English media thinly veiled racism

SER19 said:
Can you demonstrate some examples of media reporting that have this dog whistling and undertone, from after the 2021 final. You speak that you 'still remember' it as if it left some stark examples
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Two different statements. Different paragraphs. Perhaps not articulated greatly. Not referring to media when speaking of fallout, but rather public reaction. Rashford, Sancho and Saka were racially abused incessantly. However, I do feel there is a media undertone that reads like dogwhistles to me when reporting on black players, and it does feel as though it is done with the purpose of rallying weirdos. Sterling and Pogba come to mind, and more recently Mainoo too - albeit in Mainoo's case it seemed more rooted in ignorance/prejudice and a lack of general football understanding.

Moreover, you've more replies than anyone else in this thread and you seem intent on that there's seemingly no issue - and the reasoning seems anchored to "white players get it too". To me that's a reductive view of a complex matter, but alas - you go ahead.
 
V.O. said:
This is absolutely an issue, and you can see it barely disguised a lot of the time, especially in the right wing papers. Some of the treatment that Sterling has gotten over the years for instance can't really be explained by anything else.

However, these examples are crap.



Here's what the back pages had:
papers.png

A good few of them used the photo of Saka chucking the plane, and otherwise there's Foden, Stones, Southgate, Kane all featured as well... Not really seeing it.



Papers:
papers2.png

All the papers that had pictures of the players had one or more of Saka, Sterling, Bellingham featured prominently. But one random tweet has a white player in it, so it's racism?
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Great post, and a shame you spoliered those back pages really.

Some of the posters ranting on page 1 could do with seeing the overall reporting.
 
noodlehair said:
I don't think Sterling helped himself by how he went about it. He'd get criticised for something that deserved criticism then play the race card instead of just picking out the times when him or team mates were singled out for no reason (which he did also do in fairness to him).

That's where he needed the manager, governing bodies, team mates etc; to fully back him up though. It must be hard as an individual to see the difference between fair criticism and being victimised when the latter is relentless either way.
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I think that’s an interesting take on Sterling, unless I am misremembering or you are confusing him with someone else. There was a long media campaign comprising of a series of headlines and articles that were designed to attack him personally, desperate to paint him as some sort of ‘bad boy’ footballer with a ‘bling bling’ lifestyle. They spoke about his family life, inventing kids of his that he doesn’t even have, questioned his every purchase (and then mocked him for flying economy class), slammed him for having a gun tattoo, with again not so subtle ‘bad boy’ hints.

Very little was about football, and he did not speak about it for years, and when he did, it stopped. I think it’s a reach to call it ‘playing the race card’, his big statement on the topic, as you pointed out, highlighted the disparity on reporting on black and white footballers doing the same thing. He pointed to the same publication and journo reporting very differently on Foden buying his mum a house and Tosin Adarabioyo doing the same. I’m not sure how Sterling ‘deserved criticism’ for any of that.

I also remember very different media treatment towards Foden and Greenwood after that incident in Iceland too.
 
Last edited:
Thinly-veiled, indeed. It is disgusting

The person whose face should have been the poster of this defeat is obviously Southgate
 
top1whoisman said:
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This is just straight up fake. "Rashford misses last ditch chance for the country" doesn't sound like the BBC at all... even if it didn't say "made with mematic" on the side.

Of course all the (real) coverage was about the Kane penalty miss.
 
TsuWave said:
Two different statements. Different paragraphs. Perhaps not articulated greatly. Not referring to media when speaking of fallout, but rather public reaction. Rashford, Sancho and Saka were racially abused incessantly. However, I do feel there is a media undertone that reads like dogwhistles to me when reporting on black players, and it does feel as though it is done with the purpose of rallying weirdos. Sterling and Pogba come to mind, and more recently Mainoo too - albeit in Mainoo's case it seemed more rooted in ignorance/prejudice and a lack of general football understanding.

Moreover, you've more replies than anyone else in this thread and you seem intent on that there's seemingly no issue - and the reasoning seems anchored to "white players get it too". To me that's a reductive view of a complex matter, but alas - you go ahead.
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Ok, so you've now said you didn't in fact mean the media reaction to the euros -moreso the online reaction.

