Local media snubbed by British Olympic Association (From Wimbledon Guardian)

Local media snubbed by British Olympic Association

THERE will be no coverage of the Olympic Games in News Shopper – at least if the people in charge get their way.

Local media snubbed by British Olympic Association

In fact, London’s single biggest event in a generation will have no local media coverage of any kind after bosses declined all regional press applications for passes.

Despite our coverage of the build-up to the Games and despite News Shopper being widely distributed in one of the Olympic boroughs – Greenwich – the British Olympic Association (BOA) has decreed we will not be allowed in.

Sky News, the BBC and countless foreign news agencies received all the passes they wanted.

Editor Richard Firth said: “This was supposed to be the ultimate local event, but the local media have received a collective slap in the face.

“The BOA says it received thousands of accreditation applications from all over the world but we believe the local media should be allowed in to cover the Games from a local perspective.

“They’ve offered us generic material from a national news syndication service but that’s no good to our readers. We want to write the stories which will be of genuine interest but they’re stopping us.

“Our coverage will be unbalanced. There’s been a lot of opposition to the Games in some of our boroughs, as residents wonder why they’ve been forced to pay for something which will have no direct benefit to them.

“A great antidote to that will be the sheer positivity around the Games themselves but we’re only being allowed to tell one side of the story.”

The BOA claims it may have a second tranche of press places to allocate but it is not known how many, on what basis they will be allocated or even when it will be announced to whom they will be going.

In the meantime, News Shopper has written to all the MPs in its catchment area, every London Assembly member and senior council figures to drum up support for a review of the BOA’s decision.

The application process

Following the BOA’s instructions, News Shopper applied for press passes in autumn 2010. At the time, there was no indication of what we were likely to receive or when we would be told what we would get.

When we were told we were getting nothing, the BOA said it had a limited number of passes and it hoped the accredited Press Association would be able to feed stories through to the regional press.

The decision over accreditations was taken by an independent media panel, which considered experience of reporting on the Olympics, as well as circulation numbers when deciding the number of places given to each newspaper title.