2011, Basketball, Journalism, Playoffs, Sports

Media Bias in the 2011 NBA Finals

So maybe I’m just a homer, and I can’t be objective about my second favourite basketball team (I certainly couldn’t be in 2006), but it seemed like everything was “Miami is doing this well” / “Miami isn’t doing this well” and very little was about Dallas. Worse, it seemed like Jackson had already decided Miami was winning, very early on. I kept thinking Van Gundy was the same, only then he would surprise me with some kind of pro-Dallas comment (or at least a very anti-Miami comment).

One of the worst moments for me was when Jackson said “Right now Dwyane Wade has a look like he’s ready to take over this basketball game” with around 10 and a half minutes left in the game. A lot of people claim to have already decided on their own that the Heat were not winning and that LeBron had checked out – hell, Van Gundy had made a point related to that in a previous quarter, when he noted that nobody wanted to take a shot – but apparently Jackson was still rooting for the Heat. Yes, Jackson had repeatedly watched Wade take over games recently, and maybe he can now recognize “the look.” But Wade wasn’t taking over this game and it only sounds hilarious now that we know the outcome. Why the guess? Like I said, I’m pretty sure Jackson expected the Heat to win and he could not be objective.

If I had live blogged it I would have far more examples but at this point it’s all I can remember.

Incidentally, I think the the three announcer format is ridiculous. The perfect example was when they were talking about Wade supposedly mocking Nowitzki’s fever. Jackson chimed in. Van Gundy chimed in. Breen chimed in. They all had to get their two paragraphs in, despite the basketball game that was occurring in front of them. After about 2:30 of basketball time, I thought it was over, and then Jackson repeated himself for about another 30 seconds. Beautiful.

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