In Reply to: Re: I was just listening to the CBS college basketball podcast posted by SehornBlew on December 24, 2024 at 11:13:44
the reasons for story selection and emphasis - point of view of the presenters(as ell as of the audience).
Bear with me on this. There are reasons for what I am trying to say. In my opinion, there are multiple reasons for the phenomenon Mike describes. While I get what you are saying, I think your leap to whether UCLA turns out crowds of 14,000 for its basketball games or crowds of 8-10,000 might be the cause of such reporting is a leap too far. While the point you make about the audience for podcasts and the age of UCLA's strongest fan base is right on and I thank you for it. We aren't podcast people, especially those of us who grew up through the Wooden years and, to a lesser but likely still substantial level, those who came of age in time for 1995 and UCLA's resurgence to the top then.
As to the size of the fan base of followers affecting the audience and the effect this has on the reporters: yes, certainly it has to do with audience of the broadcasters - no disagreement there, Sehorn. But I think multiple factors are also very important. To summarize a couple of them - and forgive me for the time it takes to try to get my point across:
1) the way we - humans - visualize things.
Remember that classic image - think it was The New Yorker magazine - called a New Yorkers view of geography (or something like that? Half the page consisted of a rough map of New York City. Another quarter was the rest of the country condensed into that space. The next eighth or so of the drawing was the rest of the world. And the final sliver was all the rest of the cosmos.
I believe a similar process operates with our thoughts about time. The greatest detail - in full color of course - is the present. The next much smaller segment is the rest of our lifetime - slightly aged and greyed out or sepia toned. Then there's a small slice that is the period of history of our family - within a very limited number of generations and of our country, A tiny bit covers historical period leading up to that and all the rest of time is a hint on the far horizon, reduced to the standing of ancient myths and unsubstantiated stories.
NOT TRUE of scientists - at least with regards their own particular fields of study and focus or those who specialize in endeavors (wood working, art) again with regards to their own fields of expertise.
Point is, reporters see things from the perspective of their own areas and those from which they came. I grew up in Los Angeles. I went to UCLA. UCLA in particular and west coast athletics and schools and teams always pop up first in my thoughts and reactions.
But I lived nearly thirty years of my life in the midAtlantic area centered in DC. And I was always amazed how little understanding even the best sports analysts had of what was going on with my school. Throughout John Wooden's era of pure dominance, his teams were nearly always undervalued at least early in years. John Wooden was rather grudgingly it seemed to me conceded to be a great "practice" coach. But his ability to make in game adjustments was always denegraded.
When Bill Walton was coming out of HS, Maryland landed the other very tall HS basketball star - McMillan (iirc). The eastern writers had never even heard of this San Diego kid Walton.
ALSO, the population center of the country is eastern rather than western. So many people, so many youngsters coming up playing sports and obviously getting coverage where they love. Most of them east of the Mississippi.
UCLA is 'way out there and it's in California which is the land of the crazies and the hippies and all that. Even politically - our system - the electoral college - limits the impact of any huge state. When our country was cobbled together to present a united front in shaking off the shackles of England and Europe, it was done with some built in guarantees to convince the smaller largely agricultural states, smaller in terms of populations certainly, that they could join in and the industrial northern states wouldn't simply override them and their interests.
In politics, you first of all want to secure your base from which you recruit workers and donors. And getting out the vote (GOTV) of course starts with these. But after that, what matters most in the bulk of every campaign end game is the swing vote - the undecided. If you're a Republican, you aren't spending any time at all thinking about California or New York State. (Some isolated Congressional districts, sure - every little bit helps - but in terms of the Presidency, California and New York are already decided. Who cares what they think? Everyone instead is focused on Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan. That's where the action is.) The Democrats also - same-same - just spend enough energy early to be sure you don't lose your base but the focus has to be in the midwest - the undecided swing states.
Anyway, #1 is what you are thinking about all day every day. And recency and closeness bias is a factor.
#2 would be winner bias. The story is the winner. In game after game UNC has trailed by 16 or so points, but in a number of games they have charged from behind to wind up close or even winning. Given #1, that's a story leading up to the game. I read a number of stories leading up to the game. The focus of most was to try to show why this might be a game worth watching. And with UCLA ranked, justifying why UNC could make this a game was indeed a focus of those stories. But understanding and allowing for that I found the coverage of UCLA in those articles to be pretty present. We were ranked, we were the (slight) favorite. But we were certainly covered.
AFTER the game, however, the "story" - as per the writers' and editors' point of view - was that the underdog came from behind and won the game. The disparity in the calls, the challenges UCLA faced, yeah they happened but those were just minor details. What matters is who won. The Bruins' domination for the majority of the game merely serves to provide the background for the "real story" - who won the game.
There are fictions built into how we cover the news. To appear fair, every story is supposed to include the main point but also the counter-point.
If ten thousand people convene and have a shared, agreed upon point of view, that is a news story. But there has to be "the other side" or the counter point. So you have to find a way to include that in the story. So you find the three people picketing outside the event and one gets interviewed. If a television story - about 38 seconds of tape - that means you wind up devoting 30-40 percent of the time to the opinion of three people as compared with the 50% you devote to the opinion of 10,000. Been there, done that. Dealt with it for a living for about 40 years.
It's a distortion.
EVERYTHING that happened in the game is important. Certainly the outcome. As it should be. But the way this works - unless it's the Super Bowl or something, the end result becomes THE story and winds up drowning out everything else. True also for the stories after the game. And the time allotted to each story in a broadcast or in print media the space (number of column inches) is greatest for the biggest story and diminishes for everything else. So each week with the story on the latest poll team rankings, you get one inch capsules elaborating after the name of each of the top ten teams and for everyone else, including UCLA at #22 (and everyone else from 11-25) there is no elaboration at all. Just a list of schools.
And for those also receiving votes, they are all lumped together into a small graph following the list (if they are included at all).
When I lived all those years ago in DC and UCLA was very VERY relevant in college basketball, I was always shocked and frustrated we didn't get much coverage at all. Even if there was an article on John Wooden, you were sure to be reading also about the great Dean Smith and about Bobby Knight. And, Lord help us, about Digger Phelps.
please forgive the length - I assume those to whom this is an arcane discussion of a highly irrelevant subject have already long since quit reading - if they even began. It's a process I practice myself every day and I appreciate it.