Canadian Cricket Journalism

Errol Townsend

I find the comments on the canadacricket.com Forum, from Joe Harris and Hunky Anonymous Dory, mentioning my name to be mildly amusing. They demonstrate a remarkable naiveté about the role of the media.

The job of a sports columnist, which I've been doing for 43 years, is not to be the cheerleader for ANY team. Not even the home team. The first and only duty/loyalty is to the reading public, to report as factually as humanly possible, to assess and analyse, and to provide honest, informed commentaries presented in a manner that people will read.

The gist of the complaints from these two gentlemen is that the articles on this web site are all negative. No "Go Canada, go" stuff ! In truth, there has been a lot to be negative about. But to say that there has been
nothing positive and that Canada's success against West Indies A was ignored by me is patently false. Unless these two gentlemen are guilty of highly selective reading, they would have read "Canada clobbers West Indian hopefuls" which is available in the Archives section. There, I provide an assessment of that tournament from the perspective of a team preparing for the World Cup. If they find that assessment
"negative", then there's nothing that will ever satisfy them.

The REAL problem seems to be that while it is okay to be critical of the CCA ("constructive"), any criticism of players from a CERTAIN club with which these two gentlemen are familiar is, by definition, in their eyes, "destructive".

Sorry, guys, the media doesn't operate that way. There are no sacred cows in the sports pasture. You take the rough with the smooth. Now grow up.

ERROL TOWNSHEND, beyond his experience as a sports journalist, has been an administrator at all levels of Canadian cricket, including having served the interests of Canadian cricket as President of Toronto & District Cricket League, a Director of the Ontario Cricket Association and manager of Canadian, Ontario and T&D teams.

Re: Canadian Cricket Journalism [Dori Krinski]
Re: Canadian Cricket Journalism [Mike McLean]

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