Scribes boycott FIH conference again

New Delhi: Sports journalists today boycotted the FIH press conference for the second time in the week in protest against the mishandling of media accreditations ahead of the hockey World Cup which gets underway here tomorrow.

No sooner the International Hockey Federation president Leandro Negre started to address the media at a city hotel today, a journalist from a foreign news agency stood up and raised his reservations on the distribution of media accreditation. He also complained about the harrasment which the covering mediapersons were facing on the pretext of security concerns. After listening patiently to the scribe, Negre apologised to the reporters for the mismanagement. "On behalf of FIH, I apologise to you all for the inconvenience caused to you. We were aware about all your problems and are trying our best to solve them," he said. "But at this moment, security is a big issue in India. And frankly I tell you all the accreditations is not in our hand. Being the FIH president, I myself is facing a lot of problems in entering the stadium," he added. However, the FIH chief`s words did very little to calm the agitated journalists who then walked out of the conference leaving a handful of foreign reporters inside. Despite repeated pleas, the scribes refused to return after which the world body decided to move on with the briefing along with the foreign media. Incidentally, it was for the second time in the week journalists walked out of an FIH event. Earlier on Wednesday, the scribes boycotted a World Cup sponsor announcement function, which was attended by FIH communications manager Arjen Meijer in protest against the ban on the coverage of team`s training and practice sessions. PTI