----- Original Message -----
From: "David Starer"
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.soaring
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 7:01 PM
Subject: Bad publicity


I just searched on "glider" on the BBC's news web site. What I found
shocked
me. Of 46 results returned for the period since May 1998, not a single one
mentioned any form of achievement whatsoever in gliding. See here for the
search page:


http://newssearch.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/...&start=1&q=gli
der&scope=newsukfs


Your search didn't reaveal this one
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1431834.stm about some 90 year olds having a
few trial lessons, but it's still not the sort of publicity we want.

When we were doing very well in the Junior world championships I emailed the
BBC online sports people to draw their attention to it. This was on a day
when they were covering the European Blind Football Championships,
wheelchair tennis, World Netball Championships.and US baseball*. Now, I
have no problem with them covering these minority sports, but you would have
thought that they could make room for gliding amongst them. Predicably
there was no response - not even a reply to my email. The BGA at this time
were also producing a deluge of press releases so they really should have
been aware of the British sucesses.

A friend of mine once complained to the Times newspaper that they didn't
cover gliding and their response was that they didn't have anyone to cover
it. She said "yes you do" and became the voluntary Times gliding
correspondent. They used some of the stuff she produced but eventually got
bored with it. Perhaps someone needs to volunteer their services to the
BBC.

*I know baseball isn't a minority sport for many reading this, but I'm
talking about the UK here.

Stephen