The International Sports Press Survey 2005

The survey’s results proves the fact that sport journalism is a self-perpetuating male universe with hardly any room for female athletes, female sources and female journalists. Only 5 percent of the stories have a female journalist behind the pen!

And the sport journalism is highly concentrated on few sources, contrary to tradition of journalistic professional standards which would require more sources and views in a story. 40 percent of all sports articles refer to only one source. 20 percent to no sources at all!

There is hardly any focus on the social aspects of sport in sport pages in the Western world. The sport press shows its interest in the cultural and many sided social aspects of sport in only 4,25 % of the articles.

Here we dig deeper into some of the results from the International Sport Press Survey publiced by Play the Game, the Danish Institute for Sports Studies, and the House of Monday Morning at the end of 2005.

The survey was made by 14 research units in 10 countries and was in 2005 summarised in a critical journalistic article written by Monday Morning editor, Søren Schultz Jørgensen : "The World’s Best Advertising Agency: The Sports Press."

Download the report