Bahraini uprising of 2011: The (No More) hidden political role of sports journalism

Abstract

Two events have brought the social movement in Bahrain to light yet again: the temporary detention of the football player Hakeem Al-Araibi in Thailand for alleged ‘terrorist’ acts and the imprisonment of the activist Najah Yusuf because of her criticism of the hosting of a Formula One Grand Prix. This paper sheds light on the nexus between sports journalism and politics in Bahrain. It highlights the weaponizing of sports journalism during the first few weeks of the 2011 uprising to protect the regime. The coverage of the demonstrations is analysed to inspect how the 2011 uprising was reported on by the pro-regime sports newspapers. This paper argues that sports journalism played an unprecedented political role during the uprising when it was used by the regime as a weapon to confront the protests and in the process reinforce the regime's control over the country.

Keywords

Sports journalism the Arab Spring propaganda politics the Gulf Cooperation Council states

The 2011 uprising highlighted the significant political role sports media play in Bahrain. During a critical period of the recent political and social history of the country, tens of thousands of people took to the streets on 14 February 2011 in protests against the regime. On 22 February 2011 against all expectations, a number of the country's athletes and sports figures participated in a protest called ‘The Athletes’ March’. Because of their unprecedented role in the political movement, several athletes and sports figures were detained, dismissed from their jobs or suspended from playing for their teams (Lulu, 2011).

Two events have brought the political conflict to light yet again. The first event concerns Hakeem Al-Araibi, the Bahrain National Football Team player who was in 2019 at the centre of a diplomatic dispute between Australia, Bahrain and Thailand. In his visit to Thailand from Australia (where he was granted protection visa), Al-Araibi was detained for about 3 months and later released after his extradition case to Bahrain was dropped. Al-Araibi was earlier sentenced in absentia by a Bahraini court to 10 years in prison for alleged ‘terrorist’ acts, accusations strongly denied by the footballer (Akhbar Al-Khaleej, 2019a; BBC, 2019). The second event concerns Najah Yusuf, an activist who was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment for criticizing in a Facebook post-Bahrain's hosting of the Formula One Grand Prix in 2017. She was also accused of committing ‘terror’ offences but was released in 2019. Yusuf wrote earlier from her prison cell saying that she was subjected to torture and sexual assaults (Yusuf, 2019; Oppenheim, 2019).

To understand the political role sports journalism played during the uprising, this paper examines the coverage of two pro-regime newspapers from 1 March 2011 to 31 May 2011 when martial law was introduced and around 2000 Saudi and Emirati troops were sent to Bahrain to crack down on the demonstrations (Bronner and Slackman, 2011). Two well-known pro-regime newspapers, Akhbar Al-Khaleej (AK) and Al-Bilad (AB), were chosen for this paper. AK is the oldest newspaper in Bahrain that was established in 1976 while AB is the most recent (in 2008) newspaper to be established.

The Bahraini royal family, sport and the media

Bahrain has been ruled by the Al-Khalifa regime since 1783. The Al-Khalifas is a Sunni family originally from the central region of the Arabian Peninsula (Abdulla and Zain Al-Abidin, 2009: 120). Overall, Bahrain has a population of about 1.5 million (52% Bahraini and 48% non-Bahraini) with the majority of the population being Muslim (approximately 70%) and the rest are Christian, Jewish and other religions (Central Intelligence Agency, 2019). Muslims in Bahrain is divided into a Shiite majority and a Sunni minority. While there are no official statistics about the exact proportion, the percentage of Shiites is estimated as being about 65% (Abdo, 2013: 5).

The regime uses financial endowments to stabilize its rule (Bank and Edel, 2015: 13–14; El-Khury, 1983: 67). Internationally, the US and the UK have maintained close relationships with Bahrain. Although it is only a small archipelago located in the Persian Gulf with a territory of about 717 square km, the country hosts the Fifth Fleet (the fleet is responsible for protecting the US and its allies’ interests in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and Red Sea) and has been a ‘major non-NATO ally’ of the US since 2002 (The White House, 2002). These relationships have negatively influenced the political movement (Kode, 2014). The 2011 uprising raised the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states and the US concerns that an anti-US regime threatening the political and economic interests of these countries would be established.

