Journalism – Integrity Optional

Journalism – Integrity Optional

by Kate Forrester

http://www.theanfieldwrap.com/2012/02/journalism-integrity-optional-2/

As a working journalist, I have been called all of the above at least once (but not all at the same time, usually). And I haven’t really done anything more controversial than sit in magistrates’ court and fill a single column downpage with the tale of a drunken teenager who nicked a packet of Rich Tea from the Co-op in Wrexham.

I haven’t, for instance, happily contributed to or actively encouraged the ruination of a 25-year-old man’s career based on nothing more than a questionable ruling that very few in the national media have actually bothered to question.

It’s far easier, you see, to skim read a report from a professional body and just regurgitate quotes from it. Repeatedly. Even adapt them, if you fancy it. No-one’s really going to mind, are they?

It’s not like he’s our own brave, resolute, English JT. He’s not a national treasure.

I have always been a great defender of journalists in general. This is because I know the vast majority of us work hard, for not much money, and spend a great deal of time taking flak from the general public.

A lot of it is harsh and can be pretty cutting, particularly when many personal criticisms reach you via a website comment box, with no name attributed. Sometimes we deserve all we get, because we do make mistakes. When everything you do is very much in the public domain, you have to accept you are fair game and develop a thick skin.

But hearing people – most painfully, LFC fans – say things like: “All journos are parasites” is hard for me to swallow. Firstly, I F***ing hate the term ‘journo’, but that’s just because I’m a picky little nark. Secondly, my instinct is to defend the profession I love, but for the first time ever I find I can’t.

I never thought I would become one of those people who refuses to buy a paper (the S*n aside, of course). I previously very much enjoyed my Saturday Guardian, a broadsheet I imagined would always be aligned with my general outlook on life.

Not so. In recent weeks, the paper’s absolutely woeful, shockingly biased (there’s another phrase I never thought I would use) coverage of the whole Suarez affair has had me frothing with rage much more than the Mail, everyone’s favourite foe, ever has.

At least you can attempt to laugh at rags known for their hysteria, but there are no Littlejohns at the Guardian. Allegedly. Just an astounding number of clearly anti-Liverpool writers, whose venom towards the club I have supported since I was a tiny child truly distresses me.

I cannot and will not spend my hard-earned regional news reporter’s pennies on endorsing thinly-veiled (unveiled?) attacks on our club and our city by people who have the audacity to claim they are objective.

Despite all this, we should not forget why journalism is important and why we don’t all deserve to be tarred with the same brush of moral outrage.

There is a spoof Twitter account called @SkyNewsFeed, which a few days ago claimed Luis Suarez had handed in a transfer request (provoking some amazingly moronic/xenophobic comments from its more gullible followers).

We need real journalists to verify information like this and to tell us the real story, whether it concerns the future of a witch-hunted Premier League striker or a planning application to build a block of flats on a patch of waste ground in L4.

The root of our profession is supposed to be to get at the truth and be the eyes and ears of the public.

And if all of us do our jobs as we should, the residents of Walton Breck Road will know what’s going on outside their front door, our football club will have a chance to recover from the incessant blows that have rained down on it and we may just develop a level of public discourse which can help find solutions to wide-ranging problems that go beyond the hounding of individuals.

The most telling bit for me in that is

The root of our profession is supposed to be to get at the truth and be the eyes and ears of the public.

The majority of the mainstream press lost this aspect years ago.  They became opinion papers, not newspapers.  Sadly I'm starting to see the same in local papers as well, over the last few years.  They've started to treat their readerships like fools, telling them what they should think about certain subjects, not informing them and allowing them to make up their own minds.  Critical thinking and arguing is discouraged and I can't remember when we had a paper looking at both sides of a story. 

If a newspaper started printing the news again, not opinion, or at least had articles that were balanced by having two opposing views, I may start picking one up again.  For now, I'll continue to pick up news from other sources and it's a shame that a profession that was once admired has become such a joke.

Hi, to add to this topic, I read a fantastic opinion piece written by Brentie on RAWK on English media, journalism, double standard and Hypocrisy, he is also a Lebanese and a mate of mine.

There’s a lot of thing I hate in life.

If I made a list, it would include: salads, waking up early, Beirut heat, French keyboards, Parisian people, salads, X-box controllers, dentists, cats, gyms and science fiction.

Oh, and salads.

Those would definitely be in the top 20. But they’d struggle to knock off the following from the top 10:

Hypocrisy, double standards, injustice, hysteria, discrimination ( in all its forms), bullying, agendas, fakeness and witch hunts.

All words that define the topic of my piece: The English football media.

Words alone cannot properly do justice to how much I hate them. Im sure there have been times where I have despised people more than them, but I honestly cannot recall when.

