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David Penberthy finally tells us what we already know about News Ltd NRL reporting

Messages
1,695
Well I'm no lawyer but from experience libel is hard to fight in court. They can fall back on the "well it actually happened excuse".

However, whenever a News Limited journo has a whinge about access to players or being left out of the loop, it should be thrown back in their faces.

yeah i suppose when you look at it like that, it makes sense, that they couldn`t

Thanks

Re: the highlighted part I absolutely 100 per cent agree with you
 

Brutus

Referee
Messages
26,174
Webster and Weidler are union fans. They only report on RL because it pays the bills.

Kent and Ritchie leaguies even though they write News LTD-inspired tripe.

Rothfield is a disgrace and Nicolousi and Tyson Otto are AFL fans writing league.

Mascord and Ricketts are the kings of true league journos.

Richard Hinds from the SMH (he comments on many sports, not just RL) is an AFL person.
 

Dresden Dan

Juniors
Messages
2,366
Can't work out if James Hooper & Jessica Halloran are league journos or AFL.

Each sport seems to have tragics who give fans great newspaper reading. You can tell they are fans first & they don't do other sports. I like Martin Flanagan & john Harms on AFL. Can't stand rugby but Spiro Zavos is loved by rugby fans. Gideon Haigh in cricket. But league? Roy Masters?
 

El Diablo

Post Whore
Messages
94,107
Can't work out if James Hooper & Jessica Halloran are league journos or AFL.

Each sport seems to have tragics who give fans great newspaper reading. You can tell they are fans first & they don't do other sports. I like Martin Flanagan & john Harms on AFL. Can't stand rugby but Spiro Zavos is loved by rugby fans. Gideon Haigh in cricket. But league? Roy Masters?

Halloran is AFL
 

Loudstrat

Coach
Messages
15,224
Lol true. Which is why its the only paper in Brisbane.

I find Hinds has become an entertaining read in the SMH. He is emerging as the closest thing we will ever get to the late Peter Roebuck - which is sad in the extreme.

As for what News Ltd did to our game - burn in hell Rupert. Soon.
 

Brutus

Referee
Messages
26,174
The guy who edits Big League appears to have zero knowledge of anything that happened in RL more than 5 years ago going by his interview on 2SM this arvo.
 

Dresden Dan

Juniors
Messages
2,366
I read Big League in Woolworths during my lunch break. Doesn't take long to get through it. Every week we throw out a stack of them left unsold.
 

eozsmiles

Bench
Messages
3,392
He is still being dishonest about the beat ups. They don't push negative stories about RL to prove how independent they are - they run those stories to sell papers. They will cannibalise the sport they part own to make more money. Would they admit to that however? No, because then they can't pretend to be noble.

They don't write these stories to sell papers. They do it to sell MORE papers. They know that these stories are more popular than the ones about Hindy visiting a kids hospital. The DT sell papers and get hits everyday but they get MORE if there is a photo of Carney walking out of a pub.
The audience has proven it prefers the seedy stuff when available. They're going to keep the majority of their readers happy if they can, aren't they? Shareholders would demand that.

They haven't cannibalised the sport because it is going better than just about ever. They might have tried but it's been a distinct failure. Maybe a nibble on the toe and that's as far as they have got.

Players don't think about nobility when they are putting a grapple tackle on or claiming a try they know they missed. Fans don't think about nobility when they are calling the ref a c#$t. Nobility is neither here nor there in this game. They are entertainers. They do whatever they need to in order to get a crowd. And they get a bigger crowd when they write about scandals, rats and filth, dodgy refs, betting stings, Matty Johns' d!ck, or start a fight. As was written in the article, our game is full of hate. If GI does something wrong, then a thousand Rooster and NSW fans are bagging him on the websites. If Gallen does something, it's the Dragons and QLD fans. Etc etc etc.

Some might want to blame the media for creating the appetite for this stuff. I'd rather think it's an individuals choice to view what they like. Invariably the audience dictates what the media do. They sell and we buy. If they can't sell it to us then they go broke.

Some people are saying that various groups should be excluded from getting the media rights. I reckon we need every bidder we can get to get a good price. But regardless of who gets the rights, they won't be handing over any editorial control to the NRL. If channel 7 win the day, there is nothing stopping them from poaching Slothfield and Weedler as their roving TV mudslingers. Wouldn't that be something. You can't "protect" the game from the media or the public.

We only see the tip of the iceberg when it comes to footy scandal stories and sh!tfights at the clubs. These papers get literally hundreds of calls a week from people with a rumour or a mobile phone photo. Anyone that doesn't like hearing the seedy stories should be thankful they don't hear the rest.
 

Dresden Dan

Juniors
Messages
2,366
Interesting that Telegraph today has gone for the 2nd time in a few weeks into the NYC comp to find an incident to sensationalise. It's the only time they give the NYC coverage.
 

El Diablo

Post Whore
Messages
94,107
http://www.news.com.au/national/the-afl-let-goodes-down/story-e6frfkp9-1227462457081

The AFL let Goodes down

by: Tim Gleason
July 30, 2015 12:00AM

ONE thing you learn quick smart as a refugee Sydneysider in Melbourne is that the NRL is viewed as a second-class citizen.