But you still believe that British media intends to 'rally' people to turn on black players. If you're asked for an example on this, and countered with a completely comparable example towards a white player that undermines your suspicions, you don't get to say this is reductive, or put words in the person's mouth.

Its a huge and potentially libellous accusation to make, for example if you named an individual journalist or editor. Lets assume it absolutely cant be the bbc, itv, the guardian, or this case clearly not the mail or the telegraph- what paper do you mean?

Ive replied plenty in this thread because I think it's a real problem, where nobody wins - if you believe the tweets in the OP here are rooted in racism, despite it being utterly innocuous and full of white players, and despite another poster showing the wide range of headlines that utterly undermines it, then i simply suggest that you are guilty of a confirmation bias. You are seeing evidence for something you seemingly previously have made your mind up on, where there isn't evidence of it.

Its a truly brutal tweet and sharing it undermines real issues, but I also simply can't see anybody sharing better examples from British mainstream outlets that seem to be even implicitly racist.
 
My only encounter with Steinberg was his awful piece before the cup final which seemed genuinely placed to unsettle United.

Stunned that his Mainoo piece is getting interpreted as racism, and not just wrong. Here is what he had to say about Mainoo after a recent England game, shortly before giving him 9/10 in the cup final.

'Here he was: England’s answer to Luka Modric, their very own Andrea Pirlo, a talent with the technique and ability to beat the press, control the tempo and cut opponents open by seeing the kind of openings that simply would not occur to the other players hoping to fill the third spot in Gareth Southgate’s midfield.

It was time to believe the hype.

The mood was flat. Mainoo lifted it. He is not like other English midfielders. He does not panic when he receives possession in a tight spot. His second touch is not a tackle and he does not try to win plaudits by wasting energy on chasing down hopeless causes. Mainoo makes opponents chase him. If he finds space he dribbles into it and changes the angle of the attack.

England have been crying out for that kind of composure for a long time.'

This is praise to a hyperbolic level, just as his reading of last nights game was hyperbolic in the other way. What I'm sensing is, that according to some people, when england lose, a newspaper should never have a picture of a lone black player, and presumably when they win, they should never have one of a lone white player. Their often terrible football takes should be limited to white players only, unless full of praise for a black player - which to me, based on my experiences with the black people I know in many disciplines, seems truly patronising and treats black people as if they are sensitive and completely unable to bear any criticism. Meeting some friends this weekend actually, and look forward to hearing their perspective.

This conversation has been ignited by a couple of papers, 2/9 from the ones I've seen, using Saka's throwing a paper plane to make a pun headline about the plane before flying to euros.


'https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...-spark-but-englands-defensive-frailty-remains'
 
DJ Jeff said:
I absolutely acknowledge it exists but I think its more of an artifact of say 2010 than it is relevant today.
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I think stuff like this is still super common today. For example look at how often the media reports on Muslim rapists compared to white rapists. The former group are very much overrepresented in the media even though white people commit more rape in the UK, even when you use a percentage to take into account the difference in population numbers.
 
NewGlory said:
Thinly-veiled, indeed. It is disgusting

The person whose face should have been the poster of this defeat is obviously Southgate
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Did you even for a second look at the whole cross section of paper headlines, that another poster posted earlier? Or did you just read post 1 of the thread?
 
SER19 said:
Ok, so you've now said you didn't in fact mean the media reaction to the euros -moreso the online reaction.

But you still believe that British media intends to 'rally' people to turn on black players. If you're asked for an example on this, and countered with a completely comparable example towards a white player that undermines your suspicions, you don't get to say this is reductive, or put words in the person's mouth.

Its a huge and potentially libellous accusation to make, for example if you named an individual journalist or editor. Lets assume it absolutely cant be the bbc, itv, the guardian, or this case clearly not the mail or the telegraph- what paper do you mean?

Ive replied plenty in this thread because I think it's a real problem, where nobody wins - if you believe the tweets in the OP here are rooted in racism, despite it being utterly innocuous and full of white players, and despite another poster showing the wide range of headlines that utterly undermines it, then i simply suggest that you are guilty of a confirmation bias. You are seeing evidence for something you seemingly previously have made your mind up on, where there isn't evidence of it.

