A Sad Indictment on New Zealand Sporting Journalism

This book is a sad indictment of New Zealand sporting journalism, it shows the complete ignorance of Joesph Romanos one of our leading sport writers to the point of embrassement, it is so bad, that one may have to come up with a bizarre conspiracy theory to explain the total lack of knowledge not only in this book but by our leading sporting Journalists.

But first, this book is suppose to list the 100 greatest sporting achievers this country has ever had and it starts out well listing the best of the best, Peter Snell, Sir Edmund Hillary, Sir Richard Hadlee and John Walker, but then the stupidity kicks in. You see this so called Journalist has put many local sports people ahead of our international superstars and I cannot see why?

According to Joesph, achievements by Lawn Bowlers, Archers, Sheep Sharers, Netballers, Walkers, and downhill mountain bike racers are higher than that of our top Footballers (Soccer) Wynton Ruther Oceania player of the century, Ryan Nelson (Captain of Blackburn and New Zealand first Premier league player, Sean Marks (new Zealand's first NBA Player and only kiwi with an NBA Ring and Kirk Penny New Zealand's second NBA player, not to mention our two NFL players Ricki Ellison and Dave Dixon, our woman's Basketballers who have made the WNBA, our international sprinters who are now coaching at the top colleges in the USA, the list goes on and on, we have so many sports people who are achieving at global sport who don't get the recognition.

Unfortunately this is the case across the board for all our leading sport Journalists, Brendon Telfer, Chris Miriams, Murray Decker, Andrew Saville, Spiro Angew, Keith Quinn and most of our leading print Journos. They totally ignore huge achievements by Kiwis overseas, to focus on these minor little sports, why?

One word, Rugby.

This obsession with Rugby that our journalists have is disgusting and its to the detriment of leading global sports, they are fearful that another sport may take over, so instead of reporting on sports that they deemed to be in competition with Rugby, (Basketball, track and field, Soccer, League, American Football, BaseBall,boxing ) , they focused a lot of attention on minor wee sports that no one globally cares about, EG: lawn Bowls, sheep sharing and Netball.

You have to ask serious questions of Joesph who would ranked a Lawn Bowlers achievement ahead of Sean Marks our first NBA player, now he didn't write this because he thought it was correct, no one would be that stupid, so there must be another motive.

How can Journalists not report on the daily happenings on what our top sport stars are doing on the global scene and focus on lawn bowls and netball instead? They must know this is wrong, something very suspicious is going on.

Lets look at Brendon Telfer for instance , probably the most insincere Jounros in our history, he has covered many Olympics so he knows about track and field, and most other sports, yet he twists and turns his comments, to make certain global sports to be insignificant and very minor ones to be global.

When you listen to him on radio sport talking about a major sport that isn't Rugby, he will sound like he is disinterested, he may start to eat something on air so the public gets the impression that what he is talking about cant be important, what is worse though is his total disregard for the facts and his hypocritical nature that borders on being O'Reilly like.

Here are some examples:

When talking of the League world cup he said "The Rugby League World Cup is Worthless"
Yet when talking of a much lesser sport Netball he said "This has to be the sporting achievement of the year"

He also said of the 1999 Netball world champs "This is the biggest woman's sporting event this year"

Unfortunately he said this one month after one Billion people watched the USA beat China in front of 90 thousand people to win the womans soccer world cup, somehow I don't think they had that many people watching the Cook Islands versus Tonga netball match.

His hatred of League is known, when a League Player got drunk and urinated in a public bar he said "It's animal behavior, what parent would want their kid to play that game"

Yet a few months later when a Rugby player got caught doing the same thing, he giggled like a little school girl and said "Boys will be boys"

When reporting on one of New Zealand's wins at the basketball world champs he was eating a sandwich and being patronizing , getting facts wrong and acting confuse like it wasn't a big story.

When Russia beat Afghanistan in League in front of 30 thousand people he said "Well they probably have never heard of Rugby Union, that is why they play league" All these comments were made in the past ten years, his comments thru the 70's and 80s were worst, the ones I have listed are the tip of the iceberg.

