GAA project help

[slievegullion]

Hello to all, as stated a few months back I will be posting a few questions on the board and on this particular thread. they will be in relation to the GAA and its media structures. All opinions (reasonable) welcomed and feel free to go into detail. I would really appreciate some of the more shall I say intelligent members voice there opinion e.g BC, POG, Rufus and Benny, Magpie Seanie, TheWobbler and Bud.

Thanks in advance much appreciated.

My first question is basic enough. How would you evaluate the media relationship with the GAA in the 32 counties? In other sports a certain mistrust seems to exist between the media and sporting body in question, what do you feel the relationship is here in Ireland between the GAA and the media?

[Gnevin]

Hello to all, as stated a few months back I will be posting a few questions on the board and on this particular thread. they will be in relation to the GAA and its media structures. All opinions (reasonable) welcomed and feel free to go into detail. I would really appreciate some of the more shall I say intelligent members voice there opinion e.g BC, POG, Rufus and Benny, Magpie Seanie, TheWobbler and Bud.

Thanks in advance much appreciated.

My first question is basic enough. How would you evaluate the media relationship with the GAA in the 32 counties? In other sports a certain mistrust seems to exist between the media and sporting body in question, what do you feel the relationship is here in Ireland between the GAA and the media?

I think you'd be better of splitting the question into the 26 counties and 6 counties as i know alot of the lads in the north feel BBC NI and UTV coverage is biased to say the least

[Saffron exile]

I think one of the main failings of the print and visual media here is the lack of coverage and knowledge of lower division and weaker county teams, in particular with regard to hurling. The sloppy and uninformed approach of the national media towards Division 2 and 3 hurling and teams competing in the new Ring and rackard Cups exposes an attitude that only the main contenders for McCarthy and Sam Maguire are worth covering in terms of researching players, providing live coverage and highlights and informing the public of basic player and team statistics. it exposes a lazy, and uncaring attitude towards the majority of our teams and players.
this is in complete contrast to the so-called money-grabbing corporate coverage provided by Sky sports in britain where minor teams are  regularly in an informed and extensively researched way given both TV and print exposure. even our own media provide in-depth coverage of British soccer with extensive statistics and player ratings, etc.

[stephenite]

I think that in the main, the relationship would be a positive one. The GAA, as an organisation would have a fairly solid one with most of the major media outlets in the Republic at leat. I think also that most of the major print journalists are "GAA" men, they understand what the association is about and recognise the effort that goes in on the part of marquee players. You'll never hear of players getting shafted by journalists for incidents in their private lives etc. (apart from the disgraceful piece on Meaths Jimmy McGuinness) and while I am sure there have been other such incidents ( Sunday Life and the naked pool incident ) I feel that overall, the level of mistrust evident in other sports would not exist to the same level in the GAA.

The media, also have a job and that is to sell their product, and I wouldn't say they are unknowledgeable about weaker counties in certain codes - they just tend to airbrush them out because they aren't going to sell as the majority of their market couldn't give a toss, unfortunate but the way it is. Local media are also massive for the GAA in these sort of instances, and club evel gets a huge amount of coverage in most regional and local print and radio mediums

[Gnevin]

I believe RTE under its public service mandate should cover more sport in general not only the GAA . They have lost the rights to the European qualifiers and the nearly the 6N in the past and only have them because the goverment changed the rules do they still have the rights .

They offer no live coverage of the league and the coverage the give it to little on weekened where 32 games can be played
They don't cover the Ring, Rackard and Murphy cups enough. Finals and only because they are on before big games .
They have one intermittent GAA magazine show , satanta's is nearly year rounds and 5 days a week during the peak of the championship.

[magpie seanie]

How would you evaluate the media relationship with the GAA in the 32 counties? In other sports a certain mistrust seems to exist between the media and sporting body in question, what do you feel the relationship is here in Ireland between the GAA and the media?

Overall - not bad but acres of room for improvement. You really could write an essay on this but as time is tight I'll just fire down a few things that come to mind.

As alluded to by one or two earlier posters - over emphasis on upper echelons of the association e.g. Sam Maguire/Liam McCarthy contenders. When you see the coverage Leinster schools rugby gets then other levels of our games deserve more. The GAA has a role to play in improving this too. Perhaps we aren't doing enough to let the journos know whats going on.

