Sports Journalism

Context and Issues

Raymond Boyle

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781446223789
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Boyle's study is essential reading for all students, teachers and researchers of sports journalism.
- Journalism

"Very clear and accessible, addressing key and complex issues in a plain and clearcut way."
-Alan Tomlinson, University of Brighton

Across all media; print, broadcast as well as online, sports journalism has come to occupy an increasingly visible space. This book looks at the institutional, cultural and economic environment and provides an invaluable overview of contemporary sports journalism across all media forms. The book:

• Situates sports journalism within the broader historical, economic, technological and cultural contexts.
• Examines the commercialisation of sport and the impact this is having on sports journalism.
• Looks at the relationship between PR and journalism.
• Considers the gendered nature of the industry and the impact of digital technology on professional practice.

1

ENGAGING WITH SPORTS JOURNALISM: CONTEXT AND ISSUES

‘What a wonderful life you enjoy’, sports journalists are often told by people in the pub.

Michael Henderson ‘Why I dread a summer of sport’, The Observer Sports Monthly, May (2004), No. 51

This reluctance to take sports journalism seriously produces the paradoxical outcome that sports newspaper writers are much read but little admired.

David Rowe (1999: 36) Sport, Culture and the Media.

Sports journalism is largely absent from histories of journalism in the UK. This chapter examines previous writing on sports journalism and looks at how this area of journalism has been positioned within the hierarchy of journalistic practice. It is also interested in identifying the wider discourses associated with how we think about, and value, sports journalism.

While focusing primarily on the UK, material is also drawn from elsewhere, for example the USA; however, the book argues that the distinctive economic and cultural contexts of UK journalism have shaped the broader trajectory and culture of sports journalism in this country. This chapter is also interested in mapping out ways in which sports journalism has altered and changed in response to changes in the media’s influence on the sports economy. This particular theme is then developed in more detail throughout the rest of the book.

SPORTS JOURNALISM WITHIN JOURNALISM STUDIES

Despite agreeing on its commercial importance, research into sports journalism is largely absent from the growing body of work that might be called ‘journalism studies’. From within the arena of media and communication studies, journalism and its relationship to politics and democracy has been a central concern for as long as communication research has been carried out; however, the rise in the UK of a more specific focus on journalism as a distinct teaching discipline at university level over the last decade has helped define a more distinctive terrain within which more journalism research is being focused. The arrival of a number of journalism-specific academic journals such as Journalism: Theory, Culture and Practice also signifies a distinctive stage in the evolution of a particular teaching and research arena within the UK academy.

It could be argued that given the massive range of content across media platforms that calls itself sports journalism in some shape or form, the research trajectory within journalism studies has been relatively narrow and heavily informed by particular political and economic concerns. To this end it has often drawn heavily from social science and political sociology.

Within this particular research tradition there appears to be a general consensus that journalism is in some form of crisis (Franklin, 1997; Sparks and Tulloch, 2000; Hargreaves, 2003; Campbell, 2004; Kettle, 2004; Lloyd, 2004a; Marr, 2004; Allan, 2005). The extent and depth of the crisis is vigorously debated between those who see an increasingly commercial and market-driven media economy as having a detrimental impact on the quality of journalism and its ability to fulfil its key role in democratic societies and others who view the breaking down of traditional journalistic hierarchies and the advent of new communication networks, such as the Internet, as offering as many opportunities as challenges to extend the democratic function of journalistic practice in information-saturated societies (Langer, 1998; McNair, 1999). Often this debate is framed within a wider concern about the impact of journalistic standards on the democratic process.

In the wake of the sacking in May 2004 of Piers Morgan, editor of the tabloid Daily Mirror newspaper, following the revelation that pictures showing British soldiers supposedly abusing Iraqi prisoners carried by that paper were false, fellow journalist Martin Kettle argued that:

The Mirror’s faked tale was not some one-off event. It was merely the latest manifestation of a widespread and in some ways peculiarly British disease. This holds that, within increasingly elastic limits, a journalist is entitled to say pretty much what he or she likes, whether or not it is precisely true, without being subject to any sanctions or professional penalties for doing so. (Kettle, 2004)

Indeed, this debate about journalistic standards extends beyond more overt political concerns and focuses on the wider cultural impact of what some have termed the ‘dumbing down’ of culture (Sampson, 1996; Bromley, 1998). While this concern about cultural and moral standards embraces a range of areas of civil society beyond the media, it is the latter which is centrally implicated in this process of decline. Both television and journalism are viewed as two of the key areas of cultural production that most clearly illustrate the concerns of lowering public standards. As Hargreaves (2003: 12–13) points out: ‘Journalism stands accused of sacrificing accuracy for speed, purposeful investigation for cheap intrusion and reliability for entertainment. “Dumbed down” news media are charged with privileging sensation over significance and celebrity over achievement.’ It might even be suggested that what Hargreaves outlines could also be a caricature of what is perceived to be the practice associated with sports journalism at the popular end of the newspaper market.

