Sports journalists: Spin or spun?
The increasing competition newspapers are facing from developments in the communications industries are pushing some journalists to exaggerate and spin stories to sell papers and justify their jobs argues Philip Townsend, communications director for Manchester United Football Club.
However, Andrew Moger of the Newspaper Publishers Association and Mihir Bose of the BBC believe that it is the other way around with clubs and sports bodies manipulating news outlets, and putting a price on the reporting of news.
Referencing a speech made by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair on his departure from office, Townsend argued at a seminar on sports journalism that journalists were under a pressure to spin stories in an effort to boost circulation.
“It’s not just us who spin on this side of the fence, it’s the journalists who spin as well, and that’s what creates this cycle of mistrust,” Townsend told the Journalism Leaders Forum at the University of Central Lancashire.
“If you look at what Blair said last year and what Alastair Campbell said last night, there is a certain amount of truth to it, certainly looking at it from this side of the fence, and we have to have a serious debate about it,” says Townsend.
‘Feral beasts’
Upon leaving office, Blair argued that changes in the relationship between politics, public life and the media caused by evolutions and competition in the media, had caused newspapers to lose focus on reporting facts as opposed to opinion.
“The fear of missing out means today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no-one dares miss out,” said Blair.
With an increasing number of news outlets, printed media is coming under increasing pressure to produce stories that would sell, with the reporting of the possibility of fact rather than facts themselves becoming more prevalent. For Townsend, this is the dilemma facing the sports media.
“Let’s face it — newspapers are dying. Every time you look at the circulations, they are going down. They are combating that by going online, and there are some excellent online newspapers these days responding to that challenge,” says Townsend.
“But as a thing to pick up and read, they are more viewspapers that they were before and impact is much more important than checking the facts. We see it in the guys who write about Manchester United every day of the week — but there isn’t a story at Manchester United every day of the week. I’ve worked there fore four years and I know there hasn’t been 1200 stories out of Old Trafford in that time.”
No more free ticketsBut for BBC Sports Editor, Mihir Bose, it is the media that is being held to ransom by sports bodies. Access to information is now being treated as a product, which sports clubs would like to put a price upon.
“Historically, if you think about it, covering sport was in a way not different in the way to covering theatre or the cinema. You got a free ticket, you gave a free pass to the journalists, and they went in and wrote the story,” says Bose.
However, the situation has changed, especially within the last 10 to 20 years, with access to the information needed to write stories is becoming increasingly difficult.
Bose continued, “all the sports governing bodies have realised that they have got a product that they can sell. And they want to control the product. They want to control how their product is used.”
“Nowadays when we want to interview someone, they say no, we will put it on our website… What they are trying to do is control the media, what is being said, and they feel that everything they say should realise money for them. This is really becoming a business proposition.”
Journalists must stand up
Andrew Moger, leader of the Newspaper Publishers Association’s digital rights campaign, echoed Bose’s view. Moger believes that the time has now come though for journalists to draw a line in the stand and stand up to the sports associations to demand access to information.
“As journalists we are letting ourselves down, we are letting a great industry down if we don't man the barricades against restrictive measures. We have been sleeping on this issue far too long. That includes publishers, owners and sports editors. We have tried to maintain relationships in the face of competition and control and we need to be much more robust on our own account," said Moger, who was also a keynote speaker at Play the Game 2007.
For Moger, it was key that newspapers and other print media were able to access the news without a fee, and were not reliant on the scraps thrown to them by sports bodies and associations. Doing otherwise “would be like rebuilding the Berlin Wall” and sanctioning censorship.
While official websites for sports clubs and associations have a place, Moger believes that “the true home of objective and sometimes subjective journalism is away from sportsgoverningbody.com.”
“Those websites also have been a very good source of employment for those journalists who fled fleet street so it is good to see some of those journalists finding homes,” he continued. “But they have to look to themselves and determine whether they are objective journalists delivering the news, or whether they are taking the dollar and providing us with very subjective and only subjective viewpoints.”
The seminar, “Spoiled Sports: Will the digital media finish off sports reporting as a credible form of journalism?” was held on 29 January 2008 and can be viewed online by clicking here.