This paper focuses on sports journalism for two main reasons. First, the majority of scholarly work concentrated on the role of social media during the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ has overlooked state-controlled media in general and sports media in particular (e.g. Breuer et al., 2015; Heitner, 2014). Second, sport and sports media have always been strong political tools in the hands of the Bahraini regime. For instance, while they represent about 2% of the Bahraini people, members of the ruling family head 14 of 27 sports federations (51.8%) as counted by the author. They also occupy 5 of 13 seats (38.4%) in the Bahrain Olympic Committee including president and vice president. Holding leadership positions has allowed the regime to use sport and sports media as a propaganda machine to advance its own interests and cement its rule. For example, sporting success in sports coverage is generally and deferentially attributed to ‘the wise leadership’ as if it was the main cause of success rather than individual athletic prowess (Akhbar Al-Khaleej, 2019b; Al-Ayam, 2015).

Literature review

Rowe (2007) pointed to the change of the role of sports journalism from being entertainment-oriented to having social responsibilities such as addressing racial and gender inequality in sport. These responsibilities have grown in the recent decade (Pilar et al., 2019; Torrijos and Ramon-Vegas, 2016). In the Arab world, sports media are exploited to, for instance, impose regimes’ political agenda on public opinion (Amara, 2007). As for the GCC states, it is fairly common that sports events and sports media coverage transform into political disputes or to exchange political messages. Organizing the 2022 FIFA World Cup by Qatar, for instance, has become a political tool in the dispute between these countries (Law, 2019; Montague and Panja, 2019). Moreover, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates forced their journalists to give up their jobs with the Qatari media including the sports media following another dispute with Qatar in 2014 (Al Jazeera, 2014).

In Bahrain, the 2011 Bahrain Grand Prix was cancelled as a result of the criticism of human rights violations. One year later, international media outlets questioned once more whether Bahrain should be allowed to host the Formula One race (Wilkinson, 2012). The regime was accused of investing in the sports event to bring ‘international prestige’ and divert attention from its autocratic rule (Dooley, 2013). Contrary to expectations, the 2012 Grand Prix went ahead and the race had the expected result of bringing more international attention to the daily protests being held all over Bahrain. Since it was believed that the Formula One management supported the regime, the protesters redoubled their efforts to underline the relationship between Formula One and the suppression of the uprising. Given the lack of opportunities to voice opposition in the tightly controlled media of Bahrain, political graffiti was widely used on walls calling for the boycott of the Grand Prix (Neumayer, 2018).

International media reported on the Bahraini sports media coverage of the uprising (Warrick and Birnbaum, 2011). Reports referred to programmes broadcast on Bahrain Sports Channel that displayed images of athletes and sports figures protesting and called on the authorities to punish them (Law, 2011). However, the Bahraini sports newspapers’ coverage of the uprising has been overlooked perhaps because newspapers are only distributed locally. Rabea's (2018) study of the television coverage of the 2011 uprising argued that Bahrain Sports Channel was used to name and shame the athletes and sports figures who participated in the uprising. He argued that the sports channel was employed to play the role of public prosecution by interrogating anti-regime athletes live on television (they were later arrested). Rabea (13–14) noted that sports media played a significant role in granting the regime ‘the legitimacy to carry out repressive actions on behalf of the nation’.

Chang and Vitale (2013: 23) indicate that protesters’ demand play an important role in determining the level of repression. They argue that repressive actions increase when protest activities exceed the boundaries drawn by a regime. In this light, it can be argued that protesters are not only physically suppressed but also through how their movement is reported on by the media. Scholars examined media bias in reporting on social movements (Di Cicco, 2010; McLeod and Hertog, 1992). Baylor (1996: 242) considered the prejudicial labelling of social movements by media outlets to be a ‘fact beyond dispute’ where specific events are deliberately selected, covered and timed. Reflecting an ideology, media framing employs particular words and phrases and highlights certain details within a particular event or an event itself as being more important than those neglected (Boyle and Mower, 2018; Baresch et al., 2011; Entman, 1991). In this regard, Satfy (1991) asserted that words and phrases play a crucial role in media campaigns as they present a ‘propagandistic function of symbolizing’ that seeks to encourage the public to interpret the message according to the way it has been framed. Mechanisms employed to vilify protests vary from accusing protesters of being violent, over-reliance on official sources or overlooking protests’ demands (Boyle, 2014; Di Cicco, 2010; Boykoff, 2006).

