Criticism of ESPN

Throughout its history, ESPN and its sister networks have been the targets of criticism^[1] for programming choices, biased coverage,^[2] conflict of interest, and controversies with individual broadcasters and analysts.^[3][4] Additionally, ESPN has been criticized for focusing too much on the Dallas Cowboys, LeBron James,^[5][6][7][8] Los Angeles and New York teams in general (particularly the Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and New York Yankees), Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Lionel Messi, the Southeastern Conference^[9] (SEC), basketball and American football and very little on other sports such as the National Hockey League^[10][11] (NHL), and Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). Other criticism has focused on issues of race and ethnicity in ESPN's varying mediated forms, as well as carriage fees and issues regarding the exportation of ESPN content.^[12]

Some critics argue that ESPN's success is their ability to provide other enterprise and investigative sports news while competing with other hard sports-news-producing outlets such as Yahoo! Sports and Fox Sports. Some scholars have challenged ESPN's journalistic integrity calling for an expanded standard of professionalism to prevent biased coverage and conflicts of interest.^[13] Mike Freeman's 2001 book ESPN: The Uncensored History,^[14] which alleged sexual harassment, drug use and gambling, was the first critical study of ESPN. And then in 2011, a detailed oral history^[15] about ESPN by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales called Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN^{[16][17][18][19]} was released.