SPORTS JOURNALISTS AND THEIR SOURCE OF INFORMATION - A CONFLICT OF INTERESTS AND ITS RESOLUTION

The sociocultural context of sports journalists, comprising journalism on the one hand and the sports spectacle on the other, induces a conf lict of interests. Journalists must endeavor to gain and maintain a mi nimum of professional credibility and sustain a close relationship wit h the source of information. This article presents two resolutive prac tices used by sports journalists as a means of dealing with this confl ict. The first is the sports journalist's ambivalent behavior toward t he source of information. The second is the sports journalist's use of a sociodramatic narrative feeding a loss-of-control scenario. These p ractices, respectively interactive and discursive, are discussed as we ll as their relationship to the sports journalist's conflict of intere sts.