Close reading of the sports
pages over the last two
months has left me with the
clear impression that there
does exists this hierarchy of
sports which informs the
choices editors make for this
section of the daily papers in
Trinidad & Tobago.
Having formed a distinct
impression over many years of reading the
local newspapers in general and the Express
in particular, I took the trouble to actually
count. I dared not estimate, dared not
proceed without empirical data.
Close reading of the sports pages
over the last two months has left me with
the clear impression that there does exists
this hierarchy of sports which informs
the choices editors make for this section
of the daily papers in Trinidad & Tobago.
Occasionally, Stephen Ames who plies his
trade on the PGA tour would do enough to
warrant a back page lead. Or George Bovell
III managed to out swim a field strong
enough to justify his knocking the cricketers
and footballers off the back page. And three
or four times per year, at Easter, in August,
at Christmas and at New Year’s in particular,
some stallion, mare or gelding either
threatens to or contrives to do something
that allows him or her to take pride of place
in the second half of the newspaper. But my
sense is that of the 365 issues the local dailies
produced each year as many as perhaps
350 features one of the big three on their back page. The research turned up some
interesting facts, corroboration, in my view.
On Saturday September 29, the sports lead
was a local tennis story: “TRIPLE BLOCKER Shenelle stops Carlista in ‘Nationals’. On the
following day, the last of the month, as his
lead the editor opted for a local boxing story “WHIPPING Salandy promises to beat US
opponent.” But in the 28 days that preceded
that weekend, only two did not have a story
that was not cricket, football or athletics
gracing the lead sports page. On Tuesday
September 18, after flash floods hit the
capital city on the Monday, the news editor
had claimed the back page for eloquent
photographs. And exactly one week later
on the 25th, the back page banner screamed “‘REVENGE ’ SWEET 30-1 outsider lands
Royal Oak Derby.” Of the 26 other stories,
19 were on cricket, (including every day
from the 4th to the 15th and including as well
the unusual HURTING HEROES on the
28th, the headline on Fazeer Mohammed’s
column), four were on football (which was
also the front page lead on September 15)
and three on athletics.
The results for A ugust are not very
different. Horseracing took pride of place on
August 5 when there the favourite obliged
in the Midsummer Classic. And from the
11th to the 13th, when Stephen Ames was
threatening to give Tiger Woods a run for his money in the PGA Championship, golf
led the sports pages. Those four days apart,
it was all cricket, football and athletics
with the spread being thirteen, ten and
four respectively. That is why it is hard
for the unbiased observer not to avoid the
impression that for sports editors there
exists a sport hierarchy of the three major
sports and then the rest.
That idea did not come to me all of
a piece; rather, it came together in bits and
pieces. The first seed was sown quite a few
years ago when Michael Jordan, a basketball
superstar, perhaps, the basketball superstar,
found himself facing divorce proceedings in
court with his wife of many years, Juanita.
The Jordan case was continuously reported
in the local press, complete with as much
detail as was available. I found myself
wondering whether so private a part of a
sportsman’s life qualified as sports news
even when the sportsman clearly enjoyed
such high visibility. But was it merely his
high visibility, I asked myself, or was it that
he was so highly visible in an area of sport
that had the attention of literally millions of
people?
It is true, I told myself, that when a black South A frican pace bowler was – wrongfully, as it turned out! – charged
with raping a white woman, readers of
the local newspapers were able to follow
the developments in the pages of the local
dailies. Those stories, however, enjoyed far
less prominence and contained far less detail
than in the case of the NBA superstar. So if,
for instance, the question framed itself for
me, one of the numerous Spanish riders
who year after year complete the Tour de
France without distinguishing themselves
in any particular way were to be charged
for rape back in Spain, would that story
have any chance of making it into the local
sports pages? The question remained long
unanswered, but it stayed somewhere deep
in the furthermost recesses of my mind.
Then, less than a year later, my
curiosity was not merely resurrected, but
got a new lease on life. Another basketball
superstar, Kobe Bryant this time, was before
the courts in the United States of America.
The relatively young Los Angeles Lakers star
was not, like Jordan, involved in divorce
proceedings with his teenage wife, Vanessa,
but was charged with having non-consensual
sex (a euphemism used in A erican legalese
for rape) with a 19-year-old employee of a
hotel where he had been staying. Lapping
it all up, the local newspapers carried long
reports on the proceedings – in the sports pages! I had difficulty accepting the notion
that the putative rape of a 19-year-old was
sport, even if the accused was a 25-yearold
basketball athlete who was expected to
become “the new Michael Jordan.”
M y encyclopedia carries a long
list of sports ranging alphabetically from
Archery to Wrestling. T he list includes
such esoteric pastimes as croquet and
game fishing, but essentially it covers the
mainstream activities that the word “sport”
connotes for the man in the street. Not
surprisingly, several of these sports such as
ice hockey and baseball almost never feature
in the pages of the local dailies because they
are not played locally. But several others
which are among those practiced within
Trinidad and Tobago, for example, snooker
and archery, share a similar fate. It seems
to me regrettable that such a situation
should exist. Why is it that only three enjoy
consistent coverage at all levels while other
sports which are no less popular such as
basketball, rugby, netball and hockey are
treated to an entirely different level of
coverage except when they involve national
teams or the international stage? I recently read an article by an
American professor who stressed that sports
journalism is “an oxymoron.” A journalist
friend of mine, presented with the claim,
retorted that the professor was “a jackass,
an ox or a moron himself.” On reflection,
however, he conceded that he had perhaps
been a little hasty and that “the writer might
be onto something there.” I hope he is
reading this. A nd that it has helped him to
come to some kind of solid conclusion on
the vexed question of whether news is news
and sport is sport and ne’er the twain shall
meet. And I hope that the administrators
of the minor, oops, other sports are also
reading and resolving to put pressure on
sports editors to right what is clearly to my
mind a wrong.
