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Sport and the Press • 75

Rowe (2004a: 38) suggested that by paying attention to the practices of sport jour-
nalism, ‘it is possible to “de-naturalize” media sport texts and so to understand that
they are particular creations and constructions arising from the complex, contradictory
forces that make culture.’ Rowe (2004a: 39) argued that the process of producing
media sport involves ‘many decisions, calculations, dilemmas and disputes’. Whan-
nel’s (2002) examination of the repeating characteristics of sport biographies indicates
that sports writers draw on preexisting formulaic narratives to mould the raw mate-
rial of the sport world into stories designed to appeal to their readers. The ‘punish-
ing, stressful deadlines’ (Rowe 2004a: 43) of the sport press are likely to exacerbate
journalists’ reliance on culturally prescribed framing techniques to produce dramatic
stories at a moment’s notice. Games that finish late, upsets, scandals, unexpected he-

roes and other challenges mean that journalists must often work quickly to transform
a surprise event or unanticipated outcome into a fully formed narrative.
As Whannel (1992: 121) observed, ‘star performers are characters within a set
of narratives.’ The media reconstructs the sporting contest as a story, identifying
heroes and villains, developing a plot and creating drama and interest. Narrative
is, therefore, a way of making sense of events. Narrative does not simply refl ect
what happens; rather, it constructs possibilities for what can happen, generating and
interpreting sporting moments as significant elements within a meaningful whole.

Considered in this way, analysis of narratives in cultural texts can contribute to il-
luminating values and discourses within specifi c cultures.
The media presents the news within a framework of certain values, usually as-
sociated with the dominant industries in society. News has a tendency to legitimate
existing social norms (Fishman 1980; Gans 1979; McKay and Rowe 1987; Tuchman
1978). Trujillo and Ekdom (1985: 264) argued that sports writing is ideological as

sports writers ‘continuously present and affirm social consensus on a broad set of
cultural values’. However, techniques used by journalists tend to obscure this pro-
cess. For example, Richardson (2007) considered that objectivity could be under-
stood as a journalistic practice to enable a reporter to distance himself or herself from
the truth claims of the journalist’s report and avoid criticism.
Journalists use ‘practices of objectivity’ (Richardson 2007: 87) to produce a re-
port that appears unbiased. These practices include removing the authorial voice so
that the reporter’s opinion is hidden, presenting sources that contradict each other
to achieve the effect of balance, providing supporting evidence in the form of back-
ground information and using so-called scare quotes to indicate a contentious truth
claim. What appears to be an objective report is, therefore, far from being a neutral
report. As Gans (1979: 39) commented, ‘values in the news are rarely explicit and
must be found between the lines—in what actors and activities are reported or ig-
nored, and how they are described. If a news story deals with the activities which are
generally considered undesirable and whose descriptions contain negative connota-
tions, then the story implicitly expresses a value about what is desirable.’