ABSTRACT
Much sport necessarily involves legitimate, illegitimate and accidental violence, and the media (especially television) particularly value violent moments in sport. These incidents can be endlessly replayed and dissected, offering spectacular moments that can involve deep ethical debate, but also present snippets of broadcast action and ‘showreels’ of collisions and confrontations that are the visual equivalent of fun fair thrill rides. This coverage can lay claim to involving journalism because it is, in some way, both witness and record of actual events, however confected, accompanied by commentary of varying depth. Violent moments in the media have also come to define and celebrate a form of masculinity that has been classified as ‘hegemonic.’ By this I mean that men’s propensity to excel at sporting violence can be voyeuristically enjoyed as a key feature that is emphasized as appealing to media audiences, and a pivotal means by which men’s sport can be judged to be superior to Women's sport. Women, it has been argued, are either clustered in sports that decorously lack violent appeal, or, when they do enter into the masculine domain of contact sport, can be dismissed as a pale imitation of the ‘real thing.’ However, with the rise of Women's sport in general, including contact forms, it is important to examine how journalists respond to the phenomenon of legitimate and illegitimate sporting violence. The news media are also required to address domestic (spousal) violence by sportsmen (males being, as in the wider society, the vast majority of perpetrators). How have journalists treated such off-field violence in relation to that committed on the field, as well as by male sport fans during and immediately following sport events? In addition, other modes of gendered violence arguably perpetuated by journalists themselves need to be addressed, including the intrusive sexualization of sportswomen, their ‘symbolic annihilation’ through neglect and trivialization, and their potential complicity in unleashing the sexually violent ‘trolling’ of women within social media. This chapter, then, will range freely across the gendered representation of sport by the news media, analyzing its role in countering and reinforcing modes of masculinity and femininity as they relate to multiple, diverse forms of sport-implicated violence.
