Do you seriously believe that a sport that is played professionally along 1 stretch of motorway has any right to be called "national"?
Quins get 82k because they create the event then market it......it then gets reported because its a big event. The Aviva gets a bigger average attendance than sl and us propped up bu the juggernaut that is the international game.......their London double header is well attended and sarries are back at Wembley soon.......all this builds a hype and the media cover it. The idea that the media refuse to cover a sport to deliver some agenda is insane. Supply and demand dictate what the press print.........if there was a demand for league it would be met. There isn't!
The chip on the shoulder of many so called rl fans is what more often than not is the reason the game is held back where it is.

You see, once again, you've gone off on one of your flights of fancy with a load of irrelevant guff.

Try responding to what you were actually asked for a change. Which was:
Do you think UK newspapers are biased in their reporting?

We all know what you think. What es us off is your willingness to push it down everyone's throat even when it's not remotely linked with anything else that's been said. You've made your point: give us all a rest please.

Nope.
The broadsheet or ex broadsheets write what their demographic audience want to read........this is not bias, but a decision made by the management and editorial staff. The red tops report tits and soccer and the pretentious middle class tabloids aspire to have less red top readers and more broadsheets.
My guff as you refer to it is relevant by the way......you not liking it doesn't make it any less relevant

Newspapers and the media in general, can create hype for any event which can stir the public imagination.
Whether this is RU, Paralympics, Jordan getting married etc, etc.

There is an element of printing what the readers want, The Daily Mail being the best example of a newspaper finding stories to suit it's own agenda but, there is no doubt whatsoever that the media and especially newspaper's have a major influence on the public perception of all aspects of life, including sporting events.

To say that there is not bias is quite ridiculous.

Nope. To say that because rl isn't covered in most of the press proves there is bias is ridiculous. Darts gets bigger tv ratings than league, but isn't covered in the press......is there a bias against darts too?

So why, when the Super League Grand Final attracts the biggest sporting audience of the weekend anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, do the Southern based Press completely ignore it or give it a tertiary 40 word report while then offering a double page report on a Union match which attracts less than 10,000?

In a word, yes.

Darts obviously is not seen as sufficiently newsworthy by the press, yet has mass appeal.
I know this is going off on one slightly but, do you seriously think that our views are not controlled and manipulated by the media and press ????

A very good point and one which the RL itself presently seems unable to correct. I'm no expert, but I would have thought the way forward for our PR machine (ha!) would be to outflank the traditional media by more use of social media. The game needs to go viral.

If you believe what you are fed then fine, but i tend to use a multitude of media channels and sources of information before forming an opinion. Claiming 82,000 sheep attend a union game but that 4,000 at Salford are all fans is arrogance deserving of an irb medal.

only Gutters would believe there is no bias from a southern based media towards a traditionally northern game lol.

as for your prof sport comment, prof sport is where a player gets paid to play, given that players in all three leagues get paid they are all prof clubs thus making your comment about the game only being played professionally along the M62 nonsensical. The championship 1 league looks pretty nationally spread out to me?

Jesus Gutters you're as bad as Smokey. You won't even admit basic facts. Are you honestly going to sit there and tell me the likes of the Daily Mail, Express, the Telegraph aren't biased toward the right wing? Or the Mirror toward the left?

Yet you say no they're not biased but then say yes they're biased. What you state there, "a decision by management and editorial staff to write what their audience want to read" IS bias. It's picking and choosing what to report, and crucially how to report it, based on something other than national importance, national interest etc
Because if it did then the 18k+ at the Leeds v Wigan game this year would've warranted a bigger report considering it was the largest sporting event in the country that night.

UK newspapers not biased






You do yourself a disservice when you just steadfastly refuse to accept a fact like this because you generally have a point with your posts.

Even if they were indeed sheep, 82000 is worth reporting, it got 2/3 pages in the sports section of the times plus a mention in "the news" section.
Nobody would argue that it was a major sporting event, worthy of report, but it was certainly overkill for a regular season fixture in the RU calendar.

Equally of surprise was that a nothing friendly Leeds vs Wakefield gained more column inches than just about every SL game in the regular season.

Maybe the press got carried away on the back of "Mad Friday", "Black Monday" and whatever else they could come up with to create hysteria amongst the masses

Papers aren't falling over themselves to help union or do us down. The print what helps them sell papers or get views. They think union does this and League doesn't. That isn't a conspiracy or bias, is a simple editorial decision.

If we want more space in papers we need to do more that people want to read about.

In a not unrelated point, 42 pages about union on a league message board, numerous articles in papers and on line. Sam Burgess is already a success in RU.

Almost correct but, Editors often have their own agendas, ie political bias and it is only natural that sports editors have their own preferences.
These tend to be Football and RU.

Football is supposed to be the national sport and will usually trump all others but, Union certainly gets far more column inches than its popularity "deserves", which if portrayed in a positive manner, this will theoretically increase it's exposure and theoretically increase it's popularity amongst the masses.

