Interesting:
American media criticised for US bias after using ‘wrong’ Olympic medal table to top China’s golds
... 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.
I don't really care, but all else equal I would go with the international and Olympic standard.
... “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……”
... 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.”...
Busted.