One would not typically think of SkySports as a source of political information; it seems strange for a sports website to be considered a source of political content. Yet sports and politics often interact in surprising ways; athletes are frequently committed to using their platform to be a force for change, and sports can serve as a space for dialogue and discussion like any other human phenomenon.
Therefore, it is critical to evaluate sports websites like SkySports as critically as one would any other media source.
Does Reliability Matter?
Reliability, in general, refers to how trustworthy or accurate information, or in this case, a news source is. If we consider this definition, it quickly becomes clear why reliability is important in media sources. If we can’t trust the things we read then there isn’t much of a point in continuing to consume content from that source, after all. So how exactly can we gauge the reliability of a news source anyway?
There are several potential measures of reliability to look out for when trying to determine whether a media source is reliable or not. Red flags for an unreliable article can include the presence of wild unsubstantiated claims, facts dependent on other unreliable sources, heavy use of opinionated language, and more. Some indicators of a reliable news source, on the other hand, include things like:
- Absence of subjective/opinionated language in articles
- Credible sources cited (e.g., neutral sources, .gov, .edu websites)
- Facts and statistics backed by multiple relevant outside sources
- Use of primary sources when possible (e.g., interviews, quotes)
- Information that remains consistent across news sources
So How Does SkySports Fare in Its Reliability?
The political reliability index developed by Biasly objectively assesses news organizations’ accuracy and trustworthiness. According to Biasly’s assessment, SkySports has an Overall Reliability of “Fair.” It should be noted that SkySports does not have a Fact Analysis score, so we will omit that part of the assessment from this article.
SkySports Source Analysis Score is “Fair,” which suggests that our assessment has found that SkySports can generally be trusted, but with some caveats. It could be that, as a service specialized in sports coverage, their sourcing is of better quality for sports topics than for political or social issues. It is important to remember that this rating focuses less on the direct claims that SkySports makes in their articles and more on the supporting information they use to back up their claims. This A.I.-generated score assesses the quality of the sources and quotes used in SkySports articles.
Remember that these scores are based on averages, meaning individual articles could be more or less reliable depending on the author, context, and other factors. As with any other outlet, SkySports articles must be treated case-by-case. The average provides a broad overall sense of a source’s reliability but has the same weaknesses as any other generalization.
Let’s analyze the supporting data for these rankings. We will also discuss what to look for when looking for a trustworthy news source.
SkySports Accuracy and Reliability
News organizations are frequently accused of political bias, whether to the left or to the right. Some organizations, like SkySports, have the fortune to avoid political bias by dissociating from political content altogether and focusing on other material. Occasionally, articles bring together politics and sports, which we will include in our analysis below. We do know that SkySports’ Fair reliability rating is not as high as that of typical mainstream news outlets, but it is in line with other sports-focused networks like CBS Sports or Fox Sports. This may be due to the lack of traditional sourcing that we would expect in a typical political news article.
Selection bias is when stories and facts are selected or deselected, often on ideological grounds, to create a narrative supporting the new sources’ ideology. Omission bias, on the other hand, is when different opinions and political views regarding a situation are left out so that the reader is only exposed to the ideological perspective supported by the author. It’s important to keep in mind these two types of biases when trying to assess an article’s level of accuracy.
In Biasly’s ratings, we assign a percentage score to accuracy, with one being the least accurate and 100 being the most accurate. These ratings are calculated by weighing the assertions made in an article or by an outlet against the supporting evidence provided and the number of reliable external or internal sources employed. Biasly offers a full page on its website for each outlet, which includes accuracy and dependability ratings for some of its newly released articles. Each article has its reliability score calculated separately from the overall score of the outlet as a whole. Scores vary from article to article and are most strongly influenced by bias, most notably omission and selection bias. These types of bias and more will be discussed elsewhere in the article. The articles discussed in this piece are meant to demonstrate how these variations work in the case of one particular outlet- in this instance, SkySports.
SkySports’ overall reliability rating is “Fair,” but one should remember that this is a general rating and may not apply to individual articles. For example, the article “Florida Governor Urges Joe Biden to Allow Novak Djokovic to Play at Indian Wells- ‘Give the American People What They Want’” has a reliability rating of ‘Fair’, while other articles, such as “Dan Snyder Had Role in ‘Toxic’ Washington Commanders Culture, Says US House Committee Report”, lack reliability ratings altogether, with a reliability rating of “N/A”. Some articles may demonstrate dodgy reliability, while others may be near-perfect. Like any media outlet, some SkySports pieces are more trustworthy than others.
One major issue with Biasly’s assessment of SkySports’ content is the lack of reliability ratings for articles that cover political or social issues. The articles discussed above do not cover political topics but have reliability ratings, while articles with clear political content, such as “: “Eight Years On, Colin Kaepernick Waits for NFL Call: ‘I Could Help Win A Championship’ or “George Floyd: Eight Sports Stars Speak About The Change of Culture and Their Experiences During the Last Two Years” don’t have reliability ratings. It is advised to be careful when assessing SkySports’ overall reliability, as their reliability as a source may not have any relation to their political content.
To compare SkySports with outlets covering a similar audience, consider CBS Sports, which has a “Center” bias and a “Fair” analyst reliability score, according to Biasly. They had an article with a “Good” reliability score titled “Chiefs’ Travis Kelce Wishes He Could Go to the Grammys With Taylor Swift- ‘Watch Her Win Every Single Award”, and another entitled “Federal Appeals Court Overturns West Virginia’s Ban on Transgender Athletes in Women’s Sports” that had a “Poor” reliability score. This shows that regardless of the source or its overall political leaning, stories that display that leaning are generally less reliable than neutral ones.
