Why Is Sports Journalism So Bad? (Pt 1)
I had an early introduction into the world of sports journalism. Back in the 1970s my dad reported on matches for the Sunday Telegraph. He called it his “Saturday job”, as during the week he was a feature writer for the Daily Mirror.
Sometimes he’d bring me along on his stories. When I was six I accompanied him to a youth club in Southport that had just been created by the local chapter of the Hell’s Angels*. But nothing beat the time, three years later, that he took me to a match he was covering. It was 1975, and Bolton Wanderers were once again close to promotion to the top flight. “You don’t mind if I bring my son in with me?” my dad would ask at Burnden Park’s main entrance. They never said “no”.
At half-time I feasted on crisps and sandwiches (posh ones, cut into triangles) while drinking an unlimited supply of Coke. After the final whistle he even took me along to the small, smoke-filled room where journalists would help themselves to the spirits in the drinks cabinet before asking Bolton’s manager, Ian Greaves, questions. I stood amazed as Greaves fired off strings of expletives for what seemed an eternity. It wasn’t like this on Match of the Day.
Back in the press room I resumed my foraging as the journalists wrote up their match reports in their small pads. “Just going to phone it it,” my dad informed me. “Wanna come, or are you okay here?” They’d now put the chocolate biscuits out, so he handed me his press card. “I’ll be in the press box, just show them this when you come over,” he instructed.
A little later I arrived at a throng of young autograph hunters being held at bay by a man in a white coat. “Where do you think you’re going?” he barked as I attempted to stroll past. I flashed him the press pass.
“What are you doing with a press pass?” he asked, with a mixture of annoyance and amusement.
“I’m with me dad. He’s in the press box phoning his copy in.”
“Okay son, no problem,” he said, ushering me through as the kids around me looked on in awe.
It was one of many important life lessons I’d learned that day.
1. The resources you acquire in life are largely down to who your parents are.
2. Adults act and talk differently when kids aren’t around.
3. If you don’t have a pass, people will treat you like shit.
But there was one more life lesson the day taught me: newspapers aren’t giving you the full story. Listening in on the stories the journalists told each other (children were invisible back then) I assumed they would soon end up in the newspaper. But these weren’t for readers’ eyes.
Catching up on the gossip he’d missed during the week was the part of the job my dad enjoyed the most.
“What’s the hold-up with the Francis transfer?” he once asked a group of reporters in the Maine Road press room, following a delay in Trevor Francis’ move to City in 1980.
“Oh haven’t you heard? There’s been a problem getting the bung to Cloughie,” one of them informed him, prompting knowing chortles from the others.
The journalists’ fear of losing access—and the exclusives that come with it—is the main reason these stories didn’t make it into papers. The threat of being sued is also an important factor, as is the cost and time involved in finding the hard evidence.
Economic factors also create an understanding that certain topics should not even be debated in the media.
It’s called the Overton Window, a term coined in the 1990s that originally referred to political discourse, but which now also describes how the media limit the terms of debate.
I’ll give you an example of it at work. In the mid-1990s I was a financial journalist at the Daily Mirror (see point 1), which at that time was running numerous “fatcat” stories that detailed the excesses of executive pay. We soon became aware that these often prompted incandescent rage in the people they targeted. One evening I attended a pub quiz night with the PR team at a High Street bank. I sensed a dark cloud was hanging over them.
“Bad day?” I asked.
“Our CEO has been bouncing off the walls all day, threatening to sack us all,” the bank’s head of PR informed me.
They explained that it was all over a three par story about the CEO that my paper had run that day. They made no attempt with me to manipulate the Mirror’s editorial line. They knew that was pointless. Those decisions are made a lot higher up the food chain.
A few weeks after Labour’s 1997 Election victory, the Mirror’s business editor filed a standard “fatcat” pay story. A few minutes later the paper’s news editor wandered over to the business desk.
“Word to the wise,” he said. “When did you last see the word “fatcat” in the paper?”
The business editor shot him a quizical look, but didn’t say anything. But he quickly understood. Executive pay was now outside the paper’s Overton Window. He didn’t file any of those stories after that.
That shift in editorial policy was most likely the result of a deal between Tony Blair and Mirror Group’s CEO David Montgomery struck before the Election, one of the many ways Blair made his party more “business-friendly”. But in the main, the parameters of the Window are determined in a less conspiratorial way. As declining circulations throughout the 1980s and 1990s left newspapers increasingly reliant on advertising revenue, the influence exercised by advertisers increased. In my time on the Mirror I witnessed numerous stories dropped after a threat to withdraw advertising was made.
And it is the same economic forces that, I believe, determine football’s Overton Window. For instance, the debate on who is a “fit and proper” club owner does not include questions about whether it is a good idea that two Premier League clubs—Brighton and Brentford—are owned by men who got rich by gambling on sports events. And the reason? Well, just count the number of ads from bookmakers the next time you watch a match on TV.
Which brings us to the subject of match-fixing, one that has been a constant throughout football’s history. There’s only one current Premier League manager who has made allegations that games are being rigged. Can you guess who?
On 7 March 2021, United cut City’s lead in the Premier League to nine points following a 2-0 win at the Ethiad. Three days later City played Southampton at the Ethiad. With the score at 1-1, Phil Foden was tripped by the Southampton keeper in the area. A clear penalty and a red card.
“How that’s not given?” asks the commentator on City’s official match highlights. Luckily, Pep had an answer.
This is what he said in the press conference following the match.
“The VAR don’t see it just because, ‘Oh my God,’ they go, ‘You won a… won a… won a Premier League more’. You want to try to be competitive towards the end.”
You’d think that the manager of the Premier League’s most successful club alleging that officials are attempting to rig results in order to keep the title race close would be newsworthy. But there were no follow-up questions that day, and not a single media outlet reported Pep’s remarks. One newspaper reported pretty much everything Pep said in that press conference—apart from the bit about match-fixing.
And that is the Overton Window at work.
* The Hell’s Angels’ PR offensive didn’t got exactly to plan. They’d put a bar in a room adjoining the kids’ indoor cricket area. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best of ideas. Two fights broke out in the bar during our time there, much to the annoyance of the head of the chapter, who had been banking on some good publicity from my dad. For my six-year-old self it was a brilliant day out at the seaside. I even got to see one of them arrested.
On Saturday I’ll be publishing part two of The Peter Swales Years.
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