Is sports journalism better than other journalism?

While at the health club this morning, I noticed that ESPN is devoting a lot of lead coverage to the Duke lacrosse players rape charges. From one perspective, this is journalism as usual, focusing on sensationalistic stories about crimes. On the other hand, though, this is sports not national or world news, and from that perspective their spending a lot of time on this story may verge on being admirable. Somehow I don't think of the ESPN viewership base as dying to see this story, but it dramatizes an important message about the distorted culture of professional, or at least male professional, sports (counting big-time college sports as professional).