Gary Keown has admitted that the mainstream media has been guilty of duping football fans with their flimsy coverage and obedient reportage from managers.
It is quite an admission from someone who has spent a lifetime in the reporting business with Today, The Sun, the Sunday Mail, the Scottish Express and now the Mail on Sunday providing Keown with a platform.
The days of limited TV highlights, post match quotes delivered with a nod and a wink and embargoed quotes used when suited to keep the news cycle ticking along.
These days managers and reporters find their comments assessed instantly across social media with contradictions thrown up as double-speak is exposed.
Fan media feeds off social media while Twitter accounts such as Lint can compare the ‘inconsistencies’ of referees while highlighting how one favoured club can go on runs of 64 and 75 SPFL matches without having a penalty awarded against them.
The mainstream will run a mile away from those sort of stats while they dig deep to convince their dwindling band of readers that James Tavernier is the Greatest Defender in the World.
There wasn’t a peep in the mainstream about John Beaton’s foul count in the April 7 Glasgow Derby (10-23), the extent of their analysis barely goes deeper than passing on whatever message Dermot Gallagher trots out on a Monday morning.
Summing things up while hoisting the white flag, Keown explains in the Daily Mail how Philippe Clement can’t get away with the tricks used by Walter Smith (Sir Walter), Dick Advocaat (the Little General) and Alex McLeish (big Eck).
The days of explaining away dreadful performances with absolute piffle and expecting those words to drift off into the ether unchallenged are long gone. You can’t get away with that these days.
Everyone sees the full 90 minutes with their own eyes. The proliferation of fan podcasts, social media and supporter messageboards mean that every action and every word is analysed to the nth degree, in a manner unencumbered by the politics and reserve of many mainstream observers. The world, in short, has moved on.
Supporters, as much as the football persons inside the tent hate to admit it, are intelligent. More clued-up than ever.
They know that Dujon Sterling is the one telling the truth when he says Rangers have been ‘s***’. They know when they are being duped. And a large rump of them, paying plenty for season books and whatnot, don’t like it.
Keown delivered a scathing assessment on Clement’s recent media waffling as his side’s challenge for the SPFL title has fallen off the rails.
At the moment the Scottish Daily Mail and Scotsman are making a number of jobs redundant with sport in the firing line despite coverage of football one of the traditional drivers in newspaper sales.
When Henry Winter can be made redundant by The Times no traditional newspaper job is safe, Winter will have plenty of broadcasting and freelance offers to keep him busy but in Scotland it seems that if you aren’t onboard the BBC gravy train your employment prospects are as bleak as Micky Beale’s hopes of a return to football management.
CLICK HERE for media silence as Clement drops the S-bomb.
