M is for Media
The mainstream media in Scotland is a big part of everything that’s gone wrong with the game.
They are complicit in much of the scandal I’ve written about here and elsewhere, characterised by their ignorance, their biases, their cowardice and their sheer laziness. They are hand-fed dogs, who bark only on command. They are neutered. They are weak. They are gutless. They are a disgrace to the name journalism.
And if they were doing their jobs I wouldn’t be doing this.
Any list of their most egregious offences would be too long for this article.
Their greatest hits include the persecution of Neil Lennon (“he brings it on himself”; it including death threats, bombs being sent to his home and the club, attacks in public and whilst doing his job and enough sectarian bile to drown a Russian tank division all the time, every time, whenever he steps out onto the touchline or onto the park); ignoring decades of sectarian singing and bigotry at Ibrox; the promotion of the Survival and Victim lies; a total unwillingness to engage with the fans on the issue of SFA reform; their “succulent lamb” culture; their promotion of hatred; their anti-Celtic editorialising; their shameless promoting of men like Dave King … I could go on.
But it’s their complete unwillingness to do even the most basic research that sees them embarrassed again and again and again.
The Craig Whyte episode – the “billionaire” with “wealth off the radar” as Keith Jackson called him – is perhaps the worst of them, but it was by no means the only humiliation suffered by the mainstream press as a consequence of their blind acceptance of PR and self-spinning.
As the Ibrox clubs could not have gotten into such a mess without the SFA, the governing bodies would never have engaged on their own self-destructive course had the media been awake and on the job. The MSM should have been minding the people’s business … instead they were shilling nonsense for whoever had, or wanted, the Ibrox keys.
They never scrutinised any of them, nor pressed the SFA to.
They continue to allow those who brought our game to the brink of disaster to get away with it.
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