Sports vs News Values

You will read a lot about the values of sport and the part the media has to play in representing them. Traditionally, sport has been seen to represent ideals of physical excellence, teamworking harmony, and 'fair play' - the concept of 'sportsmanship'. However, with the increasing commercialisation of sport, these values are seen as being eroded, and the media is seen as playing a large part in that erosion. As the media provides our gateway to sport, those in charge of decisions about what we see and how we see it are gatekeepers.

Gatekeepers for the media also evaluate sports stories according to news values. Whilst sports values tend to be positive, a primary news value is negativity, hence stories about sports players taking drugs, or being injured may be more prominently reported than stories about sporting success. Proximity is another news value important to sports stories, as people like to read about and watch teams that are local to them. Read more about news values here, and think carefully about how they are applied to sports stories.

Responsibility and Authority

Sports coverage involves all sorts of interpretation and analysis, from commentators and "guest experts" to the use of personality and slo-mo cameras. The audience get given a lot of information about a sporting event - often more than judges or umpires who are watching the event live. This means that sports commentators and editors are powerful figures, and, in theory, they should take as much care to avoid bias or prejudice as news editors - do you think this is true?

The media is often seen as manipulating the information given to audiences in order to create interest. For example, a foul committed by a football player may receive more media attention than a winning goal. The media, with its need to create entertainment, is seen as having a different set of priorities or values to the sport itself, and media coverage of sports is seen as encouraging:

  • a win-at-all-costs mentality as media coverage means more potential sponsorship therefore higher prizes and stakes. This potentially leads to cheating and unfair tactics
  • over-emphasis on winners as opposed to competitors
  • physical beauty rather than ability in athletes
  • negative influence of sponsors on both events and individual athletes
  • emphasis on individual 'star' players as opposed to teams
  • excessive focus on the 'bad boys' of sport. These athletes' antics (eg drug abuse) make better copy for newspapers and TV, but are they featured at the expense of those who play quietly by the rules? Does this give sport a bad name?
  • financial resources being directed towards a few 'popular' sports whilst others (notably those played by women or ethnic minorities) are ignored by the media and struggle for survival
  • excessive competition between fans - there is too much focus on off-pitch/track violence between opposing supporters, who feel that media coverage of their activities somehow elevates them to the same competitive status as the teams they follow
  • too much emphasis on equipment and facilities - everything has to be glossy, hi-tech and 'camera-friendly', and this devalues simpler sports

Therefore the media slants its coverage according to its own acknowledged news values, and sporting values are left behind. Inevitably, the original sports values have become corrupted by this - there is general agreement that they have changed over the past fifty years. Check out some of the online discussion:

However, whilst TV and radio coverage of sports is seen as a potentially bad thing, many movies do their utmost to promote the positive side of sport. There are countless stories of failing teams (or failing people) being pulled together by some positive thinking about sports values in order to win. Apart from the likes of the Mighty Ducks series, try

  • A League of Their Own (1992) (Madonna & Co set up an all-female baseball team during WW2)
  • Chariots of Fire (1981) (A fine, but subtle movie about two athletes competing in the 1924 Olympics)
  • Cool Runnings (1992) (The Jamaican bobsleigh team in a bid for Olympic success)
  • Escape To Victory (1981) (Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone, Bobby Moore & Pele play POWs who discover football might be their only means of escaping the Nazis. An epic war and sporting movie)
  • Gladiator (2000) (Well... it was sport for the Romans and this film has a lot to say on the subject of 'fair play' and media delight in negativity and personality)
  • Jerry Maguire (1996) (Is it possible to be ethical in the world of pro-sports?)
  • Slap Shot (1977) (Paul Newman stars in this satire on the use of violence in Ice Hockey)
  • 24:7 (Bob Hoskins sets up a boxing club in a deprived UK city)