Tabloid rats

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Did anyone else hear the thing on 5-live over the weekend talking about the tabloids attitude to England and football. If I wasn't convinced these people were vermin before, then this program brought it all home. There were even suggestions that previous trouble abroad 'caused' by English fans was actually orchestrated by UK tabloid journalists....a couple of them went on record as saying they had witnessed some of their less esteemed colleagues buying beers for rowdy fans and egging them on if trouble looked like brewing.

I wonder if Ken can get a copy/transcript of the show....

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2000

Answers

My cynical eye would easily believe this, but I don't think many of the thugs who associate themselves with Ingerlan' would take much goading.

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2000

I listened to it. Nice to hear Harry Harris speaking: just as inarticulate and rat-like as you always imagined.

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2000

Its been pretty well-known for a while that hacks have been doing that. I don't think its necessarily the sports jounos, but their colleagues. Normally along the lines of buying a fan a few drinks, slipping him some money and then photographing him smashing a glass on the table or quoting him saying some offensive rubbish. TO be fair, its not really connected to the more organsied hooliganism that goes on elsewhere.

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2000

I like the Fiver (from the Guardian) description of Sly Sports "Hold the Back Page" where journos get together on a friday night to talk crap....."Some journalists in a room, there's no beer, they argue".
Always strikes me as uncanny the way the journos and TV crews are always there when the trouble starts.

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2000

I thought that what was more worrying in a way was the admission from el hackos that they sat around for days making up headlines in advance (a la Swedes 2 Turnips 1). The danger with that was the implication that the line of the argument followed the tone of the headline. Not reporting, but playing on words etc

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2000


There's a book by Colin Ward, called "All quiet on the hooligan front", which looks at this in depth. He was given a job for Today newspaper to cover Euro 88 in Sweden and was sacked because he kept calling back saying "there's no trouble". He is an Arsenal fan and know hoolies so was better equipped than anyone to tell the full story.

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2000

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