Maybe it’s because of my background. Im a Lebanese man that’s lived half of my life in London and the other half in Beirut. I have, like all of you, lived through wars in our country and region where I have seen the true face of the media revel itself. I, due to my nationality, have been part of a people demonized by the kind folk at, amongst others, Fox News, the New York Times and the Sun.
Nobody needs to tell a Lebanese person or an Arab about how the media works. Nobody needs to be reminded of the double standards, the hypocrisy, the hysteria, the hidden agendas and the bullying that form the backbone of the media’s narrative on our region.

So,  seeing as Im a Lebanese person hopelessly and passionately in love with Liverpool Football Club, it is surely without any shock that you will learn that I have absolutely reached the end of my tether with the English football media and their campaign against Luis Suarez. I am sick to death of the persecution and vilification of the flawed genius who wears our iconic number 7 shirt.
I have stayed silent in this group on this matter since the news first broke. I have held my own counsel as I’ve seen the likes of Paddy Barclay, Oliver Holt, Daniel Taylor (chief sports writer at the Manc Marca, otherwise known as the Guardian), Henry Winter, Jonathan Northcroft, Matt Dickinson and others find Luis Suarez guilty of racism before the FA tribunal even was formed. I have laughed as they wrote about how backwards a country Uruguay was, about how racist a continent South America was. I have shook my head as all their pieces reminded us of how great and just and fair and so damn equal the United Kingdom is.

Uruguay had blacks in their armies when the English was still enslaving them. They had blacks in their national teams when the English were still denying them the right to wear the 3 lions shirt. All these are facts; but you know what they say about facts: never let them get in the way of a good argument.

The campaign from the media, from the very start, was to show how just and proper the English game was. It was to show how advances a society England was. It was to demonstrate to Sepp Blatter, and the rest of the world, how much better and firmer England dealt with racism.

Nevermind that there was no evidence. Nevermind that of all the cameras in the ground, not a single one caught a single word Luis Suarez said. Nevermind that not a single witness could confirm Patrice Evra’s story. Nevermind that he’s been found by the FA before to be an “unreliable witness who has made exaggerated claims”. There’s no rooms for shades of grey, for the media everything is, forgive the pun, black and white.

The sheer hypocrisy is bewildering. The English football media decided Luis Suarez must be found guilty. He is, after all a person from a backwards country where they actually have the temerity to call a fat person fat, a short person short and a black person black. He handled on the line against Ghana (perfectly fine when Scholes scores with his hand though), he bit a player in Holland (but when an Englishman in Jermaine Defoe does the same to Javier Mascherano, an Argentine, they all go quiet) and he dives (Rooney or our captain anyone?). Of course he’s a racist.

Never once, during this entire affair, have I read a single piece detailing why Liverpool and its fans absolutely reject the findings. Not a single journalist in a broadsheet, TV station or tabloid has actually highlighted the sheer lack of evidence in the report. There’s been a total agreement between every single journalist in the English football media that Luis Suarez is a racist. You could not find any other subject in England where every single journalist has exactly the same viewpoint.

But the saddest thing is, that during this entire time, I haven’t actually read a single piece on racism. Noone has actually, when it’s the hottest topic in town, decided to talk about race and how to proceed in eradicating it. Nobody has studied why there’s so few black managers (none in the premier league), black officials (none either) or black football journalists (a single one, Darren Lewis from the Mirror). Nobody has stopped to ask why in such a multi cultural country, are they no Arabs, Indians or Pakistanis playing professional football.

Why? Because, quite simply, they do not care a single dot. The media could not care less about racism. They could not give a damn about these matters. The entire goal is to sell papers and ad space, and in the soap opera of the Premier League, Luis Suarez is a perfect villain and racism is, thanks to dear old Sepp, a hot topic. A thoughtful, analytic and detailed piece about racism will not shift papers. A picture of Luis Suarez snarling at Patrice Evra under the headline “RACIST” will.

The Sunday Times this week called Luis Suarez “South America’s most loathsome export since General Pinochet”. This is a publication that are owned by a man who finances and funds a portion of the US government who actually helped install and prop up the dictator Pinochet in office. You could not make this stuff up if you tried.

It’s the hypocrisy that does it for me. Look at the way they demonized Fabio Capello for not speaking good English. Look at how they hounded Rafa. It’s an open secret that the faces of Sky Sports, Keys and Gray, called him a “fat Spanish waiter”. Noone sees anything wrong

So next time you hear or read these journalists saying how Liverpool Football club and its manager are a disgrace to the sport, its fans racists and  that its number 7 should be deported, remember how hypocritical these people are. Remember the double standards, the hysteria and the injustices.

And never forget that the last time these people decided to bully a man and organize a witch hunt against him, forever highlighting his weaknesses and never his strengths, they succeeded in removing that man from the manager’s seat at our great club. And they succeeded, through their hidden agendas, to replace that man with a nice English gentleman, full of decorum and friendliness. A wise old man with 35 years of experience, a near spot on English and no belly in sight.