In this context, Kilgo (2020) argues that protests that demand justice struggle to receive fair coverage. Coombs et al. (2019: 14–15) study of media coverage of Colin Kaepernick’s protest (then San Francisco 49ers backup quarterback) shows that the coverage concentrated on the player and paid less attention to the message perhaps because he was accused of being ‘radical’ (Graham, 2020; Jenkins, 2020). Lee (2014), nonetheless, presents another reading in his examination of Hong Kong newspapers’ coverage of protests between 2001 and 2012. He argues that protests received positive coverage particularly when the protesters did not adopt ‘radical tactics’.

In their comparative study of news coverage of protests in Brazil, China and India, Shahin et al. (2016) provided a similar argument to Lee. However, they acknowledged that media coverage is influenced by the ideological relationship between the government in power and media outlets at the time. While the literature presented in this section mainly reported on the way political media discredit protests and protesters, this paper examines the sports journalism coverage of the 2011 Bahraini uprising. It presents an interesting case when sports journalism was not only used to propagandize the regime’s sporting achievements, but was also used as a means to confront the social movement and penalize those who dared to challenge the regime.

Data collection and methodology

The data were collected from several sources. For AK, the Portable Document Format (PDF) version of the hardcopy archive was not available on the newspaper website; therefore the issues were downloaded from a private online server created by an activist who was archiving AK issues for their own project (the server is not online anymore). For AB, the PDF versions of the hardcopy issues covering the period of the study were downloaded from the AB website. Issues of AB of 11, 16, 17, 18, 21, 26 March and 3 May, 2011 were not available. Despite the difficulty accessing and collecting AB issues, only 3.8% of the total data were missing. Such a percentage of missing data can be considered insignificant (Dong and Peng, 2013).

Every sports article published in AK and AB from 1 March 2011 to the end of May 2011 was read. Local sports articles were classified into four main categories:

Explicitly about the uprising. This category included sports news articles that reported on the uprising using explicit political terms such as the ‘uprising’ or ‘The Athletes’ March’;

Implicitly about the uprising. This included sports news articles that implicitly covered the uprising without using explicit political language;

Explicitly about the regime. This included sports news articles that covered the Al-Khalifa members’ sports activities that were not related to the uprising;

Unrelated articles that reported on general sports activities.

The analysis focuses on the regime’s explicit propaganda during the protests. Propaganda is an attempt to manipulate opinions towards the propagandist’s ends by influencing people’s thoughts to obtain the compliance of a mass audience (Ingram, 2016: 15; Soules, 2015: 6). One sports article from every newspaper issue on each day of the period of the study was selected from the first category ‘explicitly about the uprising’. When there was no article that explicitly reported on the uprising in an issue, a news article was selected from the next day’s issue. The articles were selected from the upper right side of the first page of the sports supplement as Arabic is written and read from right to left. When there was no article on the upper right side of the page, priority was given to the article that occupied most space on the first page. When there was no explicit article about the uprising on the first page, this method of selection was applied to the second page of an issue and so on.

In total, 46 sports news articles (19 articles from AK and 27 articles from AB) were selected and analysed manually. While it can be argued that the sample size is small, the selected 46 news articles accounted for 58.9% of the published articles that explicitly reported on the uprising during the period of the study. In addition, it has to be noticed that the use of sports journalism in politics was limited to a number of days in the first few weeks of the uprising when it was needed to do so.

