By virtue of being part of the entertainment industry, an AFL footballer’s brand appears every bit as important as their ability to find the ball. And now footballers are being urged to “take back control” of their image and call out what they see as misrepresentation – or in less polite terms lies – in the media.
Notwithstanding the irony that the quote “a lie will go ‘round the world while the truth is pulling its boots on” is mistakenly attributed to Mark Twain, social media has only expedited the speed in which these lies can travel. Internet forums and Twitter feeds fuelled by energy drinks and axes to grind make up a banquet of fresh horrors almost daily. And despite having access to almost all of human knowledge with a whorl of our fingertips, our instinct is to instead bounce myth and innuendo off the walls of our echo chamber.
Last year a handful of footballers, including Bulldogs premiership hero Tom Boyd, stepped away from the game because of mental health issues, exacerbated by what they read on social media. AFL boss Gillon McLachlan is hardly prophetic when he says that he believes players would be better staying off the medium altogether.
But concerns have been raised that the misinformation prevalent on social media has now wormed its way into the 24-hour newsroom and that the relationship is symbiotic.
“Players have voiced their frustration at how some stories are reported through the lens of social media, where the threshold for publication is lower,” an AFLPA spokesperson said. “We’ve tried to educate the players on the challenges of the current media climate and not to tar all media outlets with the same brush.”
The reality, however, is that it is not easy to take back control of a news story. It has been suggested that footballers respectfully call out factual errors or unfair reporting, effectively asking them to pull on their boots as a lie takes its third lap.
The only way to control a story is to get out in front of it. And this is something too few AFL clubs and their communications departments appear to understand.
As the sportswriter Richard Hinds once remarked: “I’ve noticed athletes tend to have a lot to say. Unless you ask them to say something.” During the off-season, your team’s key forward has probably put on six kilograms and outgrown everything but a club-imposed aversion to a microphone. The only time a player will be made available to media is to stand in front of the sponsor’s sign for a few minutes to deliver the club’s key messages with all the warmth of a tax audit.
However, were you able to sit down with a footballer for more than 10 minutes, you’d no doubt come away with a sense of who they are, as well as two things that are critical in dealing with any issue: empathy and understanding. Respectfully calling out “fake news” is not nearly as effective when you’ve nothing in the public sphere to contrast the lie.
As part of the most recent collective bargaining agreement, AFL players were allegedly prepared to provide greater media access, but there was little appetite for this at AFL House. Instead, players were asked to be more open to working with the AFL to grow the game.
Unfortunately, instead of greater media access we are provided with the propagation of sites such as Players Voice. In launching the site last September, CEO Kerry McCabe said, “we have moved away from great sports storytelling, which used to be available in the media,” and that “the void we came across is the lack of relatability to let fans engage on a human level with sportspeople.”
While this may sound promising, the more McCabe spoke, the more the site sounded like an abattoir for the English language. “Our promise to sportspeople is we will help define their brand, we will help increase the size and cross-code nature of their social following, which has a direct correlation to market worth and sponsorship value.”
This sounds less relatable and “engaging at a human level” than it does a three-ringed corporate circus. It is also a reminder, bordering on satire, that the issue the players are trying to address – taking back control of their image – may also be part of the problem. If an athlete’s story is pitched at defining their “brand” and “cross-code nature of their social following” you’re working in the margins of fiction.
If you want to be better represented in the media, be authentic and be available.