I really hate seeing headlines like - "GAA star in drunken brawl". I'll accept its usually the gutter press tabloids that engage in this craic but if a lad goes out and gets in a row its no reason to have a pop at the GAA. My perception may be incorrect (due to me being sensitive to it) but I think uncalled for headlines like that tend to be "GAA" more than "Soccer" or "Rugby". I also think that amateur sportsmen deserve greater privacy and protection than professionals. That's something I wish the media would respect more.

The media are generally hungry for GAA related stories and info and this is natural as it is extremely popular. As an association we can and should do more to promote our games through them. I know people want to watch highlights on Sunday Sport but I've found the bits about the clubs really good, interesting and inspiring. That's the good news message we want to beam into homes.

Hope that helps. Sorry if its a bit all over the shop.

[Kerry Mike]

Where to start:

RTE's aertel coverage has been crap for years now and its service badly needs an overhaul in line with the text service provided by likes of the BBC or Sky. There needs to be a higher level of interaction. Would love if RTE could provide clips of games as part of its text or interactive service.
That Aertel is hard to look at and read too, its been using the same box shaped font for years and if you have poor reception you miss a load of text and it takes forever to scroll onto the next page, very frustrating if you have multiple pages.

RTE Aertel coverage of GAA games is particularly poor with scores not being updated for hours after a game have finished and more often than not with incorrect scores. The soccer Aertel coverage on the other hand shows every scorer or sending off from every small league team in Britain.

The TV match coverage has improved and there are better camera angles being provided from the bigger games in Croke park, but for most smaller games you have a fixed camera in the stand and 1 or 2 cameras up on a big cherry picker behind each goal and possibly one hand held camera. So lots of room for improvement in camera angles and repeats of scores and major incidents in games.

As for the RTE commentators we have Ger Canning for years now and I'd say very few can stomach him at this stage, the others are not much better.

TG4 provide a great service and their All Ireland gold is a great program.

The Sunday game live needs a facelift, Lyster has been in the hot seat too long but some of the analysis can be good at times espeically the hurling.

I think the local Radios and papers give the GAA great coverage but the national printed press seems to have an obsession with English soccer much to the detriment of their GAA coverage.

I think with the advent of Setanta providing opposition to RTE and TG4, services will improve but hopefully will not lead into a ppv for games.

As for the relationship between the media and the GAA I think its good overall but the GAA are a money driven machine now and their discussions over the next while will be interesting, while I hope they maintean our games to be broadcast to the widest possible market and not to a select pay per view. I think however if the GAA come to some deal with Setanta or Sky it should involve the promotion of GAA games internationally. I am sure there could be a market for hurling in particular.

Players seem to be more in demand from the media nowadays and there is some friction over this but for the most part therei is a healthy respect between players , the GAA and the media.

[Jinxy]

Inserting the word GAA in a sensational headline gets peoples attention and gets them to buy the paper. Its that simple. It doesn't matter how tenuous the link is. This was never more blatant than the Evening Herald and its reporting on the death of a young girl outside St. Brigids ground, Russell Park beside the old Phoenix park racecourse last year. Without rehashing the tragic incident itself, the headline on the front cover would lead you to believe a violent incident which resulted in the death of a young girl occurred on St. Brigids premises. Instead the incident happened just off a very busy main road which happens to run past the GAA club. When another party involved in the original incident took his own life a couple of weeks later, the article again included "GAA" in the headline. As far as I know, none of the individuals involved had anything whatsoever to do with St. Brigids and they were not on their premises at any time that evening. The chairman of the club complained to the Evening Herald, which some time later printed a very small "clarification" in one of those side columns hardly anyone reads buried in the middle of the paper. The fact that it was considered an acceptable headline to begin with is an obvious reflection of the level of public interest in GAA matters both on and off the field. I know I was suckered in initially as I bought the paper purely on the basis of that story (as it was misrepresented to me by an inappropriate headline). However, sticking "GAA" on the front cover probably shifted a few thousand extra units of that particular edition, so it was a job well done as far as the Herald were concerned.

[Lecale2]

I would really appreciate some of the more shall I say intelligent members voice there opinion e.g BC, POG, Rufus and Benny, Magpie Seanie, TheWobbler and Bud.

Feck off tosser! Why don't you PM them.

[thewobbler]

Slieve Gullion,

I could write a book on this, but the bottom line is I think the current media coverage of GAA is generally very good, and some providers actually excel at the service (Irish News is a prime example).

Some people aren't happy and always want more, but the same people wouldn't be happy even if there was free-to-air, wall-to-wall coverage of all things GAA. They would then find an angle to complain about overkill, or complain about the nature of the coverage.

