Ethical Issues in Turkish Sport Media: Perceptions of Professional Football Players

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the perceptions of professional football players on the obedience of the Turkish Sport Media to journalistic ethical codes. This study was based on feedback received from professional football players (N=138) whose ages ranged from 20≤ (n=30), 21-30 (n=53) and 31≥ (n=55) years, representing 10 teams participating in Turkey’s Super League. Each participant evaluated a series of five statements related to the media’s news gathering techniques, treatment of their personal lives, prevalence of gossip, general accuracy of news stories, as well as the tendency of the media to stimulate and encourage violence. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the Kruskal-Wallis Non-Parametric test were used to analyse the data. It was determined that the ethical codes, namely gossip, private life and honesty are frequently violated, and the ethical codes, namely newsgathering and violence are sometimes violated. According to these results, Turkish sport media outlets are plagued with significant ethical code difficulties.