Sports journalism ethics and quality of information.
The coverage of the London 2012 Olympics in the
British, North-American and Spanish press
PhD candidate: Xavier Ramon
Supervisor: Dr. Salvador Alsius
Taula de Nova Recerca (TNR). Barcelona, May 14, 2015
Introduction
•  Mass media are essential players in the configuration of the public
agenda and the transmission of information and values in
democratic societies (Bernstein, 2002; Hardy, 2008).
•  Journalists should have a “moral compass” (Kovach and
Rosenstiel, 2001: 181). They must fulfil crucial duties:
•  Should provide a complete and responsible coverage of all the
areas of the news arena, including sports (Boyle, 2006).
•  Should ponder freedom of expression with the preservation of
the key principles of journalism ethics: truth, justice and
responsibility (Alsius, 2010; Christians et al, 2009; Frost, 2011).
•  Should be committed to generate quality contents: Ethics is an
invitation to excellence and quality of information.
Introduction
•  To pursue the highest standards in terms of ethics and quality of
information is particularly relevant in the Olympic Games:
•  most important and prestigious international sporting megaevents (Billings, 2008)
•  receive an intensive media coverage at a global scale
(Hutchins and Rowe, 2012; Miah and García, 2012)
•  feature a set of crucial values, such as the respect for human
dignity, justice, multiculturalism, equality, antidiscrimination or
peace (Brownell and Parry, 2012; IOC, 2014; Maass, 2007;
McFee, 2012; Moragas, 1996; Naul, 2008; Parry, 2006;
Samaranch, 1995).
Introduction
•  However, sports journalism has been characterized by a series of
major drawbacks, such as: boosterism; the dissolution of the
frontiers between information and opinion; rumours; the lack of
rigour; sensationalism; the incitation to violence; the inequalities in
the treatment of gender, race and disability; the lack of publicservice mission; or the low quality and variety of sources (Hardin et
al, 2009; Oates & Pauly, 2007; Rowe, 2007; Wanta, 2013).
•  “Sports coverage routinely violates the ethical norms by which the
profession asks to be judged” (Oates and Pauly, 2007: 333).
•  Notions of “toy department” and “fans with typewriters”.
Research objectives
1.  To elaborate a theoretical framework and review of the
literature about journalism ethics and mediasport. Examination
of the normative standards of the profession and the major ethical
drawbacks that have occurred in the field.
2.  To examine the coverage of the London 2012 Olympic Games
carried out by six quality newspapers of three countries (United
Kingdom, United States of America and Spain), analysing the
adequacy of newspapers’ pieces to the fundamental principles of
journalism ethics (truth, justice and responsibility).
Research objectives
Research objectives
3. To analyse the media compliance with the prescriptions
established in the ethical codes, stylebooks and national and
international recommendations about journalism ethics.
•  UNESCO
•  International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)
•  Council of Europe
•  Independent Press Standards Organization (IPSO)
•  National Union of Journalists (NUJ)
•  Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ)
•  American Society of Newspapers Editors (ASNE)
•  Spanish Journalists’ Associations Federation (FAPE)
Research objectives
•  Principle of truth
Specific considerations
Written foundations
1.1. Avoiding conjectures,
speculations and rumours
IFJ (Art. 3); Council of Europe (Art.
4); FAPE (Art. 13)
1.2. Quantity and quality of
balanced, authoritative and
trustworthy sources
SPJ (Art.1); ASNE (Art. 6); APSE
(Art. 6a); FAPE (Art. 13)
1.3. Completeness and richness in
the provision of sporting news and
the larger framework
UNESCO (Art. 1-2); IFJ (Art. 1);
Council of Europe (Art. 17); SPJ
(Foreword); ASNE (Art. 4)
1.4. Rectifications of content
UNESCO (Art. 5); IFJ (Art. 5);
Council of Europe (Art. 26); IPSO
(Art. 2); NUJ (Art. 3); SPJ (Art. 4);
FAPE (Art. 13)
Research objectives
•  Principle of truth
Specific considerations
Written foundations
1.5. Separation between information
and opinion
Council of Europe (Art. 3); IPSO
(Art. 1); ASNE (Art. 5); FAPE (Art.