God, I hate them…
[/quot]

Some great articles here, i just wish some of the other journos had the balls to follow up stories like these, but i think that if they do they would be taking sides with a "so-called" racist at a so called racist club and they are terrified that they would be tarred with the same brush and god knows what the consequences to their precious careers would be.
I hate them all.

Some cracking pieces there, nothing that would ever get into a national though. Hate the agenda men at the papers, the Guardian is the funniest, jumping on the pseudo-moralism wagon to show how just they are by castigating a man from Uruguay as being typically racist for a South American'. That and the Leveson papers finding moral high ground.

Some great articles here, i just wish some of the other journos had the balls to follow up stories like these, but i think that if they do they would be taking sides with a "so-called" racist at a so called racist club and they are terrified that they would be tarred with the same brush and god knows what the consequences to their precious careers would be.
I hate them all.

I think that's the problem to be honest, the opinions of too many readers are governed by the papers they read. In the context of the article, as soon as anyone pops up with a different view they're instantly loathed for going against the grain and 'siding' with an alleged racist/racist club, whereas anyone with a bit of nous will realise that there are two sides to every story and neither are ever going to be gospel.

With regard to the Suarez case, too much sh*t was thrown early on and it has stuck - despite the report dispelling a lot of the bullshit. And on past form, the sh*t isn't going to go away any time soon - for Liverpool Football Club or for Luis Suarez. We just need to close ranks and support our club and our player.

Great threat and well needed.  It's a shame that the Orwellian-esque press are all too ready and (very?) willing to accept the judgement of the 'independent' panel when serious questions remain over what happened and how one player was given repeated attempts to state his 'evidence' (that changed a number of times).  To question it though, seems to fall on deaf ears.  The establishment has spoken.  Fergie is outraged.  And that is enough for many journalists.

I still have hope in time that an alternative 'truth' will come out.

"Two sides to every story....." as they say.  But in this case, there only appears to be one reported.

I think that's the problem to be honest, the opinions of too many readers are governed by the papers they read. In the context of the article, as soon as anyone pops up with a different view they're instantly loathed for going against the grain and 'siding' with an alleged racist/racist club, whereas anyone with a bit of nous will realise that there are two sides to every story and neither are ever going to be gospel.

With regard to the Suarez case, too much sh*t was thrown early on and it has stuck - despite the report dispelling a lot of the bullshit. And on past form, the sh*t isn't going to go away any time soon - for Liverpool Football Club or for Luis Suarez. We just need to close ranks and support our club and our player.

Is correct Joey, the obvious media suspects are instantly dismissable as a source of unbiased neutral newscopy and recently that particular category has all but disappeared,.
Even the Echo which was once unquestioned now comes under scrutiny, coincidentally our 'local' paper is printed now in manchester as are a good number of the national editions who have relocated there, as have the BBC.
Is it conceivable that there is a link with the geographical source of the bollocks we are subjected to daily?

DRAWBRIDGE

by Rob Gutmann // 14 February 2012 // 153 Comments

THE last time I felt anything remotely like this as a Liverpool supporter was 27 years ago.

39 people had died at the 1985 European Cup final in Brussels, and Liverpool fans were blamed for their deaths.

To this day I am none the wiser as to where precisely the true weight of culpability lay for the Heysel disaster, but I know that my club ultimately took responsibility for it, and that we as supporters remain haunted by the spectre of those events to this day.

Heysel was about life and death. It was more important than an argument between two millionaire athletes, and the loyalties of two warring tribes.

The Suarez and Evra mess, though, has come to echo 1985, for me at least, because there are parallels in terms of the sheer momentum of shame being foisted upon what felt then, and still feels now, like our family.

Modern day LFC talisman, Luis Suarez, is a racist in their eyes. Their report may say different, but their words in print and on screens show us what they think of him, show what they think of Kenny Dalglish, show what they think of us.

After Heysel we were all deemed beasts. They said there was a cancer at our core. It felt so very unfair, but not as unfair as it felt for those who had lost loved ones.

So we silently bowed our heads and accepted the penance.

Again, albeit in clearly less serious circumstances (so don’t shoot me for the analogy), they want to shame us all again.

They want us to withdraw to our fortress of self-righteousness – to man our barricades and dig in for the long siege. They want it, and they are going to get it. Well, at least I hope they are. The time for magnanimity in this affair is over. The barbarians are at our gates and the bridge has to come up. If no one likes us, then how can we care ?

Who are our royal we ? Right now it feels like it might just be a royal me, as the PR men step in and apologising and falling on swords is all the rage. I hope I’m not alone in my anger. I hope and sense that there are more than a few Liverpool reds out there who feel what I’m feeling. In fact I know there must be.

Liverpool Football Club is truly special. There, I’ve said it. I came to know it as a 10 year old living in London in the 1970s who jumped on the bandwagon and never looked back.

