Our club has made a virtue of doing things in a certain way.
Most of the time I find myself in total agreement with that way. When it comes to the football strategy I’ve had my doubts, and I’ve said so. Those were eased to an extent when the club appointed Brendan Rodgers as boss. The logic of that move has been proved in our performances on the field.
I’ve been away for a few days, but I’ve followed the news closely in my absence and I’ve been pretty unsurprised by The Daily Record’s shabby attempt to make us share the “blame” for with-holding ticket money from Sevco.
I also note, with amusement, the shocking behaviour of their supporters in Germany, and the near total silence in the press about it. This is especially galling when one considers that the behaviour of a small number of Celtic fans at Parkhead is what is being offered in half-hearted mitigation for Sevco’s refusal to pay its bills.
That club did not meet its responsibilities to us. We sent them an invoice for the damage caused by a scum section of their support. They didn’t pay it.
We found a way to get our money that didn’t involve tricks or deceit and – thankfully for them – didn’t require a court order. Instead of accepting that The Daily Record sought to justify in some way the behaviour of that moronic element of their fan base. The wrecking of toilets was “provoked” then, as their degenerate element was at Hampden. Therefore we should let them off with their behaviour.
This is the logic of the paper. This is the moral test it sets before it offers one iota of criticism of them. Can it somehow be spun as someone else’s fault?
In this case as in many other cases the blame falls on their fans, and the reaction of their club in the aftermath. Nobody else. The rest is just window dressing, as the paper knows full well. It’s Sevco who come out of this looking like an embarrassment, as I said in the last article.
But it doesn’t matter what I say. It doesn’t matter what the other blogs write. We can counter the lies of the media by offering the alternative view. We can hammer punch back at them with the truth so that our supporters aren’t misled by false news or outright lies. But the blogs have never had the reach or the ability to make the media stop this outright.
That power belongs to the club, and the club won’t use it.
How many more times is the Daily Record going to do this to us? How many more examples of it do we need before it becomes as clear to the people who work inside Celtic Park as it is to those who attend every second week? This newspaper will do everything it can to smear us, the whole lot of us.
It’s clear which core audience it panders to. It’s clear that it derives most of its information and the direction of its articles from a PR firm which might as well adopt the RFC crest as its official standard, because that’s who and what it represents; they are the mouthpiece of Sevco.
When it comes to that paper Celtic fans are no longer interested in weasel words or half measures; they want to know why this is allowed, why this newspaper, which plainly lines up as our enemy, is allowed access to Celtic Park.
Ban every one of its writers, tomorrow, and don’t allow them entry until there’s a recalibration of attitude across the board.
This is not censorship. We’re not telling them what they can and can’t write. They can still write their anti-Celtic dirge. But they will no longer be able to do it as credentialed members of the press corps. These people aren’t journalists anyway, and theirs isn’t a newspaper, as this blog and others have pointed out time and time again. They are stenographers, cut and paste professionals, more akin to fanzine writers, and because they are hopelessly and openly partisan in their coverage have no right to be considered impartial.
Celtic wouldn’t credential Follow Follow Magazine or the Rangers Standard would they? So why are we pretending these professional Celtic baiters are any different?
I’ve heard our club try to explain away its “position” on this several times and I’m not satisfied with the answer and you shouldn’t be either. Because Daily Record hacks have been banned from Celtic Park before, just never for writing lies about our fans or players or manager. But at least two have written articles critical of Peter Lawwell and had their access suspended because of it. Why is that considered more offensive than some of the other stuff they write, after which its “reporters” are still given full access to the press box?
The bloggers aren’t going to stop standing up to these people and calling them out on their garbage, but why is that our job in the first place? This particular paper can’t be trusted to play with a straight bat and they no longer make any secret of that. We know it and they’re perfectly happy for us to. Because it doesn’t matter what we say, only what the club does.
Signs of life, please, Celtic.
It’s past time for banning this rag from the ground.