JOURNALISTS continues to face the prospect of intimidation when reporting Rangers FC – according to a Channel 4 journalist who was has been openly critical of the Media’s scrutiny of the club in the lead up to its administration and liquidation last year.
Alex Thomson, chief correspondent at Channel 4 News, was speaking with BBC Scotland investigations correspondent, Mark Daly, in Edinburgh.
Daly’s documentary about the club, The Men who Sold the Jerseys, has already won several awards and was yesterday shortlisted in the Royal Television Society’s Television Journalism Awards.
The pair were speaking two days ago at Media Mondays, hosted by Edinburgh Napier University.
The podcast from their fascinating discussion has just gone online.
Thomson sought to contextualise his comments about the Media in terms of the influence any large institution can hold over it. In the case of Rangers, there has been the additional factor of online abuse of journalists from fans.
Said Thomson: “I am not saying the reporting by the mainstream Scottish Media has been uniformly bad, there have been a lot of very good examples of first-class journalism… That said,… I know from journalists working right now on Glasgow papers that intimidation by Rangers fans absolutely has an effect on the editorial policy and the way in which things get reported. There’s a big problem.”
Listen to the podcast here.