I wasn’t brain washed into being a red the way my lad has been, and thousands of other Scouse boys and girls have correctly been by indigenous parents. I co-opted myself into the family as a young and then still objective outsider.

When I first started going to matches I noticed how our people seemed different from their people.

We, seemed to have a different value system. When our team conceded a goal, we raised our song for our team, whilst they went mute for theirs. When our goalkeeper took up position at their end of the ground they booed and brayed at him. We applauded and saluted their man. Whilst they skulked away like wounded beasts in defeat, we stayed behind to clap their heroes if they left our home victorious. We stayed to hail them despite the hurt inside.

We were no angels, but the National Front never set up their tents outside our ground. We didn’t think that we were just marking time supporting our team until Engerlund came calling in the summer either. They were all English. We were Irish, welsh, Scots, Norwegains, Asians and everything else that they weren’t.

We didn’t have cuddly reptilian-oid mascots and giant video scoreboards. We didn’t wear replica club shirts en-masse, or sing other teams songs. We tended to keep it funny rather than cruel, but whatever the chosen war cries, ours were the loudest, the proudest, the very best. We always had our famous atmosphere. We were, we are, legend.

They think we are deluded, self pitying, bolshy, arrogant, provincial and parochial, unwashed mass of chip-on-the-shoulder has-been sentiment. They think we’ve got red sh*t in our eyes and have no chance of seeing their objectivity for what it is. We’re so partisan, so Kenny, so Shankly, so Scouse, that we can’t tell race from wrong.

They are wrong though. They have been since October last year, when their man, Patrice Evra decided to try and take us down.

Evra was cheating when he disputed a coin toss before a ball was kicked between Liverpool and United that month. He was cheating when he rolled around feigning injury after the lightest of touches from Suarez on 50 odd minutes of that game. He was cheating when he tried to provoke a fight with Suarez in the Kop goal mouth shortly afterwards, and he was cheating when he reported the same man for multiple racist abuse at the match’s conclusion.

They won’t see Evra this way.

They see him as a noble victim. They see him as the man who dared say ‘No ! Enough is enough’. They see him as a cause celebre, as an opportunity, as chance to fly a flag, to adopt a position and to don a cloak of virtue. They are also see Evra as the latest stick with which to beat us with. It feels like that anyway.

We’re paranoid of course. All football fans are. All clubs fans think they get a raw deal from the media and the wider public. As the adage goes though, just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean that they aren’t all out to get you.

What are we meant to think? Our boy genuinely feels he’s been done a mischief by their boy. Who knows the truth of that scene that Suarez and Evra played out in that six-yard-box last Autumn. Not me, not you, not us, not the FA, not them. I’m not even sure Suarez and Evra will know where the truth actually lies anymore.

We do know that Suarez feels innocent, and in the absence of sensible evidence, beyond reasonable doubt, we feel the family should back him. Kenny Dalglish understands that more than anyone. He knows what our family stands for more than most, perhaps more than anyone. He showed us that in 1989.

At 60 he is now our venerated patriarch and we rightly take his moral lead.

If Suarez feels the time for smoking the peace pipe with their chap is not yet, that it’s too soon, then surely that’s his prerogative. Being ‘the victim’ is, we are often reminded, a state of mind. As he steeled himself for a bout of unwanted hand shaking on Saturday last, Suarez clearly still saw himself as the abused. Ironic, they’ll say, as he was the one ‘found guilty’ of abusing.

They haven’t been listening to us, or Suarez, that much is evident. We’ve said he’s an innocent man. That we are convinced Evra has lied, that the FA delivered false justice. We told them clearly when we chose not to appeal, that we did so because we were tired of fighting, not because we thought our champion guilty. There was no tacit acceptance of their accusations in that stance.

They wanted him to apologise. He wouldn’t and we told them why. So, why? Why, when Patrice Evra half heartedly puts his hand forward but looks disdainfully away and to the side, is Luis Suarez expected to seek out his oppressor’s palm and humbly and submissively seek absolution?

To many of us, it looks in that moment as if Suarez has thought ‘F**k you and the lying horse you rode in on. F**k your faux victimhood, and your shameless highjacking and abusing of the ‘kick-it out’ campaign. F**k your attempt to ruin my career just because you were having a bad hair day. F**k your manipulating of the weak and opportunistic men. F**k you for labelling me as all that I despise.’

Or maybe he just didn’t fancy shaking his hand.

On Sunday 12th Feb, Suarez and our MD Ian Ayre issued statements. Suarez was unreservedly contrite and Ayre was unreservedly critical of our man.

Even Kenny said sorry for being mean to that fool from Sky. Good PR by the club, some will surely say. Maybe the men from Boston have spoken, and this is the result. Maybe they see a brand in jeopardy and have stepped in to restore order.

Maybe their course of action will prove a PR success and the fire that is burning media wide against us will now begin to burn itself out. I hope that does happen. I hope too though that behind closed doors the men in LFC suits and ties realise that for many of us the rage induced by recent events will not wane softly in the face of the blinkered sh*te.

