Page 83 - Sport Culture and the Media

64 || SPORT, CULTURE AND THE MEDIA

culture of sceptical enquiry and distance from sources makes this transition
difficult:

but the greatest problem, far and away with Australian sports journalism,
and I don’t limit it to Australian sports journalism, is there is always a
tendency towards sycophancy and biographies being hagiographies, and
that whole line of Johnnie Bloggs was the greatest there ever was – and it
doesn’t matter that he’s won five grand finals in a row now and can high
jump ten metres, you never saw such a modest bloke who loves his wife!
Look at him here with his two kids . . . the great problem with sports
journalism is there is way too much sycophancy.
(Philip)
Philip notes, for example, that one leading sportsman (who cannot be named
on grounds of defamation!) is regularly presented favourably in the press as a
family man and ‘nice guy’, but that, ‘If we had the world deadshit Olympics
and I was a selector, I would send him’. He also describes the problem of
being in the position (also commonly experienced by pop music and other
entertainment journalists) of being granted an exclusive interview with a
sporting superstar who is ‘savvy about the media ways’, and then feeling, as
a sports journalist, inhibited by this privilege:

the great man has agreed to speak to me. It is really something – the only
print article he gave when he was out here and we did get on very well. It
would have been, if I had really wanted to have a go at him, it’s bloody
difficult, he’s given me twenty minutes and he ain’t given anybody else
twenty minutes.
(Philip)
Such criticisms by sports journalists themselves that the print and broadcast
media are not doing enough critical, investigative work are usually made in the
name of their Fourth Estate function. It is argued that society – especially its
vast cohort of sports fans – is being let down by lazy, compromised and trivial
sports journalism.
This accusation (justified or not) of rampant sycophancy in sports jour-
nalism is widespread among other types of journalist and sports fans alike,
meaning that contemporary sports journalism is caught in a critical pincer
movement both from inside and outside the profession. The growth (at least in
British soccer) of ‘cottage industry’ sports publications – ‘fanzines’ and now
‘netzines’ – is perhaps a symptom of the failure of sports journalists and other
writers to serve and satisfy their audiences. In such cases (as is discussed in
Chapter 4), sports fans have seized the means of cultural production by publish-
ing amateur print texts and creating their own sports web pages and online