Imagine you are watching the news and suddenly, someone starts talking about a famous athlete who had a meltdown because a referee didn’t count their goal. Now every news channel is talking about this, and you find out they have bipolar disorder or something. Would you know that he had this illness if the media didn’t broadcast it and it made the headlines?
The answer is probably not. The truth is that sports media doesn’t want the fans to know that their favorite athlete might have a mental or physical chronic illness. I think they do it to protect them, but there is times that athletes take a mental health break and the media lies and says something like they are going on vacation or spending time with family. Unless something big happens and the media catches wind of it, such as a game, then it’ll stay hidden from the general public.
This doesn’t stop media from writing in the headlines what they think is happening, though, exaggerating or simply lying about the truth to make it more interesting. This can come to hurt the athletes or help them; depending on what they said, they may have to speak out to defend themselves.
When it comes to athletes having chronic illnesses, some fans might feel more connected to the athlete, like “Oh, he/she has asthma too? That is really cool.” But other fans might see it as a negative thing, less respect for the athlete, or simply not understand what it is like to live with it. I don’t think that everything about athletes needs to be known in order to protect their privacy but some things should be so that media can’t stretch the truth.
We all want our favorite players to be healthy and show them support as fans but we also need to realize that they have private lives. We don’t need to know what health issues they suffer from, but it’s good to know how they are doing if they do need to go on hiatus. The media needs to realize that not everything needs to be a headline, and keeping them safe is the most important.
