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When readers can’t tell fact from fiction, that’s the fault of the mainstream press.

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Image for When readers can’t tell fact from fiction, that’s the fault of the mainstream press.

One of my favourite aspects of this job, and it always has been, is that you never quite know what you’re going to get on any given day. You don’t know which articles will take off and which ones will flop like a fish out of water.

Sometimes, it’s easy to predict if something will do well when there’s a hot topic, or I can offer a unique perspective on a situation. These pieces tend to perform consistently well. Yet even with experience, a lot of it comes down to luck.

This week, I posted an article that turned out to have the highest number of hits of the year. It likely drew more views than anything I posted last year too, and while I thought it would do reasonably well, I didn’t expect it to smash all the records.

It pulled in three times the numbers of anything else I’ve put up in the last nine months. And oddly, it wasn’t a piece I was particularly proud of or thought was overly clever. It was a satirical piece, sure, but I’ve written much better and much funnier.

It was the Keith Jackass article—the one linking Brendan Rodgers to the Hearts job, quoting an unnamed Hearts official, and, as usual, quoting a Celtic insider who may or may not have the initials PL. It followed the same basic structure as all the Keith Jackass pieces, which are built around utterly ridiculous ideas, the sort you can’t believe anyone would take seriously. And yet …

The last time I wrote a Keith Jackass piece was after Kiev knocked the Ibrox club out of the Champions League, and that article claimed Celtic was at the centre of a UEFA match-fixing investigation involving not just the Ukrainian government but NATO and the White House. The only thing factual in that entire piece was Biden’s Secret Service codename being ‘Celtic.’

That may have been the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever written, and that’s saying something. These articles are intended to spoof the worst tendencies of the sports media, exaggerated to extremes. Yet no matter how absurd I go, there are always some people who believe they’re real.

In In the Name of the Father, there’s a scene where Paul Hill, played by John Lynch, describes how he named random people in his police confession to demonstrate how outlandish the accusations against him were. “I named everyone I knew who was not in the IRA,” he said. Yet the authorities took him seriously. It’s a bit like that with these articles—no matter how out-there I go, some readers think they’re reading genuine reporting.

At first, that frustrated me, and it frustrated me a bit over the last couple of days. But aside from a couple of responses which were over the top and veered into foaming at the mouth I let most of them slide. Because I realised that part of the reason those articles drive such huge numbers is precisely because of their absurdity—and the fact that some people genuinely believe them. The thing is, I’m no longer going to blame the readers for that.

It’s not their fault they can’t tell satire from reality.

This is the media environment they’ve been raised in, where some actual stories are every bit as absurd as my parodies. I once published a real Keith Jackson article under the Jackass byline because it was so dumb it could’ve passed for one of my intentional spoofs—and it did. Most of the regular readers didn’t spot the difference.

I spend a lot of time criticising the Scottish press, and today’s no exception.

This is my fifth article on the subject, and it feels like a summation of all the rest. We live in a media culture where I can find four reasons in a single day to take the hacks to task. They inspire my imagination to its wildest extremes, and they create an audience of readers who genuinely can’t tell the difference between the spoof and the reality.

In a healthy media environment, this might lead to some introspection. But in Scotland, there’s no accountability in the press. They don’t hold each other to account, and there’s no one policing the garbage that gets printed. Stories get repeated and spread, even if they’re wrong. If one outlet reports a mistake, the rest just follow suit rather than correcting it.

You might remember that there was once was a time when they didn’t do that. If The Record ran a story that turned out to be wrong The Sun would crucify them for it. If The Sun got something wrong The Record would mock them mercilessly. It kept people semi-honest. It kept professional standards above the subterranean level. No more though.

Take the nonsense about how Cerny was going to shoot the club from Ibrox to the Europa League final that I highlighted earlier. It’s not journalism; it’s fiction. Cerny never said anything of the sort. That was a journalist jamming words into his mouth or twisting those he actually said in order to generate the story the hack wanted, not to reflect what actually happened.

These journalists have repeatedly done this to Celtic managers and players, and there’s no pushback. Then you have people like Keith Jackson himself, more interested in serving their own egos than delivering truth to their readers. His latest attack on Craig Whyte, for example, paints Jackson as the hero when he was the one who wrote that puff piece about the “Motherwell-born billionaire” that helped Whyte get his hands on the club in the first place.

That ridiculous article inspired the Keith Jackass series in 2017, that and a bunch of others besides. But when I said down to write the first of them it was the “Motherwell born billionaire” story I had at the forefront of my mind, and it remains the perfect example of how far our press corps has fallen. Because Jackson isn’t unique. He’s not even the worst of them. That distinction falls on the Ancient Embarrassment who writes in The Sunday Mail.

But you don’t have to look terribly far to see that they are just examples. The media is full of these people.

Take Gary Keown; he had the audacity to suggest last season that Brendan Rodgers wasn’t a success at Celtic in his first spell, despite winning every domestic trophy he competed for. I could’ve copied that word for word too and slapped it under the Jackass byline, and readers would’ve thought it was a spoof. I certainly did when I first read it.

