It’s not a crime for a Celtic blogger to use a mainstream media outlet to carry our message.

The other day, my good friend Paddy Sinat over at 67HailHail got himself a little bit of media coverage when he was invited onto a BBC Sportsound radio show for a wee chinwag with Tom English and Ian McCall.

Now, they had a bit of fun at his expense; just before the show went live, McCall made a ludicrous suggestion about the valuation of Arne Engels—but otherwise, they attempted to have a serious discussion.

It’s perfectly obvious who the smartest kid in the class was when you listen to it, and that was Paddy. Simple as that.

We have a journalistic class in this country which is very arrogant—and I’ll get to that subject in a longer piece later on—but they view the bloggers with a certain amount of contempt. Well, believe me, the contempt is mutual.

And in their case, I think it’s somewhat misplaced, because we are, in fact, as proper football observers, much better at this stuff than they are.

But I was surprised to find that, in the eyes of some people, Paddy had apparently committed some heinous offence by going on there, even thought he held his own and got his licks in, and that at times it was McCall and English who sounded flat-footed and daft. And that’s where I want to focus this article today.

We’re fan media guys. If someone in fan media wants to pursue a mainstream career, that’s up to them. But for the most part, we are fan media guys, we are partisans, and we don’t see things the way the mainstream media does.

A lot of us are a hell of a lot better than some of the mainstream media at analysing and interpreting the issues facing our game. That’s not an idle boast. That’s a fact. But our roles and responsibilities are entirely different and separate.

The minute you become a mainstream media personality, you cross a line, and you have a responsibility to be neutral—or at least to offer a neutral perspective. And I can hear the laughter already, because we all know not many of them are capable of doing that. Certainly, neither English nor McCall is capable of it.

I don’t know why our fans call into Radio Clyde. I’ve never understood it. I don’t know why some of our fans call the Record Hotline—I understand that even less. But I’ve occasionally seen our fans go on mainstream media shows and not only give a good account of themselves, but prove to be far more articulate and far more intelligent than the people they’re on there with.

And I’ve applauded that every single time.

See, this all comes back to something I’ve said before—I don’t hate the mainstream media. I actually grew up revering it. I grew up revering journalism as a profession. I grew up revering journalists; they were among my heroes.

Two of them brought down an American president.

But I’ve got to be honest—I’ve grown out of that admiration in recent years.

I hate what the mainstream media has become—a repository of clickbait, of rumours and gossip, and for the unscrupulous, a means of spreading disinformation and lies. I hate how lazy so many mainstream journalists across different parts of the business have become. They don’t do their jobs.

So why should we get on the backs of people from our own community who, when asked to appear in or on mainstream publications or shows, actually do it—and show these people up?

Why should we get on the back of someone like Paddy, who can handle himself against these people, doesn’t embarrass himself, but rather makes them look foolish—makes them look and sound flat-footed, ignorant and slow?

If the mainstream media wants to give some of our guys a platform to talk sense and bring some reality into the public discourse, then I say more of it.

You’ll remember when the media used to frequently interview Ibrox fan media guys, right? That didn’t turn out so well.

You had guys like Chris Graham—who they even appointed to the board over there, before he lasted a full 24 hours and had to resign for his Islamophobia.

You had guys like Craig Houston, who the media made a celebrity for a very brief time. Did you know he got charged last week for using his podcast to racially abuse a Labour councillor from a Muslim background?

That one did make the papers—some of them, anyway. Many simply referred to him as “a podcaster” without going into any detail about the fan media publications he used to write for, or the book he wrote, or the media pals that he’s got.

Do you think Paddy’s ever going to turn up linked to a scandal like that?

The greater the profile they give to guys like us, the more it embarrasses the mob across town—and the more the mainstream media itself gets held to proper account.

So why’s Paddy getting stick for going on there?

He deserves praise for going on. He deserves praise for giving us a good name, and for providing a positive version of our fan media. He’s not trying to carve out a career in the mainstream press—he’s simply using that vehicle to carry our message.

And I say more of it.

He shouldn’t be getting stick for that. Nobody should be wondering why he’d go on the BBC. It should be obvious. We complain all the time that the BBC Sports studio is filled with ex-Ibrox players. Well, this weekend, that studio had on one of our own. And he was in there fighting our corner and defending our cause.

It’ll be a cold day in hell before I criticise somebody for that.