Bye Bye BfB
Before I climb up onto my high horse, which I intend to do in just a moment, I'd just like to make it clear that what follows is not going to be a side-taking rant against Mark Lawn - Bradford City's chairman - because, much as I may have opinions about him, I don't know enough about what's been going on to make some grand public statement about it, nor do I especially want to. This is, however, a bit of a plea for proportionality, and a battle cry in favour of the underdog.
Yesterday my favourite website closed, its excellent content replaced by a euphemistic statement about personal decisions, apologies for distress caused etc. For a bit of context, Boy from Brazil was a thoughtful, incisive, sometimes even witty blog-cum-fanzine for Bradford City fans, which featured a glorious balance of match reports, previews, comment pieces, news flashes - pretty much everything. It found just the right balance, avoiding the sometimes thuggish comments you find on so many chat forums whilst also steering away from the geekiness of some match reviews (you know the ones - those sport journos who write things like "the penalty took me back to Beagrie's missed penalty in the second half of the away game at Bristol City in 1999...") whilst retaining a bit of emotion and opinion, unlike the purely factual recounting of an afternoon's play ('x hit the bar in the 76th minute, y was substituted in the 84th minute...") It was, in short, a brilliant read and its absence will create a genuine gap in my life which can't be filled by the PR-led content of City's own site (nothing wrong with that, but it serves a different purpose), the ploddingly factual reporting on the BBC and the post-match verbal brawls in the T&A comments section.
But why has it gone? Well, that's what has worried me. Apparently, it's all due to an article that was posted on the website after a youth game, presumably in good faith, claiming that much-criticised chairman Lawn made disparaging remarks about the team's performance, and possibly even cheered for the opposition (though the actual article stated that this was meant "sarcastically".) It seems that Lawn took umbridge at this - and who wouldn't? - and then, suddenly, the website was gone. The Telegraph and Argus explains this in more detail (see what I mean about the comments section?)
Reading between the all-too-clear lines, the Powers That Be probbaly threatend to sue. Now, I can see why Lawn would be pissed off: to be accused of behaviour like that, whether it's true or not, is pretty damning and as such doesn't help the club, either. It also feeds into the general discontent felt by so many fans at the moment, and so was perhaps a little ill-judged, true or not. And yet, at the same time, is it really the end of the world? If it was wrong - and Hendrie says it is (and who are we to argue?) but at the same time, the BfB writers must have got it from somewhere and can't have just made up something like that out of thin air - then why would an apology and a retraction not suffice? Newspapers in this country make derogatory, sweeping statements all the time, often with no basis in fact but merely in speculation presented as such, and sometimes not even that. A couple of years ago, a student in his first week at university died in a nighclub. The very next day, for all including his grieving relatives to see, his face was splashed across the front of a local rag read by countless commuters, accompanying an article condeming a drink and drug-fuelled night of hedonism at the university-run event. Weeks later, when the autopsy results were released, the article was not formally retracted in an equally-large front-page spread, nor was an apology made. There was merely a "clarification" deep inside the paper on around page 18, I think, confirming that no illegal substances were found in the student's blood, and actually he'd died from an undiagnosed heart complaint. Given the hurt this must have caused to his friends and family, and the damage to the poor young man's reputation, was the paper shut down? Was it bollocks. The journalist removed? I don't think so. Was The Sun shut down after it made unsubstantiated and deeply wounding claims about the behaviour of Liverpool fans at Hillsborough? Nope. It's still the biggest-selling paper in the UK (though not, notably, in Liverpool.) Now, on this occasion, a fat man's pride has been dented. Quick, call in the lawyers!
The debate about the libel laws in this country is too big and complex for me to start creating a pointless scuffle on a little-read personal blog, and yet they do seem to work disproportionately in favour of the powerful, the ones who can afford to sue or at least make life very unconfortable for anyone who crosses them, and they do, on occasions, seem to go too far. We live in an age where anybody can publish anything at the click of a button, and this can be dangerous. People do need to exercise a bit of care about what they say and how they say it. But at the same time, people should not be made to feel afraid of voicing an opinion, recounting an event or, in this case, bullied out of it altogether, and though rules is rules, to apply the same force - or, as seems to be the case give the example above, MORE force - to a group of unpaid volunteers writing for fellow fans who share the same passion as to overpaid gutter press, "professional" journalists who should know better seems more than a little unfair.
We live in a free country, and, I'd like to think, a sensible society. In a sensible society, I would hope that those with the power and the money should expect to take a bit of flack, and occasionally, to be misinterpreted and even misrepresented. It's a hazard of the job, and it happens in the real world all the time, Mark - the "I heard so-and-so said this about so-and-so" conversations round the water coolers in countless offices across the land every single day. We don't all threaten legal action. If BfB did say something wrong (and they may well have done), they should be made to apologise and retract it publicly, perhaps in a more overt way than the half-arsed attempt of that London rag I mentioned earlier, or, if they don't want to do that, put up a new article clarifying where they got the story from in the first place. Then we can let it all blow over, like the grown-ups we're meant to be, and I can continue to enjoy my favourite website (did I mention this is actually all about me?) Instead, the two journalists have been left upset and threatened, and lost their hobby as a result; countless fans have lost access to a very good source of news and opinion; Lawn has been vindicated but as a result looks like a bit of a dick, which is ironic as this is presumably why the website came down in the first place. The whole response seems to me massively disproportonate, a storm in a teacup has been transformed into a typhoon in an industrial tea urn by unnecessarily litigious and bullying behaviour, and the mutterings of discontent on the various chat forums are growing out of control as a result.
