Athletes and Tabloids: A disaster or a match made in heaven
For the last few years a trend has been increasingly growing in the media; the rise of the mighty tabloid and the news they report on. The tabloids had previously been reporting solely on the entertainment world’s news and the gossip and scandals that abound
in that industry. The times have changed and we can now see sports stars being increasingly featured in tabloids with breaking news of the latest scandal that they are involved in. It seems as though people have a thirst for every single bit of gossip and
news that they can get their hands on about an athlete. Athletes being featured in tabloids will continue to be a big feature of tabloid reporting for many years to come.
A tabloid has been defined as a smaller format newspaper that reports on local interest and entertainment news and increasingly focuses on and exaggerates sensational news items and scandalous issues from the world of entertainment and sports. The reporting
style itself is sometimes opinion based and some reporters tend to blow news items way out of proportion in order to sell more newspapers and increase circulation. The format is very popular in the UK and in America as well. With the rise of the internet,
we have seen numerous tabloid websites pop up that provide the same sensationalised news to their readers.
Tabloids have found a natural home in the entertainment industry because for some reason, celebrities have a sort of a knack for getting into trouble. So many of them have drug problems, spousal problems, get into accidents and are found to be cheating on
their partners, and it all makes for great news. A large number of them are free from scandal, and their lives too are interesting, but a whole host of them are always embroiled in some issue or the other. The problem now is that the sports industry has also
become entangled in the web of tabloid journalism.
A report surfaced a few days ago that claimed that David Beckham had solicited a prostitute and cheated on his wife Victoria Beckham. The footballer vehemently denied the claims and is now suing the tabloid that printed the story. Beckham is continuously
the target of tabloids and has constantly has to defend himself. He has, over the years, achieved considerable celebrity status all over the world and people lap up any news they can find out about the man and his personal life.
This brings us to an interesting point about news reporting in sports. When did sports fans start caring about the personal lives of their favourite athletes? At what point did they start to wonder about where an athlete partied or who they met or who they
slept with? Somewhere along the way we started to care about the off field antics of our favourite sports stars just as much as their on field exploits. Yes there are times when a tabloid’s reporting exposes some very dodgy practices like for instance the
latest spot fixing scandal that engulfed the England-Pakistan cricket series recently, but does it matter who an athlete partied with if they consistently deliver at the sport they are playing.
This shift towards sensationalised reporting about sports stars has a darker side as well. An athlete that constantly sees his or her name attached to some scandal or the other will probably experience huge levels of stress. The reports being true or false
does not matter, the stress they cause is the same. An athlete who is under a huge amount of stress will see his or her performance be affected at the game that made them famous in the first place. Increased levels of stress might lead to poor performance
for the whole team and might result in losses that could have been very easily avoided. Tabloid reporting is acceptable when it is limited to revealing illegal practices and dodgy happenings in sports. But their relevance should be questioned when they cause
untold stress to athletes.
Tabloids will see no let up in their popularity or prominence in the future. It seems that fans of sports will have to be objective and keep an open mind about the sensationalised and exaggerated news items that frequently appear. If we stopped caring about
athletes’ personal lives the tabloids might stop writing about them.
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