Sports journalism's relationship with sport's corporate sector: a comparison between Australia, India and the United Kingdom

摘要

Previous research has been critical of sports journalism's relationship with sport's corporate and business sectors. Employing gatekeeping theory, this study examines the level of commercial influence in the newspaper sports pages and sports homepages of six broadsheet or quality newspapers in Australia, India and the United Kingdom. Data was gathered from a content analysis of 4103 web and print articles across a 12-day sample over two constructed weeks. The results show that commercial influences are a significant factor in the production of the sports pages in Australia and the UK and, to a lesser extent, India. This result supports the observation of an overall trend towards increased commercialisation in journalism.