Near the end of the Sky Sports news programme Through The Night, the hosts always flip through the back pages of the British daily newspapers to point out the headlines of what the morning papers are saying. It’s a standard news segment on their show. Except for what happened last night.

When the hosts last night showed the back page of The Daily Express newspaper, they discussed the main headline about how Rio Ferdinand said that England was a circus under Sven-Goran Eriksson because of the WAGs. With the Sky Sports camera zoomed in on the back page, what was very noticeable was that the bottom left corner of the newspaper had been ripped out.

Thinking this was strange, I visited the Daily Express newspaper’s website to see what was on the back page that was so offensive.

And boom, there it was. It was an advertisement from Setanta Sports advertising the Irish company’s coverage of the Belarus against England World Cup qualifier. The main picture above shows the back cover of the newspaper, while the inset picture clearly shows the section of the back page removed from the newspaper as it appeared on Through The Night.

How immature and unprofessional must Sky Sports be that they won’t even allow a tiny Setanta Sports print advertisement to be shown for a few seconds on their TV network? Part of the issue for Sky must be that they’re concerned about losing subscribers to Setanta Sports, but this isn’t the way to go about it. It makes the network look stupid, juvenile and – frankly – it shows how biased and unobjective the show is.

This isn’t the first time that Sky Sports has clearly avoided giving their competitors any publicity. When Sky doesn’t have the TV rights to massive sports competitions such as Euro 2008 or the Summer Olympics, the Through The Night show either completely ignores the massive sport news from those tournaments or relegates the news to the third or fourth story. Also, when BBC’s Panorama broke the news about the bung scandal, the Through The Night programme didn’t mention a single word about the massive story for a couple of days. And when the show did finally mention the story, it was buried deep so to give the BBC as little publicity as possible.

Related posts:

1. I’m On Setanta Sports Returning As Special 1 TV
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3. Why Sky Sports News Sucks

The Daily Express newspaper is reporting that Manchester City owner Thaksin Shinawatra has sent a letter to each Man City player saying that he’s dissatisfied with the team’s performance in the second half of the year, that each player is up for sale and that he plans on having an entirely new squad before the new season begins.

Expect the news to create quite a storm through the blogosphere and in the online newspapers around the world today. But, is the news even true? Daily Express reporter Richard Tanner fails to name one source in his article. This is one thing I hate about the British tabloids. There are no facts in this article, just rumors.

The Guardian put the story in their rumors section where it rightfully belongs instead of their news section. The Daily Telegraph wrote a piece about the story and attributed the news to the Express, which is often rare for a British newspaper to do so. Perhaps if the story isn’t true they can point their fingers at the Express and say “they said it, not us.”

Not surprisingly, the official Manchester City website doesn’t mention anything about the story. Even if it was true, I’m sure the club wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot pole. Interestingly, their web site does have a section called “What The Papers Say.” City has so far decided not to put that article in there (for good reason, the City fans would riot if the story is true).

When a newspaper is writing an article and cannot use the person’s name because he or she wants to remain anonymous, the writer should clue the reader in to the source of the story. “An unnamed source inside Manchester City Football Club today revealed that” or something similar. Otherwise, how does the newspaper expect us to believe the story?

Related posts:

1. Frank Lampard To Inter Milan? The Daily Express Walks A Fine Line
2. Berbatov To Man United: British Newspapers Follow The Sun’s Lead
3. Are Manchester City About To Go Into Meltdown?