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 Journalists
Famous quotes containing the words sports and/or access:
“Falling in love is the right adventure for those who dislike sports and travel.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves.”
—Saul Bellow (b. 1915)