By James Whittaker
I don’t always agree with Adrian Robson's Friday Forum in the Royal Gazette but he was spot on today when he called out UBP politician Darius Tucker and Premier Ewart Brown after they slammed the press for not showing up at the airport to greet the Under-19 World Cup team.
In what seemed like a cheap point scoring gesture, Tucker trotted out the old line about the press covering the negative stories and ignoring the positive.
All because we didn’t go to the airport to greet the team and denied him a photo-opp?
The photos we (and the RG) ran were of the players competing on the field and the stories were about their performances — not a disaster, but hardly a major success story.
The Sun always makes an effort to cover positive stories, particularly where youth are invoved.
Here’s some recommended reading for Mr Tucker, in case he wants to be a bit more informed the next time he decides to start a sports debate in the house:
Young footballers prepare for All-Star weekend
World Champ says Wilson could be very special
Coach says Perozzi has knockout power
Barnes knows the Formula to success
In recent weeks he could also have checked out our player-by-player profiles on the Under-19s before they went away, our weekly youth football column and our front page picture story on under-13 football champions Social Club.
And just to show we’re not biased, maybe he should dig through his back issues of the Royal Gazette and have another read of this story about… wait for it…
The under-19 cricket team’s one victory against Ireland
But really if the politicians want to debate something useful about sports they should read this:
Wilson’s dad sells off car, bike to help finance racing and work out how they can actually do something to help a young man who has genuinely proved himself on the world stage, instead of paying lip service with fatuous debates about the media.
It's interesting that Government didn't slam CITV as well. Considering one of the mandates of the Government's TV station was to cover events that the regular press doesn't cover.
Government can't use that excuse because they could have had CITV down at the airport if they really felt it was newsworthy, but they also chose not to be there.
Posted by: Don Burgess | March 14, 2008 at 04:13 PM