Because this paper argues that sports journalism used specific key phrases to frame the uprising, the analysis focused on how the following four elements were framed: the uprising, the consequences of the uprising, the Al-Khalifa regime and the protesters. These elements mentioned in the news articles were numbered and analysed. It has to be stressed that the original text was published in Arabic and the use of frame to label the ruling family, for instance, often had a stronger connotation than the English translation. For example, the ruling family was framed as ‘the regime’ that might not have a positive connotation in English. However, this key phrase is used in Arabic to legitimize a political authority on the one hand and delegitimize their opponents on the other. To give another example, describing the removal of the protesters from the Pearl Roundabout (the focal point of the protests in the capital Manama that was demolished by the regime), the regime framed its operation as ‘تطهير’ or ‘disinfection’ (BBC, 2011) whereas the French satellite channel France24 (2011) portrayed the operation as ‘إخلاء’ or ‘evacuation’. This demonstrates the different use of key phrases to label the same event. While ‘إخلاء’ or ‘evacuation’ does not have a negative meaning, the use of ‘تطهير’ or ‘disinfection’ suggests bacteria or a group of intruders that should be fought before attacking the body or the society in this case.

Findings and analysis

In the total of 46 news articles, key phrases to frame the protests and the ruling family were used in 45 articles (97.8%) and key phrases to label the protesters were used in 23 articles (50%). As for the ruling family, it was found that key phrases to frame the Al-Khalifa members were used 81 (Table 1). There was a focus on the sagacity and the nobility of the family members such as ‘the wise leadership’, and ‘the noble leadership’. Bream (2004: 134) points to two features of a leader’s personality cult that emerge during anti-regime demonstrations: the spread of the cult figure's image and the portrayal of the leader as a hero who can solve all problems. Similarly, Bondes and Heep (2012: 4) indicate that during the crisis, leaders ‘reproduce the belief’ in their qualities and resoluteness to show their people that they can lead the country to safety.

Table 1.

Key phrases and frequency used to glorify the Al-Khalifa family in the sports coverage of the 2011 uprising.

Key phrase of the regime	AK	AB	Coverage	%
The wise leadership or government/the noble Al-Khalifa or leadership	20	23	43	53%
The leadership	2	14	16	19.7%
The nation’s figureheads	2	8	10	12.3%
The regime	4	8	12	14.8%
Total	28	53	81	99.8%

Because the uprising questioned the legitimacy of the regime, the sports coverage focused on the ‘qualities’ of the country's ‘leadership’ to restore their image amongst the people of Bahrain. It also intended to reinforce a national identity represented by the ruling family. The analysis showed that AK and AB published 2155 sports news articles in March, April and May 2011, 526 articles (24.4%) of which covered the Al-Khalifa members’ sports activities. These articles only reported on sports events and did not indicate to the demonstrations that took place during that time. They included official news articles that were often unedited news sent by official offices or clubs via email or fax to the newspapers accompanied by particular photos and their captions. Official sports news articles are not limited to an unedited story as they are occasionally written by journalists who follow the official line including addressing an Al-Khalifa family member as ‘His Highness’, presenting their names as they are officially stated and accompanying the article with official photos which are usually sourced from the Bahrain New Agency website (the national agency). These articles promoted the sports qualities of the ruling family members and their claimed main role in the success of Bahraini sports.

Furthermore, teams were shown in public pledging allegiance to the ruling family. For example, football players were showed holding a banner before their match started in which was written (as translated to English): ‘Al-Hidd Cultural and Sports Club; its players, members and all of the distinguished people of Al-Hidd city pledge to God to be faithful and loyal soldiers to our kingdom and our leadership through thick and thin’ (Al-Bilad, 2011). Another club ‘vowed’ to suspend ‘all of those who involved in any way in the events and all of those who sought to destabilize the country and insult the leadership’. Remarkably, the General Organisation for Youth & Sports (an official institution that supervises local sports activities) asked sports clubs and federations in a news article published in AK on 6 April 2011 to report the names of the sports figures and athletes who participated in any political activities during the uprising.