Its a truly brutal tweet and sharing it undermines real issues, but I also simply can't see anybody sharing better examples from British mainstream outlets that seem to be even implicitly racist.
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It's not "you've now said" - that's what I said initially - hence "two different statements. two different paragraphs". I spoke of the fallout after the penalty shootout that I remember vividly - the racial abuse those players got. Then I spoke on what I feel is a weird undertone on how media reports on black players, that reads to me like dogwhistles. And yes, "white players get it too" is a reductive lens, unless you don't believe racism exists ever, since you could apply the same reasoning to everything. Also, I don't believe I have put words in your mouth? I think I just noted your investment in this thread and what some of your reasoning seems anchored on.

Yeah, well, good thing I've not named individual journalists or editors/didn't make any accusations - and even went out of my way to add plenty qualifiers to my post.

I don't discount the possibility of confirmation bias, though I also don't believe it would have happened in a vacuum, if so. These matters to me are more complex than "look! there's headlines for white players too! Sorted". Again, please proceed with whatever exercise you're engaged in this thread - I've given you the clarification you wanted regarding my initial post. I have seen your posts in this thread. I have no interest beyond this point.
 
Bright_Eyes said:
I think stuff like this is still super common today. For example look at how often the media reports on Muslim rapists compared to white rapists. The former group are very much overrepresented in the media even though white people commit more rape in the UK, even when you use a percentage to take into account the difference in population numbers.
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If you're aware of the Rotherham scandal, you'll know that those numbers probably can't be trusted. If they even exist at all, that is. Feel free to provide them.
 
TsuWave said:
It's not "you've now said" - that's what I said initially - hence "two different statements. two different paragraphs". I spoke of the fallout after the penalty shootout that I remember vividly - the racial abuse those players got. Then I spoke on what I feel is a weird undertone on how media reports on black players, that reads to me like dogwhistles. And yes, "white players get it too" is a reductive lens, unless you don't believe racism exists ever, since you could apply the same reasoning to everything. Also, I don't believe I have put words in your mouth? I think I just noted your investment in this thread and what some of your reasoning seems anchored on.

Yeah, well, good thing I've not named individual journalists or editors/didn't make any accusations - and even went out of my way to add plenty qualifiers to my post.

I don't discount the possibility of confirmation bias, though I also don't believe it would have happened in a vacuum, if so. These matters to me are more complex than "look! there's headlines for white players too! Sorted". Again, please proceed with whatever exercise you're engaged in this thread - I've given you the clarification you wanted regarding my initial post. I have seen your posts in this thread. I have no interest beyond this point.
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It's an incredibly comfortable and convenient stance to take don't you think - to be able to make such inflammatory accusations without having, or possibly even being able, to demonstrate a single example of a mainstream journalist or paper doing what you claim to be a 'rallying' of bad feeling towards black players. Surely, with the internet at your disposal, a single link is possible. My only suspicion is that none really exist, that can't be countered with something similar towards a white player.

If you look at that tweet by a prominent black journalist, just baselessly saying that Saka was used as the 'face of defeat' across a number of platforms, it is just unfathomable. Almost every single newspaper did not, in fact, use saka, and the 2 that did on their back pages, showed him tossing the plane - a somewhat novel image that would 100% have had the same use and headline had it been foden. But Lewis is of course getting some great traction from his completely baseless outrage in this instance, and he can make claim in a similar way to yourself - safe in the knowledge than anybody who dares to push back even just a little, risks having their own reputation clouded with insinuation.

I don't like the guy, but the fact that Steinberg, mercillesly abused for weeks because of his ethnicity, is being called a racist online, because he critciised Mainoo, is not the world I want to live in - not for steinberg, or mainoo, who doesn't need a moral panic to make it seem as if a young black athlete cant take a shitty article.
 
V.O. said:
This is absolutely an issue, and you can see it barely disguised a lot of the time, especially in the right wing papers. Some of the treatment that Sterling has gotten over the years for instance can't really be explained by anything else.

However, these examples are crap.



Here's what the back pages had:
papers.png

A good few of them used the photo of Saka chucking the plane, and otherwise there's Foden, Stones, Southgate, Kane all featured as well... Not really seeing it.



