Sports Journalists' Access
In professional and some collegiate sports in the United States, it is common practice to allow properly accredited sports reporters into locker rooms for interviews with players and coaching staff after games, while the sports teams provide extensive information support.
Sports including American football, ice hockey, basketball and baseball understand the essential commercial relationship between media coverage and increased ticket, merchandise and advertising sales.
Elsewhere in the world, particularly in the coverage of association football, the journalist's role often seems to be barely tolerated by the clubs and players. For example, despite contractual media requirements in the English Premier League, prominent managers Sir Alex Ferguson (of Manchester United) and Harry Redknapp (formerly of Portsmouth and Tottenham Hotspur), refused to conduct post-match interviews on occasions with the rights-holder BBC because of perceived unfavorable coverage.
As with reporters on other news beats, sports journalism should involve investigating the story, rather than simply relying on press releases and prepared statements from the sports team, coaching staff, or players. Sports journalists are expected to verify facts given to them by the athletes, teams, leagues, or organizations they are covering.
Read more about this topic: Sports Journalism
Famous quotes containing the words sports and/or access:
“Guys do not have a genetic blueprint that allows them to understand or love sports.”
—Lesley Visser, U.S. sports reporter and announcer. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 82 (June 17, 1991)
“Oh, the holiness of always being the injured party. The historically oppressed can find not only sanctity but safety in the state of victimization. When access to a better life has been denied often enough, and successfully enough, one can use the rejection as an excuse to cease all efforts. After all, one reckons, “they” don’t want me, “they” accept their own mediocrity and refuse my best, “they” don’t deserve me.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)