MY CALL - WEBSITES MUST BE RESPECTED AS AN IMPORTANT SOURCE OF NEWS
By David Fowler | Tuesday, August 2, 2011
David Fowler is the principal thoroughbred caller for Radio TAB, taking the position upon Wayne Wilson's retirement last August. David, who is a keen form student and punter, has enjoyed a lifetime involvement in the racing media. His personal blog, ‘My Call’, appears exclusively on HRO.
I think the penny has finally dropped and I'm about to shed my "dinosaur" tag.
It's time to embrace the internet as an important news providing source!
OK, I'm not that ancient but looking back at some events over the past week made me think of the significance of news or views via websites.
The Cleveland Bay starting fiasco (more of that later) and trainer John Dann's comments about the riding of Tea Tattle gained strong traction through exposure on the letsgohorseracing website.
This is edited and managed by John Lingard, a former colleague whom I rate as one of the most astute journalists I have worked with over the last 30 years.
John could easily be placed in any environment to cover any type of news and he would do it professionally. In some respects, he is a wasted talent.
But the point of this story is not to highlight any particular website because it could have been launched even on this blog, but the fact that these websites must be respected as viable news sources.
I shook my head when I read a recent reference to them as "gossip websites".
At my last political check, free speech and democracy are still part and parcel of our society.
All newspapers have a "letters to the editor" section. Are all those contributors spouting "gossip". Of, course not.
Opinions, within reason, are vitally important to a thriving democracy.
But these websites also provide news and break news which unfortunately the Courier-Mail often doesn't have the space or the immediacy to accommodate.
Anyway, what's wrong with some healthy competition between the print and electronic media.
Remember when there were three newspapers in this city … the Courier-Mail, Telegraph and Daily Sun. It provided a stronger news base and a diversity of opinion.
So, just because you don't like something you read on a website, don't demand its closure.
Remember that freedom I was alluding to earlier applies to not reading something if it offends you.
Now to accept Facebook and Twitter … well, one step at a time!
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I was reluctant to make comment on the Cleveland Bay issue until watching the vision and reading the stewards' report.
I've done both and I have little doubt all four runners in question were denied a fair start.
Let's look at the evidence. They ALL draw alongside each other in barriers 13 to 16 on a rarely used part of the track at the 1200m start.
Connections of ALL of the quartet make application to be declared non runners.
But the sting is in the Stipes' report which makes reference to each of these runners having "slipped" at the start.
By their own admission the stewards declare they slipped … they weren't slow out or checked at the start ... they ALL slipped.
So the stewards' panel obviously believe that it was a coincidence that ALL four runners SLIPPED at the start.
Enough said.
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There was a fair amount of discussion on whether Tattsbet pulled the right rein in making the seventh race at Doomben a jackpot trifecta race.
I think they did.
It was one of the biggest fields and hardest races of the day to assess so value was always going to be in the mix.
There is the other school of thought to go to a smaller, better class race where the result is more apparent and you can "play" the exotic harder, albeit for a much smaller return.
But it's all opinion. In the end, it's how the punters vote which provides the final answer and they bet nearly a quarter of a million on it.
And it's heartening to see Tattsbet support a "local" meeting rather than going interstate which understandably happens when the autumn and spring carnivals are on.
It's like last month's Queensland Cup. The run-of-the-mill punters aren't purists and they couldn't give a toss whether the race lacked class or not and again voted in its favour by making it one of the highest holding races of the day.
Until next week.
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