Analysis of Reliability in SkySports Online News Articles
There are several ways to assess the reliability of the articles a media outlet chooses to publish. Some of the important aspects of a network’s reliability include the quality of its sources, the accuracy or veracity of the facts it reports, and the degree to which it exhibits selection or omission bias. We will expand on the definitions of all of these metrics here.
SkySpoorts does not claim to take any particular ideological stance. Its primary role, as even some critics allow, has been to become the most transformative product in the UK’s sports media landscape:
“It is becoming difficult to recall sport in a pre-Sky age, when there were just 14 top-flight football matches a season. A whole generation has known nothing else and for many their connection with live sport is exclusively through their television set. In 1990 the BBC and ITV paid £3.2m a year. The latest deal, for 138 live matches per season from 2010, is worth £594m a season to the Premier League.”
SkySports is such a monolith in the UK and European sports media landscape that it would surely be big news if they displayed prominent political bias in their coverage. However, this is not normally the case. If anything, they have faced criticism for avoiding politically charged discussion, as in the incident that is the subject of this article, wherein a presenter apologized for appearing to stifle a discussion about racism in the Premier League with a disclaimer that the views of one presenter did not represent the views of Sky Sports:
“I’m so sorry to have spoiled what was such an important discussion on racism tonight. I had to intervene when Gary (Lineker) suggested the two main political parties were to blame – I didn’t make that clear enough. For that I apologise unreservedly,” he wrote on Twitter.
“I would never purposefully shut down a discussion on racism. I’ve worked for Sky for over 20 years and know they share my view that racism of any kind should not be tolerated. That is not a debate. And that’s why I’m so very disappointed and sorry tonight.”
Quality of Sources and Facts Used
One of the most fundamental building blocks of media literacy is the ability to evaluate the quality of sources used in an article. In some cases, as in the articles mentioned above, SkySports does not cite any particular sources. In other instances, SkySports is much more consistent about using reliable sources, although it is not quite up to the standards of a regular news outlet. Take a look at the sources found in one article from the SkySports website, published in 2020 and entitled ““Donald Trump Brands NBA ‘political organisation’ After Jacob Blake Shooting Protests’. The number of sources isn’t incredibly extensive, and there are only seven quotes- four short, two medium, and one long. We note the number and length of quotes because longer quotes are a general indicator of a reliable source.
The author has five sources for this article, listed below:
- Former President Donald Trump (Conservative-Leaning)
- Marc Short, Chief of Staff to Vice President Mike Pence (Conservative-Leaning)
- Jared Kushner, White House Senior Advisor (Conservative-Leaning)
- A Twitter post from Lebron James
- President Joe Biden (Liberal-Leaning)
Though the number and credibility of the sources are higher than normal for a SkySports article, and the majority are from authority figures, there aren’t any reliable outside sources, and the sources we do have are simply expressions of opinion. There are no facts or data from neutral agencies, and a majority of the sources are themselves biased in favor of one particular side. The more credible sources that an author uses and properly cites, the more likely it is that their work will be reliable.
Selection and Omission Bias
Generally, selection and omission bias do not occur often enough in SkySports articles to be a major issue. They do a fair job making sure that their stories are balanced considering they rarely have any political content to cover. For example, the article “Fear of Racial and Physical Abuse Makes 41% of Ethnically Diverse Fans Hesitant to Go to Sporting Events”, is quite neutral in tone and sourcing, mentioning only those sources directly connected with the survey and avoiding any particular judgment on the content of the survey itself.
Again, SkySports does not seem to have frequent issues with selection and omission bias. Nevertheless, their authors may occasionally publish a piece that falls victim to this issue. Take the article “Eight Years On, Kaepernick Waits for NFL Call: ‘I Could Help Win A Championship’”, in which SkySports highlights the perspective of Kaepernick and other athletes with similar liberal opinions regarding inequality while omitting contradictory opinions from others who might feel differently.
The points are hammered home throughout the article:
“At the time, two days after pledging to donate $1m to community organisations, Kaepernick said: “The message is that we have a lot of issues in this country that we need to deal with… We have a lot of people that are oppressed. We have a lot of people that aren’t treated equally, that aren’t given equal opportunities”.
Taking a knee also began happening in the NWSL, with World-Cup winning footballer Megan Rapinoe kneeling during a national anthem in September 2016 and saying “we need to have a more thoughtful, two-sided conversation about racial issues in this country”.
The author selects quotes by Kaepernick and others with similar liberal viewpoints on inequality and injustice while omitting viewpoints from others who might disagree. Selection and omission bias work to present a one-sided picture of complex issues, mitigating the informative impact of an article and presenting the reader with incomplete and biased information.
So Is SkySports Reliable?
As a sports news network, indications of unreliability from SkySports are less critical to the value of the network than if it were a traditional political media outlet. The lack of political content makes SkySports challenging to evaluate. With only a “Fair” reliability rating from Biasly, it is perhaps most fair to say that SkySports’ publications can be trusted to a certain extent, but they have certain limitations- namely, their overall lack of participation in the political media sphere- which limits their utility as a news source.
Nevertheless, we hope this article demonstrated the importance of evaluating SkySports as critically as any other news source, as these media literacy skills are valuable to cultivate regardless of the source you are analyzing. The more you research media reliability and accuracy, the simpler it will be for you to spot problems with sources, selection, omission, and factuality. To help with this, you can use Biasly’s News Bias Checker to uncover reliability problems and find the most accurate and dependable news.