Last week I was fortunate to attend a Walkley Media Talk called 'Inside Mail: Reporting sport in the era of scandal.' Moderated by Amanda Shalala, the panel was made of a wealth of experience in sports journalism including Alex Brown who is the national head of sport at News Corp Australia and Fox Sports, Steve Mascord who runs a freelance business and often has articles published in the SMH and Rugby League Week and Malcolm Conn, chief cricket writer for the Australian.
In a year where any success on the sporting field has been overshadowed by scandals, like the ASADA investigations both in the AFL and the NRL, soccer match fixing rings and the increased prevalence of sports people behaving badly, this talk focused on whether the nature of sport itself has changed or whether journalists are just becoming better at sniffing out a scandal.
I thought I would make a few brief comments on some of the points discussed.
One of the first issues discussed was in relation to the prevalence of scandals which are now being reported on in the media. The question put to Alex Brown was whether sports journalists had become better at sniffing out a scandal or whether the nature of sport had changed.
Brown suggested that no one is looking for more scandals and suggested that as money has filtered its way into sport, there is greater capacity for corruption.
I think we can look at this in terms of two separate types of incidents we are seeing in sport today.
The first are 'scandals' which relate to a team being given a competitive edge or impacting the way a team performs on the field such as match-fixing and doping. Certainly Brown is correct, as sport has shifted from being amateur, to semi-professional to professional, the stakes are indeed higher. As players are being paid increasing amounts, clubs are being rewarded financially for success and with members demanding success, perhaps there is a greater incentive to cheat because as Brown suggested 'clubs at an institutional level are looking for an advantage.'
The second type of scandals can be placed in a broader category of 'sportspeople behaving badly'. In this situation, I think money is only one factor which has seen an increase in reporting of these incidents. What I think is a greater factor at play is what Malcolm Conn called an 'immediate media scenario' where everyone knows what is going on all the time. There is greater demand for stories as a result of the 24 hour news cycle, so more is being reported. Further, the role of technology and social media means that almost anyone with the ability to take photographs and a sentence to accompany the photo can share 'news'. Via social media this news is disseminated faster than ever before.
I think this suggests that perhaps there aren't any more scandals in sport today, rather there has been a shift in an ability to report on it.
Obviously one of the main talking points of the talk was in relation to the ASADA investigation. I feel that this issue has been discussed to death, but I did want to highlight a comment made by Malcolm Conn in relation to the penalties handed out to Essendon's James Hird. Conn expressed surprise that Hird was able to come back and coach in the AFL after a year, following the severity of the doping issue at Essendon suggesting that if the AFL was serious about the integrity of its sport, the penalty for a mean, the Head of a Football Department which implemented a 'program [which] (had it come to its fruition) would have seen 26,000 injections given to a playing list of 40.' Conn then suggested the implications this would have on parents who had seen their 18 year old sons drafted to Essendon and for fans who generally care about the welfare of their players.
In my mind I absolutely applauded Conn when he made these comments. We as fans often get so caught up in a 'win at all costs mentality', that we forget the importance of issues like the welfare of players. The welfare of our athletes should be the number one priority of our clubs at all times. To allow Hird to come back and coach in the AFL suggests to me, that the tremendous impact he had on the health of the individuals under his care is not being taken seriously enough.
Separately, Steve Mascord raised another sensational point about the role of the media and whether it is to report what people want to know or whether it is to report what people need to know. There is obviously a significant difference between a verbal stoush between Malcolm Conn and match fixing, one is clearly something people want to know about, the other is clearly about what people need to know.
We are living in an era where celebrity news sells. With the proliferation of reality television and the tremendous media coverage athletes receive - people want to know about the personal lives of their sporting heroes. I think we live in a media world where there is an important role for both. What we need to ensure happens, is that there is a continuing role for investigative journalists as well as an increased ability to report on 'celebrity news'.
One final point, when discussing his verbal stoush with David Warner over Twitter, Malcolm Conn said 'the power of Twitter, you cannot underestimate'. I totally agree! So if you read and enjoyed this story, make sure you share it with your friends.
Love,
@LadiesWhoLeague
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