Did the Media Taint Bond's achievement?

August 7, 2007 is a date that will forever go down in history. It was on this day that Barry Bonds of the San Fransisco Giants hit career home run #756, breaking the previous record of 755 set by Henry Aaron. Bonds now stands alone as the home-run king. Or does he?

Typically this would be cause for celebration and recognition of one of the baseball greats of our time, but instead it has been more cause for controversy and disgust. It is well known that Bonds has encountered allegations of steroid use, but any proof of this is still nowhere to be found. It is currently still under investigation, but just because he hasn't been proven guilty doesn't mean he hasn't suffered from the allegations. Instead of receiving cheers and a pat on the back for his accomplishments, Bonds was greeted with boos wherever he stepped foot. Could it be possible the media egged this reaction on?

Dante Chinni of PEJ wrote an article, entitled How Did The Media React to Bonds' Blast, in which PEJ did an examination of the coverage in the 43 daily newspapers that were based in cities that are home to major league baseball teams. In this examination Chinni used a special software to look for the most frequently used words in a total field of 106 stories which covered the event. Chinni's findings were certainly interesting.

It was found that the words "steroids" and "performance-enhancing drugs" were the two most common words to appear in the coverage, both appearing 215 times. Positive words were also present in the coverage but appeared much less. This list was lead by "achievement" appearing 140 times and "great" a mere 117 times.

Particular journalists made their opinion of Bonds well known. For example Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News wrote that the fans in San Francisco seem to think he "became the all-time home run king of baseball without the help of enough performance-enhancing drugs to keep a battleship afloat." Another article reads, "A little piece of humankind died Tuesday night," said Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti.

Did all of this opinion making front page influence readers around American on their opinion of Bonds and his achievement? Of course it did. Whoever might argue otherwise would be a fool. Although the allegations are there, and very well may be true for all I know, can't we just let Bonds be for now? In America aren't we "innocent until proven guilty"?