Can sports reporting or sports writing really be considered serious journalism?
Probably not, because the very foundation on which everything is based--sport--is little more than a triviality, a discretionary endeavour that enjoys significant popularity and global attention primarily because of its entertainment value.
Even the diehards who are riveted to every ball of a dreary Test match do so because they are intrigued by what they may perceive to be a bowler’s tireless effort to dismiss a batsman by adhering religiously to a particular plan of attack, notwithstanding the fact that to the supposedly undiscerning eye it is the visual equivalent of a powerful anesthetic.
Just for the sake of clarity, I’m not referring here to issues of corruption in sport, like cheating through the use of banned performance-enhancing substances or the bribing of players and officials. Nor is this about cost overruns in the building of stadia or the staging of events and tournaments.
Those are matters for proper investigation that can be conducted by journalists who know little or nothing about the particular discipline involved. Background knowledge of the sport may help contextually, but it isn’t really necessary.
No, I’m talking about the role of the reporter covering a specific sport or sporting event, or interviewing a key personality either before or after a game. That’s when you realise that this business is as much about kissing up and massaging egos as either brutally laying bare the inadequacies of a team or celebrating an unexpected triumph against a formidable opponent.
There surely aren’t too many sports journalists anywhere in the world who aren’t fans of the sport they cover. Why else would they do it? So it’s a reasonable question to ask if they can really step back and dispassionately analyse any situation. Football, a sport that is universally popular to the extent that in many countries it is essentially a multi-billion-dollar entertainment industry, offers a classic case of the blurring of the line that separates independent, impartial reporting from public relations and promotion.
Shaun Fuentes, long-standing media officer of the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA), revealed in an interview during Friday’s “Sporting Edition” on TV6 that some of the reporters at the post-game interview of last Tuesday’s 2-0 victory over Jamaica at the Hasely Crawford Stadium were suggesting to head coach Stephen Hart that he was a bit of a “miracle worker”.
Apparently Hart, the Trini-born naturalised Canadian who has clearly had a positive impact on the senior men’s Trinidad and Tobago team since taking up the job last July, immediately downplayed such suggestions in keeping with a cautious, low-key style that appears to be his hallmark. But were the reporters who engaged in that dialogue with the coach any different from the average fan who gets carried away with every good result? Or were they just buttering him up, piling on the praise a bit excessively to stay in his favour for the sake of having relatively easy access to him in the future?
Of course the same is done in other areas--politics, business, etc--as journalists seek to maintain a relationship with the primary source of information in many instances. However sport, like the music industry and other forms of entertainment, seems to take the buttering up business to a different level, to the extent that it’s almost expected that an interview is not really an interview but someone with a microphone inviting so-and-so sporting personality to explain how they were so brilliant today.
Listen to any interview conducted right after an English Premier League football game and, almost without fail, it begins with something like: “The boys were absolute magic, weren’t they?” if speaking to the winning manager, or: “This result must be hard to take, especially as the lads put in a really good shift this time”, when talking to the boss of the losing side.
And you could understand why it’s done that way. An interview is not about the interviewer but the interviewee. So you do what you have to do to make the subject comfortable, to make him or her loosen up to the extent that, somewhere along the line, something really newsworthy is uttered to make the effort worthwhile.
I’ve often wondered why it’s considered essential to get these pre- and post-game comments simply because they are so trite and predictable. There’s hardly any news value in them except that editors, for whatever reason, are loathe to carry a report on a game without the winning captain saying: “We played really well today. I’m delighted especially with how (insert name) performed,” while the losing skipper’s unique pearls of wisdom are cast forth along the lines of: “Things didn’t go as planned today, but we just have to put that behind us and take the positives forward to the next game.”
And what do the fans want, for that’s what they are, otherwise they wouldn’t be following the sports news, would they? Do they want the facts, first and foremost (“Trinidad and Tobago defeated Jamaica 2-0 at the Hasely Crawford Stadium last night”), or do they want to feel good (“The turnaround in our footballing fortunes continues...”) or can they stomach a bit of critical assessment (“There’s obviously still a long way to go, but the Soca Warriors took another small step forward...”)?
It’s all part of the entertainment package I suppose. To feel good, to get damn vex, or pretend you don’t care, for at the end of the day, it’s only sport.