How sports are reported around the world has huge relevance for what South Africans can expect of coverage of the 2010 World Cup.
Experience elsewhere makes clear that the 2010 story will not be only about matches, stadiums, broadcast rights and electricity supply. It’s also very much about our media’s own culture, our international image and the country’s sports pecking order.
These general issues were outlined this week in Stockholm, Sweden, by academics discussing media representations of the Beijing Olympics as well as of football coverage.
Meeting under the banner of the International Association for Media and Communication Research, many of the researchers delved into the deeper dynamics of contemporary coverage of sports.
International sports occasions are ”mega media events”, according to academic Garry Whannel. He described how the Olympics become a ”media vortex” — a focal point around which many issues converge.
In the case of China, these include human rights and Tibet. Demonstrators, said Whannel, have successfully grabbed the opportunity around the Olympic torch to stage political theatre — complete with media-tailored body language.
The ”vortextual” theme was also evident in work presented by Hu Zhengrong, who pinpointed additional images that feed into global coverage of the Olympics — tainted Chinese toys and foods, environmental pollution, and the recent earthquake.
Fellow Chinese academic Zhao Jing spoke about how the Beijing government hopes to promote official nationalism and development achievements during the Olympics. However, Hu’s comments showed that not all the Chinese media has fallen in line with this venture.
Instead, many local magazines are using the international attention around the Games to air critical coverage, question internal inequalities and propose political reforms.
It’s a scenario that may be echoed in South Africa in 2010, with our journalists called on to promote the country but also feeling compelled to resist self-censorship.
There are other international patterns reported by academics in Stockholm that have a bearing on 2010 coverage.
In the case of soccer-mad Portugal, according to historian Francisco Pinheiro, there have been more than 500 sports newspapers. Today, that country boasts three daily sports papers that together sell more copies than their counterparts in the general press publications. And 80% of the coverage in them is specifically about football.
There are similar patterns in other Mediterranean countries, and it’s a trend that Pinheiro describes as ”football-isation”, meaning the hegemony of soccer over other sports.
When reportage reflects on international competition, he says, it oscillates between assuming that Portugal is either the best or the worst in the world.
That probably sounds familiar to South Africans. And it could be that 2010 will see us partly emulate Portugal in the prominence of sports journalism, and specifically soccer coverage.
Competition between nations that goes beyond the game as such is also experienced in Scandinavia. Swedish researcher Peter Dahlen outlined how national tensions were inflated in the coverage of the 2003 World Cup qualifier match between Norway and its former coloniser, Denmark.
Headlines in that case hyped preparations for the ”war”, and the ”drill style” of play by the Norwegians. Similarly in South Africa for 2010, tensions between countries will likely paint much of the coverage — although hopefully not fuel xenophobic sentiment.
Following the case of Germany, we can also expect major coverage of footballers as celebrities.
Research by German academic Eva Maria Lessinger reveals that the transformation from professional sportsman to major pop cultural icon — like David Beckham — is not explained by performance on the field alone.
What makes the difference is a player’s relationship with women, particularly wives and mistresses. Rapid changes in their loves and hates help guarantee the exposure, according to Lessinger.
Players’ money is another factor in celebritising them. Their earnings, lifestyle, home and holidays also constitute rich pickings for the press.
Lessinger’s research shows contrasting coverage between different soccer stars. Several are portrayed in popular magazine Bunte as anti-heroes because of betraying their wives. But this is not so in one case — Franz Beckenbauer — despite him having had four marriages and two illegitimate children.
The tone of coverage in Bunte condemns footballer infidelity in general, but also confirms the untouchability of Beckenbauer as a kind of royal patriarch.
The point is that coverage seemingly about soccer figures is also very much about gender relations and class entitlement.
Extrapolating from these international cases, 2010 for South Africa is likely to become a ”vortex” of issues that extend way beyond soccer. It will be up to our journalists, however, to use the occasion to raise their own game.
We can do with more media dedicated to sports — though hopefully not only soccer. We would also benefit from journalists being more aware of the issues around constructing international rivalry and celebrities in football.
In the long term, like China, we can also gain if journalists maintain deep scrutiny of South African problems despite all pressures or proclivities to accentuate the positive.