Sport journalists’ views on gay men in sport, society and within sport media

Abstract

In this research, interviews were conducted with 10 US newspaper sport journalists to gauge their experiences and attitudes toward issues and coverage of open and closeted gay men in sport, sport media, and within society. Concerning closeted athletes, most of these journalists are reluctant to report on athletes’ non-normative sexual orientation, even if that means a competitor could scoop them on a story about a major athlete being gay. Most of these reporters believe that US sport fans are ready for openly gay athletes in professional men’s team sports, but that locker rooms might be slower to adapt. Despite these progressive attitudes and more than 220 years of collective professional media experience, none of these journalists ever worked with a sports reporter who was openly gay to all of their colleagues. Therefore, it was not surprising that most believed sport journalism would be a challenging career for openly gay men, particularly if those individuals also did not conform to gender-normative notions of masculinity.