Insights on Reporting Sports in the Digital Age

Ethical and Practical Considerations in a Changing Media Landscape

Roger Domeneghetti

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367819484
• eBook ISBN: 9781000411690
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Scienze della comunicazione

This first book in the Journalism Insights series examines the major practical and ethical challenges confronting contemporary sports journalists which have emerged from, or been exacerbated by, the use of digital and social media.

Combining both quantitative and qualitative research and contributions from industry experts in sports reporting across Europe, America and Australia, the collection offers a valuable look at the digital sports reporting industry today. Issues discussed in the text include the ethical questions created by social media abuse received by sports journalists, the impact of social media on narratives about gender and race, and the 'silencing' of journalists over the issue of trans athletes, as well as the impact on 'traditional' aspects of sports journalism, such as the match report. The book features first-hand accounts from leading sports reporters and scholars about how these changes have affected the industry and sets out what 'best practice' looks like in this field today.

This book will be a useful resource for scholars and students working in the fields of journalism, media, sports and communication, as well as for current sports journalism practitioners interested in the future of a changing industry.

PART I

Ethical considerations in the digital era

1

Benefit or burden?

Social media and moral complexities confronting sports journalists

Tom Bradshaw

DOI: 10.4324/9781003010944-3

Introduction

The use of Twitter and other social media platforms is now an established form of sports journalism practice (English, 2016; Sheffer and Schultz, 2010; Sherwood and Nicholson, 2012), although research is ambivalent about how effectively sports journalists deploy new media technologies (Fondevila-Gascon et al., 2016). Social media has also acted as a spur to competition between sports journalists (Gibbs and Haynes, 2013). While the ethical challenges posed to sports journalists by social media have received some attention (Bradshaw and Minogue, 2018) and have prompted some to propose a bespoke code of practice for sports journalists (Ramon-Vegas and Rojas-Torrijos, 2018), they are in need of more detailed explication and analysis through a deeper consideration of sports journalists’ experiences of working in the social media era.

This chapter uses qualitative data to explore the ethical issues facing sports journalists in the digital age. The data comprises in-depth interviews with ten sports journalists as well as diaries kept by three different sports journalists. The sample of sports journalists captures both broadcast and online/newspaper journalists. While the journalists who took part in the research are all based in the UK the findings are likely to have resonance for sports journalists operating in any country where social media is prevalent, not least because social media allows journalists to engage with an international audience. The data collection has been underpinned by a methodology of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith et al., 2009), according to which the sports journalists were able to reflect in detail on their personal experience of negotiating ethical issues in sports journalism.

Social media emerges as a double-edged sword: in the same breath it can be regarded as an important newsgathering tool but also a platform on which verification is difficult. One of its most positive functions is to raise the standard of some sports journalists’ output, but at its worst it can be a platform for grotesque distortion and for corrupting sports journalists’ decision-making processes. What emerges is how social media has transformed the practice of sports journalists, and with that has come new ethical issues, or in some instances old ethical issues in new guises.

The findings can be condensed to the following points:

• Online abuse of sports journalists is widespread, and for some participants online abuse—whether at them or to the subjects of their stories—is a quotidian experience.
• Perhaps paradoxically, social media is viewed as facilitating the spread of inaccuracies, but is perceived by some as a potent driver of improved standards of accuracy due to sports journalists feeling that their work is under greater scrutiny than ever before.
• Social media is seen by some sports journalists as a corrupting influence on the integrity of sports journalism, with large Twitter followings corrupting sports journalists by prompting them to make editorial judgements based on their followers’ anticipated reaction.
• Social media has led to new—and arguably more complex—forms of self-censorship among sports journalists.
• There is a marked ambivalence among participants about the impact of social media on sports journalism and sports journalists.
• Alongside new ethical issues arising in the social media era, more long-standing pre-social media issues persist too.

The chapter concludes by making a recommendation to industry. This is based on how commonplace the abuse of sports journalists appears to be. Having a ‘thick skin’ is the standard response for dealing with such abuse, but this seems an inadequate response given the nature and volume of some abuse, and given the need to protect journalists’ mental health. As such, sports desks and sports journalism organisations, such as the Sports Journalists’ Association in the UK, are recommended to consider drafting guidance and organising forums to support the recipients of online abuse.

Literature review

Ethical issues confront sports journalists working for local, regional, national and international news organisations (Boyle, 2006a, 2006b; Cairns, 2018; Harcup, 2007). In his classic monograph examining issues affecting modern sports journalism practice, Boyle contends that the closeness of the relationship between sports journalists and many of the teams that they cover means they run the risk of producing content that is “complicit” with those organisations’ aims. Boyle refers to this as the danger of “travelling too close to the circus” and suggests a need for the sports media to “run away from the circus” (Boyle, 2006b). Sugden and Tomlinson (2007) also consider the complicity potentially involved in sports journalists’ relationships with both their subjects and sources, arguing that a “collusive dynamic” exists, while Rowe (2005, 2007) has suggested that sports journalists have performed a “cheerleading” function rather than that of watchdog. A connected phenomenon—the increasing reliance by journalists on material provided by public relations departments, and the attendant disregard for verification—has been labelled “churnalism” by Davies (2008) and an extreme form of the activity has resulted in at least one sports writer being suspended from their role in the United States (Biasotti, 2015).

