Fawaz, a Rifle and an Outpouring of Faux Outrage : How the Nottingham Post are Killing Journalism
Last night the Evening Post tried to break major news story
surrounding Fawaz. On his Instagram feed Fawaz posted a picture of what he’d
been up to at the weekend. In the rarefied air of the Middle Eastern rich and
connected that is hunting. That’s not a rarity amongst them, and there was
little or no indication of where or how anything had happened. Just Fawaz, a
rifle and a probably dead Ram.
Now whoever was working the Posts light night desk saw this
and decided to start making huge leaps of imagination and create somewhat of a
name for himself as the man to break something big. When you do a search on the
news story writer, he’s clearly a fairly newly qualified journalist attempting to
get his break scoop to make his name after working for an in house publication
for an Insurance firm. Its bewildering how ridiculous this is to make news.
Now, of cause as everyone knows last week an American
dentists illegally shot a Lion which had been lured from a National Park,
amongst a host of their mitigating circumstance that underline how barbaric
this act was.
To start being comparable of hunting a Lion in a protected
area in Zimbabwe with Fawaz shooting a Ram wherever he was (as it’s not clear)
is ridiculous, but no doubt the Post decided to run with this, even openly
tweeting Fawaz to comment on it rather than contact private sources for a
comment in a way journalists usually would. And then saying in the article 'we contacted Fawaz for a comment but with no response', as if he's cowering in shame. Clearly scenting a major story the
Post, who are still bitter over the previous media ban went with it. What made
me most laugh was in the first few drafts on the webpage of the post they were
clearly covering their base by making it clear they didn’t know if the ram was
dead at the end of article after spending the rest of time talking about hunting
and Cecil the lion. Its not even clear if its possibly an animal Fawaz owns anyway.
The thing for me is that this is such complete non news, but
the Post clearly has some set agenda of being anti Fawaz and is trying to show
the guy up in a bad light. Now maybe its bad timing in the light of Cecil the
Lion to be posting trophy hunting picture up, but the fact this a Ram made
other go on other huge connections with Derby rather than maybe this is just
what he was hunting rather than other symbolism. After all he shot a deer too
and they used to appear on the old crest of Nottingham Forest but this is
overlooked in the chase for a story. Now other papers have followed suit.
Why?
This isn’t because its news so to speak. This is because it
will get some beautiful clicks and with the dying world of newspapers it’s all
about getting clicks for advertising revenue. So anything that immediately gets
attention before you think about it they all chase. The Mail of course posted it
because their output is borderline embarrassing anyway, and they crave hits more than anyone else in the world (think of the sidebar of shame, and how much football output contains actual sport)
It merely further underlines what many Forest fans think of
the Post. That it’s a laughable paper, that it has a strong anti Fawaz leaning
these days, because of the media ban. Why is someone’s social media output in the
news? Why is what a rich man from Kuwait’s instagram page getting this
attention? It’s merely a very strong attempt to create outrage and news out of
nothing to create a buzz rather than actual disgust at what occurred. A quick Google
teaches you there’s plenty of other people do this. So can we all stop this
faux outrage over something newsworthy just because the Post is desperate to
get a few clicks? Its an insane morale crusade to try and vilify someone.
Comments
Post a Comment