Outside the Frame: Newspaper Coverage of the Sugar Ray Leonard Wife Abuse Story.

This article analyzes the print media's ideological framing of the 1991 story of boxer Sugar Ray Leonard's admission of having physically abused his wife and abused cocaine and alcohol. We examined all news stories and editorials on the Leonard story in two major daily newspapers and one national sports daily. We found that all three papers framed the story as a "drug story," while ignoring or marginalizing the "wife abuse" story. We argue that sports writers utilized an existing ideological "jocks-on-drugs" media package that framed this story as a moral drama of individual sin and public redemption. Finally, we describe and analyze the mechanisms through which the wife abuse story was ignored or marginalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]