Sports journalists must safeguard their freedom against large sporting bodies if objective coverage of sporting events is to be maintained

That's what was claimed at the recent 8th Journalism Leaders Forum hosted at the University of Central Lancashire on 29th January 08.

In a year which has seen large sporting organisations increasingly clash with journalists the debate was always going to be provocative and the audience was not disappointed. The panel consisted of renowned figures from the sports journalism world- Mihir Bose, BBC Sports Editor (right), Phil Townsend, Director of Communications for Manchester United Football Club, Andrew Moger, leader of the Newspaper Publishers Association’s digital rights campaign, Kadambari Murali, Sports Editor for the Hindustan Times (left) and Robert Hardie, Content Strategy Director for Associated Northcliffe Digital. The forum was chaired by Charlie Lambert, a veteran BBC North West sports presenter and commentator, who now runs the highly-regarded sports journalism programme at UCLan.

The opposing views put forward by Mihir Bose and Phil Townsend were particularly lively and served to illustrate the polarization of views between large, powerful sports organisations and journalists.

Andrew Moger said "As journalists we are letting ourselves down, we are letting a great industry down if we don't man the barricades against restrictive measures. We have been sleeping on this issue far too long. That includes publishers, owners and sports editors. We have tried to maintain relationships in the face of competition and control and we need to be much more robust on our own account."

If you missed the forum you can view the online recording at http://breeze01.uclan.ac.uk/p88174755/