Why The Scotsman’s headline on Celtic’s Hillsborough tribute seems dishonest and a little obscene.

Sometimes I get infuriated over things that other people would consider immaterial, inconsequential, unimportant. Perhaps this is one of those occasions. But when I saw The Scotsman’s headline today—that the two Glasgow clubs had united and come together to honour the Hillsborough dead—I wondered just what the Hell that meant, and in what way we’d supposedly “set aside the rivalry.”

I don’t want anyone to get the idea that this article is about point-scoring. It isn’t. It’s about journalistic integrity and the truth in reporting.

What surprised me about that headline, initially anyway, before I read the article, is that Celtic has always paid its own separate, personal, club tribute to the Anfield club and its fans on this date. That’s been a tradition since the day it happened. And as everyone knows, we were the first club to play Liverpool in the aftermath of that horrible disaster. Celtic has been at Liverpool’s side all the way through these years.

So, I was a little puzzled as to why our club would have chosen to do some kind of joint tribute with someone else. I wasn’t annoyed. I wasn’t bothered. I was just surprised—and puzzled. I wondered what form this united front would take. I wondered what “setting aside the rivalry” between our club and theirs to pay tribute to Hillsborough would actually look like.

I mean, I guess there are a number of forms it could take. I just wanted to know which one, and if there was a particular reason why we had chosen to do some kind of unified tribute rather than the one we normally do. As I said, I wasn’t angry about it. I wasn’t aggrieved in any way. I was just curious.

“The two Glasgow giants come together on the 36th anniversary of the disaster to pay tribute to the 97 supporters who tragically lost their lives,” said the subheading—and again, that clearly suggests a joint approach. What else does “come together” actually mean when everything is said and done?

The first paragraph of the article emphasises the same point. “Celtic and [the Ibrox club] have united to pay a heartfelt tribute to Liverpool Football Club on the 36th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, when 97 supporters tragically lost their lives.”

It’s right there. It’s crystal clear. They’ve united—and there’s a reference to a heartfelt tribute, not separate tributes, but a tribute. One singular thing.

And again, giving the writer the benefit of the doubt, I read the piece—because I was keen to know why, instead of doing what we always do, which is releasing a statement expressing our heartfelt support and sympathy on this date, we had supposedly chosen to do something jointly with the club across the city.

Which, of course, we haven’t actually done.

Because all that’s happened here is that we’ve released our annual statement on social media, where fans can come on and pay their own tributes, and express their own support for our brothers and sisters in Liverpool. It’s nice. It’s simple. It’s dignified. It’s traditional. And we want them to know that, on this day, we’re thinking of them, and we support their continuing campaigns for justice.

Separately from that, the Ibrox club has released its own statement, expressing its own sympathy and support for the 97 and all at Liverpool FC. Just as simple, just as dignified, and wholly individual.

So this has nothing to do with the rivalry between our two clubs. It has nothing to do with “setting that rivalry aside.” The rivalry shouldn’t be part of this conversation. Our club has paid its annual tribute. Their club has paid a tribute. That doesn’t mean anything—except that we’re all human beings and all part of the football family. And at a time like this, the whole football family is thinking of the same thing. The same people. The same victims of a terrible and preventable tragedy.

And I don’t know why this upsets me so much.

Perhaps it’s the gut feeling that the writer—and his newspaper—used that tragedy, and the suggestion of some form of “united” tribute from Glasgow, in order to get hits, and clicks, and traffic for their website.

And I don’t know how you feel about it yourselves, but to me that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

That makes me feel like they’ve behaved in a way that’s pretty scummy. That this day, and all the things connected to it, and all the emotions swirling around it, didn’t matter to them—except that they saw a way to generate traffic from both our fans and the fans of the club across the city.

And not only is it an insult to every one of us who clicked on that article to read it—curious about why the two clubs had done something together when they’ve always done something separately—but it feels like a violation of the Liverpool fans too. It feels like a violation of Liverpool’s sombre day of remembrance, because all the publisher saw in it was an opportunity for themselves.

I’m probably overreacting here. But whatever way you look at it, that headline—and that reporting—is fundamentally dishonest. And once you conclude it’s fundamentally dishonest, it doesn’t take long to start asking why someone would do that. Why someone would make that suggestion. And I can’t think of any reason except that they got a little bit of traffic out of it.

If that’s the case, then a lot of people in our media ecosystem really have to look in the mirror and ask themselves what it is they’re doing—and what business they think they’re in. And whether there’s any low they wouldn’t stoop to in order to make a little money.

In the end, maybe this isn’t a big deal. But it wasn’t an accident either. That was deliberately crafted to give a certain impression—an impression which has no basis in fact at all. And which, however you dress it up, has only sought to exploit this particular anniversary.

Most other anniversaries? I think you could have got away with it. But not this one.

Not this one—because it was another media publication, of course, another of our mainstream titles, which didn’t just slander the living, but slandered the dead too.

And if you’re going to use today—and those people—in a cynical and dishonest manner, then you’re little better than the scumbags at The Sun, whose own newspaper screamed from its front page of “The Truth” when it was a tissue of absolute lies.