The coverage endeavoured to present the ruling family members as the sacred figureheads and the legitimate authorities that should not have been challenged. A news article published in AB on 7 April 2011 quoted a football club vowing ‘to be soldiers’ of the leadership. This article commented that Bahrain Club (local team) ‘proved its loyalty to the wise leadership’ by expelling its members who participated in the demonstrations. Von Soest and Grauvogel (2015: 5) indicate that repression alone cannot sustain autocratic regimes’ rule. Thus, the ruling families of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar were placed at the heart of an emergent state building project after independence. The identity of and loyalty to the state are conflated with the identity of and loyalty to the ruling families (Partrick, 2009: 4).

The ruling families in the GCC states present themselves as the state and the ‘central means by which the will of the masses is translated into the power of the state’ (Kamrava, 2013: 306). These families live in ‘tribal blocks’ or small societies where each ruling tribe and its immediate members share common interests that sharply differ from the interests of the rest of the population (Al-Naqeeb, 1989: 100). The tribal blocks’ superiority is enforced both socially and legally. For instance, Article 1-A of the Bahrain Constitution (2002) stipulates the king's person is inviolate and his decisions should not be questioned.

In 23 articles (50% of the coverage), the protesters were framed as unpatriotic individuals and presented as those who ‘offended the nation and the wise leadership’ (Table 2). This technique is employed by political regimes during conflicts to draw a line between the allies and the enemies to determine who deserves to be punished (Steuter and Wills, 2009). Kaufman et al. (2013) explain that characterizing others is intended to undermine them. According to Cozma (2014: 435), this tactic attempts to make the audience rebuff opponents without examining any evidence.

Table 2.

Key phrases and frequency used to disparage the protesters in the sports coverage of the 2011 uprising.

Key phrase of the protesters	AK	ALB	Coverage	%
Offending the figureheads of the nation	1	2	3	13%
Offending the nation/the wise leadership	5	4	9	39.1%
Offending our figureheads/the wise leadership	1	1	2	8.6%
Overthrowing the regime	1	0	1	4.3%
Offending the figureheads/the political leadership	3	0	3	13%
Offending the wise leadership/the dear nation	1	2	3	13%
Offending the regime	1	0	1	4.3%
Disloyal to the nation and its wise leadership	0	1	1	4.3%
Total	13	10	23	99.6%

Tens of athletes were named and rebuked for their ‘shameful acts’ (indicating their roles during the uprising) by the coverage and commissions of inquiry that was established by the sport federations and clubs. On the contrary, the coverage praised pro-regime political events including an event that was organized in Bahrain Stadium (the main football stadium in the country) to sign a huge kit of the national football team as a symbolic gift that was presented to the King of Bahrain Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa. The event was called ‘ما لها إلا حمدها’ or ‘It is only for Hamad’. This signified how the regime views its rule of the country, as a private property that must only be ruled by the king. The kit of the national football team symbolized the athletes while the signature was evidence of their loyalty to the king.

The coverage also promoted another event called ‘سيوف الولاء’ or ‘Swords of Allegiance’ that was held at Bahrain Stadium. As with the first event, the regime called on its supporters to join the campaign against the protesters by pledging their allegiance to the ruling family. ‘Swords of Allegiance’ was considered a sports event because it mainly involved pro-regime athletes and sports figures. Reporting on it, a news article published by AK on 18 April 2011 stated that this event ‘will prove to the world that the wise leadership and the people of Bahrain are in harmony’. Another news article published in AK on 6 April 2011 commented that ‘(pro-regime) athletes have said their word and sent a message to those who sought to question their loyalty’ to the leadership. Consequently, only pro-regime athletes who pledged their allegiance to the ruling family were allowed to continue playing for their teams as clearly stated by two articles published in AK on 8 April 2011. Notably, while anti-regime sports figures and athletes were suspended or expelled from their teams on the pretext of breaking the law that bans athletes from politics (as stated in a news article published in AK on 22 April 2011) the regime encouraged pro-regime sports figures in its propaganda campaign to participate in political activities to show their ‘love’ and prove their ‘loyalty’ to the ruling family.

