Blaming the media

I'm not a huge fan of sporting journos - print journos especially (yes that is a generalisation and there are exceptions). At times I wonder whether the only reason that thing many people read in the morning was called "newspaper" was so we could differentiate it from "toilet paper" and not get confused between the two.

But despite many sporting media resembling little more than cheerleading squads one thing that winds me up more than bad journalism is seeing people blame the media for less than ideal publicity - Mark Inglis earlier this year being a prime example.

So I found this article from today's Herald an interesting little insight with its personal recounts of sportswriter meets sports administrator - and I'm on the side of the journo with this one.

When the High Performance Director of a sport that receives substantial SPARC funding is on the plane back home, it is news, journalists on behalf of the public do need to question why, and the public do have some right to ask. At times I wonder whether sporting administrators who receive these large cheques from SPARC have forgotten the dollars actually comes from the New Zealand taxpayer and not the organisation handing them the money.