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Sports Journalism, Supporters and New Technologies: Challenging the Usual Complicity Between Media and Football Institutions

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Sports Journalism, Supporters and New Technologies: Challenging the Usual Complicity Between Media and Football Institutions This may be the author’s version of a work that was submitted/accepted for publication in the following source: Soares Costa Vimieiro, Ana (2017) Sports journalism, supporters and new technologies: challenging the usual complicity between media and football institutions. Digital Journalism, 5(5), pp. 567-586. This file was downloaded from: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/103488/ c Consult author(s) regarding copyright matters This work is covered by copyright. Unless the document is being made available under a Creative Commons Licence, you must assume that re-use is limited to personal use and that permission from the copyright owner must be obtained for all other uses. If the docu- ment is available under a Creative Commons License (or other specified license) then refer to the Licence for details of permitted re-use. It is a condition of access that users recog- nise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. If you believe that this work infringes copyright please provide details by email to [email protected] Notice: Please note that this document may not be the Version of Record (i.e. published version) of the work. Author manuscript versions (as Sub- mitted for peer review or as Accepted for publication after peer review) can be identified by an absence of publisher branding and/or typeset appear- ance. If there is any doubt, please refer to the published source. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2016.1263161 SPORTS JOURNALISM, SUPPORTERS AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES: Challenging the usual complicity between media and football institutions1 Ana Carolina Vimieiro Digital Media Research Centre, Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia. Currently at the Communication Department, Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected] URL: anavimieiro.com Grounded on the analysis of the campaign #ForaRicardoTeixeira (Get Out Ricardo Teixeira), this article investigates how supporters have used new technologies to challenge controversial decisions of media outlets that hold sports broadcast rights in not covering or under-reporting the severity of scandals involving sports governing bodies and leaders. Adopting a combination of political economy and discursive analysis, this work explores how the interplay between media system and football industry in Brazil led to the perpetuation of a complicity relationship between the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) and Grupo Globo, broadcast rights holder of the main football events since the 1970s in Brazil. Such complicity guaranteed that many corruption allegations against Teixeira during his 23 years running CBF received little attention in the news programming of Globo. In 2011, when the company decided not to cover the ISL case, Brazilian supporters organised themselves to create the campaign, which for many observers was indeed one of the factors that pressed Teixeira to resign from his post in 2012. The campaign had several merits, including its effective use of decentralised media production tools. However, its main pitfall was its personalistic focus on Teixeira, which prevented a broader thematisation of the structural problems of football. KEYWORDS: sports scandals; fan activism; political economy of football; Brazilian football; sports journalism; sports broadcast rights; digital media; personalisation Introduction Sports journalism is not an area that enjoys a great reputation, having already being referred to as “the toy department of the news media” (Rowe 2007). Rowe (1992) has pointed out that there is certainly, in such criticism, a social stigma and cultural snobbery derived from the popular representation of sports’ ethos as non- or anti-intelectual. On the other side, other works have stressed the failure of sports journalism to engage systematically and critically in the “watchdog” and investigative roles that are crucial to the profession (Rowe 2005, 2007, 2016; Boyle 2006). The lack of prestige and the low quality of the work done in this area have also been associated to sports journalists being not specially well trained, tending to have more limited occupational experiences than their colleagues in other departments, a lower class of origin and level of education (Hargreaves 1986; Rowe 1992). 1 The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in Digital Journalism, 2017, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21670811.2016.1263161. 1 This article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the reasons underlying such failure and the responses that contemporary audiences have given to it, particularly in the context of media sports scandals. Adopting a combination of political economy analysis and discursive analysis of the online fan-based campaign #ForaRicardoTeixeira (Get Out Ricardo Teixeira), this work explores how the interplay between media system and football industry in Brazil led to the perpetuation of an exchange of favours policy and a complicity relationship between the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) and Grupo Globo, the largest media network in the country and broadcast rights holder of the Brazilian Football Championship (or Brasileirão, as it is commonly referred to) for the last 30 years and of the FIFA World Cup since it started to be live televised in Brazil, in 1970. Such complicity guaranteed that many corruption allegations against Teixeira during his 23 years running CBF were not reported or received very little attention in the news programming of Globo’s free TV channel, Rede Globo. In 2011, when Globo once more omitted to talk on its nightly newscast Jornal Nacional about the ISL case — at that time a still ongoing Swiss investigation that implicated Teixeira in an extensive scheme of corruption and bribery —, Brazilian supporters organised themselves to create the online campaign, which for many observers was indeed one of the determining factors that pressed Teixeira to resign from his post in 2012. The analysis of the campaign provides elements to consider the ways that social media and decentralised media production tools are reconfiguring the relations between sports journalism and its audiences. Historically not used to be demanded to hold football authorities publicly accountable for their wrong doings in Brazil, Globo has been challenged by a changing media environment and transgressive and articulated supporters who have refused to go with the regular “cheer leader” vibe of sports journalism and wish for a more politically-engaged type of sports reporting. The article is organised as follows: at first, a brief introduction to the political economy of Brazilian football is provided, with a focus on the historical mutual dependency established between the football industry and Rede Globo; second, the paper presents the ISL case and discusses the past corruption stories involving Teixeira; third, I introduce the #ForaRicardoTeixeira campaign, giving details about its actions and communication strategies; fourth, I analyse the unfolding conversations on Twitter that followed Teixeira’s resignation in March 2012, presenting both a quantitative and a qualitative exploration of the messages and, particularly, of how Globo’s coverage of his departure, extensively criticised and ridiculed by users, once more revealed its compliance with the sports leader; at last, I analyse the merits and pitfalls of the campaign, stressing that its personalistic focus on Teixeira made it successful in publicising the scandal to a larger audience and in gathering support for its actions. On the other side, it also prevented a broader thematisation of the structural problems of sports institutions and the obscure schemes of negotiation of sports broadcasting rights. The complicity between Rede Globo and CBF: a brief introduction to the political economy of Brazilian football Media systems and sports institutions have developed a somehow “symbiotic relationship”, with the staggering popularity of sports being the result of the enormous amount of attention it receives from media companies and with media companies profiting extensively from the advertising and increased audience that the treatment of sports generates (McChesney 2008). This interplay became even more 2 structural in the 20th century with the advent of television and the establishment of a buying/selling business relation for the live broadcasting of matches (Boyle and Haynes 2004). This financial interdependency was later advanced by pay-TV and pay-per-view packages, with broadcasting revenues becoming the major pillar of sports finance today and the acquisition of sports events rights a core marketing strategy of large media corporations to reach audiences in an increasingly fragmented and saturated media environment. In Brazil, the football industry and the largest TV network, Rede Globo, have an interrelationship of mutual dependency that was built through the business agreements established between them over the years for the commercialisation of broadcasting rights of football matches. Since football matches started to be live televised in the country, in the 1970s, Globo has broadcast the major national and international events of the sport: the Brazilian Championship and the FIFA World Cups. Regarding Brasileirão, the main sporting product in Brazil in terms of TV broadcasting, matches and money paid to the clubs (Santos 2013a), Globo has broadcast it since 1987, when the competition started to be live televised. Globo signed
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