news, there’s lots of sports information out there. He offers a guide to understanding which sources are most trustworthy and which sources may not be reporting sports from all sides.

Sports fans have so many choices of where to get their sports news. It’s wise to remember that they aren’t all equally good.

For coverage that goes beyond live action and results, you can turn to traditional, daily local news organizations or to newer, digital-focused outlets such as The Athletic that emphasize long-form enterprise angles. There are also fan blogs, but they usually just riff on other media reports.

Another source has emerged in the past two decades: Websites published by leagues and teams themselves. Many readers don’t realize the difference between sites produced by independent professional journalism organizations and “in-house” sites created by almost all pro and college teams and leagues. NFL.com and MLB.com, for instance, are owned by the leagues (which own TV networks as well). Panthers.com belongs to the Carolina Panthers, for example.

In-house sites emerged partly as a way to make money but also in response to dissatisfaction with traditional independent media, which have dealt with shrinking revenue across the industry in the past 15 years by eliminating beat reporters for some teams or reducing travel for sports coverage.

Many in-house sites claim they give editorial freedom to their writers, but franchise self-interest will always come first. An example: During the MLB lockout in 2021, MLB.com stopped publishing news and photos of players.

Their proliferation raises a question about these sites as an option for news: Do you really want to depend on an outlet that’s satisfied to report only the obvious daily news and that won’t report negative off-field news unless it’s already public? Well, no, you don’t, but it’s possible that that description is not entirely fair.

Seeking professional competence and an image of legitimacy, these in-house websites are increasingly hiring former journalists (and sadly there are many in the job market).

“In-house reporters do engage in a public relations function.”

— Michael Mirer

Researcher Michael Mirer of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee interviewed 24 of these in-house reporters working for either pro teams or major-college athletic departments and, in an article published in 2019 in the Journal of Media Ethics, Mirer concluded that these reporters still considered themselves journalists who followed customary journalistic practices.

They said they published only truthful stories and argued their predominantly factual presentations were superior to a lot of today’s independent sports journalism that prefers attention-getting hot takes over factual reporting. They criticized the publication of errors and rumors by independent sports writers. They believed they brought more “civility” to sports reporting, according to Mirer’s interviews.

But Mirer cites inevitable departures from best practices. In-house writers report news only when their teams or leagues are ready for publication. Their scope of news is limited to happenings of the team, not any related community or social issues that might arise. They present negative performance not with their own analysis but by citing statistics and letting coaches provide the analysis. “In-house reporters do engage in a public relations function,” Mirer writes.

Ideal sports journalism this isn’t.

The researcher concludes with an interesting and surprising suggestion for independent sports reporters. He argues that independent reporters can’t match the access and therefore the effectiveness of in-house writers in presenting the basic daily news of the team. So he suggests that independent reporters should play a distinctive and necessary role that in-house reporters never will, which is to concentrate on “more socially aware sports journalism.”

Here are some examples:

• “How have sexual assault protocols evolved at the Olympics?” — the 19th
• A review of the political contributions of 183 team owners in the run up to the 2020 election. — USA Today
• “The program is doomed”: Players say coach created a culture of fear” — Indiana Daily Student

While standard stories may remain part of the repertoire, Mirer advocates prioritizing attention to how a sports team affects a community, and how sports inevitability reflect and raise today’s endless social issues.

He writes: “Independent sports journalism should view sports as the civic, cultural and economic institutions they are. It should examine the way events within athletics dramatize key social issues or serve as an entry point to societal-level discussions on issues of race, gender, crime, domestic violence, childhood development, community investment, economics and others.”

Today’s sports media do more of that kind of work than ever before. But yes, more is needed, and it would get an audience if done well. The hesitation, though, is whether to leave any part of sports news to team websites, no matter how those writers view and execute their roles. The potential issues with the credibility and integrity of the information are just too troubling to do so.