Earlier in the week, I wrote here and over on Fields of Green about how Help for Heroes had been forced to demand that a site with links to the Sevco fan organisation Club 1872 remove from public sale shirts and other merchandise carrying their logo and the image of Lee Rigby.
Since I posted those articles I’ve been waiting for the media to pick up on this story, because it’s an important one for a number of reasons.
Yet the wait goes on.
Not one single media outlet has reported on this matter.
Not one newspaper bothered to mention it, far less look into it and seek to understand what exactly happened here.
Is this the only country in the world where the media blatantly ignores news?
Hey, I know that this article will get hits. Maybe a lot of hits. I can’t believe that The Scotsman wouldn’t get more, or that The Record’s online edition wouldn’t have got a thousand shares. I think this subject merits an article. Why don’t they? What’s their problem?
Even a basic piece, 300 words, simply laying out the facts as we know them. A good typist could produce that in under a minute. If there was research involved, how hard would it be? Help for Heroes has a website. Their statement is on there. James Doleman’s article is freely available, as is my follow-up over on Fields. How long would that take?
Ten minutes? Twenty?
That’s a coffee break.
They could have had a Kit Kat brought to them and produced a piece whilst they ate the thing. It’s not exactly an all-day job, is it?
Are these people scared? Of what?
This isn’t a speculative piece, or a punt. It doesn’t involve inventing anything. No guesswork is needed.
The website in question had those materials on sale for £24. Of that money, £10 went to Club 1872. How do we know that? Cause it was right there on the website. Did they have permission to use the Help for Heroes logo? No. Help for Heroes confirmed that. Did they clear this with the family of Lee Rigby before they slapped his image on some cheap tat? No.
All facts. No fatty add-ons. No need for elaboration or expansion. Just the simple stuff.
No effort required.
No special legal analysis needed.
What makes this a news story above and beyond the fact that a Sevco supporter organisation has taken advantage of a charity by appearing to claim that it endorsed its cheap goods is that some of Club 1872’s money has already found its way into the coffers at Ibrox. Money from those transactions might well end up keeping the lights on over there, and that’s a major problem for the club and those who work within it, because they hold themselves up as having a special relationship with “the troops”. I’ve long argued that it was a fraud, nothing but a political stick to try and beat our own club with, but they do also appear to take this “bond” seriously.
That makes it news.
It’s sickening and exploitative and shameful and it was worthy of at least one critical story in the papers.
They must have better things to write about. The Daily Record has at least two journalists following Celtic around Slovenia. One of them has spent the week posting his diary; virtually unreadable, brain-numbing guff that slags the locals, makes stupid jokes about our team, mentions beer every paragraph and could easily have been written in less than three minutes and sent to the newsroom by text message in the middle of Happy Hour.
This is what they regard as worthy of publication.
They really are beneath contempt.