Ben Knight reported this story on Sunday, June 29, 2014 07:01:00

ASHLEY HALL: The World Cup is called the greatest show on earth. It's certainly the biggest sporting event on earth, and for the past three weeks, ABC correspondent, Ben Knight, and cameraman, Dan Sweetapple, have been immersed in what sounds like a reporter's dream job.



But it's not without its difficult days and at this World Cup, some of them were far more difficult than anyone could have expected.



Ben Knight, now back in the ABC's Washington Bureau, filed this report.



BEN KNIGHT: For someone like me, who's what you might call a general reporter, jumping into the world of sports journalism is always a bit of an adjustment.



And at this World Cup, it was more true than ever.



It should really be no different to any other kind of news. A story is a story, and sport uniquely provides the kind of storylines that you'd probably kill for every other day of the week.



Every day, there's drama, emotion, there are surprise twists, and often, there are just really interesting characters.



But as my colleague David Mark says, sport is really just theatre.



And it's something that really hit home for both of us while covering this World Cup in Brazil and it's something we talked about a lot during our assignment - for reasons that I'll explain shortly.



First up, you may not realize it but sports reporting is a totally different beast to what I'll call regular news. It has its own rules, its own norms - and rules and norms that just wouldn't apply in any other kind of reporting.



And you can really see it at the press conferences. There's a convention in regular news that journalists use a reasonably formal style when they're asking questions of people. It establishes a kind of separation, a little bit of independence - you don't call the Prime Minister 'Tony' for example, you certainly don't call him 'Tone'.



But in sport, it's strictly on a first name basis - Ange, Mile, Timmy, Matty. It's a very matey atmosphere and it's a bit jarring, but you do get used to it.



But away from the news conferences, when the players have disappeared back into camp, that bonhomie can evaporate very quickly because the people who manage the media appearances of the players and the coaches are also very different beasts to the press secretaries and media flaks of the real world.



In regular news, there's a general acceptance that journos and flaks are going to have the odd disagreement, and from time to time have a frank exchange of views. But everyone's pretty thick skinned, and the relationship usually survives, because there's a job to be done and at the end of the day, both sides need each other.



In sport, it's far more one-sided.



Here's an example.



At the last Socceroos training session in Brazil, the team's families were having a kick around on the pitch to say goodbye to it, and instantly, all the TV reporters who were hanging around jumped because most of us had the same thought - these are great shots, these are probably going to open most of our television stories on the news tonight.



And on a Groundhog Day assignment like the World Cup, I can't tell you how valuable it is to have something that looks just a little bit different from the same old pictures of training that we were shooting every day.



None of us could work out why we hadn't been told about it.



They were beautiful pictures, they were good for us, they were good for the Socceroos, they were good for Australian football, and the team's media manager, Dave Mason, was out there on the pitch with them. He didn't stop us so there was no problem with us filming it.



A short time later 'Maso', as everyone calls him, walked off the pitch.



I asked him why he hadn't let us know and if there was going to be another picture opportunity like that, could he perhaps give us some warning. He didn't directly answer the question. What he actually said was if I didn't like it, he could kick us out and that was the end of story.



Well, of course, I didn't like it but it's pretty hard to cover training from outside the ground. So we sucked it up and we trundled on.



And that's the world of sports reporting. Access is everything, and the power lies with those who control the access and the accreditation.



So like I said, it's a bit of an adjustment.



But that adjustment got particularly difficult, in fact, almost impossible, on the day of the Socceroos' final match against Spain.



When I woke that morning, I checked my phone and the first news I read was about the long prison sentences that had been handed down to the three Al Jazeera journalists in Cairo - Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy, and Baher Mohamed.



And I felt sick.



I've never met Peter Greste, but like a lot of others, I've been following his case. But like many others, I had naively assumed Egyptian authorities were about to release them, that they'd been simply going through the motions of a ridiculous trial to sound some kind of warning to the foreign press.



Of course, it didn't turn out that way, and I can't remember when I've been so angry. And this case has a particular resonance for me as someone who's reported from Egypt many times and doing exactly the kind of stories that these three men were doing. But even if I hadn't, it hardly matters.



What mattered that morning was that suddenly I felt stupid going out and reporting on a football game - even a World Cup match.



And I know that other Australian reporters felt the same because it was the first thing we talked about when we bumped into each other outside the stadium that morning - everyone shocked, dumbfounded, and everyone very, very angry.



But the World Cup wasn't going to take the day off and the job still had to be done.



And even if I wasn't in the mood for football, there were plenty of others in Brazil and Australia who were. It was my turn to try to put things in perspective.



There will always be sport at the end of a news bulletin, sometimes at the top. It's our great diversion. It balances our lives.



And even on the days of utter tragedy, we can find relief, consolation, sometimes inspiration, sometimes distraction in the stories from the playing field.



And someone has to tell those stories.



This time it happened to be me, and to a lot of people, that might make me the one of the luckiest people in the world and they would be correct.



But it wasn't an easy day and to be honest, it still doesn't feel quite right.



This is Ben Knight back in Washington DC, for Correspondents Report.

