FIFA: No indicators for a turnaround

The media image of FIFA in international TV news, 2015-2016

Zurich, February 25, 2016. As FIFA prepares to nominate the successor to Sepp Blatter, the long-standing President who had to vacate his post in June under the shadow of wide-ranging corruption charges, the five sports leaders running for the top job have only a very limited media profile. This show new data from the Swiss-based Media Tenor International Institute. International TV news has become more critical over the last weeks as the FIFA World Congress approached – indicating that they do not expect a speedy turnaround of the image of world soccer’s leading body.

“Out of the five candidates for the FIFA Presidency only the South African Tokyo Sexwale and UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino have at least received positive coverage of the last 14 months in international TV news”, says Dr. Christian Kolmer, Director of Society Analysis with Media Tenor. While the French candidate Jérome Champagne and Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al Khalifa from Bahrain have been barely visible, the Jordan Prince Ali bin al Hussein has already been damaged by his unsuccessful bid for the Presidency in May 2015.

The South African entrepreneur Tokyo Sexwale starts from a solid media basis in his home country and has been credited with a good chance to follow on Sepp Blatter in international TV news. Corruption accusations against him have not stuck. “Gianni Infantino is as well seen as untainted by the charges against the former UEFA President Michel Platini”, explains Dr. Kolmer. The Swiss citizen Infantino was covered positively not only in the SRF domestic news but as well on German TV.

The long interval between the breaking of the scandal in May 2015 and the new convention has aggravated the damage to the image of FIFA. “Until now the organization has had no chance at all to start repairing the damage to its reputation, while at the same time the ongoing criminal investigations have exposed ever more details of the network of corruption in the soccer world”, comments Dr. Kolmer.

In February the tone of coverage has declined again. “Journalists no longer believe that FIFA will overcome Blatter’s ‘poisoned legacy’ – so the title of an ARD documentary - soon”, concludes Dr. Kolmer.

For this report Media Tenor International has analyzed all 667,661 reports about protagonists from 22 main evening news programs in Germany, South Africa, the U.K. and the U.S. All stories have been examined by human coders. Inter-coder reliability averaged 88% in the 1st quarter of 2016.

Contact: Dr. Christian Kolmer, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.