Generic New York-centric Headline
October 9th, 2007I never really bought in to the whole East Coast bias thing. But then again, I never really thought about it because I don’t pay nearly as much attention to media coverage of teams that are not my own as I would for coverage of one of my favorite teams. But, being a die-hard Cleveland Indians fan, I have been forced to endure the American League Division Series against the New York Yankees, and all of the media fixings that comes with it. And to be frank, I’m disgusted.
For the past week, I have been eating Yankee media coverage for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and all snacks in-between, and I am sick of it. I even had to purge myself several times to keep from ending up like the glutton in the movie “Seven” - lying dead in a pool of my own excrement. I always knew that New York got more media coverage than other cities as far as its sports teams go, and I am fine with that. But it has gotten WAY out of hand. Even the announcers calling the game on TBS (Chip Caray, Tony Gwynn and Bob Brenly) who would seem to have no New York connection whatsoever, were overdoing it. It was almost as though they were openly rooting for New York to win the series. Caray is traditionally a National League broadcaster, and Gwynn and Brenly were both career National Leaguers, plus Brenly spent several seasons managing the Arizona Diamondbacks - AND HE’S FROM OHIO! But all three of them may as well have been native New Yorkers the way they were calling the game. Most New York natives will probably disagree with this sentiment because they’re so used to the New York-centricity, if I may coin a phrase, of the national media, that they just don’t see it.
In the hours after the Indians’ series-clinching victory in game four, the headlines that popped up on the front pages of most major national sports news-oriented websites included the following: Sportsline.com - “Bronx Bummer”; ESPN.com - “Goodbye Bronx?”; SI.com - “Bronx Bummer”; SportingNews.com - “Bronx Booted”; FoxSports.com - “The Final Roll Call?”; NBCSports.com - “Bronx Keeps Burning”; Yahoo Sports - “The End Game”. These all reference the Yankees in one way or another, and none of them reference the Indians, the team that actually won the series, at all. In addition, all front-page-featured photographs on these sites but one featured either Joe Torre or Yankees players. One picture was of the Indians celebrating after the victory. One. What if New York had won the game? Would there have been a bunch of pictures and headlines about the Indians? Absolutely not. No matter the outcome, the Yankees are the center of attention. Why? Because there is a genuine bias in the media. There cannot be another reason.
It’s not just major headlines and national stories that lead me, and I’m guessing a lot of other non-New Yorkers to think this way. There are many little things that some people probably don’t even notice. For example, ESPN.com ran a poll question the other day, after the Yankees lost game two. It was something like ‘What is most to blame for the Yankees performance thus far in the series?’ and the options included Joe Torre, Alex Rodriguez, relief pitching, starting pitching, lack of hitting and such. There was no mention of the Indians pitching, which had been fantastic, as being a potential reason. If the Indians get a hit, it’s because the Yankees are pitching poorly, not because the Indians are a good hitting team. If the Yankees can’t hit, it’s because their bats are slumping, and not because the Indians have good pitching. And if the Yankees lose the series, it is because Joe Torre is a bad manager, and not because the Indians are a better team.
Why does it have to be like that? I understand New York City is the largest in the country, and that they deserve their fair share of attention, but why is it so overdone? There are 280 million of us in this country that don’t live in the New York area, and we are tired of it.