Forget Sterling: The Mail and The Sun are the real victims

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Still, all that is nothing compared to The Sun, who completely undermine Dave Kidd’s excellent introspective piece by painting themselves as the victims.

‘Let’s get something straight,’ reads the first paragraph to – again – an unattributed column.

‘The racist abuse of Raheem Sterling at Chelsea is not somehow The Sun’s fault. We hope those allegedly responsibly get what they deserve.’

‘We hugely admire Sterling’s talent. Our coverage of his off-field behaviour has nothing to do with his skin colour.’

That’s exactly the point: what ‘off-field behaviour’? Buying his mum a house? Going to Greggs? Getting a tattoo in memory of his late father?

‘The suggestion is ridiculous and offensive – and the idea it inspired racists is baseless.’

Yet it is one espoused by your own chief sports writer. Kidd largely defends The Sun’s stance on Tuesday but does add that ‘some newspaper coverage of Sterling and other black players feeds into the treatment he gets from supporters, some of whom may be aggressively racist’.

‘His media mates should engage their brains before dishing out accusations without a shred of evidence.’

Mediawatch dreads to think what they actually mean by ‘his media mates’. And as for ‘dishing out accusations without a shred of evidence’, weren’t you the ones who said Sterling had ‘flaunted his millionaire wealth‘ before clarifying whether it was actually his house or not? And wasn’t it you who called him a ‘footie idiot’ for no apparent reason?

Hell, wasn’t it you who used a non-existent journalist to lay into him for winning a penalty against Shakhtar earlier this season? You were so incensed that you changed the scoreline to reflect your anger, remember? It was really mature.

How’s that for a shred of f***ing evidence? Mediawatch finds it ‘ridiculous and offensive’ that you find criticism of your reporting on Sterling ‘ridiculous and offensive’. We thought we were the snowflakes.

Posted By: Ralf Scrampton, Dec 11, 13:40:33