Media Impartiality and Integrity. Rest in Peace

Written by: The Ref

The BBC, the Scottish mainstream written media, and BT Sport. All guilty of doing nothing to promote equality and impartiality in the media; indeed, all guilty of killing off impartiality and integrity in Scotland.

The BBC. From taking any, and every opportunity to attack our club and us: its supporters, to creating television programmes using unlawfully obtained information, in order to cast our club as some kind of social pariah.

If you have happened to have had the misfortune to tune into BBC Radio Scotland, you may be forgiven for thinking you had tuned into Radio Dublin.

Scottish accents have been replaced by southern Irish, and I do wonder whether this is due to the BBC Bias against Rangers in Scotland. If it's not Pat Bonner, it's Tom English. Both barely conceal their hatred of our club, and gush over a club that concealed the fact that a paedophile was operating in that very same club.

Are there no Scottish presenters able to fill the positions currently held by Bonner and English? Well yes, there probably are; however the BBC in Scotland are not interested in impartial reporting anymore. Even the people who run the BBC sports website have given up on any pretence that they offer impartiality in their reporting, with complaints being made almost weekly about inaccuracies in their reporting, and blatant subliminal messages - attacking Rangers - being broadcast on their sports pages.

Next, we have the Scottish mainstream written media. I have lost count how many times the mainstream Scottish written media have had to issue apologies in recent times over inaccurate, totally untrue and misleading articles, published about our club. A headline banner on one day, will be followed the next day, by a tiny written 'apology' in a corner of a page, hidden within the rag. Too little, too late, because the damage has already been done. They know exactly what they are doing.

Then we have BT Sport, and in particular former Celtic player Chris Sutton. BT Sport have had to deal with thousands of complaints about Chris Sutton, due to his open hatred of Rangers and his completely biased comments, made while appearing as a paid pundit on their televised matches. Sutton was a competent football player, who made a career based partly on being one part of the Sutton and Shearer strike partnership at Blackburn Rovers. Since retiring from the game, he seems to be desperately trying to create a new career as some kind of controversial TV pundit.

Controversy is probably forgivable if there is impartiality and all teams/players/clubs are spoken about in the same way, but Sutton does not deal in impartiality. He hates Rangers, and he uses his hatred to appeal to the very worst among the bigoted supporters of Celtic. I cancelled my BT Sport subscription a while ago, citing that the reason I was cancelling my contract was due to BT Sport's continuing employment of Sutton.

Yesterday, January 2nd, an article appeared in the Daily Record, supposedly penned by Sutton. Yesterday was the 46th anniversary of the Ibrox disaster, which saw 66 Rangers supporters, many of them children, killed while attending a match between Rangers and Celtic. In the article, Sutton is credited with using a phrase which stated:

'This is the time to tread on Rangers. You don't let them get back up again.'

In using that phrase, Sutton has shown himself to be nothing more than scum who belongs in the gutter. No doubt the most despicable of Celtic supporters would have been delighted at this, and will have been elevating him to some kind of God-like status, but to any decent human being, Sutton's comments are abhorrent.

Would Sutton have used this term to describe Liverpool, on the anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster where 96 Liverpool supporters were killed? No, he would not.

I will not accept that this was an unfortunate turn of phrase either, because Sutton knows fine well, the depth of feeling Rangers supporters have over the loss of so many of our own in 1971.

Sutton should be removed from his position at BT Sport, and he should also be removed from his position as a guest columnist at the Daily Record. He has shown that he is morally bankrupt, and cannot put impartiality, decency, and integrity before his hatred of our club.

Do I think that anything will be done about Sutton, the BBC, or any of the Scottish mainstream written media outlets who continually attack our club? No, I don't.

Media impartiality and Integrity died a long time ago in Scotland. R.I.P.