This document summarizes a research paper analyzing why the American press showed less interest in covering the Lance Armstrong doping scandal compared to the European press. It suggests the European press covered it more extensively because cycling is more popular in Europe. It also notes that Americans may be desensitized to doping scandals. An interview with an expert on doping found that American media is reluctant to damage national heroes and that Europeans have more national pride invested in the Tour de France.

1. Featherman, Sykes 1
Raymond Featherman and Mallory Sykes
Philosophy 325
Professor Sacks
Case Study Final
December 7th, 2012
The Downfall of Lance Armstrong
Lance Armstrong: seven-time Tour de France champion, internationally renowned
elite athlete, cancer survivor, philanthropist. The positive things associated with this man
are almost endless. Recently though, Lance Armstrong made headlines for something
else besides his athletic wins or his charity LIVESTRONG. On October 10th 2012,
official news was released that Lance Armstrong would be stripped of all his seven Tour
de France titles because it had been uncovered that Armstrong had been blood doping.
However, the coverage by the US media, like a burst of flame off a splash of gasoline,
died down almost immediately. We found this to be strange, considering Lance
Armstrong’s celebrity status in the United States. This provoked the question in our
minds of why Americans as a whole have shown a lack of interest in the Lance
Armstrong blood doping scandal. To answer this question, we decided to analyze the
differences between the ways the American Press and citizens reacted to how the
European press and citizens reacted to the Lance Armstrong blood doping scandal, where
cycling as a sport is much more prevalent and followed.
As mentioned before, on October 10th, 2012, the United States Anti-doping Agency
(USADA) released an official statement on Lance Armstrong. In it, USADA made the
claim that along with blood doping himself, Lance also lead a doping program within the

2. Featherman, Sykes 2
United States Postal Service Cycling Team (USPS Cycling), with whom he rode for.
USADA then sent this official statement to the Amaury Sport Organization (ASO), the
organization that runs the Tour de France, as well as the Union Cycliste le Internationale
(UCI), the governing international organization of cycling. In this report, the USADA’s
primary source of evidence was through testimonials from various people, including
former and past teammates, who knew Lance Armstrong throughout the span of his
professional cycling career, starting in 1998 (USADA report). Within the first page of the
official USADA statement they summarized the evidence as: “The evidence of the US
Postal Service Pro Cycling Team-run scheme is overwhelming and is in excess of 1,000
pages, and includes sworn testimony from 26 people, including 15 riders with knowledge
of the US Postal Service Team (USPS Team) and its participants’ doping activities. The
evidence also includes direct documentary evidence including financial payments,
emails, scientific data and laboratory test results that further prove the use, possession
and distribution of performance enhancing drugs by Lance Armstrong and confirm the
disappointing truth about the deceptive activities of the USPS Team, a team that received
tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars in funding” (USADA report). The evidence
presented had to be compared to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) code. As we
all know, USADA did find that Lance Armstrong was in violation. However, this report
itself did not officially take away his titles until UCI legitimized the report and officially
took away Lance’s titles. When UCI gave their approval of the report Lance Armstrong
was officially striped of all seven Tour de France titles.
The European Press reacted to the Lance Armstrong story in the way we thought the
U.S. Press should have. What we saw from the European press was continual up dates of

3. Featherman, Sykes 3
the Lance Armstrong story, sometimes being represented in the top stories of sport.
During our research, we have come to some conclusions about why the European press
seemingly has covered the Lance Armstrong case more then the U.S press did. The first
and primary reason that we found was simply because cycling has traditionally been an
event that is primarily watched by Europeans “The media potential of the traditionally
European race is being increasingly recognized in the United States, with Armstrong's
charisma and personal triumph over cancer contributing in no small measure” (Sidhva).
This quote blatantly states that traditionally the Tour de France has been a sporting
interest of Europeans. However, it also brings up an interesting motive for the European
press to want to report on the negative news that has come out about an American, that
being Lance Armstrong. We all know that with all international sports comes a little
national pride that is dependent on the outcome of the event or game. Although we are
not accusing the European press of targeting Lance Armstrong because he is an
American, they have certainly shown that they are not afraid to update their readers on
the latest blows to Lance Armstrong’s career.
Of course the driving force behind why the press reported, and still continues to
report, on this is not for their own personal vendetta, but because their readers, the source
of their income. These Europeans are not deterred to read up on Lance Armstrong and his
huge fall from athletic stardom and lose of his seven Tour de France titles because he is
not a fellow countrymen. To gauge the cultures reaction to this story, we have decided to
take a look at the comments and social media left on European news sites and blogs to
see what personal individuals thought of the situation.

4. Featherman, Sykes 4
One example of how the stories kept much further up to date by the European press
then by the United States press is that, in the USA, ESPN’s latest article on Lance
Armstrong was from October 23rd, yet the Telegraph, a British news media station, most
recent story was from December 8th, only 3 days ago. In just three days, The Telegraph
had accumulated 21 comments and 32 total shares on just Twitter alone. Taking into
account not only the amount of time the stories had been on the web, but also the much
larger sports-fan fan base ESPN has, the fact that it has taken over six weeks for their
article to accumulate 92 comments and just 29 shares shows how much less interested the
US readers are to the story.
In our opinion, the press within the United States has given a sub-par effort when it
comes to the way they went about reporting and investigating on the so-called Lance
Armstrong scandal. Many of the articles from credible US press outlets, including ESPN,
on the case did not even have recent and/or updated stories. We believe this may be due
to the fact that Americans may be numb to the use of steroids in professional sports. It no
longer comes as a surprise or shock to American sport fans when a new story breaks on
how a famous and talented professional athlete has been caught engaging in illegal
steroid use. From Doug Barron to Barry Bonds to Manny Ramirez, the list goes on and
on. The major difference between these three examples and Lance Armstrong is that
Barrons, Bonds, and Ramirez were professional athletes in sports that draw a large and
steady American crowd, whereas Armstrong competed professionally in cycling, which
not only has few televised and popular competitions, but also draws a small American
crowd. Those two factors combined can be the reason why the US media decided not to
cover it as aggressively as one might expect.

