Written by Media exposure has heightened societal awareness of sports, players, and their organizations. The prevalence of scandal is as much a matter of conflict or negligence as it is about societal expectations. It’s not really as outlandish as it sounds when you consider the eagerly anticipated news of the latest scandal. How it is hungered for and devoured; discussed and debated, dissected and disseminated.
“While media exposure has unquestionably helped to embed sport in national consciousness and heightened effective responses to it” (Whannel, 1992), it has also facilitated the creation of the conditions and the exposure of ‘high-pitched’ sports scandals. Greater surveillance of athletes’ conduct both on and off the field by any citizen with a smart phone has increased the chances of catching a sportsperson in ‘mid-intoxicated-transgression’.
We must increasingly wonder though, should athletes be bound by a ‘code’ that is exerted on them in their down time or should they be permitted the very human opportunity to ‘screw up’ sometimes. A person wearing a uniform or a badge and representing a particular organization has to ‘behave’ or risk reprimand, but what happens when your own image is representative of an organization. Some may say that salary packages reflect this responsibility, that it is part of the job, but athletes are increasingly subjected to a suffocating ‘ownership’ by the media, sponsors, administrators, and fans. The question is how much of the ‘interest’ in athletes is adoration and how much is a voyeuristic and eager anticipation of a spectacle worthy of days of ‘water-cooler’ gossip.
It would be hard to believe that an actor or singer would feel obliged to allow journalists and cameras in their dressing room or be detained for drug testing or skin-fold tests to check their weight.
A worrying tendency also is the linking of scandals and controversies in sport to the ‘nationalization’ of sports in general. Such is the case in an independent review of Swimming Australia from 2013 that accused the “Culturally toxic incidents … such as getting drunk, misuse of prescription drugs, breeching curfews, deceit [and bullying]” as a direct affront to Australia and its reputation as a nation of ‘good sports’” – David Rowe. So, the fate of a nation’s reputation is now squarely on the back of the beleaguered athlete as well.
Today, modern advances in health monitoring bring potential privacy issues regarding an athlete’s very private health data.
“A smart pill detects an athlete’s body temperature and transmits it to an external device, so coaches can look for spikes that might impair performance. Biosensors measure a cyclist’s glucose to help optimize fuel levels. Smart goggles allow a swimmer to monitor speed, heart rate and stroke rate. And, of course, a smart ring conveys the most valuable information in sports, at least in 2021: whether an athlete might be infected with the coronavirus.” – Busca (2021).
This scenario is described as the ‘hyperquantified athlete’, one so described in every minute molecular detail as to generate increasingly large amounts of biometric data. This data is assisting strategic decisions and determining performance rates, but at the end of the day, who owns this data? The athlete or the organization? How is it stored and for how long? How else can it be used? Bioethicist Andy Miah, chair in science communication and future media at the University of Salford in the UK states “The real story here is the transformation of society, and sports, into data points, athletes almost cease to be humans, and they become a series of data points.”
Although it sounds like the plot to a science fiction movie, there must be safeguards to ensure the culture remains respectful to the ethical treatment of athletes and their right to privacy. As fellow members of humanity, they are entitled to that.
As biometrics boom, who owns athletes’ health data? – The Washington Post
www.theroar.com.au/2012/01/28/public-interest-invasions-of-athlete-privacy-cause-for-concern/