In the meantime, I almost forgot we have a game to try and win today. All of you, just grow up, move on and focus on the job at hand, which, in case you've forgotten, is to play some football. And give me my website back.
Yesterday my favourite website closed, its excellent content replaced by a euphemistic statement about personal decisions, apologies for distress caused etc. For a bit of context, Boy from Brazil was a thoughtful, incisive, sometimes even witty blog-cum-fanzine for Bradford City fans, which featured a glorious balance of match reports, previews, comment pieces, news flashes - pretty much everything. It found just the right balance, avoiding the sometimes thuggish comments you find on so many chat forums whilst also steering away from the geekiness of some match reviews (you know the ones - those sport journos who write things like "the penalty took me back to Beagrie's missed penalty in the second half of the away game at Bristol City in 1999...") whilst retaining a bit of emotion and opinion, unlike the purely factual recounting of an afternoon's play ('x hit the bar in the 76th minute, y was substituted in the 84th minute...") It was, in short, a brilliant read and its absence will create a genuine gap in my life which can't be filled by the PR-led content of City's own site (nothing wrong with that, but it serves a different purpose), the ploddingly factual reporting on the BBC and the post-match verbal brawls in the T&A comments section.
But why has it gone? Well, that's what has worried me. Apparently, it's all due to an article that was posted on the website after a youth game, presumably in good faith, claiming that much-criticised chairman Lawn made disparaging remarks about the team's performance, and possibly even cheered for the opposition (though the actual article stated that this was meant "sarcastically".) It seems that Lawn took umbridge at this - and who wouldn't? - and then, suddenly, the website was gone. The Telegraph and Argus explains this in more detail (see what I mean about the comments section?)
Reading between the all-too-clear lines, the Powers That Be probbaly threatend to sue. Now, I can see why Lawn would be pissed off: to be accused of behaviour like that, whether it's true or not, is pretty damning and as such doesn't help the club, either. It also feeds into the general discontent felt by so many fans at the moment, and so was perhaps a little ill-judged, true or not. And yet, at the same time, is it really the end of the world? If it was wrong - and Hendrie says it is (and who are we to argue?) but at the same time, the BfB writers must have got it from somewhere and can't have just made up something like that out of thin air - then why would an apology and a retraction not suffice? Newspapers in this country make derogatory, sweeping statements all the time, often with no basis in fact but merely in speculation presented as such, and sometimes not even that. A couple of years ago, a student in his first week at university died in a nighclub. The very next day, for all including his grieving relatives to see, his face was splashed across the front of a local rag read by countless commuters, accompanying an article condeming a drink and drug-fuelled night of hedonism at the university-run event. Weeks later, when the autopsy results were released, the article was not formally retracted in an equally-large front-page spread, nor was an apology made. There was merely a "clarification" deep inside the paper on around page 18, I think, confirming that no illegal substances were found in the student's blood, and actually he'd died from an undiagnosed heart complaint. Given the hurt this must have caused to his friends and family, and the damage to the poor young man's reputation, was the paper shut down? Was it bollocks. The journalist removed? I don't think so. Was The Sun shut down after it made unsubstantiated and deeply wounding claims about the behaviour of Liverpool fans at Hillsborough? Nope. It's still the biggest-selling paper in the UK (though not, notably, in Liverpool.) Now, on this occasion, a fat man's pride has been dented. Quick, call in the lawyers!
The debate about the libel laws in this country is too big and complex for me to start creating a pointless scuffle on a little-read personal blog, and yet they do seem to work disproportionately in favour of the powerful, the ones who can afford to sue or at least make life very unconfortable for anyone who crosses them, and they do, on occasions, seem to go too far. We live in an age where anybody can publish anything at the click of a button, and this can be dangerous. People do need to exercise a bit of care about what they say and how they say it. But at the same time, people should not be made to feel afraid of voicing an opinion, recounting an event or, in this case, bullied out of it altogether, and though rules is rules, to apply the same force - or, as seems to be the case give the example above, MORE force - to a group of unpaid volunteers writing for fellow fans who share the same passion as to overpaid gutter press, "professional" journalists who should know better seems more than a little unfair.
We live in a free country, and, I'd like to think, a sensible society. In a sensible society, I would hope that those with the power and the money should expect to take a bit of flack, and occasionally, to be misinterpreted and even misrepresented. It's a hazard of the job, and it happens in the real world all the time, Mark - the "I heard so-and-so said this about so-and-so" conversations round the water coolers in countless offices across the land every single day. We don't all threaten legal action. If BfB did say something wrong (and they may well have done), they should be made to apologise and retract it publicly, perhaps in a more overt way than the half-arsed attempt of that London rag I mentioned earlier, or, if they don't want to do that, put up a new article clarifying where they got the story from in the first place. Then we can let it all blow over, like the grown-ups we're meant to be, and I can continue to enjoy my favourite website (did I mention this is actually all about me?) Instead, the two journalists have been left upset and threatened, and lost their hobby as a result; countless fans have lost access to a very good source of news and opinion; Lawn has been vindicated but as a result looks like a bit of a dick, which is ironic as this is presumably why the website came down in the first place. The whole response seems to me massively disproportonate, a storm in a teacup has been transformed into a typhoon in an industrial tea urn by unnecessarily litigious and bullying behaviour, and the mutterings of discontent on the various chat forums are growing out of control as a result.
In the meantime, I almost forgot we have a game to try and win today. All of you, just grow up, move on and focus on the job at hand, which, in case you've forgotten, is to play some football. And give me my website back.
Labels: Bradford City
posted by RLS at 12:22 PM
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