Lickspittle Journalism

[badboygolf16v]

The mainstream English speaking cycling press have been a part of the problem of doping in cycling for a long time.

Here's one of the main culprits at the moment, Will Fotheringham's latest article.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/18/tour-de-france-frank-schleck-drugs

Brendan Gallagher of the Telegraph is another Wiggo ***

Rest assured, were Brailsford to hold his seminar later this year (which I doubt he will) Fotheringham and Brennan will paint a terrible picture of the attendees who dare to question Team Sky.

What is the motivation for this kind of journalism? Patriotic stupidity? Hero worship? Financial or benefit-in-kind payment?

At least Twitter allows direct and publicly viewable criticism of these clowns.

On a positive note, there are journalists like Jeremy Whittle and Richard Williams who present a balanced view. I am sure their views are tempered by the threat of being barred from Sky press conferences.

I don't know what the answer is.. It just gives me the right hump!

 

[Benotti69]

It is part of the omerta. Journalists (are they really) believe they will get better access if they write these ***articles.


Real journalism is hard to find these days. Twitter and blogs where people are not scared to call it as they see it are of more use to people than the mainstream media.

 

[Bonkstrong]

Apart from being thoroughly bland, what's wrong with the article?

 

[Mongol_Waaijer]

Apart from being thoroughly bland, what's wrong with the article?

The claim that Wiggins is at the forefront of a clean era, simply because he wrote an article in the same paper explaining why he wouldn't dope.

We now know that anyone with a family and children who lives in a small town would never dope, and that the UK has no doping culture.

 

[roundabout]

The last sentence says it all.

Where's the bucket?

And to think I used to like The Guardian once.

 

[Susan Westemeyer]

Further use of that word will result in immediate suspensions.

And if you don't know what it is, don't ask.

Susan

 

[Bonkstrong]

It is part of the omerta. Journalists (are they really) believe they will get better access if they write these C**ksucking articles.


Real journalism is hard to find these days. Twitter and blogs where people are not scared to call it as they see it are of more use to people than the mainstream media.

By that I presume you mean journalism that makes Sky out to be a dirty team? The problem with that is there is very little evidence or substance that can be used to write an article on without becoming a laughing stock.

Or would you be happy with a piece that questioned the hiring of Lienders etc? Even as a massive Sky fan I would love to see that being written, I wholeheartedly agree than his hiring was not wise without fully disclosing the reasons why in the public domain first and then inviting someone like Kimmage along with them to oversee things from our point of view. The reasons given since his hiring are not acceptable in my opinion.

 

[rhubroma]

It's either unsupportable ingenuousness or willful deceit.

We live in two worlds, as I've said before--the real world, which is mean, depressing and ultimately deadly, and the world of such patriotic journalism, which is thoroughly false, though it is regarded by most people as the ideal world. If you deprived people of this patriotic journalism, if you ripped it our of their hands and took it off their computers, once and for all, you'd deprive them of more or less everything. Hence, there's nothing people cling to so much, nothing they rely on so much, as patriotic journalism. Patriotic journalism is their salvation. What they demand of this patriotic journalism is an ideal image of themselves, and they will agree to anything that produces this image, even the most dreadful distortion. It never strikes them how appallingly they compromise themselves.

 

[Bonkstrong]

The last sentence says it all.

Where's the bucket?

And to think I used to like The Guardian once.

Vomit inducing, really??? What do you want him to say? What more can he do?


(If I were answering my own question I'd like to see Kimmage on the Sky bus for a season)

Releasing blood values would have very little positive effect mainly from the armchair haematologists making wild claims. We have several armchair doping experts who have catagoricaly stated he is doping because he beat somebody with a broken wrist in a TT - hardly compelling stuff.

 

[rhubroma]

For all its massive impact and exemplary sentence, the most likely source for Contador's clenbuterol positive was a contaminated food supplement, suggested the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The test results suggest a "cleaner" Tour de France, at least compared with the darkest days of the noughties and late 1990s, quite possibly the result of the ban on the use of syringes across the board

One doesn't need to be a doping expert, but only to have followed the sport over the past couple of decades and been reading, to know that the highlighted parts are inanities that deliberately (or ingenuously - which, in this case, is far worse) work toward pulling the blinders over peoples eyes like the poster above.

 

[roundabout]

Vomit inducing, really??? What do you want him to say? What more can he do?


(If I were answering my own question I'd like to see Kimmage on the Sky bus for a season)

Releasing blood values would have very little positive effect mainly from the armchair haematologists making wild claims. We have several armchair doping experts who have catagoricaly stated he is doping because he beat somebody with a broken wrist in a TT - hardly compelling stuff.

Really. How about asking questions that need to be asked instead of regurgitating Wiggins's column as a sign of his cleanliness.