Many of us don’t care about the PR implications for the brand and were ready for the siege. The supplies were in, we were tooled up and ready for all their crap and more.

We know we’re different and special and their scorn only reinforces that conviction. Those that join our bandwagon from all corners of the planet instinctively know why LFC matters and why, through wind and rain, it prevails, and why regardless of sporting success or failure it will remain relevant.

John Henry and his team behind our team need to decide which side of our fortress walls they wish to stand. Are they with us or them?

LFC is the greatest of brands and needs protecting Mr Henry precisely because it will never truly be branded.

LFC is an anti-brand and that’s why we like it.

In fact, that’s why, as the song goes, we F***ing love it.

^                ^                   ^ 

The very same thought concerning Hillsborough and Heysal went through my mind - wondering how the F**k can these creatures make the same obscene judgements over and over again are they totally without souls and conscience?

Why should Journalist be different to any other profesion ?.

Some great stuff in this thread, makes me feel angrier about this sh*t and somehow better with it

DRAWBRIDGE

by Rob Gutmann // 14 February 2012 // 153 Comments

THE last time I felt anything remotely like this as a Liverpool supporter was 27 years ago.

39 people had died at the 1985 European Cup final in Brussels, and Liverpool fans were blamed for their deaths.

To this day I am none the wiser as to where precisely the true weight of culpability lay for the Heysel disaster, but I know that my club ultimately took responsibility for it, and that we as supporters remain haunted by the spectre of those events to this day.

Heysel was about life and death. It was more important than an argument between two millionaire athletes, and the loyalties of two warring tribes.

The Suarez and Evra mess, though, has come to echo 1985, for me at least, because there are parallels in terms of the sheer momentum of shame being foisted upon what felt then, and still feels now, like our family.

Modern day LFC talisman, Luis Suarez, is a racist in their eyes. Their report may say different, but their words in print and on screens show us what they think of him, show what they think of Kenny Dalglish, show what they think of us.

After Heysel we were all deemed beasts. They said there was a cancer at our core. It felt so very unfair, but not as unfair as it felt for those who had lost loved ones.

So we silently bowed our heads and accepted the penance.

Again, albeit in clearly less serious circumstances (so don’t shoot me for the analogy), they want to shame us all again.

They want us to withdraw to our fortress of self-righteousness – to man our barricades and dig in for the long siege. They want it, and they are going to get it. Well, at least I hope they are. The time for magnanimity in this affair is over. The barbarians are at our gates and the bridge has to come up. If no one likes us, then how can we care ?

Who are our royal we ? Right now it feels like it might just be a royal me, as the PR men step in and apologising and falling on swords is all the rage. I hope I’m not alone in my anger. I hope and sense that there are more than a few Liverpool reds out there who feel what I’m feeling. In fact I know there must be.

Liverpool Football Club is truly special. There, I’ve said it. I came to know it as a 10 year old living in London in the 1970s who jumped on the bandwagon and never looked back.

I wasn’t brain washed into being a red the way my lad has been, and thousands of other Scouse boys and girls have correctly been by indigenous parents. I co-opted myself into the family as a young and then still objective outsider.

When I first started going to matches I noticed how our people seemed different from their people.

We, seemed to have a different value system. When our team conceded a goal, we raised our song for our team, whilst they went mute for theirs. When our goalkeeper took up position at their end of the ground they booed and brayed at him. We applauded and saluted their man. Whilst they skulked away like wounded beasts in defeat, we stayed behind to clap their heroes if they left our home victorious. We stayed to hail them despite the hurt inside.

We were no angels, but the National Front never set up their tents outside our ground. We didn’t think that we were just marking time supporting our team until Engerlund came calling in the summer either. They were all English. We were Irish, welsh, Scots, Norwegains, Asians and everything else that they weren’t.

We didn’t have cuddly reptilian-oid mascots and giant video scoreboards. We didn’t wear replica club shirts en-masse, or sing other teams songs. We tended to keep it funny rather than cruel, but whatever the chosen war cries, ours were the loudest, the proudest, the very best. We always had our famous atmosphere. We were, we are, legend.

They think we are deluded, self pitying, bolshy, arrogant, provincial and parochial, unwashed mass of chip-on-the-shoulder has-been sentiment. They think we’ve got red sh*t in our eyes and have no chance of seeing their objectivity for what it is. We’re so partisan, so Kenny, so Shankly, so Scouse, that we can’t tell race from wrong.

They are wrong though. They have been since October last year, when their man, Patrice Evra decided to try and take us down.

Evra was cheating when he disputed a coin toss before a ball was kicked between Liverpool and United that month. He was cheating when he rolled around feigning injury after the lightest of touches from Suarez on 50 odd minutes of that game. He was cheating when he tried to provoke a fight with Suarez in the Kop goal mouth shortly afterwards, and he was cheating when he reported the same man for multiple racist abuse at the match’s conclusion.