The latest Keith Jackass piece was inspired, as many of them are, by nonsense that was actually in the papers, specifically by two articles linking Rodgers to clubs where there aren’t even managerial vacancies, and if the press is going to get away with that, they might as well link him to every vacancy that does actually exist. Hearts was the obvious target for the satire.

Since posting the article, I’ve seen plenty of comments from people who believe it’s real. That’s not their fault. It’s the fault of a media that, for years, has fed them increasingly ridiculous, fact-bending, reality-breaking stories. The same media that still promotes the Survival and Victim Lies and where writers and broadcasters who know what actually happened still use words like “relegation” when they talk about those events.

These journalists play fast and loose with the facts, and all of them misuse the word “investment” in a way that seriously makes me angry. They understand what the word means, but they still won’t apply it in the correct manner.

Today many of them are cheering on “investments” at Hearts and Hibs that, if anything, make those clubs more vulnerable in the long term; we surely don’t need to look too far back to recognise that depending on Other People’s Money is not a sustainable model for Scottish football. Yet the risks are obvious, and it astounds me that the press can’t see it.

These people have a lot to answer for. Many of the problems in our game today are directly attributable to the incompetence and dishonesty of our press corps. And the sad thing is, it’s not getting better. It’s getting worse.

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10 comments

  • Scud Missile says:

    So Tom English the Irish man who works for BBC Scotland has resurfaced after hiding under the covers since sevco took that right good SCUDDING from us,is now pushing for the cash to be splashed at ibrox.

    He doesn’t say where this cash is to sourced from or who to bring it in just as long as they appear with the money and challenge Celtic.

    Now he last time that was tried the previously klub from ibrox went to the graveyard,this one is heading in yhe same direction.

  • Clachnacuddin and the Hoops says:

    I’m just glad that I do not and never will put a penny in their (The Scummy’s) direction and bloody well won’t either going forward…

    But I very much appreciate James, you furnishing me with all the pathological lies they spread on a daily basis about ma beloved Hoops and please keep giving me these blatant lies (I certainly cannot call it information)…

    Then I can give my opinion on your excellent forum and get my anger about The Scummy’s off ma tits in a public Blog…

    And feel pretty awesome about mercilessly mocking the tramps into the bargain !

  • Mr Magoo says:

    James, if any readers think that the jackass narratives are real.

    They must be completely and utterly feckin retarded.

    Total fuckwits

    Candygrams for all the mongos out there

  • SFATHENADIROFCHIFTINESS says:

    Unfortunately James, it’s not just in the coverage of Football that their readership is being let down.
    But rather its the extreme partisan nature of its coverage of Politics that has really served its readership and Scotland badly.

    The rabid anti SNP, anti ScotGov and anti devolution stance across all titles and Broadcasters is a Democratic outrage.
    The outright lies and perversions of fact are disgraceful. ‘Journalism ‘ does not exist in Scotland anymore. Our ‘National’ titles are just an extension of the Right wing Media in England that props up the Monarchy, and the obscenely undemocratic, Westminster farce of a Political system that condemns the vast majority of the population to ignorance of what is condoned and perpetuated in their name.

    Scotland is somewhat unique in that the strong underlying ‘Protestant’ influence of the Scottish Masons and O.O. has created a state within a state here, where a minority of the largest Religious / Cultural grouping has become the ‘Staunch’ defenders of the Scottish Establishment and it’s continued association within the larger British Establishment.

    When you consider the partisan News, and Current Affairs output on BBC Scotland TV/Radio it’s not really a surprise that it’s Sports Coverage and Football in particular is fronted by assorted Unionist, ex Rangers, bigoted buffoons.

  • Nick66 says:

    James, there is a phrase I see often, it’s the hope that kills them. However, I’m reminded of a phrase that may be relevant to the whole mindset across the Clyde. It’s regarding the survival myth.
    It doesn’t take a lot of strength to hang on, but It takes a a lot of strength to let go.

  • Nick66 says:

    Apologies James, , I forgot to name the source. John C Watts I believe.

  • harold shand says:

    Nonsensical headlines for click bait articles that are full of utter sh*t

    That’s all I see nowadays in the Daily Record etc

    • Clachnacuddin and the Hoops says:

      Best that ya just see it walking past in a shop Harold…

      That way – one doesn’t aid them financially in any whatsoever way –

      Better still The Celtic Blog reports their utter shit to us all for free !

  • Yorkshire Bhoy says:

    Hacks just deliver what people want to read for the most part… because it sells papers/generates clicks and that’s what pays all their bills.

    If an individual doesn’t have the necessary analytical skills or critical thinking, then that is the fault of the individual and the education system (…and maybe a bit pf parental upbringing deficiencies).

    They are probably also the type of dumb-ass who is prone to being scammed as well!

    Now what club/fanbase fits that mould? Mmmmmmmm…

  • Fat mike says:

    Investment at hearts and hibs actually is investment. They want a results by the way of return, no matter results on the pitch. If in January hibs have a striker that’s scored 20 goals and they need him to fire them into Europe or keep them up he’ll be at Bournemouth before the fireworks have stopped. Jackson the other night on that hotline actually said ‘that’s our job to get these answers and ask these difficult questions they wont answer’ then read between the lines and made up the answers himself as if it was fact! A once proud profession is long gone as far as Scotland is concerned

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