These Things Happen

At the start of this season, Rangers announced that any media outlet wishing to have access to the club would no longer be afforded prime seats at Ibrox, regular opportunities to interview the manager and players, or hospitality for free anymore. Access that they had grown used to, to then turn round and more often than not print lies about the club, or attack players like Morelos, often in articles that were very close to, if not outright, xenophobic in the minimum and, in some cases, racially fuelled. 

Having had enough, and seeing a potential revenue maker, Rangers announced that going forward if companies wanted media access then they would need to pay a fee of £25k. A decision that has seen the Rangers support split, some seeing it as a chance to show the mainstream media that they need Rangers more than Rangers needs them, and others worried this leaves Rangers open to criticism that they are attempting to control the narrative and that unbiased coverage is important.

It's easy to see both sides of this viewpoint, with fan media partner Heart & Hand being one of the media outlets to take up this opportunity the narrative could be that Rangers only want media that leans Rangers way reporting on Rangers. On the other hand, the mainstream media have had access to the club since media coverage began, and yet they choose to waste that access, more often than not, printing lies and inflammatory pieces. 

The Reaction

As the mainstream media started to really assess the damage not having access to the club was having on their sales we were able to see how they would react to the situation. Would they decide to stump up the £25k? Which, let's face it, is not an extortionate amount of money for a national newspaper or broadcaster. Or would they spit the proverbial dummy out?

We're talking about the Scottish mainstream media here, so obviously it was the latter. 

It started at the beginning of August when we saw multiple reports about how this new policy of charging the media for access to the club would ultimately harm Rangers in the long run and was robbing the fans of unbiased coverage. Bizarrely enough almost all of these articles that were hitting Twitter were behind, you guessed it, a paywall.

Isn't it funny how they can charge us for access to their product, yet complain about being charged for access to Rangers product?

Next up was an attack on the coverage provided by fan media. Seasoned, I use that lightly, journalists started to question why the fan media that were at the press conference weren't asking the difficult questions. The same media who had access to that lot across the city and failed to ask any of these so-called "hard questions".

Isn't it funny how they can demand that the hard questions are asked by fan media when they don't have access, but when they have access it's back to the jobs for the lads' routine?

Then after Rangers had the audacity to win the Old Firm the gloves really came off. The Daily Record hit the nuclear bomb button. They had Mark McGivern, a professional journalist, a man that has almost certainly gone to university to study journalism (I say almost certainly because I've no idea), go through years and years of tweets from podcasters on the Heart & Hand network.

Yes, you read that right. A man that is apparently a professional journalist, working for what is apparently a professional newspaper, was scowering Twitter for offensive tweets from podcasters because, well that's what they do now it seems. MSP Paul Sweeney called for them to be banned from Ibrox.

Cammy and Hoggy immediately deactivated their Twitter accounts, stepped away from the podcast, and through Heart & Hand submitted an apology. We were told though, that this was not enough. That this was Rangers fault, that they should address it, that they should be held accountable. It was front-page news that had a 2 page spread inside the paper. It was all people like Humza, Dornan and the failed *insert your own noun* wanted to talk about. AH told us that if you were against racism but continued to ignore anti-Irish/anti-catholic racism like this then you were not against racism at all.

Enter David Edgar and the Rangers support.

The Fallout

Edgar was furious at McGivern and his colleagues for attacking his friends in an attempt to get at him and declared war on them. He, along with many of the Rangers support, started looking for offensive tweets by the reporters of the record and Sweeney. And find them they did...

There were hundreds of historical tweets by record reporters, BBC reporters, and reporters for other media outlets. There were holocaust jokes posted by MSP Paul Sweeney himself. There were mounds and mounds of offensive tweets and soundbites from SNP-employed comedian Janey Godley. All of these were highlighted by the support and pushed back to those that were so vocal about what Rangers should and shouldn't do about the tweets from 2 voluntary podcasters.

The record released a short tweet saying they were looking into it. Sweeney started to block everyone. Godley was let go from her SNP role but there was nothing from Humza or Dornan on any of it, while the chief mammy told us "these things happen". The failed *insert your own noun* insisted that by looking at the sins of those casting the stones that made us the problem, because how dare we expect to all be held to the same standard, and AH decided to ignore these forms of racism because it wasn't "anti-Irish/anti-catholic" racism and in fact paint the perpetrators, and somehow herself, as the victim in it all.

I'm not for cancel culture as a general concept, but I'm also not for racism in any form. What I am for though is an equal playing field. I'm also a believer in playing by the rules your opponent lays out, and if these people thought they could play dirty and not expect the same in kind they've learned a quick lesson this last week.

One thing is for sure though, it's definitely helped spice up the international break. I have spent part of the week wondering what Steven Gerrard must make of it all, no other club could surely see a war of their fan base versus the nation's media in such a way as this.

Hopefully tomorrow though we will be able to forget about all of this as the famous take to the field and try to get some revenge on the team that put us out of the Scottish Cup last season. I think we will all agree that we could do with a little more focus on the on-field product and a break from the tedious Rangers haters and their hate-filled agenda.

I don't want to steal anyone's material, but Stevie at Four Lads statement "ignore the nonsense, the irrelevant and the noise" has never been more apt than this weekend.

The Rambling Ger

Twitter - @GerRambling

IG - TheRamblingGer