They won’t see Evra this way.

They see him as a noble victim. They see him as the man who dared say ‘No ! Enough is enough’. They see him as a cause celebre, as an opportunity, as chance to fly a flag, to adopt a position and to don a cloak of virtue. They are also see Evra as the latest stick with which to beat us with. It feels like that anyway.

We’re paranoid of course. All football fans are. All clubs fans think they get a raw deal from the media and the wider public. As the adage goes though, just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean that they aren’t all out to get you.

What are we meant to think? Our boy genuinely feels he’s been done a mischief by their boy. Who knows the truth of that scene that Suarez and Evra played out in that six-yard-box last Autumn. Not me, not you, not us, not the FA, not them. I’m not even sure Suarez and Evra will know where the truth actually lies anymore.

We do know that Suarez feels innocent, and in the absence of sensible evidence, beyond reasonable doubt, we feel the family should back him. Kenny Dalglish understands that more than anyone. He knows what our family stands for more than most, perhaps more than anyone. He showed us that in 1989.

At 60 he is now our venerated patriarch and we rightly take his moral lead.

If Suarez feels the time for smoking the peace pipe with their chap is not yet, that it’s too soon, then surely that’s his prerogative. Being ‘the victim’ is, we are often reminded, a state of mind. As he steeled himself for a bout of unwanted hand shaking on Saturday last, Suarez clearly still saw himself as the abused. Ironic, they’ll say, as he was the one ‘found guilty’ of abusing.

They haven’t been listening to us, or Suarez, that much is evident. We’ve said he’s an innocent man. That we are convinced Evra has lied, that the FA delivered false justice. We told them clearly when we chose not to appeal, that we did so because we were tired of fighting, not because we thought our champion guilty. There was no tacit acceptance of their accusations in that stance.

They wanted him to apologise. He wouldn’t and we told them why. So, why? Why, when Patrice Evra half heartedly puts his hand forward but looks disdainfully away and to the side, is Luis Suarez expected to seek out his oppressor’s palm and humbly and submissively seek absolution?

To many of us, it looks in that moment as if Suarez has thought ‘f**k you and the lying horse you rode in on. F**k your faux victimhood, and your shameless highjacking and abusing of the ‘kick-it out’ campaign. F**k your attempt to ruin my career just because you were having a bad hair day. F**k your manipulating of the weak and opportunistic men. F**k you for labelling me as all that I despise.’

Or maybe he just didn’t fancy shaking his hand.

On Sunday 12th Feb, Suarez and our MD Ian Ayre issued statements. Suarez was unreservedly contrite and Ayre was unreservedly critical of our man.

Even Kenny said sorry for being mean to that fool from Sky. Good PR by the club, some will surely say. Maybe the men from Boston have spoken, and this is the result. Maybe they see a brand in jeopardy and have stepped in to restore order.

Maybe their course of action will prove a PR success and the fire that is burning media wide against us will now begin to burn itself out. I hope that does happen. I hope too though that behind closed doors the men in LFC suits and ties realise that for many of us the rage induced by recent events will not wane softly in the face of the blinkered sh*te.

Many of us don’t care about the PR implications for the brand and were ready for the siege. The supplies were in, we were tooled up and ready for all their crap and more.

We know we’re different and special and their scorn only reinforces that conviction. Those that join our bandwagon from all corners of the planet instinctively know why LFC matters and why, through wind and rain, it prevails, and why regardless of sporting success or failure it will remain relevant.

John Henry and his team behind our team need to decide which side of our fortress walls they wish to stand. Are they with us or them?

LFC is the greatest of brands and needs protecting Mr Henry precisely because it will never truly be branded.

LFC is an anti-brand and that’s why we like it.

In fact, that’s why, as the song goes, we f**king love it.

It's a good heartfelt article and I agree with the lions share of it.

I would like to ask a question though regarding this line:

Many of us don’t care about the PR implications for the brand and were ready for the siege. The supplies were in, we were tooled up and ready for all their crap and more

At what point does it end though? Yes we know as the article states that neither the club nor Luis are racists; yet the perception of everybody but supporters says otherwise.

I don't give a rat's ass what supporters of other clubs think about us but what about that large group of global fans that follow the sport as a whole not any particular club?

We don't care about the PR implications up to what point? Up to the point where no sponsors will touch us because we turned ourselves into the pariahs  of modern football? To the point where we can't get a naming partner for a new stadium, thus no new stadium and no revenue except for our ticket sales?

We all know this stuff is garbage but sadly on a whole the world follows garbage because that is what they are fed so garbage is the norm so it must be true.

We could say that a player may not want to come here because the club broke the YNWA rule and that is truly possible. However it is just as possible if this thing continued to spiral out of control unabated some players would not want to come here because they would not want to hurt they're image by playing for a club that had "issues", not real issues mind you but issues created, supported and spoon fed to the  masses who take if for the truth.

