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.

Knowledge bank: Sport and exercise professionals generally have a deep, even romantic attachment to sport. While the field of sport, exercise and physical education has much to commend it, it is important that professionals in this division of the ‘body industry’ have a complete and unsentimental grasp of it.

High level support is pouring in to Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, the two American sports journalists who are facing jail for up to 18 months because they refuse to say who leaked them confidential grand jury testimonies from athletes questioned in the Balco doping case.

China has issued a new set of rules for foreign journalists who want to cover issues in China up to and during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. According to a spokesperson from the Foreign Ministry, foreign reporters will be allowed to travel anywhere in the country without prior permission from local authorities.

Talk or go to jail! A federal judge in California has issued a ruling which sends two investigative sports journalists, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, to prison for up to 18 months because they refuse to reveal who leaked them confidential grand jury testimonies from athletes investigated in connection with the Balco case.

Two years before more than 20,000 international journalists are expected to go to China to cover the Beijing 2008 Olympics, a survey by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China shows that Chinese authorities frequently detain foreign reporters, and occasionally use violence against them and their sources.

In Bangladesh, a group of sports journalists and press photographers are still waiting to hear the outcome of an official government probe into a brutal police attack on them at a cricket test match between Bangladesh and Australia at the end of April. The Asian Human Rights Commission is concerned about the delay of the report and allegations that the probe commission has listened to fake eyewitnesses.

Journalists have also played active roles in the Juventus match fixing scandal. Eight journalists are currently under police investigation and last week icon tv host Aldo Biscardi was forced to resign from his hugely popular soccer talk show after allegations that the show had been too favourable to Juventus.