17)
1.6. Avoiding sensationalism
Council of Europe (Art. 30), SPJ
(Art. 2)
•  Principle of justice
Specific considerations
Written foundations
2.1. Commitment to justice in the
portrayal of gender, race, disability
and nationality
UNESCO (Art. 9); IFJ (Art. 7),
Council of Europe (Art. 28); IPSO
(Art. 12); NUJ (Art. 10); SPJ (Art. 1);
FAPE (Art. 7)
Research objectives
•  Principle of responsibility
Specific considerations
Written foundations
3.1. Respect for the privacy of
sportsmen and sportswomen
UNESCO (Art. 6); Council of Europe
(Art. 23-24); IPSO (Art. 3); NUJ (Art.
6); SPJ (Art. 2) FAPE (Art. 4)
3.2. Avoiding warlike language that
fosters violence and confrontation
Council of Europe (Art. 35)
3.3. Respect for religious beliefs
UNESCO (Art.9); IFJ (Art. 7); FAPE
(Art. 7)
Methodology
•  Qualitative content analysis (Altheide, 1996; Bryman, 2012).
•  The Guardian/The Observer, The Daily Telegraph/ The Sunday
Telegraph (UK); The New York Times, The Washington Post
(USA); El País, La Vanguardia (Spain)
•  Criteria: quality, tone, relevance in their communicative systems,
circulation and capacity to carry out rigorous sports journalism.
•  Observation timeframe: 33 days (July 18 - August 19, 2012), 19
days of Games + one week before and after the event.
•  Database: Filemaker Pro 12
•  Analysis units (n=6.552)
•  Triangulation (Hesse-Biber, 2010; Tashakkori and Teddlie, 2009) with
41 semi-structured interviews (38 interviewees): scholars and
experts, media professionals, IOC representatives.
Truth. Conjectures, speculations and rumours
•  Portrayal of Ye Shiwen
•  Olympic gold medal. 400m individual medley (July 28, 2012)
•  The Guardian was the first media to include on the record the
voice of John Leonard (WSCA), who suggested that her
performance was “suspicious”, “unbelievable” and “disturbing”.
He went further, labelling doping with the Chinese nationality.
•  Doping controversy translated into the international sphere
•  Consequences over the principles of:
•  truth (rumours, sources)
•  justice (amplification of negative stereotypes)
•  responsibility (emphasis on prejudicial rivalries - “Us versus
them”).
Truth. Sources
Truth. Completeness and richness
Truth. Completeness and richness
•  Minimization of less prominent disciplines
•  7 sports did not reach the 1% of the coverage.
•  Outside the Olympics:
•  Sports remain positioned within a hierarchy
•  In the digital age, the multiplicity of media platforms hasn’t
been translated into a broader coverage of sports, but rather
into a deeper coverage of the most prominent sports.
•  “We are not a sports NGO or a PSB”. Newspapers:
•  Operate in a very competitive marketplace
•  Need to tailor the range of sports to audiences’ interests
•  However, quality newspapers have responsibility to give
exposure to non-revenue sports: Diversification is crucial to
quality of information
Truth. Completeness and richness
•  Depth and sophistication in the sporting coverage
•  Truth in sports journalism, in a context characterized by the
overload of information and the multiplicity of voices, is providing
more than just facts and results.
•  Aspects that played a key role in producing and retaining value
for media organizations in London 2012:
•  Background, comment, analysis and interpretation
•  Translating the atmosphere, the colour, vivacity of events
and the human stories behind them
•  Exhaustive photographical coverage
•  Infographics: Innovative ways of providing information to
increase readers’ knowledge about sports they are not
familiar with.
Truth. Completeness and richness
•  Significant task to critically examine the larger framework
(relevant contexts behind the play)
Truth. Completeness and richness
•  The coverage seemed reasonably balanced, as the reports
picked up some of the key aspects that went wrong:
•  In security grounds, media scrutinized G4S for their shortfall.
•  In ticketing, British newspapers did a good job of raising the
awareness about the hypocrisy involved in the controversy over
empty seats, reserved to members of the ‘Olympic family’.
•  In legacy, critical account of the sales of school fields and the
cuts in school sports funding.
•  In other areas, the coverage could have been more insightful:
•  Contradictions of the Lower Lea Valley transformation
•  Stories contrary to the ‘party atmosphere’ (including protests to
sponsors), were excluded or received scant attention.
Truth. Rectification of content
•  Rectifications of content, due to factual details (times, medals,
records, pictures, names, cities, misidentification of flags).