LFC took the high-road here and many disagree with it, but at what point do you say enough is enough?

I saw some posts earlier in the week stating we would be better off sticking to our guns letting the sponsors and money leave and just sticking to our convictions no matter what, even if dropping down the the championship was the result.

Just trying to gauge feelings on this, the club owes Luis support but does the support come at any cost no matter the consequences?


Edit: Bayren is one of the biggest names and I think would be considered our peer, what would happen if T-mobile and Allianz  left because one of its players was linked to a neo-white supremicist group?...where would they be at the end of the day when the world starts calling the club and its supporters as all being nazi's?

That is the problem with all of this...the world is a much smaller place than it was 50 years ago or even during Barnes time playing, actions have implications, even though the FA report said Luis was not a racist nobody bothers to read it; as it is much easier just to get spoonfed our daily dose of the so-called truth from the media.

Hi, to add to this topic, I read a fantastic opinion piece written by Brentie on RAWK on English media, journalism, double standard and Hypocrisy, he is also a Lebanese and a mate of mine.

There’s a lot of thing I hate in life.

If I made a list, it would include: salads, waking up early, Beirut heat, French keyboards, Parisian people, salads, X-box controllers, dentists, cats, gyms and science fiction.

Oh, and salads.

Those would definitely be in the top 20. But they’d struggle to knock off the following from the top 10:

Hypocrisy, double standards, injustice, hysteria, discrimination ( in all its forms), bullying, agendas, fakeness and witch hunts.

All words that define the topic of my piece: The English football media.

Words alone cannot properly do justice to how much I hate them. Im sure there have been times where I have despised people more than them, but I honestly cannot recall when.

Maybe it’s because of my background. Im a Lebanese man that’s lived half of my life in London and the other half in Beirut. I have, like all of you, lived through wars in our country and region where I have seen the true face of the media revel itself. I, due to my nationality, have been part of a people demonized by the kind folk at, amongst others, Fox News, the New York Times and the Sun.
Nobody needs to tell a Lebanese person or an Arab about how the media works. Nobody needs to be reminded of the double standards, the hypocrisy, the hysteria, the hidden agendas and the bullying that form the backbone of the media’s narrative on our region.

So,  seeing as Im a Lebanese person hopelessly and passionately in love with Liverpool Football Club, it is surely without any shock that you will learn that I have absolutely reached the end of my tether with the English football media and their campaign against Luis Suarez. I am sick to death of the persecution and vilification of the flawed genius who wears our iconic number 7 shirt.
I have stayed silent in this group on this matter since the news first broke. I have held my own counsel as I’ve seen the likes of Paddy Barclay, Oliver Holt, Daniel Taylor (chief sports writer at the Manc Marca, otherwise known as the Guardian), Henry Winter, Jonathan Northcroft, Matt Dickinson and others find Luis Suarez guilty of racism before the FA tribunal even was formed. I have laughed as they wrote about how backwards a country Uruguay was, about how racist a continent South America was. I have shook my head as all their pieces reminded us of how great and just and fair and so damn equal the United Kingdom is.

Uruguay had blacks in their armies when the English was still enslaving them. They had blacks in their national teams when the English were still denying them the right to wear the 3 lions shirt. All these are facts; but you know what they say about facts: never let them get in the way of a good argument.

The campaign from the media, from the very start, was to show how just and proper the English game was. It was to show how advances a society England was. It was to demonstrate to Sepp Blatter, and the rest of the world, how much better and firmer England dealt with racism.

Nevermind that there was no evidence. Nevermind that of all the cameras in the ground, not a single one caught a single word Luis Suarez said. Nevermind that not a single witness could confirm Patrice Evra’s story. Nevermind that he’s been found by the FA before to be an “unreliable witness who has made exaggerated claims”. There’s no rooms for shades of grey, for the media everything is, forgive the pun, black and white.

The sheer hypocrisy is bewildering. The English football media decided Luis Suarez must be found guilty. He is, after all a person from a backwards country where they actually have the temerity to call a fat person fat, a short person short and a black person black. He handled on the line against Ghana (perfectly fine when Scholes scores with his hand though), he bit a player in Holland (but when an Englishman in Jermaine Defoe does the same to Javier Mascherano, an Argentine, they all go quiet) and he dives (Rooney or our captain anyone?). Of course he’s a racist.

Never once, during this entire affair, have I read a single piece detailing why Liverpool and its fans absolutely reject the findings. Not a single journalist in a broadsheet, TV station or tabloid has actually highlighted the sheer lack of evidence in the report. There’s been a total agreement between every single journalist in the English football media that Luis Suarez is a racist. You could not find any other subject in England where every single journalist has exactly the same viewpoint.