Papers:
papers2.png

All the papers that had pictures of the players had one or more of Saka, Sterling, Bellingham featured prominently. But one random tweet has a white player in it, so it's racism?
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Finally a balanced take here.
 
The Mitcher said:
How is it racism exactly?
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You can't say with a certainty, but you can look at the media and studies on the media in general and find lots of evidence that large parts of the media in the UK are racially biased (e.g. see my above post but there are plenty more examples.)

I think that at some point, the question isn't "prove that this one article/post is racist", but to look at the broader picture of the institutions we have here and what their agenda is. What are media sources trying to push, what's their editorial line based on their publishing history, etc.

Look at the difference in slant between these two articles for a good example:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-bought-five-luxury-homes-worth-2million.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...-starlet-Phil-Foden-buys-new-2m-home-mum.html

Revelations that Rashford is splashing out and ploughing money into properties! Whilst Foden is a good boy who loves his mum. Look at the difference in the titles. There are also other examples of negative coverage of how black players spend their money.

It isn't such a stretch to think that the media's general racism carries over to football, there's some good examples of it. And it isn't such a stretch either to think that the media publish, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, their biases in who's photos they choose to represent successes and failures. It's already well documented that this is done in other topics in the media, so why not here?

When you ask the question "how is it racism exactly?" I think that comes from a belief that the media isn't very racist in general and/or that unconscious racial biases aren't significant, that media sources don't have agendas/editorial lines and/or those agendas aren't racist ones. Correct if I'm wrong.

As a side note on racial bias in football that is probably unconscious, here's a good example about football commentators that we communicate our biases whether we want to or not:

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...ls-racial-bias-in-english-football-commentary
 
pierrethesnack said:
If you're aware of the Rotherham scandal, you'll know that those numbers probably can't be trusted. If they even exist at all, that is. Feel free to provide them.
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"Once again, it’s crucial to look at the bigger picture: court data show Asians weren’t over represented among roughly 172,000 men & 27,000 women convicted of any sexual offence in England & Wales in 2016. More specifically, Asians were actually underrepresented (at 4%) among the approximately 6,200 defendants prosecuted in 2015/2016 for sexual offences flagged as child abuse related."

Source
 
Josh 76 said:
You can always find racism if you try and look for it.
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Wasn't it Morgan Freeman who said the only way to stop racism, is to stop talking about it ?

The OP IMO, has a narrative to fulfill, which makes me wonder who is the real racist in this.
 
SER19 said:
It's an incredibly comfortable and convenient stance to take don't you think - to be able to make such inflammatory accusations without having, or possibly even being able, to demonstrate a single example of a mainstream journalist or paper doing what you claim to be a 'rallying' of bad feeling towards black players. Surely, with the internet at your disposal, a single link is possible. My only suspicion is that none really exist, that can't be countered with something similar towards a white player.

If you look at that tweet by a prominent black journalist, just baselessly saying that Saka was used as the 'face of defeat' across a number of platforms, it is just unfathomable. Almost every single newspaper did not, in fact, use saka, and the 2 that did on their back pages, showed him tossing the plane - a somewhat novel image that would 100% have had the same use and headline had it been foden. But Lewis is of course getting some great traction from his completely baseless outrage in this instance, and he can make claim in a similar way to yourself - safe in the knowledge than anybody who dares to push back even just a little, risks having their own reputation clouded with insinuation.

I don't like the guy, but the fact that Steinberg, mercillesly abused for weeks because of his ethnicity, is being called a racist online, because he critciised Mainoo, is not the world I want to live in - not for steinberg, or mainoo, who doesn't need a moral panic to make it seem as if a young black athlete cant take a shitty article.
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No more comfortable or convenient than “look! headlines for white players! Racism solved!”. I called the reasoning reductive, but it’s closer to idiotic to anyone with lived experience. At best, it underlines a shallow understanding of these matters.

With the time investment you’re making in this thread surely you can find the links you want yourself. Like the time Sterling highlighted the differences in coverage for similar stories about a black city player and Foden, and the chief sports director for the Sun at the time, despite not being mentioned in Sterling’s post, jumped up and said they’re weren’t motivated by racism, but that he felt uneasy about how aspects of Sterling’s (young black players’ lives were being covered comparatively) and needed a rethink.

