One of the saddest stories about sports coverage in Tanzania was the failure by television and the print media to win awards in the just ended Excellence in Journalism Awards Tanzania (EJAT).
The only winner in the Sports and Culture category came from culture when seasoned producer/presenter, Masoud Masoud, carted away the top award in the audio category, radio.
Submitted entries for the category had such poor quality that the jury could not get winners for the second and third spots.
The failure by journalists from newspapers and television to win awards in sports is reflective of the sick man that Tanzanian sport has become.
Yet it is indisputable that sport is a field that is very popular among readers in the country.
To appreciate Tanzanians’ love for sports, one has simply got to stand near newspapers stand in the morning and watch readers’ behavior as soon as they buy newspapers.
They will quickly survey the front page and then turn to the back page, where sports stories are located, and here is where they normally started reading, seriously.
It was this habit, observed over the years by Tanzanian journalists that a few years ago the Tanzania Standard Newspapers (TSN) (publishers of the Daily News, Sunday News and Habari Leo) conducted a study on which section of its newspapers were read most.
A University of Dar es Salaam firm was contracted and conducted a three months study on readership preferences.
The firm finally came out with findings that showed 60 per cent of readers who bought TSN newspapers read sports and only 40 per cent read other news genres.
Following the results, the TSN which had then only had two sports pages, all tucked at the last two pages of the newspaper, increased its sports pages from two to four.
Therefore the TSN study on its papers’ readership is one of the living evidence on the extent of Tanzanians’ love for sports.
In short, any media that involves itself in sports coverage stands a better chance of surviving, economically, in the country’s cut-throat media competition.
Given the foregoing scenario, one would have therefore expected journalists in this field to work more professionally by writing their pieces with more depth for the already assured readership market. Unfortunately, that has not been the case.
However, lack of depth in the stories submitted for adjudication, saw the jury failing, at the end of the day, to get winners.
What is perhaps more unfortunate is that this is the second time that the sports category has had problems.
During the same contest at the end of 2009, there was only one winner who came from the print media.
The electronic media-radio and television failed to get winners.
During the time, the problem was attributed to the short notice given to the contestants and the fact that most journalists do not have the habit of preserving their newspaper cuttings, CD/DVDs for audio and video.
However, a quick glance at why sports entries from the print media and video (television) failed to impress showed that most of the submissions were confined to reporting rather than analyzing issues.
And given the conflict laden nature of the sports field, it is only through in-depth writing that revolves around analysis that would do justice to any piece in the field.
For instance, one issue that could be handled and which demand critical analysis include what was once touched on, albeit fleetingly, by the former national soccer coach, Syllersaid Mziray (who died in Dar es Salaam last year).
He said soccer provided livelihood to more than 6000 families in Dar es Salaam alone through two top-flight clubs, Simba and Young Africans.
Now consider this: if the two clubs have been able to support more than 6,000 families in Dar es Salaam, minus that army of suckers would have enabled leaders in the two clubs to turn completely professional.
Therefore for one to be considered to have written something worth considering for an award, he or she would have to tackle, exhaustively, the foregoing subject.
One will have to explain how members of the 6000 plus families have been getting money from the two clubs.
It is important to get to the bottom of this story for the simple reason that it does not make sense for people who have nothing to do with soccer development to earn their livelihood through the two clubs.
Secondly, there is the issue of taxes. Has any media attempted to find out whether Tanzanian soccer clubs pay taxes to the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA)?
If the answer is in affirmative, then how much money in taxes clubs pay per annum?
The importance of tax payment is very important in ensuring that clubs are run professionally.
If those intending to become leaders in those clubs realize that there will be no free money for them, such posts will only attract serious people and not the kind of sports leaders some of the clubs have.
Indeed, it does not make sense for clubs that make up to 600m/- per match in gate collection to be perpetually in the red.
In fact, the foregoing arguments can be extended to cover other productions, say in music, and local Tanzanian films, an area which is alleged to be making billions of shillings but has, for inexplicable reasons, been reduced to a den for pirates!
A decade or two ago, sources had it that those who depended on the two city clubs for their livelihood, got the money through gate collections, that the money was collected through ‘Taliban’ for Simba and ‘Komandoo’ for Young Africans.
Reports then had it that for anyone who wanted leadership in the two clubs, the route to the top was through the two set of suckers, Taliban and Komandoo.
In short, ‘Taliban’ and ‘Komandoo’ called the shots in both clubs.
Once leadership in a given club threatened to ensure that gate collections did not reach the two groups, a group in a given club would stir conflict and that marked the end of a given leadership in the club.
Thus for a given leadership to survive in a club, it has nothing, but to dance to the whims Taliban in Simba or Komandoo in Young Africans.
This game was usually played at the expense of the welfare of the players in the club.
It is presently not known whether this problem continues to haunt the two clubs, hence the need for the present crop of sports journalists to look into the issue more critically.
Therefore as far as conflicts in the two clubs are concerned, any member of the jury would have expected Tanzanian journalists to shed some light on this touching issue which is critical to the development and growth of the two clubs.
Unfortunately sports journalists have never attempted to work on this story which is central to soccer in the country.
There are many issues in the sports field that hide a lot of unpalatable activities that require answers.
And the only people who can bring out such answers to the general public are journalists.
Therefore journalists ought to stop, immediately, reducing themselves into events’ specialists and conduit of other peoples’ voices and instead, ferreted out scandals that stunted and damaged sports development.
If sports journalists had been using their tools properly by serving as the nation’s agenda setters in sports, no one would have succeeded in using sports as a ladder for getting into parliament as past experience clearly shows.
People use sports, through journalists, to build their image which they in turn employ it as a vehicle for driving them into politics.
Once Tanzanian sports journalists start asking themselves hard questions, starting with whether or not sponsorship of the premier league benefits teams and players, the sports category in the EJAT contest will not only be competitive, but readers, viewers and listeners will also be able to get their money’s worth from their print and electronic media.
One hopes that the next EJAT contest will see more high quality entries in the sports and culture category.
It is important that Tanzania sports coverage was taken back to the days of TSN former Zimbabwean sports editor, Tommy Sithole (currently Director Development Cooperation in the International Olympic Committee-OIC) who succeeded to transform the paper’s back pages-through his sports column and general sports coverage, into the first page of the Daily News.
By Attilio Tagalile
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