But the saddest thing is, that during this entire time, I haven’t actually read a single piece on racism. Noone has actually, when it’s the hottest topic in town, decided to talk about race and how to proceed in eradicating it. Nobody has studied why there’s so few black managers (none in the premier league), black officials (none either) or black football journalists (a single one, Darren Lewis from the Mirror). Nobody has stopped to ask why in such a multi cultural country, are they no Arabs, Indians or Pakistanis playing professional football.

Why? Because, quite simply, they do not care a single dot. The media could not care less about racism. They could not give a damn about these matters. The entire goal is to sell papers and ad space, and in the soap opera of the Premier League, Luis Suarez is a perfect villain and racism is, thanks to dear old Sepp, a hot topic. A thoughtful, analytic and detailed piece about racism will not shift papers. A picture of Luis Suarez snarling at Patrice Evra under the headline “RACIST” will.

The Sunday Times this week called Luis Suarez “South America’s most loathsome export since General Pinochet”. This is a publication that are owned by a man who finances and funds a portion of the US government who actually helped install and prop up the dictator Pinochet in office. You could not make this stuff up if you tried.

It’s the hypocrisy that does it for me. Look at the way they demonized Fabio Capello for not speaking good English. Look at how they hounded Rafa. It’s an open secret that the faces of Sky Sports, Keys and Gray, called him a “fat Spanish waiter”. Noone sees anything wrong

So next time you hear or read these journalists saying how Liverpool Football club and its manager are a disgrace to the sport, its fans racists and  that its number 7 should be deported, remember how hypocritical these people are. Remember the double standards, the hysteria and the injustices.

And never forget that the last time these people decided to bully a man and organize a witch hunt against him, forever highlighting his weaknesses and never his strengths, they succeeded in removing that man from the manager’s seat at our great club. And they succeeded, through their hidden agendas, to replace that man with a nice English gentleman, full of decorum and friendliness. A wise old man with 35 years of experience, a near spot on English and no belly in sight.

God, I hate them…

Did the post you quoted really say that the author hated Parisian People, then went on to also list Hypocrisy and Discrimination? I'm struggling with this one......just really hoping it's bad sarcasm? 

We all have to understand,that any anti-Liverpool propaganda,has it's roots in the late 1960's.United had just wone the Champions League,but Liverpool was the centre,of youth culture,so that victory,was not,a nationwide event,after all; Celtic had done it,3 years earlier.Then under the Boss and Sir Bob,we had the audacity to dominate the league for the next 20 years.After the great Sir Matt Busby,there were a sucsession,of useless managers,culminating in the current gobsh*te.We cannot blame him for our lack of success,that is down to our Manager and players.They will be judged at the end of the season,and I hope that Kenny is given more respect for his efforts,than Raffa was given under the previous corrupt owners.

We all have to understand,that any anti-Liverpool propaganda,has it's roots in the late 1960's.United had just wone the Champions League,but Liverpool was the centre,of youth culture,so that victory,was not,a nationwide event,after all; Celtic had done it,3 years earlier.Then under the Boss and Sir Bob,we had the audacity to dominate the league for the next 20 years.After the great Sir Matt Busby,there were a sucsession,of useless managers,culminating in the current gobsh*te.We cannot blame him for our lack of success,that is down to our Manager and players.They will be judged at the end of the season,and I hope that Kenny is given more respect for his efforts,than Raffa was given under the previous corrupt owners.

I agree with you ,United went through quite a few managers after Matt Busby retired and they had a lot of bad press in the 70s and 80s,and it was a sore point with them when Celtic won that first European Cup.We did of course dominate England and Europe in the 70s and 80s and United were unable to be our equal.I feel it fair to mention that when Matt Busby was manager i don't recall the animosity and venom we have today,but then again he was respected and an ex Liverpool player who retired to manage United.

If a newspaper started printing the news again, not opinion, or at least had articles that were balanced by having two opposing views, I may start picking one up again.  For now, I'll continue to pick up news from other sources and it's a shame that a profession that was once admired has become such a joke.

I don't know where you will get your news from, but the aim of journalism is not to report the truth. It's to make money, by whatever means necessary. Trying to get objective, unbiased journalism from elsewhere is very difficult, because the writer has his or her own views on an issue, and inevitably those views influence their pieces, either in whole or in part, and that's what they want you to believe.

After the great Sir Matt Busby,there were a sucsession,of useless managers,culminating in the current gobsh*te.We cannot blame him for our lack of success,that is down to our Manager and players.They will be judged at the end of the season,and I hope that Kenny is given more respect for his efforts,than Raffa was given under the previous corrupt owners.

We had corrupt owners, we were not the only club to have corrupt owners, one of them is second in the league at the moment. You can blame the owners for poor transfer activity, poor management of the club and many other things. But executives and directors at even the richest clubs can't score goals on the pitch, and if you can't beat seriously sh*t teams at home on a regular basis, you have to look elsewhere for blame.