Patriotism in the regime's propaganda is defined as being loyal and obedient to the ruling family. Historically, patriotism as an ideology was employed to bring a country's people together to face an external enemy (Mestyan, 2017: 21, 28). Use of the unpatriotic frame endeavoured to distort the protesters, isolate them from the society and to encourage the regime's supporters to denounce the social movement and confront the protesters. For instance, a news article published in AK on 28 April 2011 described the pro-regime athletes as ‘loyal and patriotic’ who had an ‘imprint on the Bahraini sport during the uprising’. Moreover, the article promoted a television sports programme and called the readers to participate in it to condemn the anti-regime demonstrations. In another example, a news article published in AK on 15 April 2011 quoted the main commission of inquiry that investigated the athletes’ participation in the uprising thanking ‘the sports authorities and the Bahraini people for their cooperation with the committee’. This refers to providing personal information, images and video clips of sports figures and athletes accused of participating in the protests.

The coverage portrayed the protests negatively by focusing on the legal framework of the movement. The protests were labelled as ‘unlicensed gatherings’, ‘illegal gatherings’ or ‘illegal marches’ (Table 3). Moreover, the demonstrations were framed as ‘distressful acts’ that breached the security of the country. Lakoff in an interview with (Powell, 2003) argues that:

Table 3.

Key phrases and frequency used to frame the uprising in the sports coverage of the 2011 uprising.

Key phrase to target the uprising	AK	AB	Coverage	%
The unlicensed marches ‘The unlicensed Athletes’ March’ ‘The unlicensed protests’ ‘Illegal marches’ ‘Illegal gatherings’	14	11	25	33.3%
The unfortunate events ‘The recent security events’	4	7	11	14.6%
The political events ‘The recent events’ ‘The political activities’ ‘The political circumstances’ ‘The political march’	4	7	11	14.6%
The sit-in ‘Disgraceful acts’ ‘Security disturbances’ ‘Marches that breached security’ ‘Marches demand regime overthrow’	3	5	8	10.6%
The political crisis ‘The political unrest’ ‘The crisis’ ‘The security crisis’ ‘The recent crisis‘	3	6	9	12%
The Athletes’ March ‘The wretched Athlete's March’ ‘What is called The Athletes’ March’	3	4	7	9.3%
Irregularities and abuses ‘The sports abuses’ ‘Sports irregularities’	3	1	4	5.3%
Total	34	41	75	99.7%

Language always comes with what is called “framing”. Every word is defined relative to a conceptual framework. If you have something like “revolt,” that implies a population that is being ruled unfairly, or assumes it is being ruled unfairly, and that they are throwing off their rulers, which would be considered a good thing.

Autocratic regimes need to justify their actions against civilians. Thus, the regime’s repression of the protesters was framed as legal. The regime’s propaganda sought to send a clear message to those who plan to participate in anti-regime political or social activities in the future. In addition, the coverage suggested that the protesters did not represent the interests of the good citizens of Bahrain. The decisions to suspend or expel the athletes and sports figures were described in a news article published in AK on 8 April 2011 as ‘decisions made to protect the country from the stray hands (indicating to the protesters)’.

With regard to the consequences of the uprising, they were framed in 19 articles (41.3%) and all negatively. Valkenburg et al. (1999) suggested that media coverage presents an issue based on its consequences. This frame overlooked the consequences of actions taken by the regime to confront the protesters. In contrast, the coverage highlighted what was claimed as being the consequences of the uprising using key phrases such as ‘sabotage’ or inciting ‘sectarian strife’ (Table 4). The two most used key phrases ‘destabilization of the security’ and ‘breaching the nation's unity’ appeared 13 times (68.4%). For instance, a news article published in AK on 14 April 2011 claimed that the uprising was an attempt to ‘stir up a sectarian strife and tensions to target the stability of the country’. Another news article published in AB on 4 March 2011 claimed that the uprising led to ‘devastating financial losses for the sports clubs and federations’. Framing an uprising as having devastating consequences on the society and the economy is another protests paradigm technique often employed to vilify social movements (An and Gower, 2009: 111).

Table 4.

Key phrases and frequency used to frame the consequences of the protests in the sports coverage of the 2011 uprising.

