Watching the Pros Vs. Playing the Game: How Sports Coverage Affects Community-Level Athletes
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Watching the Pros vs. Playing the Game: How Sports Coverage Affects Community-level Athletes Romayne Smith Fullerton, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Journalism, Faculty of Information & Media Studies, University of Western Ontario We are a media nation. At virtually any hour present. It will identify what the of the day or night, Canadians can access approximate ratio of professional versus up-to-the-minute sports scores, amateur coverage is in a national newspaper commentaries and actual games. While (The Globe and Mail), a French language some of the smaller newspapers and provincial newspaper (La Presse), a large television stations cover community sport, metropolitan daily (The London Free Press), a the vast majority of stories in mainstream community weekly (Journal Argus) and media focus on professional games, highly several television newscasts. It will offer paid athletes and related scandals or some idea of what the range of diversity is intrigue. in both professional and amateur coverage and will answer questions like how many Professional sport pervades our culture. For girls and women do we see? How many young people, the effects of this are wide non-white athletes? Are there athletes with spread. The world of pro sports offers disabilities in the news? And given that everything from a possible source for Canada is a vast and diverse country, do we fashion, to a place to look for career see most of our regions represented? inspiration, role models and even heroes. Given the tremendous potential the media Methodology have to influence us, the purpose of this The content analysis focuses on the print paper is to explore how the portrayal of medium—newspapers. While we did watch both professional and amateur sport has an in excess of 12 hours of television news and impact on how Canadians—particularly sports broadcasts and did monitor both young Canadians—see themselves and public and private radio during the month define their goals and values. of February 2003, because of accessibility Through a content analysis of four issues with respect to broadcasts over the randomly selected weeks of sports coverage last year, this discussion is more general. In over the last year, this paper will outline order to have information about all seasons what the current news is about, what kinds of print sports coverage, we divided the past of stories are being covered, what the year into summer, winter, fall and spring, recurrent themes are and what underlying and then used random numbers to select a values—both explicit and implicit—are representative week for each time period. 88 Watching the Pros vs. Playing the Game The dates were May 13-19, 2002; August 5- amateur. Similarly, the New PL (a London- 11, 2002; September 30-October 6, 2002 based City-TV affiliate) covers pro and local and February 3-9, 2003. While 2002 was an sports news. For the weekly community Olympic year (Winter Games 2002 at Salt paper, the Journal Argus (in St. Marys, Lake City), the analysis covers winter 2003 Ontario) the focus is almost exclusively on instead so that this sample is representative local sports. The only time professional of what Canadians see and read in their athletes are mentioned in the weekly paper newspapers on a regular basis. is if the story subjects were originally from the town or the surrounding area. In effect, Summary of Content Analysis these are profiles that concentrate on family history, previous local sports involvement For the purposes of the analysis, the and so forth. Examples of such stories are researchers applied the term ‘professional’ relatively rare in this content analysis. to any athlete or team whose primary income is derived from sport. They used the What kinds of stories are being written? terms ‘amateur,’ ‘local’ and ‘community- based sports’ interchangeably and applied With respect to types of stories for both them to any athlete or team who professional and amateur across the media, participated in sports but for whom most are ‘hard news’ (factually-based stories competing was not their livelihood. The that tell what happened and when) or only exceptions were figure skaters who, features that are closely tied to recent games despite competing for substantial prize or happenings in the world of sport. This is money, are deemed amateurs by Sport because sports coverage does not operate Canada. on different criteria from the rest of news: what gets covered are the newest, most up- The vast majority of coverage in The Globe to-date events. But because the news is and Mail, a national newspaper, La Presse, largely about what just occurred, there is not Quebec’s provincial equivalent, and both a lot of background given in these types of Rogers Sportsnet and CTV Sports focuses stories, nor is there much room for almost exclusively on professional sports. discussion of peripheral issues or This is not surprising given the breadth of implications. This type of story coverage their audience and the practical problems of gives the impression that scores, standings trying to discuss local sports in regions too and outcomes matter most. numerous to mention. This is not to suggest that there was no mention of amateur sport, What are the recurrent themes? but it was much less significant than professional coverage. In terms of the content for the professional coverage, the most popular theme is For the metropolitan daily, The London Free winning and losing and the winners almost Press, the focus is shared with local sports at always get the most space—more a ratio of about 70 professional to 30 photographs, more film footage, more copy The Sport We Want 89 devoted to their success. The next most Do different papers frame sports stories in popular themes are money, ownership, unique ways? Does this give Canadians a coaching and some mention of the types of different impression of what’s valued in skills that helped the team win the game. sports? It also needs to be mentioned that statistics, In the Journal Argus, there is a marked in the case of newspapers, and the difference in how winning or losing is scoreboards in the case of television, take conveyed. Whereas The London Free Press up significant amounts of space. This tends to frame both its professional and reporting of scores in a stand-alone fashion local stories in the same manner, usually along with the fact that winning is by far the mentioning the score in the first few most prevalent feature of news coverage in paragraphs and then outlining what events general, significantly divorces the outcome led to the outcome, the smaller local paper from the process and may usually tells the story in suggest to young Canadian chronological order with the readers that scoring and outcome of the game near the winning are more important end. The effect of reading than how you play the game. about the games in this manner is that winning is not In terms of community-based as emphasized and the process sports, the most popular is more evident than when theme is identical to that scores are reported first. found in professional coverage: winning and losing. What about opinion pieces? Next, in contrast to the depiction of professional With respect to types of news outcomes, is a description of coverage, after hard news and skills or positions the athletes features, the most prevalent play and strategies that aided form is the column. Columns them to win their game. In fact, for the are usually written by a seasoned sports weekly Journal Argus, game descriptions writer who, because he10 knows the field so sometimes outnumber winning as the well, has a large degree of latitude in terms primary theme. The effect is that while of subject matter. Columns are not winning is obviously important, being necessarily tied to the most recent events or skillful, playing your position and games, but they tend to be related to current supporting your team are also part of the community news agenda. Can this local coverage offset for young readers the emphasis on scores and winning that the 10 The term ‘he’ is used here because out of the 295 larger papers usually offer? columns analysed, only one was written by a woman and it was a roundup of soccer events, not a commentary per se. 90 Watching the Pros vs. Playing the Game affairs in the same way as other types of on issues related to money, ownership and news. athletes’ skills. While columns were surveyed for the prevalence of The vast majority of columns in The Globe, sportsmanship as a theme, most mention The Free Press and La Presse are about only those plays that resulted in scoring or professional athletes and professional injuries—plays that directly affected the games. For The Globe and La Presse, the ratio outcome of the game as opposed to those of pro to amateur is about 30:1. For the having to do with fairness, honesty, Free Press, it is about 25:1. Given that this consideration for other athletes and so paper sells itself in part based on its local forth. This lack of discussion on sports coverage, it is surprising that its sportsmanship was equivalent in columns columnists don’t devote more space to about professional and amateur sports. commentary on local athletes or teams. Does this silence around good However, columns tend to be critical and sportsmanship leave Canadian amateurs while the sports editor, Dave Langford, says with the impression that these kinds of that The Free Press doesn’t shy away from values are unimportant? negativity in amateur coverage, columnists may subconsciously feel less comfortable The opportunity does exist for these commenting on young athletes who are not commentary writers to open a larger professionals.