That is rather awful.

You know, if mainstream media outlets/reporters, spewed as much misinformation and false facts about politics or the like, there would be a shitstorm for them to deal with. I can’t stand that these people can pretty much say whatever they want and not be held accountable for it.

Being from Vancouver, let me tell you, it’s not just MMA that’s covered poorly. It’s pretty much a wash across the board. The two major papers in Vancouver, the Sun and the Province, are both pretty bad. It’s like going from bad to worse. Pick your poison.

Fingerless gloves, no cups, and every fight is an ‘I Quit’ match?

How am I unemployed while these clowns have jobs?

I don’t expect any journalist from here to have an objective, impartial view of the sport I’m passionate about. That way when one does come along I can be pleasantly surprised. However, being from the valley(just outside Van), it doesn’t help that the only guy promoting MMA matches within 100 miles was just shot and killed in his gym stairwell, probably for his drug and gang connections. Add to that the ignorant, obtuse views of the politicians who originally banned it in Vancouver municipality, NYC will get MMA back before we do. Shit.

Print media is in a death spiral. Less customers = lower salaries = less qualified reporters = shitty reporting = less customers, etc. This problem is ubiquitous. I’d actually say that sports journalists are on average more knowledgeable about the sport they specialize in than journalists in other areas. If you think this is bad, talk to someone who understands statistics about the media’s use of them.

In a way, this is good news for MMA. There would be a big problem if people were fully informed about the sport, yet still opposed its legalization. This shows that the UFC (who else is reinvesting money into the sport?) can make headway through education.

I’m ashamed of the journalism in my city after reading that.

aside from the fact that the writer himself looks like an idiot. There was clearly no malicious intent to make MMA sound like the barbaric, human cockfighting, etc sport that many people who truly oppose it regularly do. He likened it to Pro Wrestling and, in a sense downplayed the violent nature of the sport.

I plan on taking the time to put together an extensive and thought-out response. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Don’t get too upset about this. Any newspaper from Canada that is called The XXXXXXXX Sun is just a 1/2 step up from a tabloid. The Sun media corp is not exactly known for hard hitting journalism, they are only read for tits, crime, and hockey. There could be an alien invasion and their front page would be; MAPLE LEAFS LOST 8TH IN A ROW TO FLORIDA. Their yearly investigative journalism effort is picking apart city council members’ expense reports, and organising the data into a colourful, shiny chart.

There is no point in trying to argue a point with any of the Sun newspapers, you would have more success debating an eggplant.

MMA gets a much more evenhanded treatment in more respectable Canadian newspapers. The Toronto Star had the front page of its sports section devoted to GSP once. The National Post and the Globe and Mail also have much higher standards than and of the Sun newspapers.

I see the article as ignorant towards MMA rather than negative. Better than the ‘human cockfighting’ dribble we see too often.