From December PA Sport will stop taking copy from its regular snooker stringers from early next month and will instead its in-house reporters and the website of the sport’s governing body, World Snooker.
Media Guardian reports that the agency said that will use quotes, statistics and match reports from World Snooker, with some additional reporting.
This has caused concern in the snookering world with the chair of the Snooker Writers’ Association George Riley writing to PA to express his outrage.
“Would PA take England soccer coverage from the official FA website? Manchester United match reports from [Manutd.com]? No other sports would even entertain this idea,’he wrote.
“Worldsnooker.com is a corporate website that does not give an accurate account of what happens at tournaments. Any controversy is basically played down or even covered up.”
World Snooker said: “PA is not going to lift everything from our website. The information that will be provided to PA is the same as would be provided to any credible media agency or newspaper on request.”
PA said that the decision to use World Snooker “as a source of information … does not affect our impartiality” and added that it will order freelance copy if a big story breaks at a snooker tournament.
A spokeswoman said: “The Press Association is dedicated to covering snooker and we have no plans to scale down our coverage.”
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