PRESS COVERAGE OF JAGIELLONIA BIALYSTOK FOOTBALL MATCHES IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CORRUPTION SCANDAL RELATED TO THE 2003/2004 SEASON
PRESS COVERAGE OF JAGIELLONIA BIALYSTOK FOOTBALL MATCHES IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CORRUPTION SCANDAL RELATED TO THE 2003/2004 SEASON

Summary/Abstract: The popularity of football impacts the development of pathological phenomena such as cor-ruption. At the beginning of the 21st century, one of the biggest corruption “scandals” was initiatedin Polish league games. Press made a significant contribution into the unmasking of those involvedin this practice. The main aim of the article is to analyse press coverage of Jagiellonia Białystokfootball matches in the season of 2003/2004 in the context of detecting unfair sports competitionby journalists of the time. The research was based on the comparative and philological methods.In case of social history or the history of sport, it undertakes a novel, previously unexplored subjectmatter. The analysis of football matches was based on the list of descriptions from national andlocal daily newspapers, i.e. “Przegląd Sportowy” and “Kurier Poranny”. It was enriched with pub-licised information regarding a broadly-understood corruption scandal in sport of the first decadeof the 21st century. The results of the analysis pertaining to the first aforementioned title showeddoubt about two out of 16 matches (13%), whereas in the local Białystok press this statistics washigher and equalled 6 out of 16 games (38%). Those considerations led to the demonstration ofthe problem concerning the identification of corrupt match connections, especially in nationalpress, which shows the difference in engagement of journalists often unrelated to the region. It isconfirmed by the local daily which achieved a much higher rate of unmasked corrupt behaviour.

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