ABSTRACT
One of the great myths which surrounds sport is that it is an oasis of decency, honour and fair play in the desert of immorality and corruption which lays waste to the outside world. A safe haven of rules sanctified by stopwatches, its boundaries delineated by goals and winning posts; it’s no wonder that sport continues to be held up by so many as the one great equalizer which transcends those immutables, race and gender – so long as everyone plays by the rules. But as the perennial drugs scandals in athletics and boardroom backstabbing elsewhere show, rules in sport are just as prone to being bent as the rules in politics and business. Sport mirrors the outside world. I would suggest that it is only within the intensely personal experience of playing sport or watching it, that a romanticized, transcendent view can be justified. In this chapter I will be lending my insight as a woman who worked on the
sports desk of a national newspaper, to give you an inkling about how the media machine works to perpetuate, and indeed helps to create, certain stereotypes which exist elsewhere. I shall be expressing my opinions, which are informed by my perspective as a black woman, about why I think this is the case. Hopefully some of my thoughts on how race is dealt with in the media may go some way in debunking the myth that sport is an oasis. Beyond that I shall be looking at the role of business in the promotion of certain stereotypes, and its ever-tightening grip on sport’s future.
