{"id":224672,"date":"2025-10-19T13:41:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T13:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/224672\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T13:41:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T13:41:08","slug":"sarah-spain-breaks-down-misinformation-issue-in-womens-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/224672\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Spain breaks down misinformation issue in women’s sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite breakout women\u2019s sports stars like Caitlin Clark, Coco Gauff, and Trinity Rodman generating more consistent hype than ever before in their sports, day-to-day news about the WNBA, NWSL, or other women athletes is shockingly hard to come by.<\/p>\n

Some outlets have sprouted up to fill this void, while major networks continue to make incremental investments in women\u2019s sports coverage. However, basics like statistics and injury updates, as well as deeper storytelling and analysis, are a rarity compared with the NFL or other major men\u2019s leagues.<\/p>\n

Last year, former ESPN host Sarah Spain launched the Good Game podcast<\/a> and the iHeart Women\u2019s Sports Network as one way to help fill this void. Meanwhile, this information gap has broadened.<\/p>\n

Fake quotes (especially ones attributed to WNBA star Angel Reese<\/a>), nonsense narratives, and tired debates continue to dominate the headlines in women\u2019s sports. Nobody knows what\u2019s going on<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In an interview on the\u00a0Casuals podcast<\/a> last week with former ESPN teammate Katie Nolan, Spain explained this news chasm, how it leads to misinformation, and why it is preventing fans from fully embracing women\u2019s sports leagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fundamental issue for me is a failure of the media, over the course of the past however many decades, to invest enough in women\u2019s sports so that there can be established, veteran, trusted voices,\u201d Spain explained.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

When Spain was at ESPN, she said, she often relied on facts and figures from external outlets to provide commentary and entertainment for viewers. In women\u2019s sports, these things are much harder to find, so producers and researchers are far more likely to overlook them.<\/p>\n

On\u00a0Good Game, Spain said she tries to constantly lay out the stars, stakes, stats, and stories of major women\u2019s sports events for her audience. Still, she sees broadcasts and major outlets failing to clear this low bar.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t do that for women\u2019s sports,\u201d Spain said. \u201cWe tell you one story about a woman who plays and also helps in her community, and we\u2019re like, \u2018Don\u2019t you want to watch the game now?’\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result of this issue, Spain believes misinformation and conspiratorial thinking have filled in the gaps. Fans don\u2019t know where to go to vet viral quotes or get the full story for themselves. Everything becomes hearsay or open to interpretation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of misattributed quotes or fully made-up quotes. And because there\u2019s nowhere to go to say, \u2018Oh, she never said that,\u2019 it just travels,\u201d Spain explained. \u201cWith NBA Centel<\/a>, you get tricked. Then you go to all your main sources \u2026 and you go, oh, they didn\u2019t say that, I can\u2019t find it anywhere. Where do you go for women\u2019s sports to be sure that if it happened, it would be there?\u201d<\/p>\n

Even the people covering women\u2019s sports now, where investment has increased, struggle to keep up. Rather than being an authoritative source for the many new fans flowing into the WNBA or other leagues, reporters are instead having to respond to the minefield of potential missteps or accusations they could face if they slip up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can be a barrier even to the people covering it, because there are landmines everywhere,\u201d Spain said. \u201cAnd if you\u2019re trying to just do the work, actually talk to players, coaches, people involved, report, etc., and you\u2019re not trolling the internet to find out what all the theories are and accusations and problems are, you step into things without even realizing you will then be accused of aligning with X or doing X.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last layer Spain laid out is how the few longstanding women\u2019s sports journalists and fans are responding. Spain likened the reaction from these groups to hipsters who like a small indie band and are defensive of it getting too big.<\/p>\n

These fans, according to Spain, see bad actors once again piping up about their favorite athletes and double down to fortify their defenses:<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it is people who are arriving who don\u2019t really know the space but want to commandeer it, and then I also think rightfully so, fans of women\u2019s sports are so protective because it is a space that has been poisoned over and over again by people who have no interest in seeing it succeed.\u201dWhere do you go for women\u2019s sports to be sure that if it happened, it would be there?\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, reporters at major networks and newspapers bring an institutional knowledge of women\u2019s sports to the table. But they can only do so much to get their perspective out, especially if they are likely on the older side and not filling TikTok feeds or YouTube feeds the way a more insidious content creator might.<\/p>\n

Sports media is in catch-up mode, as Spain lays out, to merely meet the demands for day-to-day information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite breakout women\u2019s sports stars like Caitlin Clark, Coco Gauff, and Trinity Rodman generating more consistent hype than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,107556,35974,107557,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-224672","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-casuals-with-katie-nolan","11":"tag-katie-nolan","12":"tag-sarah-spain","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}