However, this isn’t a column about the merits of one code over another. Let me state for the record I am a fan of both the 18-man and 13-man games. I follow the Sydney Swans and South Sydney Rabbitohs (not to mention the mighty Mascot Jets) in no particular order.

Yet despite the Melbourne Storm being one of the *nation’s most successful sporting franchises in history, it seems the only league stories that stick down south are scandals over player behaviour.

Whatever case you may try to mount, rugby league is still seen by many AFL fans as a park game played by big dumb brutes that no real person cares that much about let alone goes and watches.

I reflected on this holier-than-thou attitude as the Adam Goodes issue went to the front pages this week and discovered these gems of *information:

● Adam Goodes is a diver;

● He plays for free kicks;

● He is a dirty player;

● He doesn’t play in the spirit of the game;

● He plays for a team that gets a special “Cost of Bondi” allowance;

● And, of course, that’s why he gets booed.

Yes, that’s why each of his 20 or so touches of the football at every away game is greeted by booing. Every touch, every away game, no matter the opponent.

I mean spare me. Sometimes it feels like Ivan Milat would get a better reception.

I heard someone on talkback radio trying to justify why he boos Adam Goodes without mentioning the war, namely that his sudden *unpopularity stems from him objecting to being called an “ape” and entirely reasonable comments about being indigenous he made as Australian of the Year.

In the end the caller had tied himself in so many knots he made Dennis Denuto sound like Martin Luther King. It seems that it has got to the stage where some AFL fans who are booing Goodes have just talked themselves right out of any racial *motivation.

Last weekend in Perth one enlightened West Coast *Eagles supporter told Goodes to “go back to the zoo”.

This man had two lines of defence for his behaviour.

First he said “the world had gone too politically correct” and second and, luckily for Adam, thought he “might not have heard it for all the booing and banter coming from the crowd”.

Maybe his lawyer is Dennis Denuto himself.

Telling someone to “go back to the zoo” doesn’t exactly qualify as “banter”.

If that’s this bloke’s idea of witty repartee you wouldn’t want to be stuck next to him at a party.

Real banter was leaning over the fence as a kid at Redfern Oval and screaming out “lolly legs” when the opposition goal kicker came in to convert a try. And I came up with that when I was six.

Adam Goodes is a dual Brownlow Medallist, a two-time premiership player and an Australian of the Year. What do you have to do to get some respect?

He is AFL royalty – indeed Australian sporting royalty – and I for one feel the AFL has let this drag on for far too long.

Apart from the Sydney Swans and the efforts of a handful of clubs, most notably the Western Bulldogs, neither AFL fans nor the Melbourne media have mounted much of a campaign to come to *Goodes’ defence.

If the NRL faced a similar situation and Greg Inglis or Johnathan Thurston were getting treatment like this I would find it unfathomable that they would let it go on for four months without so much as a comment.

There is no way the NRL would let it happen. And if they even tried to bury their heads in the sand the Sydney media and community would never have let them get away with it. It’s a city that likes to see action.

That’s the difference *between Sydney and Melbourne, where it seems the AFL is too much of a sacred cow to ever get the branding it deserves.


The AFL is Australia’s *indigenous game yet it has sat on its hands and done nothing to help its greatest indigenous star. It should be ashamed of *itself.



Tim Gleason is a former adviser to NRL chief executive Dave Smith and was sports adviser to former premier Bob Carr and former prime minister Kevin Rudd.
 
Messages
3,191
Webster and Weidler are union fans. They only report on RL because it pays the bills.

Kent and Ritchie leaguies even though they write News LTD-inspired tripe.

Rothfield is a disgrace and Nicolousi and Tyson Otto are AFL fans writing league.

Mascord and Ricketts are the kings of true league journos.

Richard Hinds from the SMH (he comments on many sports, not just RL) is an AFL person.
100% still
 
Messages
3,191
Can't work out if James Hooper & Jessica Halloran are league journos or AFL.

Each sport seems to have tragics who give fans great newspaper reading. You can tell they are fans first & they don't do other sports. I like Martin Flanagan & john Harms on AFL. Can't stand rugby but Spiro Zavos is loved by rugby fans. Gideon Haigh in cricket. But league? Roy Masters?
Harms claims he isn't biased against RL because he wrote Renouf's biography. :joy::joy::joy:
 

Hank_Scorpio

Juniors
Messages
353
What questions would they be? Bloke couldn't keep it in his pants and played with a youngin at work, boss finds out, investigates and sacks him.

It's a tough business in all professional sports when private matters can cost you your job. This got way too much press down here for what it was, was page after page of this crap for more than a week. Maybe you fellas get a subscription to the Herald Sun/Age to see the dribble they post on AFL to sell papers. Sydney has the Sloth and Melbourne has Caroline Wilson. Dribble factor isn't isolate to just Sydney unfortunately. Good news stories don't sell papers it seems and its any sniff of blood will draw out these moron journalists in their droves.
 
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