Newspapers are private commercial entities either owned by individuals or by shareholders. They have no mandate to report anything they don't want to but they do have a mandate to make money for their owners.
As much as you like to repeat That there is a widespread bias or even conspiracy I have yet to hear a decisive argument that proves these money making entities are purposely ignoring a sport for nothing more than some editor or owners personal stance against that sport.
Rugby league at the top level in the British isles is played by 11 teams all from one geographical area. It is not a national sport and neither is it of national interest........if it were of national interest with the public clamouring for news, then the owners of the media would be publishing stories about it.

What I have heard a lot of is unfounded conspiracy theories based around a preloaded prejudice against a sport with a far greater national and European reach that is backed up by a national side playing in regular international tournaments.

How is it that a club like harlequins can attract 82,000 fans to a game.......more than a few sl sides manage for an entire season? Is it down to the nasty editor at the express or is it down to more people wanting to be associated with middle class union rather than Castleford v Wakefield in the grim north of England.

Just because YOU think its not fair doesn't mean that the rest if the country have to agree with you........and they dont

Who are you to dictate how much union deserves in exposure? 15,000,000 watched Wilkinson kick that drop goal and 250,000 attended the street parade.......you may not like it but union is much much bigger than league as far as the public are concerned

Sounds like Sam Burgess helped helped the Bath RU A team get through to a semi final tonight. Every time he's played Union, his side has won so far. Guessing he must have got more than a one or two metre run tonight as they are describing his break as scintillating. But sounds like the bloke he gave a clear run in For a try dropped the pass!

I too can't blame Sam for taking the money and moving sport if his new employers looked at what he could do, what they wanted and gave him a contract that will set him up for life.

I hope Sam gets used to a completely different sport and rips it at club and international level like he did for us.

It's just frustrating that it is such a waste of talent. From what I've seen of what they want Sam to do, it would seem that any of the bog standard, anonymous type forwards they breed for top level Union could do it. They didn't really need such a talented rugby player as Sam Burgess. But, it's their money and they can spend it as they like.

Genuinely hope Sam does really well as we would expect (even though the strange rules of Rugby Union will be a bit of a hindrance to say the least). But it does seem to me that this will really turn out to be a mid career rest in Union for Burgess prolonging his career prior to a return to Rugby League at almost the level he was at when he left.

Find myself unfortunately agreeing with Gutters here. Newspaper will write about what sells.......do you think the editors of red tops really give a sh*t about X Factor or I'm a Celebrity or whoever Katie Price is sleeping with.......no, but they slam that across their headlines because they know it's going to sell/attract better.

Newspaper editors/Journalists have one aim.....sell, sell, sell.

You can cut that out right away

I know, I felt dirty saying it

No, Newspaper editors/journalists have one aim.....keep their owner happy.
Do you think an anti-UKIP story will make its way into the headlines of the Express newspaper, regardless of how much it might or might not sell papers?
Or a pro-Labour/Milliband one in The Sun?

It's more than just what sells papers. It's what agenda the owner wants.
Aside from that the background of the editors and senior people in a newsroom is vital. It's why we get stories of travel chaos/bad weather etc in London but never when there's problems in the rest of the country. The floods in Hull being a prime example of how the "national media" often ignores stories and issues that don't tally with what the London based media decides are important, even for the millions of people who don't think and live the same way as them.

It's not an active "anti-northern" or in this case anti-RL agenda. It's one that forgets about most things North of Watford and West of the Home Counties.

I think comparisons of political allegiances to RU/RL coverage is a bit extreme isn't it?

Editors will have an aim to keep their owners happy.....and one clear way of doing that above anything else is selling papers and making money by filling it with what sells.

I don't think its extreme to back up my point that newspapers aren't solely about selling papers. If they were they'd all make a profit but very few actually do. It's also about pushing the agendas of their owners. Thats why there was so much front page reporting of Big Brother in the Express when Richard Desmond bought Channel 5, for instance.
It's also, as I said, about the background and experiences of those in senior positions at the paper. If they've grown up in a leafy home county where rugby league is never mentioned, that will naturally filter in to his thought process when deciding how much, if any, coverage to give (say) Leeds v Wigan. If, in his world, Leeds v Wigan was never important and barely mentioned, unless it got a crowd where he was unable to ignore it, like football, he probably will ignore it regardless of whether more people are actually interested.

It's not about massive back or front page stories for RL, I don't expect us to be there on the vast majority of occasions. It's about us not getting the attention we deserve. It's RL missing out on regular, decent pieces on games, incidents etc 2 or 3 pages in from the back page. That's what isn't right.

In the same way as the Hull floods being ignored, bad weather etc. It's not solely a newspaper thing. Unfortunately many things in life have become incredibly London-centric in recent times. Media is definitely one, financial institutions another, and obviously government is another huge one.
London receives 24 times the infrastructure spending than the rest of the country.

Unfortunately, along with it being bad for the country as a whole, or certainly for the millions of people who live in the rest of the country, it's also bad for RL because it doesn't and never has had a base of interest in the south and in London.

Whilst there are plenty of faults with both RL and the RFL, many of them frustrating at either the stupidity of the faults or the simplicity of the solution to those faults, it always has to be borne in mind that the sport is continually fighting a battle against this London-centric nature of this country at the moment, and fighting it with very limited resources at its disposal.

Absolute and utter paranoid class war drivel!