The Record’s Latest Story About Ibrox Is Cover For Another Shameful Episode.
The Record has an odd piece up tonight, a pro-Ibrox article about how they are the fifth highest rated ground on TripAdvisor.
What is the purpose of a story like that? Who does it serve?
Why is something that’s been in the public domain since January 13 suddenly a story?
An article praising Ibrox as a place to visit?
That’s odd, isn’t it?
That’s an unusual thing to be making the papers. So where did the story come from?
Could it be because this weekend there was yet another story about how an ethnic visitor to the ground left in disgust, and was later pushed to tears when he visited one of their pubs only to be subjected to further racist abuse?
Is that the reason why Ibrox is suddenly being highlighted as a great place for neutrals to visit?
You get cynical when you’ve been in this game for a while.
You also get smart.
The racism story was in the papers earlier, having happened this weekend, and suddenly here we have a story about what a great place Ibrox is for a visit. You don’t need to have been a blogger for a decade to realise that those two stories are connected, and that the paper is doing Ibrox’s bidding here.
Honest to God, The Record has some reputation for assisting them with their PR.
What stories like this do, of course, is blow smoke instead of making the club confront the real problem.
Which means that the problem gets worse. Which means that it never goes away.
Bobby Nwanze, who is an independent sports journalist, went to visit their ground for the Stirling Albion game at the weekend and was subjected to racist abuse.
When he retreated to an Ibrox bar to finish the game he was subjected to more.
The Record itself wrote that story today, and so did a number of other outlets.
It is another shaming episode for all concerned.
Is it a coincidence that on a day when their club is making the news for all the wrong reasons that Gavin Berry has a fluff piece up tonight digging out selective information from a piece on an obscure site, money.co.uk, which was published eleven days ago?
Who exactly pointed Berry in that direction?
Was he just randomly surfing the net and stumbled upon it?
Are we really supposed to believe that?
This isn’t a legitimate news story, it’s inconsequential guff, but there it is trending, and you get the feeling that it’s doing so because someone called Berry or one of his superiors and asked them to do a little whitewashing.
That club is a disgrace, and so are its media acolytes who refuse to tackle the problem and instead do this stuff.
That club will never improve its image as long as these people continue to pretend that nothing over there is wrong.