American media criticised for US bias after using ‘wrong’ Olympic medal table to top China’s golds

American media outlets have been criticised for presenting the Paris 2024 Olympic medal table differently to the official tally – in a method that puts USA on top of the pile.

Most of the world ranks the medal table by count of gold medals, then by silver to separate countries with the same number of golds, and by bronze when the silver tallies match too. This is how the medal table is presented on the Olympic Games website, a method which values the most prized medal, gold, over silver and bronze.

But US outlets including the Washington Post, ESPN and Olympic broadcaster NBC default their rankings by the total number of medals, while the New York Times shows both total medals and a gold-first tally alongside each other, and it has raised a few eyebrows abroad.

Unsurprisingly, the “American method” almost always presents USA – which has the biggest team with nearly 600 athletes at the Games – as the top ranked nation, and that is the case in Paris, as the first country to accumulate more than 30 medals. The official Olympics website meanwhile has China in first place with 11 golds, and the US languishing down the table below Australia, Japan and hosts France.

American media argue it is a method that has been deployed for decades, but it remains a point of contention at each Games.

“The New York Times is better than this, but they always do it,” tweeted Nick Bryant, author and former Washington correspondent for the BBC. “American exceptionalism at its most needy and mad……”

Some responses defended the Times’ method, writing: “You’re just noticing this? It’s been the metal count methodology for at least 25 years now.”

Australian journalist Bradley Jurd tweeted: “Every country in the world ranks by gold medals. It’s never by total. But this is a country that insists on Fahrenheit and pounds, when almost no one else does.”

NBC has sometimes turned comments off on X when tweeting out the medal count, but that hasn’t stopped the scrutiny. “Meanwhile, in the actual medal table, the US are 6th,” quote-tweeted one user. “Love that they’ve turned comments off as they know they’re wrong.”

Another wrote: “Again the US media opt for their own feel good sort rules for the medal table vs the official table.”

American media needn’t have worried in Tokyo, eventually edging out China by one gold to top the table whichever way it was presented. But that may not be such a sure thing this time around, with the US needing to catch up after collecting far more silver and bronze in the opening days. With the athletics still to come, however, Team USA has plenty of time to catch up.

The US has finished on top of the table at 18 of the 29 summer Olympics, including the very first in Athens in 1896, and six of the past seven stretching back to America’s home Games in Atlanta in 1996 – China punctured that streak in Beijing in 2008. Hosts Japan finished third last time ahead of Great Britain in fourth.