What is it then that enables the newspaper to hold its audience in a field where, after all, it is results that matter, and the results are already yesterday’s news by the time they appear on the breakfast table?
The simple answer is that the newspapers have changed their focus. The match reports and the results are still there, and we read them even if we know the scores - the reports give us, perhaps, a different perspective on the game, and the results include statistics, such as crowd figures, winning (or losing) sequences and top-scorers tables, which may interest us. Certainly, the league tables can be perused in a more leisurely manner than that afforded by television, but these also appear on teletext, and, on their own, do not provide a reason for many of us to turn immediately to the sports section.
What the newspapers offer us which the television and radio stations do not, or at least not in as much detail, is the in-depth interview or analysis, in the case of the broadsheets, or, in the case of the tabloids, the sensational behind-the-scenes story. The tabloid press easily outsells the quality press, with The Sun and The News of The World the biggest-selling daily and Sunday papers, respectively: and the tabloid sports regimen is one of scandal, scoop and lack of subtlety. Sex, bribes, drugs, booze, player-transfer scoops, manager-sacked scoops, why-England-must-beat-Zimbabwe-or-go-home-in-disgrace specials: all of these sell newspapers, whether or not they are factually accurate, relevant, fair or even well-written.
Punning headlines with an increasingly tenuous connection to the English language have become the norm, and many of them are personally insulting and even vulgar; occasionally they are funny. Graham Taylor, the hapless former manager of the England football team, was subjected to a sustained and vindictive personal attack from the tabloids which visibly altered his public persona and no doubt caused considerable pain and upset to himself and his family - ‘turnip’ was one of the kinder epithets used about him.
Newspapers, then, tend to sensationalise because television has stolen the news element from them. I am of the opinion that the tabloids, in particular, use the individual as the focus of their attention, rather than the team, and that the aim is to build that person up and then knock him or her down. The higher the pedestal they are put on, the further they have to fall, so it is in the papers’ interests to cultivate the individual so that when the sensational story comes - ‘Giggsy bonked me three times in a night’, says top model, or Gazza's drunken orgy in dentist’s chair - it is seen as an item of national scandal, rather than the crass and often inaccurate intrusion into an individual’s private life that it actually represents.
I believe that media has a massive impact on sport and the media are now everywhere. There is no way to avoid the media if you are a sportsman and this is the problem. The media love to destroy the so called image that sports people have. David Beckham for instance was persecuted over the whim of his former Pa telling the world that they had an illicit affair. This caused uproar and people were saying that David Beckham cannot captain England due to the allegations. This then put the football star on edge and his performance during Euro 2004 was much blamed on this slander.
Concluding this information the sports stars of today have to be on their best behaviour all the time, if they do anything that could look bad the media will find out about it. The media have the responsibility to inform the public of what they do. Unfortunately they inform the public of all the bad things that sportsman do and not enough of the good things and if they do inform us of something good they tend to still put a negative in there to balance the story.
