Page 24 - Sport Culture and the Media

INTRODUCTION || 5

and general journalism), magazines, still photography, radio, film, video, tele-
vision and new media is outlined. Themes of media power, the reproduction of
ideologies of dominance and the position of the sports media in contemporary
culture are highlighted as crucial to the ensuing analysis. The links between the
conditions under which media sports texts are made, and the meanings and
ideologies that they generate, are proposed as the key twin foci of a cogent and
instructive understanding of the relationships between sport, culture and the
media.
This is not to suggest that the production and reception of texts are distinct
processes that have no bearing on each other. The reverse is the case, because
what is produced in the media always operates with notions of how a text might
be received, just as how it is received (positively, negatively or not at all) depends
first on whether the text has been produced for consumption in the first place,
and then on the conditions which are only partially under the control of the text
producer (such as whether it is being ‘displayed’ to a man or woman, sports fan
or sports hater, and so on). By provisionally separating media sports text pro-
duction and reception along these lines, it is possible to grasp the complex ways
in which media sports texts are made and unmade in a continuous process
involving the representation of a cultural form by media organizations, its
transformation through these acts of representation, and then its further trans-
formation (including challenges to the media’s representation of sport) by other
interested parties (such as sports administrators, performers and fans). In so
doing, it is possible to challenge two common, flawed and opposing arguments
(both partially defensible) – either that the media are so powerful that they are
progressively exterminating sport ‘as we know it’ (with sports fans reduced to
the playthings of media moguls) or that sport is so powerful that the media are
forced to fawn over it like hungry dogs (with sports fans ever more indulged and
pampered by sports television, radio and the press).
The macro analysis of Chapter 1 underpins a focus on actual sites of media
sport production. Chapter 2, ‘Working in media sport: the discipline of sports
journalism’, examines one key area of media institutional practice in addressing
the professional status of sports journalism as a sector of journalism in general.
Based on a study of sports journalists in the print and electronic media, it
demonstrates how the makers of media sports texts have difficulty in securing
high professional standing, not least because they are expected to observe the
strictures of journalistic objectivity while also developing close ties both to
their subjects (athletes and other sports workers) and to their audiences (pre-
dominantly sports fans). The resulting tension is shown to have a significant
impact on the formation of stories and to produce sharp divisions between
different sub-disciplines within sports journalism. The cultural significance of
what otherwise might be seen as merely an internal power struggle within a