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The tragic death of Dale Earnhardt in 2001 broke hearts across the world.  And the way that we found out about it was none other than the media.

Long story short, NASCAR didn't have good safety standards back then.  He was killed instantly.  But it was now FOX handled the tragic situation that showed the world what happened.

They started by interviewing Ken Schrader (driver of the No. 36 car pictured above).  Schrader went into the No. 3 cockpit and checked on Dale.  On TV, he was interviewed and visibly shaken up, but he didn't say too much because he didn't wanna speculate and jump to any conclusions.

Then, they interviewed Michael Waltrip, the winner of the race and a driver for Dale Earnhardt's team that he owned.  He was ecstatic that he won the race, but was later quoted after the news came out as saying "This was the best day of my life, and then it became the worst."  I still get goosebumps thinking about this tragic day, and I was only 5 years old.

They later cut to the media center, where NASCAR president Mike Helton came out and made a statement, stating those infamous words: "We've lost Dale Earnhardt."  The hearts of people across the world that were watching ached for everybody and Dale.  In my opinion, the media handled this tragic situation to perfection.

I am a huge NASCAR fan, so when NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver AJ Allmendinger (yes, that is a real name) tested positive for adderall, I was somewhat shocked, for a few reasons.

First off, I was shocked that a NASCAR driver tested positive for drugs.  After all, it isn't a sport like football or baseball where PED's are such a problem.  Allmendinger was taking the pills to combat his ADHD, but they were on the list of drugs deemed illegal, so he had to pay the price.

Secondly, the timing of this was incredible.  The news came just mere hours before he was supposed to race in the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway.  He was escorted out of the track and a replacement driver was flown in last minute.  But now, let't get to what really matters when it comes to this project: how the media handled it.

The various media outlets covered and handled this incident strangely.  ESPN isn't too big on NASCAR coverage, so they weren't too educated on the incident.  But networks like SPEED, which is 100% motorsports oriented, were.  Those networks looked at it from all sides, like the owner, driver, sponsor and family side.  And considered everybody.  But ESPN didn't.  They made false assumptions and were called out on it.

In yet another NFL domestic violence case, this one was somewhat underreported due to the Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson cases that were arguably more severe and came out and broke at different times.  Arizona Cardinals RB Jonathan Dwyer was arrested in a domestic violence investigation involving his wife as well as his child.

This breaking news story was broken in the same way as the aforementioned Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson cases were broken, but this was different in the sense that it was the third such case the NFL had experienced in the span of about 2 weeks, so it wasn't taken as seriously.  It was more of a "Wow, again?  What else is new ..." kind reaction.

Cleveland Browns WR Josh Gordon was suspended by the National Football League for one year after testing positive for the second time for marijuana.  The suspension was later reduced to ten games, but personally, what caught my eye, was how the media handled this story.

Whether it was ESPN, ProFootballTalk, FOX Sports or any other sports outlet, the story as primarily looked at from a pure football standpoint.  I can see this if it were the Cleveland Browns, but as a large media outlet that many kids watch on a daily basis, I believe that they had an obligation to talk about how you shouldn't use marijuana because it is illegal.