ABSTRACT
Through its many filters-visual, cultural, critical, psychological, sociopolitical, and of course economic, the media operate to encourage us to think we are participants in sports when we really are simply spectators. Providing us with a vision of the world, through images and interpretations of those images, the media aim to give us a sense of the wider world-albeit through the lens of a constructed, corporate reality. “Now that an entire generation has grown up assuming that life without television is an impossibility, it may be useful to remind ourselves that sportscasting began with radio, not with TV, and that sports journalism in print is older still,” Guttman (1986, pp. 128129). This chapter discusses print media (sportswriters/sportswriting, sports journalism/sports journalists, and sports print media), broadcast media, controversies, and emerging technologies, which leads to an examination of sportscasters themselves. Introducing the topic in terms of “jockocracy,” we will consider sportscasters as celebrities, and include profiles of more than 200 prominent people in the field.