•  Good practice: The Washington Post’s letters to the editor as a
key space for accountability
•  Discussion about the coverage of the Olympics (violent
vocabulary, photographical representation of African Americans,
pieces that went beyond the American focus, athletes’ portrayal,
among others).
Truth. Separation between information and opinion
•  Common dissolution of frontiers between information and opinion
(subjective expressions, evaluative adjectives and adverbs, firstperson approach and inclusion of journalists).
•  “Dressing up fandom in fancy words”: Expressions to praise
the performance of domestic athletes
•  “Wonderfully dominant”, “scintillating shooting performance”,
“gloriously fulfilled”, hard-working patriots”, “epic blowout”,
“wondrous completion”, etc.
•  In reporting cases of loss or underperformance, subjectivity
also arises: “miserable McKenzie”, “disastrous performance”,
“frustratingly inconsistent”, “stunning fall”, “deshonra en el
1.500”, “rematadamente mal”, etc.
Truth. Separation between information and opinion
•  El País after the defeat of the Spanish football team
•  “Una soberana derrota”, “rematadamente mal”, “espantosos
ridículos”, “chasco monumental”, “decepcionante debut”,
“descalabro futbolero”, “lamentable imagen”
•  “Un empalagoso equipo vestido de azul celeste, desconocido,
muy desnaturalizado”
•  “Mucho ombligo, poco cerebro”
Truth. Sensationalism
•  Cases of sensationalism
•  Reports about sex and partying at the Olympics
•  Other examples of soft news – infotainment
•  Fundamental factors to consider:
•  Tabloidization (Skovsgaard, 2014), which generates tensions
between the market forces and the ethics and quality.
•  The erosion of the public-private distinction. The duality
between the ‘public interest’ and the ‘human interest’ in
contemporary journalism (Knoppers & Elling, 2004).
•  The preponderance of celebrity news within the current
cultural and communicative landscape.
•  The celebrity culture is having particularly a significant
impact in the world of sport (Boyle, 2013; Conboy, 2014; ).
Justice. Portrayal of gender
Same number of pieces
Gender gap: 4%
Justice. Portrayal of gender
Gender gap: 10%
Gender gap: 15%
Justice. Portrayal of gender
Gender gap: 28.71%
Gender gap: 22.14%
Justice. Portrayal of gender
•  Qualitative dimension: ambivalence in the coverage
•  Raising sportswomen’s profile
•  Media showcased sportswomen’s achievements through a
balanced and fair vocabulary.
•  Meaningful task to shed light on the increase in
sportswomen’s participation and the inclusion of women from
Muslim countries that had never sent female athletes to the
Games (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Brunei).
•  Media fostered a larger conversation about the pending
challenges to achieve equality.
•  Persistence on covert and overt forms of gender stereotypes
•  Emotionality, infantilising, out-of-context elements and
sportswomen’s private lives, relationships and marital status,
sexism and mentions to physical attributes and attire.
Justice. Portrayal of race
•  Information about race was only provided in exceptional cases,
such as with the US gymnast Gabrielle Douglas.
•  Journalists cannot always be colour-blind v Douglas was casted
in the ‘other’ spotlight because of her race.
•  Certain covert stereotypes were fostered throughout the coverage
•  On a broader level, newspapers took the opportunity to raise the
public awareness of racism within sport and society:
•  Condemned two discriminatory tweets contrary to the values and
ideals of the Olympic Movement.
•  Praise of multiculturalism and opposition to discrimination: The
Guardian and The Telegraph criticized Daily Mail’s attempts to
convey damaging expressions such as ‘Plastic Brits’ to refer to
athletes that were non-white or non-British born.
Justice. Portrayal of disability
•  Newspapers placed a great deal of attention to Oscar Pistorius
and the significance of his inclusion was well delivered. However:
•  He was portrayed in many occasions as an object of curiosity
•  Nickname blade runner without commas.
•  He could not scape the controversy around the unfair advantage
that his prosthetics could provide him. Why did media continue
focusing on what had already been litigated?
•  The portrayal of the South Korean archer Im Dong-Hyun revealed
certain misleading perceptions about disability within journalists
•  Although he had a limited sight, he was inaccurately described in
several media reports as “blind”, “registered as blind” or “legally
blind”. Since disability is confined to Paralympics, journalists had
difficulty dealing with disability issues and nuances.