However, you do not have to subscribe fully to the ‘dumbing down’ thesis to be concerned about the current state of the journalism profession. As journalist, economist and writer Will Hutton has argued:

Journalism and the entertainment culture in which we now live are uneasy bedfellows. Facts are not always clear-cut, easy to understand and dramatic; good and bad rarely lend themselves to the demands of soundbites. Yet for those who can deliver dramatic, clear-cut stories, the entertainment culture delivers celebrity status with salaries and standing to match. The temptation to over dramatise grows by the month; to cut corners for some is irresistible. (Hutton, 2004)

Ostensibly these debates are about the impact of commercialisation on the provision of impartial and uncomplicit news, something viewed as fundamental if people are to make informed choices in a democratic society, and at their core is a concern about the quality and range of political and economic information being made available. Why then should these concerns impact on a study of sports journalism?

SPORTS JOURNALISM AND ‘TABLOIDISATION’

The rise of the preoccupation of journalism with celebrity-driven news, part of a wider ‘tabloidization’ thesis (Sparks, 2000), has seen the increasing profile allocated to sports become implicated in a wider debate about ‘dumbing down’. In other words, the rise in quantity of sports coverage and its supposed attendant fixation with celebrity sports stars, particularly in the broadsheet press since the 1990s, as well as its increasing profile with mainstream television news, is seen as an example of ‘dumbing down’. If, as Franklin (1997: 5) argues, news organisations and journalism in general is now fixated with entertainment-driven news and ‘the task of journalism has become merely to deliver and serve up whatever the customer wants’, then it appears increasingly what they want is sports-related news.

There remains a certain irony in this situation. The key claims now levelled at journalism in general about a decline in the standard and rigour that journalists bring to their craft have been a common criticism aimed at sections of sports journalism for decades. When the then President of Baseball’s National League in the USA addressed the American Society of Newspaper editors in the 1980s, he lambasted the quality of sports journalism and its internal policing by newspaper editors. He argued that editors ignored the sports section:

They ignore it in the sense, and it is an important one, that the same set of editorial standards for accuracy, competence, distinguishing fact from opinion, rewriting, and editing are simply not applied consistently or rigorously to sports sections as they are applied to other sections of the newspaper. (Giamatti, 1988: 204)

The paradox being that at a time when similar accusations are being made about the wider culture of political and economic journalism, and the growth of sports journalism, certainly in the UK, is seen as a symbolic example of declining standards, sports journalism is probably better policed than at any time in its history. While the tabloid market undoubtedly retains many aspects outlined by Giamatti, the expanded range and coverage in the broadsheet/compact market means there has never been more systematic, insightful and rigorous sports journalism of what Rowe (1992) calls the ‘reflexive analysis’ type available in the UK newspaper market. Thus sports journalism interfaces with the wider ‘tabloidisation’ of the press thesis in an interesting manner.

Sparks (2000), in his excellent overview of the supposed ‘tabloidisation’ of journalism is keen to stress the historical dimension to this process and its attendant debate. He also argues that the current concerns should be seen as part of this longer process that is ‘reformulating’ the news media, as ‘serious’ newspapers in particular seek to address a changing ‘readership’. This is a readership dramatically altered through a rise in educational levels and changes in the labour market and family structures. When this is combined with a more commercially aggressive news marketplace he argues that what we are experiencing is a specific staging post in the evolution of the relationship between journalism, society and democracy.

Some newspaper editors view this shifting terrain as less of a threat and agree with Sparks (2000) that what has changed is society’s expectations of what it requires from its media. To this end they argue that newspapers to a greater extent accurately reflect the breaking down of more traditional class-based barriers related to cultural taste: the public and the private and the centrality of popular culture in our everyday lives. Alan Rusbridger, editor of the then broadsheet Guardian newspaper¹, argued in November 2000 that changes in the broadsheet press simply reflected wider cultural shifts in taste and the breaking down of areas of supposedly high and low culture. He asks incredulously that:

You can’t possibly care about debt relief and The Simpsons. If you listen to Ligeti and James Macmillan then why would you want to know who won the United game last night or which Cabernet Sauvignon to drink with your meal tonight? Get back into your box.

