Unfair Coverage

As a sportsman, I've had cause to have my name in print more than a lot of people, and I'm nothing special.

Anyone who's had their name printed because of sporting achievements will be able to attest to the glaring inaccuracies often present in local news reports of sporting events. God knows I've had my name spelt a thousand different ways before now. I've had tries I did'nt score attributed to me, and tries I did score attributed to others.

All of these things I can live with. The local journalist, working on a small paper may be reporting sport as a secondary duty, more often than not wasn't at the event and is reporting second hand news. I understand all that, and it's fine.

Why though is there so often imbalance in reporting?

Link to the North Devon Journals story

That links to a report on the boxing day derby between my hometown team and their local rivals. They are the only two rugby clubs in the area, and this is the biggest game of the year for both. It's the only game of the season they'll draw more than a thousand people to, and they normally hit about three times that figure.

But equally important to the supporters are the results of the games that go on between the development, third and colts teams. Read the article I've linked to and skip to the bottom. The dev team and colts get only a sentence to mention the scorelines, whilst the thirds slide by un-noticed. And it happens all the time.