Look away now...
The consistently excellent Arseblog (it’s not as rude as it sounds, ahem) made a very good point on Sunday during the Arsenal versus Stoke football match, about the decision by Sky Sports and the BBC to not show replays of the tackle by Stoke’s Ryan Shawcross which broke the leg of Arsenal’s Welsh midfielder Aaron Ramsey.
As a background for those of you who do not follow football in the English Premier League, Stoke are a notoriously ‘rough ‘n’ ready’, physical side, whereas Arsenal have been characterised as being technical, pretty, but quite easily physically intimidated. This popular belief has been circulated by media pundits, ex-players and writers, to the extent that a number of players now freely admit to intending to target Arsenal for physical treatment.
The point made by Arseblogger (probably not the name by which he is known to his mother) is that the media has a responsibility to show such an injury in its full glory/horror. The blog’s passionate (read: cursin’ and a-swearin’) argument is that if media pundits are expressing views left, right and centre about Arsenal’s weakness, it can lead to other teams trying to exploit this perceived weakness by playing a rougher game – which results in heavy-handed tactics and ‘accidents’ such as the broken leg of Ramsey.
Shawcross’ tackle on Ramsey on Saturday evening has been criticised by those within Arsenal as the natural result of such tactics. However, while happy to express their over-zealous views on Arsenal’s lack of rough and tumble, both Sky Sports in its live coverage of the match, then the BBC in its subsequent highlights coverage on Saturday and Sunday evenings, did not show a close-up replay of the tackle for fear that it might upset viewers, such was the horrific nature of the injury.
This set me thinking as to whether the press can reasonably justify claiming the role of censor and moral guide in an age of immediate social media and widespread citizen journalism…
Within hours of getting into work on Monday morning I’d had images of Ramsey’s broken leg sent to me by no less than seven of my friends via email. A search on YouTube for ‘Ramsey leg break’ brings up a staggering 269 results. I’ve been invited to a handful of Facebook groups dedicated to the 19 year old’s erstwhile tibia and fibula.
In this environment of 24:7 information, it seems odd that the established press should bang another nail into its own coffin by purposely limiting the information it passes onto its audience. Of course, there has to be some level of decency when it comes to a national TV station: you wouldn’t want or expect the lunchtime news to show close-ups of pile-ups on the motorway. But in the case of the BBC football match highlights, it was a show that went out at 11pm -way past the watershed.
At a time when people are more likely to hear of a breaking story via Twitter than the trusty ol’ souls at the Beeb, it seems like a strange exercise in self-limitation…
- Disclaimer: I am a Gooner (aka: Arsenal fan).
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As someone who is totally tainted by broadcast journalism as an industry in general…Wow. What an interesting difference between broadcast journalism in the US and in the UK. In the US that broken leg shot would run every 5 seconds and probably command CNN for 12 hours but in the UK they chose not to, even thought it would driven viewership. I have even more respect for the BBC now.
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