I did delay my reply to see if Cyclingnews could break from the path they have been following since the site came out of Aussie hands, as they completed their coverage of the Tour and accompanying World Cup.
Cyclingnews gave us the Tour with not a single word of editorial report about the races, not a single picture, just a results listing. In no way can this be described as treating the sport as mainstream. Oldroadman you obviously cannot see the harm and cyclingnews continue to do to the women's road scene with its discriminatory and prejudiced coverage that can only have a very ugly motive at its source. We have been through all the rubbish arguments about they don't ride fast enough, aren't good enough etc and all of that distills to "they don't have p e n i s e s, so we are not covering them." It is one thing for the press to be prejudiced and they can be. They only have to answer to their shareholders. The World Cup race today gets the most modest of coverages. It does get 14 pictures, several of which are of the team presentation. This is the flagship vehicle for the women's side of the sport and the coverage is distinctly 3rd rate. Like so much about the women's road scene it is a shadow of what went before. The coverage of the women's scene since cyclingnews became British has been a backward step over that offered when under control of those ill-informed, rampant wife beaters from down under.
It is exactly this prejudiced and discriminatory attitude that the UCI board need to be addressing. Heaven forbid that a board member could look at cyclingnews' coverage and praise them, not recognising prejudice when it is put on a plate.
Sadly with such behaviour of the press "hardwired in", this is not something that will "evolve out". Affirmative action will be required. But of course, before any "solution", the problem has to be defined and if they looked and could find no evidence of any problem, then another year will go by with nothing done.
