Journalistic Integrity

In their recent article, Spanish national newspaper AS apologised after they featured a doctored info-graphic in their newspaper in a match report of Barcelona vs Athletic Bilbao. AS, in my, and many others' opinions has a very heavy pro-Real Madrid bias - which essentially entails an anti-Barcelona bias, because the Spanish league is a two-horse race. Their apology translates as follows:


"Because of an error, the graphic in the print edition of the daily AS on Monday illustrating [Dani] Alves' possible offside in the [build-up to the David] Villa goal against Athletic, does not feature a Bilbao defender who could have been in line with [Alves]. We apologize for that."

To be frank, I can't see any other scenario other than that an AS journallist doctored the photo, knowingly printed it, and that the paper issued the most terse of apologies when they got found out.

So what does it matter? It's only football!

Well, yes and no - I know football isn't important in the grand scale of things, but
1. Barcelona (and Real Madrid) are a multi-million dollar international businesses, and this is an attempt to undermine the Barcelona team, and by extension, the fairness of the Primera Liga (again, multi-million dollars involved).
2. More importantly, regardless of what it's about, it's just wholly unacceptable for journalists to so fragrantly distort the truth. What if that had been a picture of David Cameron punching a child, passed off as real? George Galloway meeting Saddam Hussein? It's the worst type of lies, and should be met with serious penalty against the newspaper and the journalists involved.

Not that I expect it will be - the Spanish authorities simply brushed allegations of Hercules' promotion-deciding match fixing scandal under the carpet last year. At the time, match fixing was not even illegal in Spain, and a judge refused to release critical evidence to an investigation [see here].

Now, without implying that media barons like Silvio Berlusconi are criminals, who use their media outlets to support their own personal interests and agendas, I would like to point out an extreme example of the same practice from history which may have lessons to teach us about which type of journalist behaves in this way - here it is.

This blog was inspired and informed by the ever-funny mediawatch column on football365.com, which rarely, if ever mentions Stalin.