Zusammenfassung

In the present study, we examine the relation between Olympians and employees of the media in Hungary through the following terms: motivations, attitudes, and rejection. The empirical research presented in this paper focused on the following research questions: 1.What motivates Olympians and employees of the media in their cooperation? 2. What kind of attitudes characterise them in their relation? 3. Why and how often do employees of the media get rejected by elite athletes? In the framework of the research, a survey was carried out among the Hungarian Olympic athletes participating at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games (N=104) and on the total population of media workers accredited to the Olympics (N=28). The data were collected by two questionnaires. The first one contained 31 questions for the Olympians, and the second one had 26 questions for the media workers. The two versions included overlapping sections as well, which made it possible to explore the respondents’ views on the same topic and get comparable outcomes in some cases. The analysis aims to present and contrast the viewpoints of Olympians and employees of the media with each other. The results show that over half of elite athletes do not like to participate in the media, but they are aware that it is necessary; that is the reason why many of them mostly accept sport related interview requests. Parallel with this, media workers assume that the majority of elite athletes like to appear in front of the public. In general terms, the main goals for elite athletes are to train well, to qualify for major international meets, and to achieve outstanding results. On the other side, the intentions of the media workers is to publish stories to the audience, which could be positive, negative, informative, provocative, or sensational. Elite athletes and employees of the media need to be more aware of each other’s motivations, attitudes and aims for better understanding each other.