FROM Buckley to Beast Mode there needs to be a better balance for media access to athletes. The right tone needs to be set at sport’s highest levels, because what happens at the top has a way of filtering down to grassroots games.
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Sports media and athletes have to coexist. The fundamental basis for this is feeding the appetite of what audiences want and promoting the game – this is where the right balance is vital.
Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley’s comments on a television panel show this week about media mistrust and access to his AFL players are reason for concern at a local level.
Buckley is a figurehead in the game and coach at the helm of the nation’s strongest sporting club. He has long worked in a game that has a highly-saturated media market and competition for exclusives is intense and he argued some good points about media ethics.
When Buckley slams the media as a whole and spruiks about access to players purely on club terms, and mostly in club-branded channels, it is the kind of thing that reverberates in society.
Ballarat media is fortunate to have pretty good access to players post-match or at training in Ballarat across most sports. Our sporting landscape, like most regional cities, highlights far more acutely the interesting juxtaposition of being the most important news source and staying true to being a community news source.
As media, we still have to play our role in tackling the big issues, asking the questions on behalf of our audience but we also have a responsibility to work closer with clubs in relaying the messages they are trying to promote to the wider community.
Buckley spoke of the football club’s role in communicating with members via its digital media channels. These are important tools and TAC Cup club Greater Western Victoria Rebels is doing great promotional work in this area.
But self-produced media should not be a club’s only media tool. Varied, uncensored voices in the game are necessary, so different perspectives build a clearer, bigger picture.
Interestingly, in the United States, the emphasis in elite codes is on open player access.
National Football League, for example, has strict rules on access to all players at training and post-match sessions. Clubs have discretion on putting up in-demand players for media conferences, but reporters still have a chance to interview any player.
Media is deemed essential to continuing popularity in the game, coaches and players.
Beast Mode is the flip-side. Running back Marshawn “Beast Mode” Lynch had a habit collecting hefty fines in days for dodging the media. Then a Seattle Seahawk, Lynch notoriously rocked up to a Superbowl press conference in 2015 and knocked down every question with the reply, “I’m just here so I won’t get fined”.
At least open access offers a chance to ask the questions. It is just as important how players and coaches act in the face of hard questions as it is when they win. The real mistrust comes in shutting out the media completely.