But probably the one that stuck in my mind was when Beckham left united for Real Madrid, the one football journalist at radio sport was talking about what a huge global story this is and how it was shown on Sky news, CNN and Fox news all day, when Brendon walked into the studio and was asked by his colleague.. "This is huge, have you been watching it on tv, Brendon?"

Brendon replied "It's like if Johan went to japan"

No Brendon, this was nothing like if Johan went to Japan, this is a story the sport world cares about.

I'm afraid this is what its been like with the NewZealand sporting media, they must know what they are spouting is lies, every time you turn on the news there is a lack of major sports stories involving kiwis or they try to connect rugby Union into any story.

They try to connect non sporting stories to rugby.

Some more Examples

When the New Zealand soccer team played the USA in front of 60 thousand people in Mexico the NZ Journo said

" You would think it was the All Blacks playing there are so many people"

When the soccer world cup started the NZ Journo said "Normally the world would be focused on the All Blacks"

A Father of a New Zealand Basketballer was asked "Your son is big, why doesn't he play rugby"

When the great Hamish Carter came back to NZ after winning the world triathlon champs the first thing he was asked was "Which rugby team do you support?"

Ryan Nelson once wrote in an email to Billy Harris, "What is wrong with New Zealand sporting Journalists, don't they know its 50 times harder to make the Premier League than the All Blacks" He wrote this because the NZ media made fun of a kiwi player making the Premier league suggesting that his former USA club will be happy to see him go.

In a item about the the great kiwi actress Anna Paquin the public was told she loves rugby and watches when ever she can, even though she cannot stand the game.

One of the most bizarre incidents was when a print Journo wrote that Bob Dylan's song The Hurricane was about the NZ rugby team the Hurricanes.

Our media reports that Johan Lomu has the speed of a world class sprinter, now his best time is supposedly hand time at 10.8, now that is very very slow time for a WOMAN sprinter.

We have been told by our media that rugby players could make the NZ four by 400 metre relay track team, which is absurd and a insult to anyone who has every represented their country in track and field.

When actor Lawerence Fishbourne came here to film a movie, the media said he loved rugby, when asked about this, he had no idea what the reporter was going on about.

The same thing happen to actor Chris O'Donnell.

When NFL films were set to film a rugby game, TVNZ told us :They might have problems filming the all blacks because they are so fast"

Every day of every week, we are fed another lie, another inaccurate report all in the aid to boost rugby.

We hardly hear about Ryan Nelson or Sean Marks, but so the media doesn't get accused of bias, they report on sports that aren't deemed to be in competition with rugby, minor sports like Netball, lawn bowls, down hill mountain racing, walking, boat racing.

Worst of all is the lies that the non sporting media allows to past, telling us that the all blacks are a global brand and repeating this lie, even though 95% of all all black merchandise is sold in this country. They are nowhere are global brand, but yet we hear this day after day.

When a government sponsored ad, to make sure parents pay child support was filmed showing a kid not allowed to play rugby because his parents didn't pay his fees, the ad never aired because the NZRFU complained, so they refilmed it using a kids soccer game instead, the NZ soccer federation complained but the ad still aired.

When the government aired a ad to tell speeding drivers to slow down they used a soccer dad showing him speeding instead of a rugby dad. Yet all positive government ads where they show good behavior from sporting parents are rugby parents.

Now These Jounros and government departments are either doing one of two things, one just being bias towards a sport they love, promoting it by lying about its world wide popularity and more sickly trying to get the achievements of our real global sport stars down, by ramming rugby down our throats and only reporting on minor sports.

The second reason is a wild conspiracy theory, that has no actual evidence whatsoever, but was put to me by someone, like other conspiracy theory's like man landing on the moon, Elvis is alive, Garth Brooks is a figment of Chris Gaines imagination and aliens in Roswell, it has to have a hearing, bit its probably false.

I don't believe Brendon Telfer and other Journalists can be that incompetent in their jobs as journalists, so is some money changing hands? Is the NZRFU paying jounros or government departments under the table to push their own barrel? Are they paying money to the media not to report on sports that they are in competition with?? Are their gifts changing hands? Is their a Salt Lake City thing going on? What is happening? because surly our jounros can't be that stupid?

Or can they?

Posted in: media, New Zealand Sport Journalists