Key phrase of the uprising consequences	AK	AB	Coverage	%
Destabilize the security and stability , ‘Destabilizing the nation's unity’ ‘Clashes between people’ ‘Acts of sabotage’ ‘Breach the nation's security’ ‘Threat to the nation's security’ ‘Targeting civil peace’ ‘Inciting sectarian strife’	6	7	13	68.4%
Economic losses ‘Financial losses’ ‘Wages of referees not being paid’	0	2	2	10.5%
Suspension of the sports activities ‘Players not attending trainings’	0	3	3	15.7%
Infringement the national sovereignty	0	1	1	5.2%
Total frequency of the key phrases	6	13	19	99.8%

The coverage relied on official and pro-regime sources including members of the Al-Khalifa family and sports federations. Often, news supplied by official sources is subject to bias in favour of these sources (Dimitrova and Strömbäck, 2008: 207; McLeod, 2007: 187). It is noted that of the 46 sports news articles (100%), no athletes or sports figures involved in the protests were interviewed or quoted including those who were accused of committing ‘offences’ (Table 5). Moreover, 29 of the news articles (63.1%) were not accompanied by a by-line (a journalist’s or subeditor’s name). As the uprising unfolded, the regime strictly controlled the flow of information more than ever before. A number of journalists revealed during the protests that they were arrested, tortured or detained for not adopting the regime’s narrative of the uprising (Bassiouni et al., 2011: 307). By doing so, the regime imposed self-censorship amongst journalists to prevent them from using their own sources to report on the events. Furthermore, 221 journalists and media organizations were denied entry to Bahrain in 2011 and 2012 without being given a reason (Bahrain Watch, 2012). This allowed the state-controlled media to recount their narrative about the uprising.

Table 5.

Use of official and pro-regime sources in the sports coverage of the 2011 uprising.

Newspaper	Articles	Articles with by-line	%	Official and pro-regime sources	%
AK	19	4	21%	19	100
AB	27	13	48.1%	27	100
Total	46	17	36.9%	46	100

Overall, sports journalism was used as a means of surveillance and punishment. The sports coverage of the uprising encouraged ‘all citizens and readers’ to send any evidence they may have collected about the protesters to the commission of inquiry. While it is not possible to determine if there was any follow-up by the readers with solicitation of information by the authorities, social media campaigns established by pro-regime supporters showed that incitement against the protesters and the invasion of their privacy became relatively common practice and was presented as a national imperative (Jones, 2013).

Discussion

Protests are repressed based on how much they threaten political regimes (Aytaç et al., 2017: 74). Political activities that target the legitimacy of an autocratic regime are subjected to extreme forms of repression including torture and death (Chang and Vitale, 2013: 36). In their coverage, the pro-regime sports newspapers differentiated between two binary identities: the legitimate party that should take serious actions to protect the county from the illegitimate party. Chomsky illustrates this technique:

It's the idea that grave enemies are about to attack us and we need to huddle under the protection of domestic power. You need something to frighten people with, to prevent them from paying attention to what's really happening to them (Chomsky et al., 1998: 42).

The regime’s propaganda provided two choices to the people of Bahrain: stability and chaos. The Bahraini regime motivated the people to overlook the country’s dire political and economic situations and follow its instructions by delegitimizing the political movement and punishing those who were part of it.

Khalaf (2013) highlighted the ‘war of ideas’ between the Al-Khalifa regime and the protesters to gain legitimacy and to reach the public. The sports journalism coverage of the uprising was part of this ‘war’ when they were used, for instance, to propagandize the athletic qualities of the Al-Khalifa family members to solidify their images in the people’s consciousness. The reliance on sports journalism as a means to repel the uprising in Bahrain showed the significant importance of sports media during political movements.

The sports coverage employed various phrases to emphasize negative characteristics to sully the political position of the uprising by portraying it as ‘illegal marches’ or ‘disgraceful acts’. Negative key phrases were used to portray the protests as having devastating consequences on the present and future of Bahrain. In contrast, the ruling family was framed as the legitimate authority, the figurehead of the nation and the only hope for a stable Bahrain. It is noted that 77 of the 78 news articles (98.7%) that explicitly reported on the uprising were published after 15 March 2011 when the regime employed sports journalism to confront the demonstrations. As the regime regained control of the situation, sports journalism returned to report on local competitions that were partly resumed starting from mid-April 2011.

