hackwatching

Sunday, 7 February 2010
James Traynor trying to take the moral high ground with Tony Mowbray absolutely laughable

In response to Jim “No-neck” Traynor’s Daily Rectum article entitled “WHAT’S YOUR AGENDA TONY?”

Jim,

You work for a populist newspaper that understands that its sports section has to kow-tow to its constituents in its reporting, rather than comment (even incitefully or contextually) on events. You seem to have an audience for this type of product, so why change?

I’ll put forward how I think it works editing the sports section of a populist newspaper.

The Sunday and Monday match reports are framed to please the people likely to buy the paper (the people who support the team which has won). During the week “stories” are naturally framed, either manipulated or conjured, or simply made up, to please the largest section of the crowd which is likely to buy the paper - Rangers fans.

Much as it pains me to say so, in terms of number of fans in Scotland, the largest denomination to which the Record would frame its stories to please, is Rangers fans.

The paper can try to maouevre quickly in its editorial style to reflect the vagaries of the two biggest sides’ fortunes (because fans of Celtic might buy more papers when Celtic win - the run to Seville being a particularly nauseating example, notwithstanding the Record’s rampant support for Souness’s Blackburn), but the default position, if I had your job Jim, would be to please Rangers, who have more fans (in this country).

For what it’s worth, I think you long ago sold out any right not to be associated with idiocy, or to be confronted with melodrama in your everyday life - you write for a tabloid. You long ago sold out any right to create a piece slating somebody else for whipping up melodrama and hysteria when this is, in my opinion, the de facto editorial orientation of your newspaper and radio show.

It’s a shame Jim, because from what people say you were once quite a good sports journalist, potentially in time capable of being mentioned in the same breath as McIllvanney. Were you to adopt a different editorial stance and try this style of reporting, however, I would think your constituents would simply howl with derision (See the career path of Spiers, G, for an example), and I believe your owners and advertisers know it as well.

I think it’s a bit hypocritical to slate Tony Mowbray for creating hysteria, then continue to whip it up yourself in some self-aggrandising piece on you and your paper’s fantastic reportage. Tony has to try and sell tickets; you have to try and sell newspapers. You’d look a little less ridiculous if you stopped trying to pretend you weren’t both part of the same racket.

 

More paranoid ranting available at www.celticparanoia.blogspot.com

 

TONY BANANAS & HACKWATCHER