Media amnesia and reactions

[Freddythefrog]

How is "black box thinker" Syed doing ? Have we heard much from him in recent days ? Lately he had been doing a good job on twitter defending Sky and Sutton and lots of his new friends. I loved his line "the surprising truth about success".

He may well get exactly what he wished for - a surprise.

 

[Freddythefrog]

Was on the commute home tonight and listening to the Media Show on BBC Radio 4 BBC and I heard this little gem. We often argue here about minutiae, but often those with a more global perspective see through the whole charade of cycling for what it is.

The focus of the program was sports journalism and the host Amol Rajan had a variety of guests including Nick Harris from the Mail on Sunday, who has done a lot of stories about the abuse of PEDs that beset Sport.

The conversation got to discuss access by journalists to the stars of sports and some other guy was blathering on about how wonderful it was to be able to get good access the England football team right now and how the journalists were able to find out more about their personalities of the stars and write about them more personally and weren’t these wonderful stories about their personalities?

Then was the kick back. The program makers had it dialled and knew exactly where “increased access” could take sports stars and their management in a PED riddled world.

Step forward and take a bow, cycling journalists……………..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b85m94 around 15.50

Amol Rajan
They were compromised; in many cases they got very close, they got very excited by access and therefore they didn’t say things that would damage their best contacts. Isn’t that the truth of what happened?

Nick Harris
Absolutely, in cycling, the amount of cycling journalists who must have known about all kinds of things going on in cycling for many years and, let me tell you, still do, and still aren’t writing it, is actually shocking.

William Fotheringham, Richard Moore, Daniel Friebe & Lionel Birnie – their whole careers written off in about 30 seconds, in an excellent pithy take.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Re:

Was on the commute home tonight and listening to the Media Show on BBC Radio 4 BBC and I heard this little gem. We often argue here about minutiae, but often those with a more global perspective see through the whole charade of cycling for what it is.

The focus of the program was sports journalism and the host Amol Rajan had a variety of guests including Nick Harris from the Mail on Sunday, who has done a lot of stories about the abuse of PEDs that beset Sport.

The conversation got to discuss access by journalists to the stars of sports and some other guy was blathering on about how wonderful it was to be able to get good access the England football team right now and how the journalists were able to find out more about their personalities of the stars and write about them more personally and weren’t these wonderful stories about their personalities?

Then was the kick back. The program makers had it dialled and knew exactly where “increased access” could take sports stars and their management in a PED riddled world.

Step forward and take a bow, cycling journalists……………..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b85m94 around 15.50

Amol Rajan
They were compromised; in many cases they got very close, they got very excited by access and therefore they didn’t say things that would damage their best contacts. Isn’t that the truth of what happened?

Nick Harris
Absolutely, in cycling, the amount of cycling journalists who must have known about all kinds of things going on in cycling for many years and, let me tell you, still do, and still aren’t writing it, is actually shocking.

William Fotheringham, Richard Moore, Daniel Friebe & Lionel Birnie – their whole careers written off in about 30 seconds, in an excellent pithy take.

So Amol Rajan - the guy who thought it was a good idea to rebroadcast Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood speech' recently - allows one of his guests to scapegoat one sport, and doesn't pull him up and point out all the journalists who get too close to footballers to properly report the sport, or all the journalists who get too close to track and field athletes to properly report to sport, or all the journalists who get too close to golfers to properly report the sport, instead he allows the mis-representation to happen, and you're suggesting this should be applauded, somehow?

The silence induced by access is not confined to one sport. FFS, it's not even confined to sport, you can see it on the business pages, the politics pages, every bloody page. It hardly needs a media studies graduate to point this out, now does it?

 

[Benotti69]

Re: Re:

Was on the commute home tonight and listening to the Media Show on BBC Radio 4 BBC and I heard this little gem. We often argue here about minutiae, but often those with a more global perspective see through the whole charade of cycling for what it is.

The focus of the program was sports journalism and the host Amol Rajan had a variety of guests including Nick Harris from the Mail on Sunday, who has done a lot of stories about the abuse of PEDs that beset Sport.

The conversation got to discuss access by journalists to the stars of sports and some other guy was blathering on about how wonderful it was to be able to get good access the England football team right now and how the journalists were able to find out more about their personalities of the stars and write about them more personally and weren’t these wonderful stories about their personalities?

Then was the kick back. The program makers had it dialled and knew exactly where “increased access” could take sports stars and their management in a PED riddled world.

Step forward and take a bow, cycling journalists……………..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b85m94 around 15.50

Amol Rajan
They were compromised; in many cases they got very close, they got very excited by access and therefore they didn’t say things that would damage their best contacts. Isn’t that the truth of what happened?

Nick Harris
Absolutely, in cycling, the amount of cycling journalists who must have known about all kinds of things going on in cycling for many years and, let me tell you, still do, and still aren’t writing it, is actually shocking.

William Fotheringham, Richard Moore, Daniel Friebe & Lionel Birnie – their whole careers written off in about 30 seconds, in an excellent pithy take.

So Amol Rajan - the guy who thought it was a good idea to rebroadcast Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood speech' recently - allows one of his guests to scapegoat one sport, and doesn't pull him up and point out all the journalists who get too close to footballers to properly report the sport, or all the journalists who get too close to track and field athletes to properly report to sport, or all the journalists who get too close to golfers to properly report the sport, instead he allows the mis-representation to happen, and you're suggesting this should be applauded, somehow?

The silence induced by access is not confined to one sport. FFS, it's not even confined to sport, you can see it on the business pages, the politics pages, every bloody page. It hardly needs a media studies graduate to point this out, now does it?

If only this was not the clinic and only cycling related we could spend the rest of our lives picking through the microscopic hairs of this

 

[Freddythefrog]

Re: Re:

So Amol Rajan - the guy who thought it was a good idea to rebroadcast Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood speech' recently - allows one of his guests to scapegoat one sport, and doesn't pull him up and point out all the journalists who get too close to footballers to properly report the sport, or all the journalists who get too close to track and field athletes to properly report to sport, or all the journalists who get too close to golfers to properly report the sport, instead he allows the mis-representation to happen, and you're suggesting this should be applauded, somehow?

The silence induced by access is not confined to one sport. FFS, it's not even confined to sport, you can see it on the business pages, the politics pages, every bloody page. It hardly needs a media studies graduate to point this out, now does it?

I listened to it all. There was no scapegoating.

The point I took away was that the program was indicating that it was across all sports as exhibited by a football journalist getting very excited about new levels of access - a very contemporary event - that was then given the very fair counter that one should tread very carefully down that path as there were dangers a plenty - exhibit A - the recent history of sports journalism with respect to cycling. The aspect that was unique to sport was the abuse of PEDs. And that made it worthy of comment.

The aspect of bias in reporting even was traced to a personal level and Nick Harris was questioned about his own support of Southampton football club and how that influenced his reporting in football. It was all well balanced.

I think I can see that joint between the calf and thigh moving rapidly !

As to the Rivers of Blood speech. I listened to both the program and the in depth BBC analysis of why it was broadcast. My own view was that if anyone did take the time to listen to it, they would be a very strange person to be anything other than less racist after having done so.