Mabel Collins, from Ringwood Junior School in Hampshire, was the winner of our 'Get Set for journalism' competition. She wrote a fantastic article about athlete role models - see what she said...
Do elite athletes make good role models? By Mabel Collins
24 Apr 2009
The very first Get Set poll asked whether or not elite athletes make excellent role models. Over 1000 votes were cast and we invited young people to turn the results into a top news story. Read the winning article!
60% of Get Set voters were not convinced that athletes made good role models.
Why is it that we believe this? It is the media that make us have this opinion. We always hear about the bad things that athletes do. For example; over paid sportsmen – especially footballers, poor behaviour on and off the pitch, drug taking and other cheating such as diving in football, teasing the opposition’s fans when celebrating, fighting on the pitch.
But we can change this if the media start to celebrate the achievements of positive role models. Also they could concentrate on the athletes who make a difference not only in their own sports, the athletes who do charity work, who give their money away to people who need it more than themselves.
We interviewed Julie Ellis, one of the people who voted against athletes being good role models for children. When we suggested that the media may have affected her opinion, she said; “You’re right. I had never thought about it that way before. Lots of athletes are great role models for children, but we are so used to hearing how athletes do things wrong, we forget about the good things.”
We interviewed a journalist from a national newspaper to see why the reporters only report on the negative things that athletes do. He didn’t want us to mention his name. This was his reply:
“Look, people want to know about the bad things that athletes do, not the good things. When people watch sport they often do so because they want people to fail, for people to go wrong, don’t they? Dancing on Ice, for example, people watch that because they want the skaters to fall over and get low marks so that they can vote for them. So that is the newspaper’s role, to tell you the things you want to hear. To keep you entertained.”We asked him if he would consider putting in the more positive things that athletes do. This was his reply:
“What is the point of us writing about things that people don’t want to read about? We wouldn’t sell many papers if that was the case. It would be a complete waste of paper and it’s really hard to get paper these days as it is, with all the protection over rain forest trees and all that nonsense.” Then he refused to answer any more of our questions.
If this is true how can we change the attitude of newspaper journalists and editors? The same can be said for television and other forms of media.
If a sportsman did something positive in the local community, would that get on the news? What if the same sportsman was filmed falling over and swearing, that would be much more likely to be shown. It is up to us to put pressure on the media to show our sportsmen in a positive light and not just focus on the negatives.
By Mabel Collins. Aged 11
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