People demand improved coverage, and use Sky TV as the examplar. Personally I'd love to see if Sky TV would devote the same amount of time and technology if their product wasn't being exported for a handsome profit to 200 countries around the world.  

One recurring thing for me is that the GAA generally lacks personalities. It's almost impossible for hacks to write about the life and times of GAA county players because either:

a) the players won't talk.
b) the players that do talk are either so guarded or so unintelligible that a story isn't forthcoming.
c) the players are too young to have done anything interesting with their lives.
d) the players don't actually have a life. All they do is train in their closed circle, 7 nights a week.
e) if something interesting actually does come up, a hack that publishes it will never be spoken to again.

Don't get me wrong, the vast majority are nice fellas. Good lads to know. But so driven, so intense, so focused are they on GAA, that nothing else matters. And that doesn't make for a good story. Beyond that, it doesn't develop the social skills required to enter any sort of media sphere after their playing days are over. It's not RTE's fault that despite interviewing just about every star GAA performer over the past 50 years, the best personality that has shown up is Anthony Tohill. And I'm not disrespecting Anthony, he comes across as a decent sort, but I'd rather listen to the lads in the pub talk football. You might get an opinion or an insight that way.

[Orior]

I would really appreciate some of the more shall I say intelligent members voice there opinion e.g BC, POG, Rufus and Benny, Magpie Seanie, TheWobbler and Bud.

Feck off tosser! Why don't you PM them.

Yeah, stop picking on Lecale2   I've answered your PM slievegullion.

[Lecale2]

I'm not familiar with the situation in the 26 counties so I can't comment.

In the north the relationship varies greatly.
Many local papers can't get enough GAA stories, results, martch reports to keep their readers happy. If clubs send in the stories they will usually be published by the local press.

I don't really agree with Wobbler. I think most GAA supporters want to see fixtures, results and match reports rather than tit-bits about players private lives.

The Irish News I reckon has a good relationship with most county PROs and their coverage of the club sceen is top class - much better than it was 10 yers ago for example.
BBC NI on the other hand have gone back and clearly there has been some sort of backlash against their GAA coverage within that corporation. Radio Ulster is generally good especially with their Sunday afternoon programme. Downtown Radio read out the club results on Sunday evening - that's it.
UTV don't know the GAA exsists. The The Belfast Telegragh & Sunday Life are a joke with stories lifted from every other publication and press release. The Newsletter boycott's GAA stories unless it involves a fight or a Tyrone player and a dog.

[slievegullion]

Excellent opinions, I will post further questions soon.

Apologies Lecale did not mean that in a chauvanistic kind of way, I just meant posters who are serious and not WUM with smart arse replies.

[laoisgaa]

As a GAA journalist I may as well give my 'two cents' to help you see things from the other side of the coin. In general GAA journalists don't experience too many problems over the course of the year but like any other job it's always going to have it's up's and down's - I concur with alot of what has already been said here but for the sake of singling out any particular publication or broadcast media I'll just give a few general points.

The days of finding GAA players and managers hard to come by before big games for interviews isn't quite what you would expect. Press Conferences and press nights are helping to give journalists better access to players and management teams but as someone already pointed out and as a lover of hurling I've only ever been at a press conference once which had a hurler from a so-called weaker county (Armagh) and this was organised by the GPA! Column inches are dictated by Editors and in turn Sports Editors and rightly or wrongly apparently there is a huge interest in English soccer in this country and that's why it gets the coverage - not my viewpoint let me add.

I mentioned Press night's above and last night both Cavan and Longford had press nights ahead of their upcoming championship games. I was at the Cavan one which was well organised and all the journalists who turned up certainly left happy

While TV rights are up for negotiation this year, talking to Nickey Brennan on Wednesday it seems that everyone will get a slice of the pie and we shouldn't be too worried about pay-per-view just yet. What's just as interesting is the way the National Radio rights will be negotiated; particularly now that Newstalk are a national station.

The Ulster Media v the Southern Media is a debate certainly worth having, in my opinion the two best national newspapers for GAA aren't based in Dublin.

On an added note how is Gaelic Life doing these days? Are Ulster fans happy with it - now that we are approaching the championship?

To quote Liam Mulivihill's Annual Report to Congress this year that the amount of media covering our games is at an unprecedented level. And to say this is certainly true, there is more and more being demanded from the GAA journalists of this world and that should reflect in the level of coverage that is put out; but as always it could still be greater

If you want to PM me about other issues feel free.

[slievegullion]

Next qustion, what would be your opinon on a GAA channel either through the Internet or on a subscription outlet like  sky? Would it be feasible?