Why are you sticking up for the media? If you follow current events you should know that the media is often clueless about reality and often report their own biases as though it's factual and news. I used to deal sometimes with media in a non-sports context and could see how limited the media's grasp was on reality.
Getting back to sports, I had a very frank talk with a sports journalist at USA Today in about '89 and he essentially admitted they tinker with their All-American team to give it a national appeal. He said to me, "If we picked the truly best 22 or 44 or whatever it would be largely composed of players from three states and readers from the rest of the country would not be interested."
I'll let you guess which three states.
It was around that time, late '80's, that Corey Booker was named a USA today A-A from New Jersey.
I rest my case.