The overlooking of the protests in the first few weeks of the uprising was indicative of the level of control that the regime had on sports journalism. Consequently, there was little opportunity for anti-regime news coverage in any local media. While politics was normally not explicitly foregrounded in the local Bahraini sports media, exploiting sports journalism for political purposes during the first few weeks of the 2011 uprising was one of the tools employed by the regime to protect itself.

Sports media and sport are considered significant elements of power for autocratic regimes and a reflection of their ideologies (Pujadas, 2014; Byman and Lind, 2010). Historically, political regimes exploited sports events and athletes’ achievements to propagandize for their ideologies (Tomlinson and Young, 2006; Beck, 1982). The popular appeal and widespread cultural impact of sport are two of the main reasons why sport and sports coverage attract the interest of political regimes eager to find opportunities to propagandize their agenda. Given the dominance of sport in the culture in Bahrain, using sports journalism was central to the regime’s public communication strategies. Overall, there were three main messages construed in the sports coverage to convince the readers of the regime's propaganda: the demonstrations were illegal, the ruling family was the legitimate authority, and the protesters were unpatriotic citizens whereas the supporters of the regime were true patriotic citizens.

The sports coverage of the uprising represented the atmosphere within the regime and its proponents to depict the demonstrations as a battlefield that required soldiers who were willing to sacrifice themselves for the country's leadership. The tone of the coverage elucidated the ideology of the regime and its attitude towards democracy. It was an echo of the political environment that only allows the voice of the ruling family and its supporters to be heard.

Conclusion

This paper examined the role of Bahraini sports journalism during the 2011 uprising. Mainstream media including sports media are owned or controlled by the regime. Sports news of the ruling family is not published by sports journalism for informational purposes only, but most importantly to communicate political messages. The ruling family realized early the importance of sports journalism. Thus, it is mandatory that sports news present the ruling family in a positive light to the public as athletes, champions and supporters of sport, and as the main reason for Bahrain's sports achievements.

Normally, political media rarely publish official statements about protests occurring across the country whereas sports media have always refrained from covering political issues. Reporting on political issues in sports journalism has always been subjected to restrictions even when this reporting was not related to local issues. However, sports journalism was explicitly employed as a political means during the 2011 uprising. The analysis of the sports newspaper coverage during a key period of the political uprising showed how the regime's media campaign relied on the cult of personality to protect the ruling family on the one hand and target the protesters on the other.

The stories of Al-Araibi and Yusuf demonstrate how politics and sport in Bahrain are inseparable. Moreover, Yusuf’s case represents another ‘war of ideas’ between the regime and the protesters. While the regime exploits sport and sports media to propagandize its rule and to present Bahrain as a modern and progressive country, activists such as Najah Yusuf overcome the regime’s control over sports media by taking advantage of the international coverage of mega sports events such as Formula One.

This paper builds on an earlier study (Rabea, 2018) that examined the use of images, crawler, background and music of two sports television programmes to empower the Bahraini regime to crack down on the uprising. This paper, however, focused on the use of language in print sports journalism (where visual content did not play a noticeable role in the coverage). It can be argued that both mediums (television and print journalism) were employed side by side to enhance the regime’s propaganda campaign during the uprising.

The sports media coverage of the 2011 uprising in Bahrain opened a new era in the history of sports media. Autocratic regimes’ recruitment of sports media to suppress social movements is likely to continue to grow as a strategy particularly when sports figures are publicly involved in protests. Taking into consideration the 2022 FIFA World Cup that will be hosted by Qatar, the involvement of sports media and sport in politics will potentially grow to counter the political and social challenges facing the GCC states and this issue should be a dominant theme in future studies of media, sport and social movements.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express his appreciation and gratitude to Dr Mark Rix, Dr Eric Loo and Dr Ruth Walker for their generous support. The author would also like to thank Dr David Blackall for his support during the course of this study.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Ali Rabea

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