Congratulations friends in Celtic.
Yesterday, The Daily Record was forced into a grovelling apology for its lamentable, despicable story saying a Hillsborough campaigner had accused Celtic of insensitivity over the “announcement” that a safe standing area was being opened at Celtic Park.
Not only did this story emerge exactly as I had expected – with the campaigner being called out of the blue by a hack and asked a loaded question and offered no clear idea about what such a scheme involved, but the hack went much further and used a Peter Lawwell quote from over a year ago, inserting it into the story as if it was a fresh one. For all we know, he read that quote out to the Hillsborough campaigner over the phone, passing it off as new.
This gave the appearance, to the casual observer, of Celtic having literally just dreamed up the scheme this week.
It would be all too easy to say that the journalist simply made a mistake. Perhaps someone even fed him the Lawwell quote without explaining the context … I’m not going to let him off that easily. He doesn’t belong in his job if he can’t check out basic facts like that. No, this wasn’t simply a piece of fishing; it was, as I feared, all too clearly a cynical attack on Celtic itself, naked, undisguised, an attempted hatchet-job of the worst kind.
Following the publication of my article, I heard from the individual at Celtic, who I’d written to earlier in the day prior to putting the piece up. I had asked him if Celtic’s wish was for the matter to be left alone. With The Daily Record piece coming out in the afternoon, I had posted the piece because it simply couldn’t wait any longer; these people had to be challenged on what they’d done. The person I’d written to had already read my article, and had no problem with it.
I knew at the point how furious Celtic must be.
The following day, Paul67 at CQN published a scorching editorial on the matter, which laid into The Daily Record in particular. Between the two articles, Celtic fans were well aware of what The Record had tried to do and Celtic were privately (and not so privately) seething. A short time after CQN’s fantastic piece, The Celtic Supporters Association released its own statement reaffirming the fans long-time boycott of The Daily Record and attacking the story in the harshest language.
Of the two articles which attacked our club, The Daily Record’s was easily the worst because they used exactly the same Peter Lawwell quote out of context and their writers were perfectly aware that the Safe Standing Area had been in the pipeline for many months, if not longer.
Their article was nothing more than an anti-Celtic torching, brazenly biased. It is without doubt one of the most abhorrent pieces written about Celtic in any publication outside of the gutter-rooms of the Sevco fan boards, since Thugs & Thieves, in the same paper in 2011.
I am 100% certain that the club contacted the paper privately and demanded the apology, but it was you, all of you who read the piece on this site or on CQN or the Association statement, and who shared those and put those on Facebook or Twitter or commented who really let these people know that it was not only a step too far but crossed a line they ought never to have gone near. Our club’s private representation to the paper carried enormous weight because of the collective outrage of our supporters, and that’s your victory.
There was a time when the paper would have done something like this and then simply ignored Celtic’s request for a retraction.
Thugs & Thieves was not simply a case of using out of context quotes; it was a story containing little more than barefaced lies. The paper stuck with that story all the way to a libel case before, under the cosh of damages and a searing court judgment, they had no choice but to grudgingly admit that fact.
Nowadays they can’t get away with that stuff.
The bloggers and the Celtic Twitterati are all over them, all the time.
Enormous credit – and not for the first time – has to go to the CelticResearch Twitter guys, who were the first to highlight that the Lawwell quote used in both articles had been cut and pasted from a press release last year, and it was that fact which removed any defence The Telegraph or The Record had for the stories they ran.
We nailed them on this. You, me and all the rest of the Celtic Family.
We didn’t give them an inch, and their shame has spread far and wide as a consequence. This story was trending on Liverpool fan sites over the last couple of days; they know the media up here tried to fabricate some kind of scandal and drive a wedge between the two clubs.
The shame of our media is a national disgrace.
Don’t be surprised if eminent media commentators like Roy Greenslade end up highlighting it for the national titles.
But for now, enjoy the win.
You did this.
Well done to you all.