New research suggests that there is racial stereotyping in the way media portray athletes.

Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia found that media stories on African-American athletes focus primarily on criminal actions while stories about white athletes are overwhelmingly positive.

"True cultural sensitivity requires the eradication of racial and ethnic stereotyping; thus, journalists and reporters must reflect on how their own unfounded beliefs about race differences in sports likely contribute to the stereotyping of black athletes as engaged in more criminal activity and innately physically gifted yet lacking in intelligence and strong work ethics," researcher Cynthia Frisby said in a statement. "Not only does negative media coverage serve to legitimize social power inequalities, but also it is likely to undermine black athletes' achievements and contribute to stereotype threat."

For the study, researchers examined more than 150 news articles about male athletes from online and print news sources to determine the theme of each story. The themes identified included crime, domestic violence, training/hard work, moral success or failure, violating rules of the sports league, accomplishments, and personal lifestyle.

They found that overall, more stories were written about white athletes than black athletes. Frisby also found that more than 66 percent of the crime stories involved black athletes while only 22 percent involved white athletes. More than 70 percent of domestic violence stories involved black athletes and only 17 percent involved white athletes. Finally, 53 percent of the stories involving black athletes had a negative tone, while only 27 percent of stories about white athletes were negative. Frisby says these statistics point to an existence of stereotyping in the sports media.

"True cultural sensitivity requires the eradication of racial and ethnic stereotyping; thus, journalists and reporters must reflect on how their own unfounded beliefs about race differences in sports likely contribute to the stereotyping of black athletes as engaged in more criminal activity and innately physically gifted yet lacking in intelligence and strong work ethics," Frisby said. "Not only does negative media coverage serve to legitimize social power inequalities, but also it is likely to undermine black athletes' achievements and contribute to stereotype threat."

Frisby said the results will help to set the stage for future research examining negative portrayals of black athletes in the media.

The findings were presented at the 2015 International Communication Association conference.