Don't believe the hype

Steve Kilgallon's fatuous outburst in last weekend's Sunday Star-Times underlines why journalists mustn't get too close to boxing promoters.

Kilgallon, nursing some kind of grudge over a Peter Williams column in the Herald on Sunday in February, seemed particularly piqued about Williams' questioning of the PR-style promotion given the fight by the Fairfax Sunday newspapers early in the piece.

"In fact, it was his own paper - among many - that ignored this fight until, like King Canute, they had to accept the tide was coming in ...", thundered this remorseless reporter, who then went on to damn stablemate Sunday News by saying that his own paper had consistently broken "the biggest stories" about the fight.

Presumably this wasn't one of them: 'Hasim Rahman to fight in NZ', said the SS-T on July 26: "Hasim Rahman will become the first recognised world heavyweight boxing champion to fight in New Zealand after agreeing terms to take the lead undercard bout on the David Tua-Shane Cameron contest," wrote Kilgallon.

Rahman didn't, as revealed by the Herald on Sunday. That's what happens when journalists suckle on the teat of a boxing promoter. A dash of cynicism and reality are healthy qualities for journalists, particularly where boxing is concerned. A sense of history is also useful. King Canute is often misquoted, as Kilgallon did. Canute did the throne-in-the-waves thing to show his courtiers that he couldn't stop the tide and was thus not as powerful as their constant flattery suggested.

Kilgallon's column came on the same day as our fifth birthday; HoS is now comfortably the Sunday paper with the most readers north of Taupo. Oh, and we sold thousands more copies last weekend based on coverage of the Tua-Cameron fight.

So we'll leave Kilgallon to nuzzle into the bosom of those milk-feeding him and to worry about the encroaching tide.

We'll just get on with the job.