5. Featherman, Sykes 5
A scandalous story of illegal drug use by one of the most famous and well-known
professional athletes in the whole world seems like a story dreamed up by a journalist. As
mentioned before, this may be a reason why the European media covered the Armstrong
case so excessively. However, this may definitely have been the reason why the US
media rarely reported on the story. This may be not only because of the national and
patriotic views of the news media’s themselves, but also the fact that US citizens, whom
as a whole view national pride highly, simply would not have enjoyed seeing and reading
numerous articles everyday on the fall from grace of a national sports figure. It goes back
to common business principle that to make money, you must put out a product that
consumers, being US sports fans especially, will want to “consume”. We believe that is
why many of the news stations that did have stories on the scandal, such as the
Washington Post, were secondary articles, taken many times from European media
outlets, a way that let news media outlets report on the story without having to spend
money or time on getting it.
As part of our research we reached out to Dr. Bryan Denham an author who has
written a lot about steroid use in athletes for an interview. We asked him four questions
designed to have Dr. Denham touch broadly on all aspects of the Lance Armstrong
scandal that we planned to analyze. Here is our interview which we will analyze after the
interview:
Dear, Dr. Denham
-Here are my interview questions:
1. I believe I asked you this question before in class but I just want to get an official
quote, do you believe that the United States is headed towards more of a European

6. Featherman, Sykes 6
outlook on steroids, meaning we are more accepting of steroids and we realize that when
players take them it is so they play their best?
It is a difficult question, because on one hand we have a somewhat dubious code of
morality and expect our athletes to preserve the so-called sanctity of sport, but on the
other hand, we have nearly constants reports of athletes using performance-enhancing
drugs. I would say that people are more accepting of the fact that steroids are part of
sports, but they do not like what sports have become in general (excessively
commercialized enterprises).
2. In your observation of Lance Armstrong’s steroids accusations, in your professional
opinion why do you think that many news distributors decided not to push the story very
hard even while the story is still on going?
American mass media are big business, and few corporations want to be associated with
embarrassing an American on the international stage – especially when that American
has survived cancer, started a charity for cancer research, and won multiple cycling
titles. U.S. journalists would prefer to “report on a report” from elsewhere, thus not
being responsible for digging up negative stories on their own. They are then able to
report the news without being responsible for the news.
3. Why do you think stories linking elite athletes like Barry Bonds to steroids are so
popular while Lance Armstrong’s steroid story in the media just got started and already
media sources in the United States are starting to really dial down their coverage of the
on going events.
I believe many sports journalists did not like Barry Bonds from start, and while they did
not necessarily make it a point to go after him, they did not mind reporting the news. As

7. Featherman, Sykes 7
Bob Costas and others have noted, baseball records in the United States are seen by
many sports journalists and fans as sacred, and some of the numbers put up by Bonds
and others in his era offended the sensibilities of baseball followers. The new records
made a mockery of the old records.
4. Do you think that people in the United States have just gotten so used to hearing about
people trying to accuse Lance Armstrong of taking steroids that this story is almost like
the boy who cried wolf (When I first heard about Lance’s latest steroid accusations this
was my initial reaction)? In other words have we gotten so used to Lance Armstrong
being accused of taking steroids we have grown a tendency to ignore it as just another
accusation that will eventually fade away?
Yes, I do believe there is a belief among many Americans that athletes and officials in
other nations are just jealous of his accomplishments. Of course, when a drug-testing
body like USADA gets involved, then people may be more willing to listen, as the agency
is located in the United States. People want to believe the best in their heroes and not
suspect those individuals of cheating the system to win. (Denham, 04 December 2012)
5. How do you believe the European culture views Lance Armstrong in contrast to the
lack of interest the U.S culture seems to hold?
The Tour de France is more important in European society, and therefore the people who
follow it stand to be much more offended if they believe an athlete from another country
is using EPO and lying about it. U.S. sports fans follow Armstrong and have cheered his
accomplishments, but there is not as much personal and national investment in the race.
Hope these thoughts assist you in your paper. BD (Denham, 05 December 2012)

8. Featherman, Sykes 8
Work Cited
"Cycling." The Telegraph. The Telegraph Media Group, 10 2012. Web. 12 Dec 2012.
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/>
Denham, Bryan. E-mail Interview. 04 2012
Denham, Bryan. E-mail Interview. 05 2012
"Endurance Sports." ESPN. ESPN, 10 2012. Web. 12 Dec 2012.
<http://espn.go.com/olympics/tourdefrance>
Sidhva, Shiraz. "Television Will be Your Tour Guide." Hollywood
Reporter (2004): 10-. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 12 Dec.
2012.
"Statement From USADA CEO Travis T. Tygart Regarding The U.S. Postal Service Pro
Cycling Team Doping Conspiracy." cyclinginvestigation.usada.org/. USADA, 10
2012. Web. 12 Dec 2012. <http://cyclinginvestigation.usada.org/>