Back Page Fakery

I've long argued that so-called 'fake news' originated on the back pages of British tabloids.  Their sports writers and most specifically their football writers, have become well-versed in effectively fabricating stories about transfers, managerial appointments and sackings and internal club disputes, based upon the flimsiest of 'evidence' and seem, over time, to have passed these skills on to their colleagues on the political desks.  The right-wing press, in particular, serve us up a daily diet of stories spun from willfully misinterpreted facts, wild speculation and down right lies.  Of course, for a while the back pages became uncannily accurate with their transfer speculation - the result, as it turned out, of illegally tapping the phones and voice mails of agents and players.  Now that their illegal activities have been rumbled, the sports pages are back to their old modus operandi of passing off speculation as fact.  Except that now they have a new source of 'information': social media.  Being, for my sins, a follower of the Spurs, the club's latest managerial turmoil has starkly illustrated the degree to which the back pages are being driven by stuff they've picked up from Twitter or wherever.  On top of social media, there are also now a plethora of on-line football sites, ranging from one man fan blogs to quasi-professional publications.  Regardless of their status, though, they all seem to be taken by the tabloids as purveyors of Gospel truth on football matters.

Using Tottenham's search for a new manager as an example, (as this is football story I've been paying most attention to), supposed candidates seem to come into the media frame by first being mentioned in a Tweet by someone who looks as if they might be vaguely authoritative, in which they are linked to the vacancy.  This then gets picked up and amplified by the online outlets - if it gets repeated by enough of them, it is then picked up by one of the tabloids and presented as a fact that Spurs are looking at that name as a potential manager.  Despite it having no basis in fact and hasn't actually come from a source either within the club, or with sound contacts there.  Even better, of course, is if a pundit - one of those otherwise unemployed ex-footballers who once played for some lower half of the Premiership club - says on a talk radio show or digital TV sports show, that they think a particular manager would be 'perfect' at the club.  That then gets endlessly quoted on Twitter, as if it is fact, before being repeated on the football blogs, then the tabloids.  The fact that it originates with an ex-pro gives it a certain cachet, even though it is still nothing more than speculation.  Hence, we had a spate of stories last week about how Burnley's Vincent Kompany was the 'shock new front runner for Spurs job'.  As far as I could ascertain, the only basis for this was a pundit on a radio show saying that Kompany would be 'ideal for Spurs'.  That was it - no inside information, just opinion.  Now, for all I know, Spurs might be looking at Kompany, but if they are, they aren't going to discuss it publicly, so nobody outside of the club knows it for sure.  The same goes for all the other managers named.  Let's not forget the shambolic hunr for Mourinho's successor and all the candidates who, according to the tabloids, had humiliatingly for Spurs, turned the job down.  Except, as it turned out, most of them hadn't ever been offered the job, let alone even been considered for it - it was all made up media bollocks.