How Raising the Bar in Female Sports Coverage Can Impact Communications
By Rebecca Roberts, CIPR Sports Committee MemberHow Raising the Bar in Female Sports Coverage Can Impact Communications
Sports broadcasting has the power to inspire audiences at every age. But they also have the potential to perpetuate harmful stereotypes and sexualise athletes. Earlier this year the European Broadcast Union (EBU) released guidelines for respectful media coverage in women’s athletes, which was put into practice at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham earlier this month.
What do guidelines like this tell us about how we must keep the conversation going about integrity in women’s sports coverage and what does that mean for sports communicators?
Raising the Bar
The EBU’s ‘Raising the Bar’ guidance aims to tackle the sexualization of women athletes. The shots, angles and replays selected that “serve no technical or storytelling purpose” yet carry significant implications when it comes to audience perception, divert attention from success and risk perpetuating harmful stereotypes.
Rather than a prescriptive set of rules the guide runs through athletics events and outlines the positive and negative camera positioning and angles angles to be considered, with how each can add to the coverage rather that compromise the athlete.
In consultation with athletes, the guide offers what is educational to the specific event from a technical aspect, which also adds to thinking about the audience engagement with the sport, its integrity and its athletes.
What Changes?
Put into practice in the coverage of the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham, you may recognise some of the camera positionings and shots selected.
Fewer low angles underneath events such as the high jump or pole vault, which have a higher chance of generating compromising images. Pole vaulter Holly Bradshaw was among the athletes who advised on the guidance, something she has said is key for those competing and women and girls watching at home. She herself has received abuse on social media, with inappropriate videos of herself and others online – all of which detracts from performance and oftentimes leads to athletes focusing on cameras rather than their own performance.
During track events, angles were higher from starting positions, and I noticed several shots pan up or readjust if they were close and athletes turned around for instance. None of which impacted the coverage from an audience perspective.
The BBC is a partner in the EBU, which provides coverage of sporting events to 57 countries. However, while guidance was implemented at the European Athletics Championships, the Diamond League, also on the BBC, doesn’t go through the EBU so wouldn’t necessarily have to adhere to the guidance.
It would feel incongruous somewhat for some of these changes not to transfer into all athletics coverage by the broadcaster, so it will be interesting to see if coverage adapts in similar way across athletics events in general, or if this was tokenistic in response to the guidance.
What does this means for sports communicators?
We’re no strangers to the disparities and differences in female athletes’ media coverage. The language used and focus on non-sport related characteristics continues to be a critical feature of how women are portrayed as athletes.
As sports communicators we too have a responsibility to ensure we’re outwardly positioning and portraying athletes we work with or opportunities we facilitate in the right way.
There must be a balance between principles that guide us and a nuanced approach that works with and respects individual athletes’ preferences.
For instance, some athletes may embrace the wider opportunities that a social media profile presents them. Not only from an audience engagement and enjoyment of social media presence, but the brand and commercial opportunities that can come from it.
However, coverage and brand positioning is a moveable feast and what may work for one athlete, or even one event, may not be something an athlete continuously wants to seek out. For instance the Europeans had a side quest on the “glam squad” – of having nails done, earrings bought that were gold, and looking and feeling good to compete.
Yes some journalists tried to tie this back to the psychology of looking and feeling good to help performance. Yes, on one occasion I did hear a male athlete being asked the same question and there was talk of having a trim. However, did asking all female athletes about it repeatedly get a little tiring? Perhaps.
For many female athletes building a wider audience on social media is driven from a recognition of contract and/or competition income needing to be supplemented by brand partnership opportunities. The support, advice and steer communicators must be mindful of is the sporting endeavour and how that’s reported on from a training and competitive environment, while providing space for personal preference.
No one said sports communications was easy!