For emphasis - well, good thing I've not named individual journalists or editors/didn't make any accusations - and even went out of my way to add plenty qualifiers to my post. You going on about “inflammatory accusations” won’t change the aforementioned.

Underpinning fabricated boogeymen with a persecution complex - “anybody who dares to push back even just a little, risks having their own reputation clouded with insinuation” is like the safest possible thing you could have done - even though needless after being provided with the clarity you seemingly sought - but it is still the course of action you took. Do you feel like a martyr or something?

I don’t even know nor care to know who Steinberg is or what kind of world you want to live in, respectfully. I’ve given you the clarity you wanted about my initial post, you said something about confirmation bias, which I said I don’t discount. I said I read your posts here. I said I have no interest in engaging further. No insinuations - I simply know where you stand and (partially?) the reasoning for it. You need not put a shield up - I just don’t want to speak to you about this beyond this point.
 
I'm definitely not going to get sucked into a debate on racism but I think it's a bit of a reach to say using a picture of Saka is an example of racism. He's one of the more recognisable players to the general public so it's always going to be him, Kane, Bellingham etc. who get their picture used. Win, lose or draw.

10 years ago it was always Rooneys photo being used whenever England lost. It is what it is.
 
Bright_Eyes said:
"Once again, it’s crucial to look at the bigger picture: court data show Asians weren’t over represented among roughly 172,000 men & 27,000 women convicted of any sexual offence in England & Wales in 2016. More specifically, Asians were actually underrepresented (at 4%) among the approximately 6,200 defendants prosecuted in 2015/2016 for sexual offences flagged as child abuse related."

Source
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Can't be represented in court data if it never made it to the courts, that's the entire point. But thanks for the link.
 
Adz_99 said:
I'm definitely not going to get sucked into a debate on racism but I think it's a bit of a reach to say using a picture of Saka is an example of racism. He's one of the more recognisable players to the general public so it's always going to be him, Kane, Bellingham etc. who get their picture used. Win, lose or draw.

10 years ago it was always Rooneys photo being used whenever England lost. It is what it is.
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He barely played. Use Foden, Stones, Kane or Rice. The guys who actually played bad but should've been the main men. But they criticize Mainoo for a Stones/Rice/Ramsdale mistake, use Mainoo in Rice's rating, have an article about Mainoo before halftime, plaster Saka on all the papers... It's blatant racism. If it's a win, Kane gets the cover. A loss? Toss a black guy on there.
 
Bright_Eyes said:
You can't say with a certainty, but you can look at the media and studies on the media in general and find lots of evidence that large parts of the media in the UK are racially biased (e.g. see my above post but there are plenty more examples.)

I think that at some point, the question isn't "prove that this one article/post is racist", but to look at the broader picture of the institutions we have here and what their agenda is. What are media sources trying to push, what's their editorial line based on their publishing history, etc.

Look at the difference in slant between these two articles for a good example:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-bought-five-luxury-homes-worth-2million.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...-starlet-Phil-Foden-buys-new-2m-home-mum.html

Revelations that Rashford is splashing out and ploughing money into properties! Whilst Foden is a good boy who loves his mum. Look at the difference in the titles. There are also other examples of negative coverage of how black players spend their money.

It isn't such a stretch to think that the media's general racism carries over to football, there's some good examples of it. And it isn't such a stretch either to think that the media publish, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, their biases in who's photos they choose to represent successes and failures. It's already well documented that this is done in other topics in the media, so why not here?

When you ask the question "how is it racism exactly?" I think that comes from a belief that the media isn't very racist in general and/or that unconscious racial biases aren't significant, that media sources don't have agendas/editorial lines and/or those agendas aren't racist ones. Correct if I'm wrong.

As a side note on racial bias in football that is probably unconscious, here's a good example about football commentators that we communicate our biases whether we want to or not:

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...ls-racial-bias-in-english-football-commentary
Click to expand...

I don't doubt there's an element of racism in the difference between those articles but Rashford is a target for the right-wing media primarily because of his activism. (The old "champagne socialist" routine)
 
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