Sporting Bias

It's been a week of mixed fortunes for Britain's sportsmen and women. Andy Murray lost to a player ranked much lower than him in straight sets in the US Open and the England cricketers contrived to go four-nil down in the seven match series of one-day internationals against Australia, this despite just beating the Australians to win the Ashes.

But it was the soccer players who grabbed most of the headlines. The ladies exceeded all expectations in the European Championships to reach the final and although beaten by the reigning World and European Champions, Germany, they had a really good tournament and pushed the Germans much harder than the 6-2 score line suggests. Obviously disappointed they will surely come back stronger for the experience. The headline on the BBC site of "Germany Crush England" is far from the truth and shows a journalistic naivete and bias hard to believe from such a usually well respected source.

Wembley Stadium

© Copyright Richard Croft and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The journalists also had a field day when reviewing England's two soccer matches last week showing favouritism and bias that was quite unbelievable. In a friendly match seemingly played at half pace against Slovenia which they won 2-0, the players were rated by several national newspapers and websites. Wayne Rooney missed a hatful of chances but received ratings averaging 8 to 9. On Wednesday Emile Heskey played a vital role spearheading the attack in a match that confirmed England's progress to the World Cup Finals in South Africa next year and he could possibly have scored at least one goal and maybe two but for two excellent saves by Croatia's goalkeeper. As for the ratings, those same papers and websites averaged 4 to 5 for Heskey. Now if that's not biased, I don't know what is.

I was not really in favour of a foreign coach for the national team but if coach Fabio Capello can continue to ignore this journalistic bias, then the team may well have a good chance next year. On the evidence of the last two matches though when they were content to play exhibition football they still don't have the killer instinct of the German Ladies. Half an hour here and there playing good attacking football which is all that we saw this last week will not win them anything in South Africa and then the journalists will be digging out those knives again and going for the jugular.

The biases the media has are much bigger than conservative or liberal. They're about getting ratings, about making money, about doing stories that are easy to cover. - Al Franken (1951 - )