Do the hacks know that Big Brother is watching them?

The myriad failures of the Fitba Fourth Estate have been a feature of this site since it began in 2008.

Firstly, it was their collective refusal to take on the awful import of the Famine Song, a new addition to the song sheet of the Ibrox Klanbase.

Moreover, the term “anti-Irish racism” seemed difficult for the hacks to grasp.

Thankfully, it has finally entered the political lexicon at Holyrood in recent years.

Before a problem can be tackled, it must be first named and identified.

At some point after this, I realised there was a lack of basic journalistic scrutiny on Planet Fitba, especially if it was regarding the Ibrox franchise.

Just on the final whistle at Parkhead on Celtic’s birthday on November 6th 2010, it was time to prove that point.

After that record score against the Dons, I uploaded an exclusive about the SFA’s head of refereeing development Mr Hugh Dallas.

It did take a couple of weeks and some follow-up pieces, but his time at Hampden was over.

Unsurprisingly it took someone out with the succulent lamb fraternity, a professor of journalism no less, to acknowledge the journalist who had broken the story.

My abiding question on the downfall of Hugh Dallas is this:

Why did it take a journalist in another country to break the story?

Then there was the fanfare that welcomed Craig Whyte as the new owner of Rangers in the same year.

The world was breathlessly informed that he was a billionaire.

Indeed, his wealth was “off the radar”.

Once more, your humble correspondent was a contrarian from the get-go.

This site is fully searchable, and it’s all here.

Since 2012 various members of the local media in Fair Caledonia had invented new terms to conceal the fact that Rangers FC (Est 1872) died when the CVA was rejected in the June of that year.

In that comforting narrative, the “holding company vehicle” snuffed it, not the club.

Then, my personal favourite is the “engine room subsidiary”.

I’m told that a staunch believer in UFOs coined that particular cracker.

Yet the truth was out there.

Rangers died in 2012, but they’re not allowed to say that.

The shameful treatment of Jim Spence at the BBC is well documented here.

To recall, all he said on air regarding the liquidation of Rangers was “in the opinion of some the club that died”.

That was enough for the heroically anonymous digital lynch mob to be assembled at Pacific Quay, pour encourager les autres.

The most recent euphemism, this time from Mr Stephen McGowan, is “weathered a financial catastrophe”.

That’s another medal contender in the mental gymnastics Olympics, which is why my Tweet responding to him is the featured image.

Of course, the implication in McGowan’s piece is that Rangers survived the events of 2012 and that the club currently playing at Ibrox is the same one John Greig captained.

That simply isn’t true, and any basic scrutiny of the events of June 2012 would reveal that.

Club 12, indeed…

The strange thing is back in 2012, Mr McGowan seemed to know the importance of Rangers achieving a CVA.

This is clearly at variance with his view in 2023 that they had “weathered a financial catastrophe”.

No, Mr McGowan, they died.

Now, I would have contacted him directly about his baffling choice of terminology, but that isn’t possible.

For the avoidance of doubt, I do not know Mr McGowan, and consequently, he doesn’t know me.

Liquidation denial is a line in the sand for this member of the NUJ.

If you write about Scottish football and cannot state the basic truth that the original Rangers pegged it in 2012, then you’re doing PR for the Ibrox franchise.

Indeed, you’re participating, wittingly or unwittingly, in an Orwellian lie.

It really is that fundamental.