The Media Must Behave Responsibly In Promoting Brown’s Management Game At Ibrox.

Last week, the media went out of its way to promote the possibility that Neil Lennon’s son might end up coming up against the Ibrox club.

This did not surprise a single one of us, and in particular when it came to The Record. That was, after all, the paper which once posited the question as to whether the taxman or our former manager was the person their fans hated most.

That they thought this was something suitable to joke about when Lennon had received death threats from those same fans is telling about how despicable they are.

The weekend game went exactly as many of us had feared. Lennon Junior was avalanched in bile. The media has been dead silent on it, even as FIFA rages against racism and bigotry abroad.

The gutless wonders of the Scottish media know this simply pushes the problem onto the shoulders of the next poor guy who has to endure it … and cometh the hour, cometh the man. Ayr United drew them in the cup and in a twist no fiction writer would have dared pen the lower league club has just appointed Scott Brown their manager.

Even as the discussions about that were ongoing, Ewan Murray appeared on the Graham Speirs podcast with Stephen McGowan to discuss, amongst other things, Ibrox’s pursuit of Lawrence Shankland, Derek Adams ludicrous comments and Celtic’s January transfer business. Somewhere in there, Ayr United were discussed as was the news that Brown was in the running.

That gave Ewan Murray his inroad to launch a highly personal attack on our former captain, which he attempted to legitimise through promoting the idea that even neutrals dislike him.

Murray, in fact, is just a bile-soaked Hearts fan who frequently rants against Celtic. When he was pressed on whether it was simply because Brown had played for Hibs, he made the astonishing claim that he’d actually forgotten all about that … and you know what? That’s not hard to believe. Hating Brown just because he wore our green shirt is reason enough for some.

You hardly need to think too deeply about this subject to recognise that there are some in the media who will hype Brown’s return to Ibrox as an encounter not between two clubs but between Brown and the people who hate him and who he hates right back. Whether that’s even true or not will not matter. There are some in the press corps who will market this match on the basis of the most awful emotions, and in doing so paint a target on his back.

Yet Brown is not going there as an ambassador for Celtic.

He’s going there as the manager of Ayr United, he’s going there as a guy who wants to better himself in his career. For him this is just another game, albeit an important one because it is a cup tie.

It would be a gross insult to him and to his club to turn this into a freak show, but that’s what some in the press will do.

But they will also make it a dangerous environment for Brown to work in, and you don’t need to be a genius to recognise that fact.

This is the club which told Chris Sutton it could not guarantee his safety, at the stadium our own board refuses to accept match tickets for because of the risks to our supporters. Brown will be on that touchline essentially alone, and the narrative is already taking shape that anything that happens he will have in some way brought on himself.

This is not a situation that the media should be pouring petrol on. That some will undoubtedly do so anyway is both depressing and shameful.

Is it too much to ask that they show a modicum of common sense, and to act responsibly? Is it crazy to believe that even in the febrile atmosphere in which lunatic writers and broadcasters attempt to turn the dropping of a single point into a moment of crisis at Celtic that this time, just for once, they don’t sensationalise or dramatize but adopt a measured stance?

Many of them will. Many of them, no matter what their sporting loyalties are, recognise that they must watch what they say less they inflame the situation.

Others will charge straight in there just for a few extra readers or to stir a controversy with their own name at the centre of it.

This is inevitable because some of them just cannot help themselves and Brown has haters in the press box who would love to see him have as uncomfortable an afternoon as possible.

But this time, this one time, I hope they act at least semi-sensibly.

Nothing is going to stop the Peepul making it as horrible a day as possible, but you know what the media is like; there are almost certainly going to be articles regurgitating every single time Brown wound them up or made a comment which their fans didn’t like, there will be all sorts of references to famous moments in notorious games … all of it to heat things up.

Some of them might even attempt to dress it up as a compliment; “Brown is steady under pressure” kind of stuff. But who needs a compliment like that? Who would want that who could just go to his work that day and concentrate on the job at hand?

It surely cannot be too much to ask.

That they think before they publish some inflammatory piece?

That they don’t hype this as anything other than two teams going head-to-head for a place in the next round? Hell, there’s even a way to make it all about the romance of the cup and about a young manager in only his second job with his shot at glory.

We know what depths this media is capable of plumbing.

We know how low they can go.

Wouldn’t it be great if just this once they aimed high, and did something that made you praise their sense of decency and accountability, rather than marvelling at their recklessness?