[DC 86]

showing favoritism to parties with whom you have a relationship, as uconn does with nearby espn, in other settings gets tv journalists fired.

That's not an apt comparison. ESPN is in the business of broadcasting sports events that people want to see, and of course they're going to promote the events that they broadcast. UConn remains the biggest national brand by far is women's basketball. If Stanford women's basketball brought in the highest ratings then you can be sure that ESPN would show "favoritism" to our program in terms of how much coverage we receive. It's in no way analogous to journalists being biased because of their political leanings.

When ESPN has had rights deals with the NHL they have invested in shoulder programming, run players through their car wash and showed a ton of hockey highlights on SportsCenter. When they don't have a rights deal not so much. Same for World Cup soccer when they had the rights, not so much when they moved to Fox.

ESPN does have a "favoritism" issue in that they are obviously soft on their partners in their reporting. Their relationships with the NFL, NBA and SEC are so lucrative that it impacts their reporting on those leagues. But giving more attention to the most popular teams in each sport is just giving the public what it wants. Same as how they cover the Dallas Cowboys more than any other NFL team even though they haven't won the super bowl in 25 years.

[DC 86]

showing favoritism to parties with whom you have a relationship, as uconn does with nearby espn, in other settings gets tv journalists fired.

That's not an apt comparison. ESPN is in the business of broadcasting sports events that people want to see, and of course they're going to promote the events that they broadcast. UConn remains the biggest national brand by far is women's basketball. If Stanford women's basketball brought in the highest ratings then you can be sure that ESPN would show "favoritism" to our program in terms of how much coverage we receive. It's in no way analogous to journalists being biased because of their political leanings.

When ESPN has had rights deals with the NHL they have invested in shoulder programming, run players through their car wash and showed a ton of hockey highlights on SportsCenter. When they don't have a rights deal not so much. Same for World Cup soccer when they had the rights, not so much when they moved to Fox.

ESPN does have a "favoritism" issue in that they are obviously soft on their partners in their reporting. Their relationships with the NFL, NBA and SEC are so lucrative that it impacts their reporting on those leagues. But giving more attention to the most popular teams in each sport is just giving the public what it wants. Same as how they cover the Dallas Cowboys more than any other NFL team even though they haven't won the super bowl in 25 years.