How do you make an attention-grabbing TV documentary when no one will go on record?

What do you get if you accuse an all-American sporting hero and cancer survivor of cheating? Job satisfaction, says LA Confidential author David Walsh.

China is yet to live up to its Olympic pledge of free media access. Findings from a survey by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China show that government interference is still commonplace for overseas journalists, while Reporters Without Borders, the Committee for the Protection of Journalists and other rights groups, all highlight the dangerous position of domestic journalists.

Now you can do your own analysis of the world’s most comprehensive data so far on the international sports press. On a new theme page, we publish the full data sheet and bring brand new analysis of the International Sport Press Survey 2005 that included 10,000 articles from the sports pages in 37 newspapers in 10 countries.

Julu Johnson, a sports editor for the Liberian newspaper News, was physically attacked by the deputy secretary general of the Liberia Football Association (LFA) when he went to cover LFA’s recent extra-ordinary congress. The attack took place in full public view of all the delegates.

Rafael Serra, a reporter from Radio Gaucha in Brazil, was beaten up by fans from the Gremio football club when he went to cover the arrival of the team's new goalkeeper in the airport of Porto Alegre.

Traditional news media that want to cover sport events on their websites are coming under increasing pressure from sports federations. Right now the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) are negotiating with the International Cricket Council and the International Rugby Board to keep their respective 2007 World Cups open for traditional print media.

Two American sports journalists who face jail for refusing to name the source of leaked grand jury testimonies about top athletes’ use of steroids in the Balco case, get support from many corners of American society but should not expect much from official anti-doping bodies such as WADA and United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).