My view

      In order to accept this whole idea, it needs to be understood. The media does a great job when it comes to gaining attention, and spreading messages around, but could it be done better in sports than it is? The question was answered in previous blog entries, but to have a proper answer, let´s have a recap.

Although media is an important tool for sports, it can also overlook certain things that might be interesting to see, but are overlooked for the reason of being affraid of numbers. That means the media is affraid of not getting enough attention and readers. Also, media is dangerous in terms of spreading a message, since it can negatively effect the sports easily (Ma, 2018, par. 3).

It was mentioned previously that interesting stories can even be told when they are from more "unknown" people, as long as it makes it interesting and readable. The thing that should change is the goal of the media, the purpose of why they are writing about sports. So far, the purpose is to get attention and money, while they are willing to do nearly everything for that (Zbigniew, Krzysztof, Michal, Julia & PioZbignitr, 2012, p. 293). That should change, it should be to show the real good side of sports, show all the great stories of sports from all people, which might actually make the fans of the sport choose their idol based on personality and how well he/she gets the strong points of sports.

The point is not to hide all the successful athletes, or to not make them stand out, it is just that stories should not be made up, or more dramatized just for the attention. The point is to show the world the real stories, not overdramatize just to make content. It is also needed to realize the effects that media have, since if they make articles focused on successful or famous people, making an article about something "horrible" they have done (or what they think they have done), the negative news only creates negative effects (Pinker, 2018, par. 10). For sure, media gain much more attention, and more money, but is this what people truly want? Or is it joy that needs to be the goal of reading articles? Neither really, people want to know the truth and want to be entertained, or get inspired. On the contrary, there are many people who seek out the drama, get attracted by the titles of famous people.

There are both bright and dark sides in sports, but it seems like the dark sides are being more exaggerated, and the bright sides are more biased. What this means is that the dark sides are dramatized to gain more attention and curiosity, and the bright sides are being mostly shown and biased towards "the best of the best". We have to be careful and filter all the media that is read, and rarely we can find media that is very objective and contains only the truthful stories that are also interesting to read, portrayed in the right way.



(Malcolm, n.d.)

The image above sums up the struggles of people interested in sports, but being affected by the media coverage of the sports.

References

Malcolm X. (n.d.). [If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.]. Retrieved April 28, 2019, from https://www.azquotes.com/quote/415761?ref=media

Ma, C. (2018, November 27). The Impact of Social Media in Sports. Retrieved April 28, 2019, from   http://thesportdigest.com/2018/11/the-impact-of-social-media-in-sports/

Pinker, S. (2018, February 17). The media exaggerates negative news. This distortion has   consequences | Steven Pinker. Retrieved April 28, 2019, from   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/17/steven-pinker-media-negative-news

Zbigniew, D., Krzysztof, J. W., Michal, L., Julia, M., & PioZbignitr, R. (2012). Mass media and   professional     sport. Baltic Journal of Health and Physical Activity, 4(4), 284.   doi:http://dx.doi.org.unyp.idm.oclc.org/10.2478/v10131-012-0028-6

For Further Research

      To understand the issue, it is crucial that you do your own research, so I will give you some websites that might help you understand better!

The first website is here: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/the-stories-these-5-athletes-will-motivate-everyone-you.html

The reason why I am telling you to research here is because there are the actual stories of successful athletes, without any bias, and it seems like it is done from pure sports interest - read this to see the stories, and decide if this is interesting to you or not. What this will give you is the look at how the stories could be told by many other athletes, maybe even by not as successful ones. 

The second website is here: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1089142-25-biggest-sore-losers-in-sports-history#slide9

This one is about the other side of success, shows the stories and videos how athletes massively lost and created a story out of it. This is to show, how interesting it could be, if the stories were the focus of media, and showed us the most interesting stories from ALL, not only from the successful ones, or trying to create a story out of nothing just to include the famous people, as it is the trend now.

The last website is here: http://thesportdigest.com/2018/11/the-impact-of-social-media-in-sports/

This one shows all the positives and negative effects the media has on sports. It is important to know, since we have to browse through media, and try to sort the articles by their relevancy, since it is very easy to read an article that is simply bad, and it can be spread very easily. This one is not about success, but I feel it is necessary to read, in order to know what effect do media actually have on sports and people. We can see that media focus to get new readers, attention, so it all results in creating the most interesting articles, whether they are truthful or not, or are just about the famous and successful people to attract the most people. 

What the Experts Say II

      According to the Baltic Journal of Health and Physical Activity, the mass media are not interested in the strong points of sports, such as sportsmanship, respect or good behaviour (Zbigniew, Krzysztof, Michal, Julia & PioZbignitr, 2012, p. 293). This is further supporting the research that was done before, as well as my claims that media are not focused enough on the strengthening parts of sports.

To add more, according to the same journal, the media focus on sensation, and seek success for whatever it takes, and they are doing that for the attention and the big money that is there (Zbigniew, Krzysztof, Michal, Julia & PioZbignitr, 2012, p. 293). This shows us that the pure interest in sports is not present in the media, they only focus on the success for further attention and money. The media is trying to give people the most attention-getting articles and titles, just for their own good. The pure interest in the sport seems to be missing, which is causing other big effects on people or the sports.

