In order for any corrupt structure to maintain it's power foundation in a world of 24/7 rolling news media, control of the media outlets and the individual journalists is of paramount importance. Individuals like Berlusconi, Chávez and Murdoch further their political and business agendas through their extensive media empires which allow them to set the media templates that produce the propaganda, spin and fallacy that comes to be termed news. This is hardly a recent phenomena and journalistic hacks have been avoiding upsetting the corportate apple carts since Orwell's time at least - to quote: "...in England the immediate enemies of truthfulness, and hence freedom of thought, are the press lords, the film magnates, and the bureaucrats, but that on a long view the weakening of the desire for liberty among the intellectuals themselves is the most serious symptom of all".
In the football sphere, all insiders whether traders, bookmakers, management, boards, journalists, commentators, administrators, senior players and referees are aware of some or all aspects of the corruption of the game. Indeed the manipulations form the prime basis of most conversations between insiders as there is a certain thrill at being privy to a corruption that is able to provide you with both interpersonal currency and financial gain. And yet, from a media perspective, none of these corrupt structures are presented to the public via the media outlets that allegedly keep us informed of the developments in our sport. Why so?
The simple and unpalatable answer is that all the insiders, no matter what their relative position in the informational hierarchy, have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. This is self evident at the top of the pyramid but, at lower levels, a balanced acquiescence is necessary to co-opt and to maintain effective control of the worker ants. If a journalist, for example, decided to go public about the corruption relating to the highly liquid betting markets in the Far East with their inappropriate influence on match outcomes in the Premiership, then he/she is losing out in a range of ways through such whistleblowing. Firstly, you're out of a job as soon as it is feasible. Secondly, a whole bunch of individuals will not be particularly thrilled by your actions. Thirdly, not only are you kissing goodbye to a nice steady wage for being obedient, you are also losing out on those nice little earners that permeate through from the corrupters to the trading rooms and on into the media centres. Any writer or journalist who wants to retain his integrity finds him/herself thwarted by the general atmosphere of conformity imposed by a few rich and powerful men. The enemies of intellectual freedom always attempt to keep the issue of truth versus lies as far away from public gaze as is possible when set against the events that represent our spectacularised reality. Liberty of the intellect means the freedom to publicise what one has experienced and NOT to be obliged to create illusory fabrications that suit the strategies of the media barons.
To quote Orwell again: "Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud". Many of our modern so-called democracies exhibit exactly this construct.
It is a pertinent question that needs to be asked far more aggressively than any sideshow to do with wrist slapping related to the bungs inquiry. Why is illegal underground criminalised gambling allowed on major football matches? Why does no media outlet even confront the issue?
Think about it...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
