Page 72 - Sport Culture and the Media

WORKING IN MEDIA SPORT || 53

journalism, the network structure of local elites). Thus, the ‘normal relation-
ship between sporting organisations and media organizations’ may be one of
‘mutually beneficial interdependency’ (Brookes 2002: 38), but it involves a
delicate equilibrium that, to a substantial degree, can only be maintained
where there is rough parity of power between those organizations. Where the
media have little need for or interest in covering a sports organization, the usual
result is (perhaps benign) neglect or occasional investigation and criticism. The
commercial media might then be offered material inducements, such as a con-
certed newspaper, radio or television advertising campaign, to encourage some
positive editorial media coverage for the sports organization. If the sports
organization holds the whip hand, however, sports journalists tend to become
surrogate sports promoters.
Broader areas of ethics on which sports journalists were not questioned in
Henningham’s study include the perils of becoming too much of a ‘cheerleader’
for sports teams (see Chapter 4) and a ‘mate’ of athletes rather than an
independent journalist, and on the inevitable temptations (not unknown to
travel and wine journalists, among other specialisms) of the ‘perks’ that go with
the job (travel, hospitality, the ‘best seat in the house’, free tickets, opportunities
to consort with celebrities, and so on). It is at this point, where the ethics of
journalism rub against the enviable ‘on the side’ opportunities of the sports
round, that critics of sports journalism (in some cases, no doubt unreasonably)
see it as the compromised ally of the sport and entertainment business rather
than as a legitimate arm of the news media. Mark Lowes’s (1997, 1999) study
of the sports desk in a Canadian newspaper bears out many of the pressures on,
and practices of, sports journalists discussed above. Journalists on the sports
round receive copious materials in the form of press releases from the com-
mercial sports organizations that they cover, and ‘are assured of a full stomach’
(Lowes 1997: 153) when covering their games. One of the reporters he
‘shadowed’, whose ‘beat’ was a National Hockey League team, was deeply
dependent on them for information, making frequent calls during the day.
Lowes (1997: 156) observed that, ‘Colvin [a pseudonym] usually wraps up
this news gathering component of his day around 5:30 p.m. or 6 p.m. with yet
another phone call to the Hornets’ [another pseudonym] media relations
people, “just to see if there’s anything else up”’. Through such routines and
structured relations ‘major commercial spectator sports’ reproduce a little
examined or questioned dominance over ‘non-commercial sports’ in the sports
pages of newspapers. Margaret MacNeill (1998), also in a Canadian context,
raises rather different issues of practices and ethics, surveying 1200 amateur
athletes about their relationships with the sports media, and expressing concern
about ‘the confusion [that] elite athletes harbour about basic constitutional
rights to free speech and about how they can effectively interact with the media’