Another theme relevant to this research is the political bias shown throughout news media sources. The bias of news media sources possesses the power to manipulate readers based on the political stance of their organization, and readers may not be aware. News media sources can be in favor of or against certain issues they are discussing, and may have the intention of influencing readers’ perception of the topic, thus changing readers’ thoughts. Spinde et al. (2022) discusses the importance of media bias awareness in viewers as it discusses different warning messages, text annotations, and political identifiers to help consumers recognize it better. This study stated that when participants read articles that clashed with their personal political beliefs, they were more likely to see bias (Spinde et al. 2022). D’Alessio concluded in a study that people tend to look at things that do not go along with their personal beliefs to be biased (D’Alessio 2003). Sutter stated that conservatives claim that the political bias comes from left oriented news articles, while on the other hand, these claims could be because of liberals’ higher demand for news content (Sutter 2011). There will always be a constant debate on which side of the news media is biased due to the way the country is split into two political sides. The theme of political bias in news media is important due to each source’s stances on issues regarding a more conservative subject which is vaccine hesitancy. When discussing politically right-leaning topics, many conservatives use the term “fake news” to describe something that does not go along with their personal beliefs (Sanders et al. 2020) Sanders et al. point out that although the term is used by both political sides, conservatives are more likely to use it, and also state that conservatives are more likely to label mainstream media as “fake news”, support Donald Trump, and believe in conspiracy theories (Sander et al. 2020). Believing in conspiracy theories is also one of the above stated reasons for declining the Covid vaccine, or being hesitant of it.
While there is political bias in general news media sources, there is also political bias in sports media. With the controversy of the NFL national anthem protests, there was raised concern that sports news may be more biased than general news. Kim and Patnode state that people who strongly supported a certain side of politics looked at the sports media as more neutral or supportive of their own views about NFL’s national anthem protests, as opposed to general news sources (Kim and Patnode 2021). This research portrays how people perceive news, and how people’s personal views have an effect on the way they see the news. Although these articles being looked at by participants were about national anthem protests, the main focus of this research will be to analyze bias in media coverage regarding athletes’ decisions of whether to receive the Covid-19 vaccine.