Abstract
Sports journalism has not received a huge amount of academic attention, and in reference to issues of race and racism, even less so: this is the gap that the book aims to plug. The authors set the scene by establishing the increasing importance of the sports desk to any newspaper: though budgets are being stretched thin here as elsewhere as the shift to digital bites, it is often the sports coverage that attracts readers, and thus advertisers, to a particular title. In this context, and in light of several recent high-profile incidents of racism in, most notably, British football, a book concerned with racism and sports journalism is timely.
Not least because, as Chapter 3 of the book demonstrates by reference to existing research and interviews with journalists, sports journalism is about as white (not to mention male and middle-class) a profession as exists. The authors rightly flag up the contrast to the field of play, and raise questions about what this might mean for the coverage not only of racist incidents but also more generally of athletes from various ethnic groups. Though the case studies that follow do not tend to dwell on the relationship between professional make up and the discourses identified, the concluding chapter returns to this matter. More diverse points of view are needed, the authors argue, and persuasively; using examples from the reaction to the Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton’s ‘joke’ about suffering racism, they highlight a key distinction between the bulk of the comment and that put forward by a non-white writer.
In introducing the book, Farrington et al. say theirs is not a media studies approach, but one concerned with journalism; the suggestion being that the subject is considered not only in terms of media outputs, but also context(s) and production. Thus the book delivers somewhat inconsistently on the promise of ‘extensive empirical work’ (p. 4) if one is concerned primarily with the unpicking of media discourses, but succeeds in blending conceptual debates with insights from media practitioners and members of sports organizations, and some sense of media framing. The chapter on boxing, for instance (the book is divided in to chapters addressing five different sports), uses three case studies that offer a diachronic look at the situations of black and Asian boxers across altering sociopolitical contexts from the early 1900s to the turn of the 21st century. The authors reflect on what matters about these athletes at different points in history – variously, the threat posed by their (supposed) physical strength, political power and cultural difference – and how they responded to their position. Yet sandwiched between the chapters on athletics and cricket, it feels a little light on (explicated) analysis of media texts.
I found the cricket chapter the most satisfying read, particularly in terms of actually exploring journalistic output and debates. As with the other chapters, it begins with context, setting out cricket’s colonial history and bringing the reader up to the present, post-9/11 era. The first two case studies establish race as a live concern in cricket in two national contexts, before a third looks at the publication of a provocative article in the Wisden almanac in the mid-1990s. This case study is extremely interesting and opens out into a discussion of this and other episodes in relation to concepts such as community, role models and Orientalism. There is depth as well as breadth to the commentary and here especially the relationships between sports bodies, athletes, politics and the media – as a profession and as a part of public discourse – is well examined. The football chapter carries similar weight, focusing on the exclusion of British Asian players from English leagues. Some of the discussion of public responses is (perhaps necessarily) speculative, but the authors’ interviews with British Asian (ex-)footballers and coaches provide an interesting insight into how the players themselves negotiate their response to the media foregrounding of their ‘Asianness’, and that of others.
The final empirical chapter, on Formula One racing, leans initially on existing research to show that Lewis Hamilton is, in a number of media texts, implicitly different, and compared to black athletes in other sports more often than other successful Formula One drivers. The authors then analyse the media (and institutional) reaction to Hamilton’s suggestion, in 2008, that he was suffering discrimination from stewards at the track ‘because he is black’. In the earlier chapter on athletics, the case studies showed how race intersects with other factors such as gender, genetics, otherness and national identity; here we see class as a filter for the notion of racism. Once again the difference in the reaction from BME writers is instructive, making for a natural progression to the conclusion and its assertion of the need for professional diversity.
Though at times the patchwork nature of a text compiled by four different authors is a little close to the surface – and I wonder if structuring the book around concepts rather than sports might have allowed for something slightly smoother – Farrington et al. have amassed a broad collection of pertinent and insightful case studies. With a practitioner amongst their number, the authors have accessed sources from within sport and sports journalism that are often lacking from studies of this sort, particularly in the case of journalists. The authors (generally) criticize not individual writers but look to highlight trends in coverage and assess their likely causes/contexts and implications. ‘What we have found is that “race” and ethnicity become central to the story, although they should often be insignificant’, they conclude (p. 152). Not only is this against PCC guidelines, it makes for a rather depressing diagnosis. Through the course of the book we see the biological arguments of the past supplanted by notions of cultural difference and incompatibility that are no less challenging. There is optimism, however, in the suggestion that professional diversity can be achieved via the progress of role-model BME journalists. In turn, that, along with improved training, can produce better professional standards when it comes to dealing with matters of race and ethnicity in sport. Taking all of this into account, then, this is a book that journalists (both budding and more established) as well as media researchers can get a good deal out of.