MLB

Media Wants You to Believe Bonds Is a Black/White Issue

Posted May 09, 2007 6:25AM By Larry Brown (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Giants, NL West, MLB Fans, MLB Media Watch, San Francisco

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As was recently noted here at FanHouse, a poll came out suggesting that only 52% of fans do not want to see Barry break Hank Aaron's home run record, that 58% of fans want to see Bonds in the Hall of Fame, and that 73% of fans think Bonds used steroids. But before going out there and saying that fans are conflicted about Bonds based on the study, did anyone scrutinize the methods and data of the study? Or did people just blindly run with what was served to them and make assumptions based on that?

If you take a look at the title for the poll, it reads "Americans Are Conflicted About Bonds' Home Run Chase." Well, to know what "Americans" think, you first have to know the racial demographics of baseball fans -- how many white, how many black, how many Asian, and how many Hispanic fans there are. Then, you would have to poll the proper percentage of each group to get a representative sample. If anyone actually bothered to read the poll, it says an oversample of 203 African-Americans were questioned out of 799 baseball fans. Considering only 12.8% of the population is African-American (according to the U.S. Census Bureau), and potentially a far lower percentage of baseball fans are African-American, I would say that the 25% mark of African-Americans used to conduct the study is designed to mislead the public and generate racially charged results.

And as HG notes over at You Been Blinded, if this study is supposed to represent how Americans feel about Barry Bonds' home run chase, then why weren't Asian and Hispanic fans questioned? Answer me that. Are they not baseball fans? Do their opinions not matter? Apparently not in this racially motivated study designed to stir up controversy amongst blacks and whites. Please continue reading for more exposure of this deceiving study.

Furthermore, the study says a "random national sample" of baseball fans were questioned. Well how do we know who that random sample was? They already purposefully questioned more African-Americans than what's in a random sample of our population so they could achieve their desired results. What's to keep us from figuring that half of the people they questioned didn't live in San Francisco, where they'd be far more likely to root for Bonds?

And if you examine some of the questions, you will notice that they are designed to give favorable answers towards Bonds. For instance, question 2 reads
As you may know, the baseball player Barry Bonds has been accused of using steroids, which he's denied. Just your best guess, do you think Bonds did or did not knowingly use steroids?
Hang on a second. Why throw in the extra word, "knowingly?" Knowingly doing steroids is a completely different question from asking if Bonds simply did steroids, which is the issue at hand. David Ortiz just said he may not have knowingly taken steroids. If you asked me if I thought Barry Bonds knowingly took steroids, I would give you a different answer than if you asked me if I thought Barry Bonds took steroids. I'm not sure if Bonds "knowingly" took steroids -- it's possible he just took whatever his trainers gave him. But I'm pretty sure that Barry Bonds DID take steroids. The two are completely different questions, yet this study reports in their findings that 73% of fans think Bonds used steroids, conveniently omitting the word "knowingly."

Lesson be learned -- before you go out and spew opinions based on polls, examine and question them first, because you never know what their underlying motivation is. In this case, it was to spark racial controversy.

Previously at FanHouse:
Barry's World: We Don't Hate Him That Much

Tags: Barry+Bonds, BarryBonds, Hank+Aaron, HankAaron

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