Justice. Portrayal of disability
•  Polish table tennis Natalia Partyka: illustrates the minimization that
non-prominent disabled athletes face in media
•  The Guardian, El País and La Vanguardia did not mention her
•  The Washington Post: only newspaper to include at least a little
photograph in its print edition
•  Disability sport found a remarkable space to be showcased in the
London 2012 Paralympics, but their exposure outside it continues to
be minimal or inexistent.
Justice. Portrayal of nationality
•  Nation remains prominent: newspapers amplified the coverage of
their domestic athletes.
•  British newspapers devoted ¾ of the coverage to Team GB: The
Guardian (74.10%); The Telegraph (74.94%)
•  El País (72.03%)
•  Cases that showed the importance of a global approach
•  NYT devoted 43.93% of its pieces to foreign athletes
•  TWP devoted daily a page with brief pieces on foreign athletes
Justice. Portrayal of nationality
•  It is not unethical to report more on the home team, but there was a
recurrent use of mechanisms that at times may had compromised
the standards of fairness and accuracy:
•  Use of evaluative adjectives and adverbs
•  Pieces that do not pay attention to foreign competitors
•  Use of patriotic quotes by athletes
•  Overemphasis on medal tables and national achievements
•  Diminishment of other countries’ abilities to compete in sport
•  Certain human stories with a nationalistic purpose
•  Repeated use of photographs with national flags
Responsibility. Respect for privacy
•  News provided elements to build the human-interest dimension of
stories, but they did it from respect, without representing an invasion
of privacy
•  Plenty of stories about overcoming adversities. Examples: Kayla
Harrison (U.S., Judo), Anthony Ogogo (G.B., Boxing)
•  Nevertheless, The Daily Telegraph’s published a report on the
drinking problems and violent death of Bradley Wiggins’ father
(25/07/2012). Was it public interest? Which benefit represented its
publication?
Responsibility. Warlike language
•  Widespread use of warlike expressions and analogies:
‘smacked in the
face’
‘pugnacious
fighter’
‘bazooka shots’
‘make a killing’
‘rough clash’
‘missile’
‘revenge’
‘lethal weapon’
‘battle’
‘annihilation’
‘victim’
‘to rocket down’
‘combat’
‘shootout’
‘troops’
‘deathly duel’
‘to bludgeon’
‘assassin’
‘onslaught’
‘barrage’
•  “Journalists should to be reminded that sport is not war […] quality
newspapers should take their responsibility of setting the tone of the
coverage. If they use war-like expressions, it is more likely that
people will adopt those expressions, because of their power to
represent sport” (David Rowe, interview, March 2015).
Responsibility. Respect for religious beliefs
•  “Revealing in shared faith” (Omar Sacirbey, The Washington Post,
04/08/2012). Well-documented article, which delves into the
reasons why members of minority faiths follow U.S. Olympians
and athletes from other countries who share the same religion.
•  However, other articles primarily drawn on curiosity, superficial
coverage and clichés: Spanish hockey player Carlos Ballbé
•  “La fe del hockey mueve medallas. España, con el seminarista
Litus Ballbé en sus filas, inicia su ascensión a la gloria”.
Preliminary conclusions
Strengths
•  Wide range of sources
•  Completeness (sports information +
larger framework)
•  Corrections + accountability
•  Coverage of sportswomen
•  Raising awareness on racism and
gender inequalities within society
•  Respect for privacy and religious
beliefs
Weaknesses
• 
• 
• 
• 
Minimization of certain sports
Blurring between genres
Sensationalism
Covert and overt gender, race and
disability stereotypes
•  Use of nationality mechanisms
•  Warlike language
Opportunities
•  Education within newsrooms, HEIs
and the public
•  Increasing diversity in the
newsrooms
•  Reinforce the use of ethical codes
and new media accountability
systems (MAS)
Threats
• 
• 
• 
• 
Multiplicity of competing voices
24/7 news cycle
Orientation towards market forces
Commercial influences between
sporting mega-events and media
•  Tabloidization, erosion public-private,
celebrity culture
Forthcoming steps and future challenges
•  Writing and finishing the doctoral dissertation (expected public
defence: Spring 2016)
•  To submit journal articles in order to maximize the impact of the
chapters of the doctoral dissertation
•  Transference of knowledge into the educational and professional
fields (specific case studies + set of guidelines)
•  To continue monitoring ethics and quality of information in the
forthcoming Olympic events (Rio 2016, PyeongChang 2018, Tokyo
2020).
[email protected]
@xramonv
linkedin.com/in/xavierramon/en
Thank you for
your attention
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