Sports journalism focuses almost exclusively on results, tournaments and top athletes. According to new research on sports coverage in 80 newspapers from 22 countries presented at the Play the Game conference in Cologne on 3 October, sports politics and economic issues are of little interest to the printed media.

A course offered by TrustMedia seeks to educate journalists on how to combat corruption by teaching them tools to identify, report on, and raise awareness about corruption.

Six years have passed since Play the Game launched the biggest survey so far on the content of the newspaper sports pages. 14 research institutions from 10 countries in three continents took part, and a total of 37 leading newspapers were analysed.

After the World Cup defeat to Russia, the British press is in the process of examining itself – or rather – of examining FIFA. FIFA is corrupt, is the conclusion of most Englishmen after Russia stole the 2018 World Cup from England and Qatar beat the U.S. for the World Cup in 2022.

The controversial and much talked about BBC Panorama documentary “FIFA’s Dirty Secrets” aired yesterday evening, naming names of three FIFA officials who were exposed as bribe-takers in the world’s biggest sport corruption case – the ISL case.

Thursday December 2nd is the day when FIFA’s recently amputated Executive Committee will cast their votes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups and the nine bidding Committees and the rest of the world will find out who will win the honour of hosting the two tournaments.

At a FIFA press conference earlier today, Claudio Sulser, Chairman of FIFA’s Ethics Committee, presented the decisions made by the Ethics Committee to ban the two FIFA executives, accused of selling their votes in the election to host the 2018 World Cup, from all football related activities. Four other FIFA officials received similar penalties.

Canadian reporter Declan Hill comments on the newest FIFA corruption case and the Sunday Times investigation that brought it out in the open.