Something else missing from The Times of 1968 was anything to do with the home or emotional life. There is nothing about marriage, divorce, children, schools, au pairs, depression, drinking, health, drugs, teenagers, affairs, fashion, sex, successful relationships, failing relationships, interior decor, cancer, infertility, faith, grandparents – or any of the other things that make up the texture of our non-working lives. (Rusbridger, 2000)

This ties in with what Sparks (2000: 32) suggests is the need to view such broadsheet newspapers as ‘bundles of serious and less serious materials’; the challenge for newspapers is getting that mix or balance correct in terms of attracting and retaining their target readership. Hence the rise in the space and resource allocated to the coverage of sports in the ‘serious’ broadsheet press in the UK over the last decade or so is in part explained by placing it within this wider context of the ‘reformulation’ of a more market-driven journalism.

However, an interesting wider theoretical position implicitly underpins much of the debate around the ‘tabloidisation’ and ‘dumbing down’ of journalism. This suggests that ultimately sports journalism (and other forms of entertainment-focused journalism) is actually the antithesis of what journalism should be really about. Sparks (2000: 14), for example, places scandal, sports and entertainment on one end of an axis of ‘different press fields’ in contrast to politics, economics and society. It appears that sports journalism does appear still to lie beyond the boundary of ‘serious journalism’. Sparks (2000: 16), however, does recognise that when a broadsheet newspaper such as The Financial Times carries analysis of the relationship between football and ‘the business strategies of global broadcasting companies’, this represents a different form of journalism. He argues that:

The true tabloid story is about the sexual antics of a footballer (any kind of football), and an operational definition of tabloidization is the process by which the press pays more and more attention to that kind of material at the expense of the coverage of public affairs. (Sparks, 2000: 16)

This position is helpful in explaining the traditional lowly status of the sports journalist within the profession, something that is picked up and developed in the work of Rowe (1992, 1995, 1999, 2004, 2005), discussed later. However, what is argued throughout the book is that the boundaries associated with sports journalism, and say business news, have now become so stretched that categorising sports journalism has become more difficult. While certain types of tabloid stories remain an important element of sports journalism, they are not necessarily representative of an overall field that is becoming more diverse.

Political journalist Andrew Marr’s account (2004) of the history of British journalism makes little reference to sports journalism. Marr admits this is an area of the print media that he does not know well, or indeed for that matter have a great deal of interest in. However, his critique of the problems facing contemporary journalism, indicates that sports journalism faces similar issues to that being experienced in other areas of the trade. Indeed, in one area, the rise of the influence of public relations on journalism (which is examined in Chapter 5), Marr argues that rather than being overly concerned with the prevalence of celebrity-driven news:

The more worrying trends in British news values are related instead to the growth of an office-based, editorial culture, rather than a reporters’ journalism .… The trouble is office-bound journalists from modern newspapers become dependent on fixers: the PR men manipulating celebrity careers; the university-trained media experts; the polling companies with a story to sell. (2004: 115)

In this area, sports journalists tend to buck the trend. They spend less time office-bound than other journalists, either being out at actual sporting events, or attending press conferences or chasing interviews. This is not to suggest that the tendency to be drip-fed information from other media sources, such as rolling sports news broadcasts and television coverage of sport, means that sports journalists are completely exempt from this general drift to stay wedded to the office, simply that it is interesting to note how sports reporting still offers opportunities to move beyond the increasingly prevalent office culture of the contemporary journalist.

What becomes increasingly evident from the research carried out on the print media, particularly in the UK, is that for many scholars sports coverage and sports journalism are not really viewed as part of what journalism (and certainly serious journalism) is really about. It is also worth noting that many within the profession itself also share these doubts as to the veracity of sports journalism being a legitimate part of the wider journalistic landscape. In 2002, the Columbia Journalism Review special issue on American sports journalism notably began its series of articles by asking whether sports journalism was indeed journalism.

Campbell (2004: 203) also notes how sports have often been grouped together with entertainment and lifestyle journalism, categories that have sat uneasily within more traditional definitions of journalism. Rooney identifies showbiz and sports as two of the key areas of content in his study of the tabloid newspapers the Sun and the Mirror. He argues: ‘We should consider the Mirror and the Sun as completely separate cultural artefacts from newspapers proper. They do not offer public-affairs material, preferring instead nonserious entertainment’ (Rooney, 2000: 103), He concludes his study by noting that: ‘The Mirror and the Sun can no longer be regarded as “newspapers” and we must find new ways to explain their importance within working-class culture’ (Rooney, 2000: 107).

While debate over the role, importance and social value of sports journalism, both within and outside the journalism profession is very much an ongoing issue, its dismissal as a form of ‘nonserious entertainment’ is simply to underestimate the range of material now to be found under the heading of sports journalism.

In the first instance, this approach unproblematically lumps all sports journalism together, making no distinction between the modes of address used by...