Media blackout: Zalgiris Kaunas refuses Lietuvos Rytas reporters accreditation

October 12, 2010

Not welcome in Kaunas

Here’s one way to address biased media coverage, though BallinEurope wonders if it might not also be labeled “akin to censorship.”

In what appears to be an effort to take away some of the newspaper’s power to report on their age-old rivals, Žalgiris Kaunas has this morning announced the extreme measure of refusing to speak to Lietuvos Rytas reporters during the 2010-11 Lithuanian Basketball League (LKL) season.

Žalgiris officials (and fans, naturally) have maintained that for years L. Rytas outlets have offered extremely biased coverage on Žalgiris basketball and have simply made facts up at times.

Defending back-to-back LKL champions Lietuvos Rytas are sponsored by a concern that runs the country’s largest newspaper (literally translated as “Lithuanian Morning,” from which the team is named) and other media outlets.

Žalgiris will not be issuing accreditation to Lietuvos Rytas journalists and television reporters, and its players and coaches will be forbidden from responding to questions from L. Rytas employees as well as from giving interviews.

Update. This just in from — who else? — Lietuvos Rytas online: LKL general director Linas Gilys has promised an investigation into the matter, despite league bylaws granting individual clubs the right to award or deny media accreditation basically freely.

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This post was published on October 12, 2010
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Comments: 3
  1. Morzikei
    14 years ago

    the Zalgiris fans should be grateful that Rytas used to write about the team getting into bigger and bigger debts… despite what they said and believed (probably due to Zalgiris-“friendly” media maintaining that everything was well), eventually the millions of LTL of debt came out into light and the team almost went into bankcrupcy…

    I guess romanov wants the “friendly” (which in fact means a horribly biased view by sport1, degrading Lithuanian football and everything to do with Rytas) media to maintain the status quo on how everything’s fine…

    the bad thing – the mentality of the Kaunas folk means they’ll believe everything if it’s wrapped in a shiny wrapper… unlike Rytas fans, who themselves use the “back ache” term when referring to possible coach changes, thus making a jab at Vainauskas (although this last change wasn’t followed by such comments due to the different nature than previous firings)

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  2. G
    14 years ago

    just for the fairness sake, one should also mention that Lietuvos Rytas owner was the first who ordered not to give any interviews to Romanov’s Sport 1 TV channel, just he did not do it in such a public and explicit fashion. Overall we as fans don’t like restrictions to the media (which may lead to poorer coverage, fewer pictures & videos, etc.), but in this particular case Romanov clearly has support of the majority…

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  3. Morzikei
    14 years ago

    except that sport1 already has a horrible reputation of being biased, overly blunt and outright insulting towards romanov’s opponents, whereas I’ve yet to see LRTV reflect on Zalgiris in any other way than neutral (sometimes even not doing enough to sell their club to the audience – unlike sport1, where it’s not ads, it’s just outright propaganda (like the one that got Zalgiris players smirking or embarrassed and Rytas players practically laughing as the Kaunas mayor started ranting about how it was Zalgiris who got Lithuania the gold of 2003))

    “the Lithuanian A lyga – tournament of the worst calibre… the Lithuanian Football Federation – a bunch of idiots ruining the great game of football… Vainauskai – destroyers of Lithuanian unity and Lithuanian basketball” – just a short summary of what sport1 has to offer… even in the days of Navikauskas Zalgiris-friendly media only tried to cover up the debts – no ouright attacks against the club and owners like these days (spreading rumours of Rytas having debts and such)

    Rytas’ only non-neutral retorts – Nerijus Kesminas’ (football and recently basketball commentator and journalist, extremely critical of romanov) highly ironic articles – which bash only romanov and show pity for the team ruled by such a paranoid megalomaniac… who already was censored back in 2007, when romanov pulled some strings to have LNK not put him on the air and instead have a when unexperienced Budraitis comment on a match going on in Kaunas from a studio in VIlnius (while Kesminas himself was at the stadium)

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