THE RATIONALE
The media has for many years’ made a distinction between white and black South Africans reporting on many matters along the racial lines. For the purpose of this study, the research looks at how the media have represented both white and black cricketers.
During the time of former South African international cricket captain Hansie Cronje’s cricket corruption scandal into match fixing, the South African white media tried to blame racial quotas as something which led Cronje to the wrong side of the law. Cronje an Afrikaner cricketing hero in the white communities took money from the Indian bookmakers in early 2000.
Nauright (2005:70) reports that race and colour also appeared in the media reports of the scandal. Cronje was originally represented as a clean, pure, white cricketer. On 8 April, The Times of London showed pictures of Cronje in his cricket whites. Herschelle Gibbs, however, a “coloured” or mixed-race South African, was presented in his coloured one-day uniform. This clearly shown how the media represented white cricketers and black cricketers. Despite all the misrepresentation of facts by the white media trying to protect a white from his corrupt activities.
In contrast to the how was built by the media Dwight E. Brooks and Lisa P. Hébert (2016:3120), highlights that, American male basketball players, and especially black male players, have been created as idol objects, so much so that personality, glamour, and so-called bad boy behaviour have become the central features of the sport. By doing so, media representations of the NBA black players as potentially society outlaws, which in turn allows other white dominated sport like ice-hockey to market itself in positive opposition to this bad boy image represented by the NBA which is dominated by black males Dwight E. Brooks and Lisa P. Hébert (2016:3120).
In his conclusion of his article, Nauright (2005:73) argues that there is a clear international media bias that positions white athletes as morally superior and that also allows for their rehabilitation in ways not afforded to athletes of colour.
The issue of have always been instrumental on opportunities available for especially the black majority in South Africa. it may be that media publish what the leadership conveys and that the role of sponsorship may have much more to do with what we read. this may just be the sources of such bias and reporting difference in issues of race. something to look at may that the American black NBA player talents have such a pull that sponsorship sees not only talent but the controversy that come with bad boy image as much more beneficial for both than we release. it will interesting to look at you approach and finds.
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