References

Zbigniew, D., Krzysztof, J. W., Michal, L., Julia, M., & PioZbignitr, R. (2012). Mass media and professional     sport. Baltic Journal of Health and Physical Activity, 4(4), 284.   doi:http://dx.doi.org.unyp.idm.oclc.org/10.2478/v10131-012-0028-6

What the Experts Say I

      An important part of research is the resources you have. A point of view from a academic journal or a professionally done research helps to uncover a point. McChesney had a nice part in a book about success, and what it means to succeed. Now, this could help us understand, why we seek out success so much.

The specific part is available here: https://books.google.cz/books?hl=en&lr=&id=d6HhgJDGXtQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA49&dq=sports+success+media+attention&ots=yjNp6OOTgd&sig=qsBzWjMnVRD8iQ4kjYDQI-mjfxw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=success&f=false

Success is a result of a competitive achievement, where a lot of emotions and effort has been put (McChesney, 1989, p. 206). This would mean that success is not only the end result people are looking for, but more likely the process that was done in order to reach the success, and that is why success could be seeked out so much, as it is usually a hard process.

Also, success results in many things, such as fame, wealth, status etc. (McChesney, 1989, p. 206). Yes, we can see, that mostly success results in fame, but why? Because the journey to success is the process that is interesting to read, or watch.

References

McChesney, R. W. (1989). Media made sport: A history of sports coverage in the United States. Media, sports,     and society, 206-207.

Current Events II

Hey there,

I said I will be back with some more content, so here we go! A few days ago, Ramy Ashour had retired from squash, and the whole squash world was affected, media are full of that content, people are sad and all squash players are giving him praise for his great career. Would the same happen if I was to retire from squash? You´re right, it would not. Why is that? Yeah, it´s success.

I found out about it through social media, and read a nice article which you can read here: https://psaworldtour.com/news/view/6342/ramy-ashour-announces-retirement

This article is completely dedicated to him and his career achievements. Don´t get me wrong here, I am not trying to dishonour his legacy and the fact that he is a great player, I am just objectively looking at how his success the effect on all the people and media. It is safe to say that articles like that would not be written about somebody who has not achieved as much. Now you could argue that if the article was about someone without that success, there would simply not be enough to write about, right? We assume that it´s the successful story that creates the content. What if there is a great story under the "unsuccessful" person? It could be interesting, if we allowed ourselves to not judge somebody by their achievements.

To help you understand my point, you can look at the video below.

                                          (Kéme, 2019)

What we can see in the video is success, his wins, all the highlights of his career that are very successful. This is the reason I say that media is very success - driven. Not only media favours success, even fans choose who will they support according to their success many times, instead of liking the person himself.

References

Production, K. (2019, April 24). Ramy Ashour retirement. Retrieved April 27th, 2019, from       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z0NmkgC5YY

Current Events I

Hi everyone,

recently I have been reading the Formula 1 race reports, since I am a big F1 fan. When I finished reading, I came to realize that the report majorly covers only the 3 most successful teams, its drivers, and the "rising stars", but something was missing. Formula 1 is made of 10 teams and 20 drivers, yet I thought that it was missing to cover some other drivers´ point of view, for example the Williams team, how it struggled, and how the drivers fought the car, it could be interesting to read. To know what I´m talking about, read the race report here: https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/reports/f1/2019-chinese-grand-prix-report


Of course, all the "rising stars" and successful people bring a lot of attention, therefore a lot of views, and discussions, but it still could be added to the report that some teams struggle, and try to analyze what is the problem. The problem nowadays is that people seek out success, and we all want to read what the successful people do, since we want to be successful ourselves. The report of the F1 race is done like that on purpose, to attract attention and to read about how was that journey for the best drivers. The media assume it is more likely to be read when there is the famous successful drivers, since also small karting drivers could read it to get inspired, and follow their content more often as it would boost their hunger for becoming one of them. This race report supports the fact that the media and people in general are very focused on success, and try to find and expose other people to possible role models, and gain more views and attention (the goal of media).

Please feel free to share this, as it could change the look we have on media presentation of successful people. More Events like this comming soon!

Media attention to success in sports

Hi there!

In this blog, I am going to show you, how important it is to realize how media are focused on success, rather than pure interest in terms of the sport. I could not unsee how the media is focused on successful athletes only, or starting to take notice of someone who just started to put in some good results and people see some potential there. Rather than interviewing the "not as successful" athletes and see what they are doing different, the media would more likely interview a successful athlete who had a bad day, and ask him/ her what has happened. I have noticed this a lot in my country, the Czech Republic. This topic is important since if we could dig in deeper to see why it is like that, we could change our perception towards media. This issue really interests me, since I have exaperienced it myself, as I am an athlete, and I would like to know how much does success grab our attention so much and makes the media seek it out. Also ... why?

Stay tuned for more, a lot more to come!