The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) is determined to fight attempts by global sports organisations to impose restrictions on media coverage of mega-events because they want to protect their commercial rights programmes. The first target of the campaign is FIFA.

Delegates at Play the Game today agreed to send a letter to FIFA urging it to speak up louder when journalists are threatened, attacked or penalised for trying to cover football related stories.

Sports editors of daily newspapers all over the world allow the sports industry to set the agenda and the priorities for coverage of sports events.

Knowledge bank: Sports editors of daily newspapers all over the world allow the sports industry to set the agenda and the priorities for coverage of sports events. That is the main conclusion of the International Sports Press Survey 2005 which has surveyed 10,007 articles in 37 newspapers from 10 different countries.

At the conference in November, Play the Game will present the results of the most wide-ranging survey of sports coverage ever undertaken. Academics and journalists from nine different countries have been analysing national and regional newspapers to contribute data to the survey.

The study concludes that sports sections of America’s newspapers are a passive and reactive space dominated by game previews and recaps with little room for enterprise reportage.

Knowledge bank: The head of BBC's Sports Online site tells about the perspectives of sports journalism on the net.

Knowledge Bank: Aidan White, Secretary General of the International Federation of Journalists, points out the complicity of the media in producing bad sports journalism. The degree of economic interdependence between media and the world of sports whether through advertising, sponsorship or negotiation of television rights has led to complacency and worse in the editorial approach to sports reporting.