Just a minority sport?

Drifting in and out of sleep whilst half watching the Andrew Marr show yesterday morning,I did pick up the comments of Roy Hattersley who was reviewing the papers.

Commenting on the amount of coverage that England's rugby world cup team was getting,Roy,who was wrongly described as a Rugby fan by Marr,described the game as a minority sport in this country.Thus why was it getting so much coverage when the game is generally ignored certainly by the Tabloid press.

Good question,some of the coverage over the weekend certainly smacked of jingoism.It is a good job that we weren't playing the French.

However as usual our sporting heroes let us down,

I quite like the headline on the front of the Guardian this morning after yesterdays result in San Paulo


That's the hat-trick ... Hamilton the latest English sporting loser

A right old media scrum

With the rugby world cup kicking off later today,the continuing story is its boycott by several news agencies in a dispute over granting general media rights.

When the agencies first met in August they were particularly concerned with limits on copyright pictures allowed during the game,and that newspaper journalists could not use multi media such as news audio visual during the games.

This issue is becoming more widespread at major sporting events.Where once it was simply a matter of journalists firing off reports for publication in the following days newspapers,today's technology and the demands of the users requires all manner of information during the game.

The issue surfaced at the football and cricket world cups in the past 12 months.

As it stands now there will be no news agency coverage of the competition with AFP,AP and Reuters amongst those who will not cover the tournament.

Reuters Director of Media Monique Villa explained that


"Amid growing confusion and uncertainty over reporting terms, and the IRB's unwillingness to engage with us to resolve the dispute over accreditation terms, Reuters is unable to continue coverage as planned."

She added that the media organisation "would like to resume coverage" of the event, but "freedom of the press and our editorial integrity are at the core of our business, and these must be respected".(from Media Guardian)



As if that wasn't enough the tournament sponsors Heineken are under attack from rivals Guinness who launch a £6m advert featuring animated rugby players making no mention of the tournament.


Update

piece in Guardian media 10th Sept

http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,,2165604,00.html