It has been suggested that the growth of digital has made issues of self-censorship more prominent for journalists generally, including sports journalists, due to the ease with which social media and other digital platforms enable readers to react directly and immediately to content they dislike or disagree with (Binns, 2017a, 2017b; Steen, 2014: 151–160). This is arguably just one facet of the impact that social media has had on editorial decision-making. The issue of how the increased pace of the sports news cycle has forced reporters to make editorial and ethical decisions more rapidly than in the past has been raised by those in positions of significant editorial power in the sports journalism industry, such as Cairns (2018). Indeed, Andy Cairns, the now former executive editor of Sky Sports News, offers a frank, vivid and thoughtful assessment of the ethical issues facing sports journalism in the digital era, not least with regard to social media. The proliferation of rumour on social media has changed the caution exercised by traditional sports broadcasters and outlets, he argues (Cairns, 2018). Sky will now broadcast material that remains unsubstantiated rumour, a situation Cairns describes as follows:

The challenge comes when a rumour gathers significant momentum on social media. We can’t ignore it so we tell our viewers that this is a rumour we know is gaining traction, that we are checking to verify and that we will update as soon as we can. It’s not where we were a few years ago, where we waited to confirm a story before putting it to air, but it’s honest with our audience.

(Cairns, 2018: 10–11)

Such a policy represents a shift away from traditional sourcing approaches, but Cairns contends that sports journalists are now far more investigative-minded than previously, and there are, he suggests, strong reasons to believe that the quality of sports journalism is good. However, he argues that this bolder and wider-ranging stance taken by sports journalists raises issues around ethical training:

Sports journalists now regularly cover issues that shine a light on some of the key ethical questions in broader society. Over the last year sports writers have covered the “take-a-knee” debate, stories about race and sex discrimination, corruption, gambling, drugs, abuse and mental health. The industry needs journalists equipped to handle these questions.

(Cairns, 2018: 11–12)

Cairns provides a vivid account of how the digital era has prompted changes in sports journalists’ working practices and stimulated the creation of a fast-paced environment in which considered ethical reasoning is difficult. Yet while providing an insightful and honest individual account, the issues he raises require further exploration.

As far back as 2010, Sheffer and Schultz were suggesting that the use of Twitter and other new media technologies could be occasioning a “paradigm shift” in sports journalism practice, with traditional journalists losing their privileged position as agenda-setters but also being able to interact more directly with their audience and offer more opinion (Sheffer and Schultz, 2010). However, the growth of social media—while enabling sports journalists to interact with their audiences more than before—has also undermined sports journalists, through the emergence of bogus Twitter accounts purveying misinformation (Corcoran, 2014). It has also stimulated the promotion of clickbait. The growth of so-called ‘clickbait culture’—in which journalists produce often sensationally-headlined online stories with the aim of attracting a bigger audience—has arisen from media groups’ desire to attract higher numbers of visitors to websites (Greenslade, 2016) and thereby facilitate advertising revenue (Rajan, 2018). It has been argued by Cable and Mottershead (2018) that the pursuit of increased audience share through clickbait tactics has compromised quality. In a longitudinal analysis examining the Twitter feeds of 15 major football media outlets between 2010 and 2017, they conclude that quality is being undermined as outlets pursue “a never-ending quest for easy content” in which “attractive headlines trump journalistic content” (Cable and Mottershead, 2018: 69). Producing clickbait content is, they contend, a short-sighted way of attempting to build an audience base that will return to a site. They suggest that sports desks and sports journalists should provide more interaction with the audience rather than more clickbait content, concluding: “If the competition is for eyeballs then surely the way to build a community and audience is to interact and not to churn out unsatisfying yet tasty morsels of clickbait for the audience to gorge themselves on” (Cable and Mottershead, 2018: 78). The issue arises, however, about how dependent the audience has already become on a diet of such morsels, and whether they can be weaned off it (Bradshaw and Minogue, 2018).

Social media is not the only means of audiences “gorging” on questionable sports content. Echoing some of the points raised by Cairns (2018), a qualitative study of sports media communications professionals in Australia found three areas of concern about the quality of sports content in the 24-hour digital era: that accuracy was a casualty of the speed at which sports journalists were seeking to publish stories; that journalists were attempting to produce more content with fewer resources; and that there was an increase in complaints (Edmondson, 2018). Following 26 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with sports communication professionals she concludes that violations of core ethical standards of Australian journalism are happening routinely as a consequence of the digital 24/7 news cycle (Edmondson, 2018: 54). A useful counterbalance to the findings, however, would be provided by interviews with sports journalists, rather than the study’s reliance solely on PR professionals.

The social media era has also, it has been argued, ushered in an era of self-obsession among some sports journalists, in which the number of followers on social media accounts becomes an enduring concern. This, Steen argues, fuels a “cult of the personality” in which the social media platform turns the writer into both the publisher and the product (Steen, 2014: 43). This emphasis on the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Sports Journalism 3.0, beyond transition
• PART I Ethical considerations in the digital era
• PART II Representations and narratives of identity
• PART III Practical considerations
• Index