The Ethics of Online Coverage of Recruiting High School Athletes

Abstract

Coverage of the recruitment of high school athletes has exploded in the last decade as the advent of the Internet turned a once-obscure type of coverage into a multimillion-dollar industry. The demand for information about college football recruits has led to new ethical challenges for Web-based publications. This survey of sport media identifies some of the ethical challenges associated with such coverage and proposes a code of ethics for Web-based media outlets. Media covering high school recruiting can use these guidelines to gain and maintain credibility, to uphold a high level of ethics, and to avoid restrictions or rules mandated by an outside source in a specialized beat where high school students are the primary subjects.

Recruiting Reporters’ Perceptions of Ethical Issues

“…When asked about the most pressing ethical issues in their field, recruiting reporters prominently discussed the importance of neutrality, both in avoiding influence on players' decision-making processes and in maintaining journalistic integrity amidst pressures from subscribers and university athletic departments to provide sympathetic coverage. In connection to the three concerns of other sport journalists highlighted by Yanity and Edmondson (2011), recruiting reporters echoed the sentiment that pressuring a player toward a certain school was unethical and should be carefully guarded against. They also empathized with the plight of players who receive incessant contact from media members, although participants spoke about this issue as though it was a necessary evil in their line of work and placed blame on less-reputable "fan-sites" and social media followers for exacerbating the problem.…”

“…Finally, a key piece of scholarship informing the current study is Yanity and Edmondson's (2011) exploration of ethical issues in the recruiting media industry. In their study, sport media professionals outside the recruiting media industry identified three major ethical concerns related to recruiting coverage: (a) that media members who cover recruiting might pressure recruits to attend a certain school, (b) that media members who cover recruiting might contact recruits excessively, and (c) that recruiting web sites operate without a published code of ethics.…”

“…Importantly, Yanity and Edmondson (2011) noted disagreement between traditional journalists and recruiting website employees regarding a fourth potential ethical issue-that a person without formal journalistic education or training is contacting, interviewing, and writing stories about high school athletes. Newspaper reporters found this practice to be problematic, while those employed by web sites considered it an ethical non-issue.…”

“…Attitudes toward journalistic training. Following the differences in opinion between traditional and online journalists noted by Yanity and Edmondson (2011), participants in the current study offered mixed reviews regarding the value or necessity of traditional journalistic training. Most of those who did not have a journalism background, such as a degree in journalism, did not consider it to be an important prerequisite to their career.…”

“…Together, these two recruiting media services have a network of 366 school-specific sites with upwards of 300,000 subscribers who pay about $10 per month for access to premium content (Niesen, 2019). However, the nature of this niche media industry, which involves contacting and rating the abilities of young athletes who are not yet adults, has raised concerns from journalists in other media sectors (Yanity & Edmondson, 2011).…”