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The Terrible Journalism & Tom English Thread


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I've already broken my own rule about keeping politics and sport separate once today (and have received my first ever red dots not from junior thickos for my sins!) so I may as well do it again. I find it entirely in keeping with the BBC's attitude to Scotland that their Scottish football correspondent isn't actually Scottish. Presumably we're too wee, too poor and stupid to write about football too.

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5 hours ago, Bad Wolf said:

I've already broken my own rule about keeping politics and sport separate once today (and have received my first ever red dots not from junior thickos for my sins!) so I may as well do it again. I find it entirely in keeping with the BBC's attitude to Scotland that their Scottish football correspondent isn't actually Scottish. Presumably we're too wee, too poor and stupid to write about football too.

He was perfect for the Cinch. An Irish rugby correspondent named English pontificating on Scottish fitba

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4 hours ago, craigkillie said:

I'd say it's borderline xenophobic to say that only people born and bred in Scotland can possibly comment on our football.

So would I, but I didn't say that. 

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18 hours ago, Bad Wolf said:

So would I, but I didn't say that. 

No, but you did strongly infer that BBC's Scottish football correspondent should be Scottish. 

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I'm thinking of Tom here when I notice the  SRU have made big losses. 

So much for "Scottish football could learn from egg chasing" pish. Perhaps it's egg chasing has learned from Scottish football how to run a business! 

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4 hours ago, tamthebam said:

I'm thinking of Tom here when I notice the  SRU have made big losses. 

So much for "Scottish football could learn from egg chasing" pish. Perhaps it's egg chasing has learned from Scottish football how to run a business! 

To be honest, it always pisses me off when some twat says that football should learn from rugby. There are about 10 nations in total that take rugby seriously, and for most of the last 20 or maybe even 30 years we’ve been 8th best. 

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A Daily Record article about one of our youngsters training with Arsenal, written by "Mark Hannah", has a few basic issues.

He claims Liam Gordon is a youth product of the club (he joined us at 19), claims we've signed Sam McClelland from Dundee United (he was our player on loan there), and the hilariously turns his final two paragraphs into a story about Rangers.

Peak Daily Record stuff.

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The Daily Record have reported on last night's neddery at the Broxburn v Edinburgh City friendly. 

Shouldn't have bothered- it'll make these wee fannies think they're hard men now rather than just sad. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

The risible BBC Scotland coverage continues with the tables (I'm sure not for the first time) being unable to cope with the concept of the bonus point penalty win and just giving any winner 3 points

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/scottish-league-cup/table

ETA It'd worse than that. Some are and some aren't so it's not even an Excel W=3 issue. They just aren't paying attention 

Edited by invergowrie arab
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I was trying (in vain) to follow the penalty shoot out between Annan and Bonnyrigg on the BBC Sport website tonight. Here’s a screenshot of the last couple of pens and the (apparent) result. According to the Beeb, the shoot out ended when Ryan Muir of Annan had his penalty saved, but as Annan were apparently 7-6 up at that point, they ‘won’ the shoot out 7-6. Had to check the Annan website to confirm that Bonnyrigg had in fact won the shoot out. BBC is still carrying the ‘result’, as well as a group table that suggests Annan are sitting on 6 points after two games.

 

IMG_4141.png

IMG_4142.png

Edited by Frankie S
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8 hours ago, Frankie S said:

I was trying (in vain) to follow the penalty shoot out between Annan and Bonnyrigg on the BBC Sport website tonight. Here’s a screenshot of the last couple of pens and the (apparent) result. According to the Beeb, the shoot out ended when Ryan Muir of Annan had his penalty saved, but as Annan were apparently 7-6 up at that point, they ‘won’ the shoot out 7-6. Had to check the Annan website to confirm that Bonnyrigg had in fact won the shoot out. BBC is still carrying the ‘result’, as well as a group table that suggests Annan are sitting on 6 points after two games.

 

IMG_4141.png

IMG_4142.png

BBC still showing Annan winning the shootout. 

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Watching Tom English in the post-match discussion of the Chile-Scotland match (rugby, sorry). Not for the first time, he's striking me as a bit of a bluffer: turns up armed with some quite pithy nuggets of information; but seems to use those objectives facts as a credibility shield, to deflect criticism from his frankly facile analysis.

A fairly effective technique.

More surprisingly his appearance seems to be evolving towards a cross between Jim Moir and Barry Took - but without their wit, obviously.

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12 hours ago, sugna said:

Watching Tom English in the post-match discussion of the Chile-Scotland match (rugby, sorry). Not for the first time, he's striking me as a bit of a bluffer: turns up armed with some quite pithy nuggets of information; but seems to use those objectives facts as a credibility shield, to deflect criticism from his frankly facile analysis.

A fairly effective technique.

More surprisingly his appearance seems to be evolving towards a cross between Jim Moir and Barry Took - but without their wit, obviously.

His articles during the rugby world cup said as much to me.

Just writes in analogies, clichés and/or extended metaphor. A thin veil to hide that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

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The BBC live commentary yesterday (“proper” text commentary, not just the computer generated updates) had the first Dundee United goal as Babunski heading home after a free kick into the box.

Which is impressive seeing as Babunski took the free kick.

 

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19 hours ago, sugna said:

Watching Tom English in the post-match discussion of the Chile-Scotland match (rugby, sorry). Not for the first time, he's striking me as a bit of a bluffer: turns up armed with some quite pithy nuggets of information; but seems to use those objectives facts as a credibility shield, to deflect criticism from his frankly facile analysis.

A fairly effective technique.

More surprisingly his appearance seems to be evolving towards a cross between Jim Moir and Barry Took - but without their wit, obviously.

This is most football journalism, to be fair.

Most of it is a combination of guesswork, bias, and retrospective justification for pretty random events.

When did you last read or hear a journalist say something really new or interesting about football? Most of them are just like us on here, except they get paid (pressured?) to put out some absolute nonsense every few days on whatever the essential issue of the week is.

A good number of the posters on here could (with a bit of editing) write a weekly column that wouldn't look out of place on the BBC Football site. Most of them are no more switched on than we are.

A lot of football podcasts are like this. People with an ice-thin knowledge of the topic coming out with half-baked opinions on teams they rarely see play, showing judgement that is often quite bizarre, and generally just sharing their subjective views. Most of it is rubbish, and carries no more weight than what you get on here.

The addition of the religion of statistics to football has given a veneer of sophistication to it, but even then, most sports journalist types don't really know what to do with the avalanche of stats in today's game, and a lot of them ar meaningless nonsense.

Imposter syndrome must be very common among sports journalists in general. And rightly so.

Edited by VincentGuerin
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