 

[Roude Leiw]

The phenomenon can be watched in any sport in any of the mass papers of any country. Take a star in a particular sport (which is a minimum popular, not some outsider sport like archery) and the press will start following the hype (and actually often create most of it) without questionning a lot. Why? It sells newspapers, its that simple. Investigative journalism, if there are indications of wrongdoing/doping, not simply shooting because you can which questions the victories is not welcome because it kills the golden goose, the new hero of the country with whom even the head of state wants his picture to be taken.

 

[the big ring]

I'd modify that to include "asking then printing what someone does not want".

 

[L'arriviste]

Yeah, but they print the talking points and some of us don't want that printed.

 

[sniper]

well then it's time for you guys to start improving your german reading skills.

 

[UlleGigo]

I'd modify that to include "asking then printing what someone does not want".

No you won't modify Orwell.

 

[Paco_P]

What is the motivation for this kind of journalism? Patriotic stupidity? Hero worship? Financial or benefit-in-kind payment?

I think jingoistic nationalism is the main culprit.

 

[blackcat]

Brendan Gallagher of the Telegraph is another Wiggo ***

Rest assured, were Brailsford to hold his seminar later this year (which I doubt he will) Fotheringham and Brennan will paint a terrible picture of the attendees who dare to question Team Sky.

What is the motivation for this kind of journalism? Patriotic stupidity? Hero worship? Financial or benefit-in-kind payment?

mirror of self, projection, identity.

How many sports journos are living out their dreams on the pitch, but sans athletic talent?

How many (of us) trawl sports forums, taking either side of the equation, similarly so, feeling betrayed or inferiior <channel moi>

Not Leveson, the issue to trawl over was Chilcot, and it died on the vine, as the fleet street hand wringers and Rusbridger got all po-faced.
how can you expect a sub culture, a niche that trades in myths and deception, tell the truth, when the entire nation is weeping over Millie Dowler (thats a metaphor btw) and not being concerned with the conflagration in the ME and central asia. As McChrystal said "we killed a whole lotta (innocent) people". But we can prosecute some ****stanis for bowling no balls for exotic bets.

CHILCOT. Not Fotheringham.

Yeah, ok, its a cycling forum and you were asking the question why Fotheringham wont ask "THE question", (you want answered). Well, cos this is not how we act. If the serious questions arent asked, why do we wanna ask if Wiggo stuck a hypodermic in his but cheek.

Fotheringham is a Cambridge boy eh, he will know how the vested class rules

 

[blackcat]

UK has no doping culture.

No it does not have a doping culture. But pro sport does. And they have been summoned into an altogether different sub-culture that takes precedent.

But the regular "I was cycling in July" mom and pops, see it in black and white, and nice people dont dope, and could not fathom how their heroes are unlike themselves.

 

[blackcat]

It's either unsupportable ingenuousness or willful deceit.

We live in two worlds, as I've said before--the real world, which is mean, depressing and ultimately deadly, and the world of such patriotic journalism, which is thoroughly false, though it is regarded by most people as the ideal world. If you deprived people of this patriotic journalism, if you ripped it our of their hands and took it off their computers, once and for all, you'd deprive them of more or less everything. Hence, there's nothing people cling to so much, nothing they rely on so much, as patriotic journalism. Patriotic journalism is their salvation. What they demand of this patriotic journalism is an ideal image of themselves, and they will agree to anything that produces this image, even the most dreadful distortion. It never strikes them how appallingly they compromise themselves.

^oui
vapid is life.
...our humanity determines the questions we ask

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Benotti is right. Most journalists believe, some from experience, that if they start asking too many questions they will be cut off from access to the riders. So yes, it's part of the omerta in a sense.

As an aside, I distinctly remember back in 1999 when LA was winning the Tour and questions arose about doping. No one in the American press it seems would even utter a single question about it. Even Davis Phinney was on Nightline saying this story should be about Lance comeback from cancer, not doping.

So, some has changed in the last 13 years, but not that much really.

 

[Benotti69]

well then it's time for you guys to start improving your german reading skills.

It is time for you start improving your translating skills

 

[Benotti69]

Benotti is right. Most journalists believe, some from experience, that if they start asking too many questions they will be cut off from access to the riders. So yes, it's part of the omerta in a sense.

As an aside, I distinctly remember back in 1999 when LA was winning the Tour and questions arose about doping. No one in the American press it seems would even utter a single question about it. Even Davis Phinney was on Nightline saying this story should be about Lance comeback from cancer, not doping.

So, some has changed in the last 13 years, but not that much really.

David Walsh talks about it where if any journalist was seen by Bruyneel to be talking to him was immediately blacklisted from Armstrong interviews.

Walsh got used to sitting on his own or with the other blacklisted journalists

 

[2008885]

It's either unsupportable ingenuousness or willful deceit.
We live in two worlds, as I've said before--the real world, which is mean, depressing and ultimately deadly

Are you OK? You do sound depressed.

 

[sniper]

It is time for you start improving your translating skills

but seriously, the number of critical, well-informed articles on doping in german press (including the bigger national newspapers) is striking.
That's not to say they're unbiassed. Yes there is a negative bias towards cycling (and perhaps towards spain, but who can blame them?).