Sunday 4 December 2011

A BBC Obituary

Football supporters amongst my readers may have noted that the legendary Brazilian player; Socrates, has sadly passed away. He was a wonderful player whose enthusiasm for the game was only matched by his enthusiasm for cigarettes and alcohol.

That aside, the point of my post is to pick up on this obituary by the BBC. Firstly it states:
At 6ft 4in tall he was known for his physical strength...
Which leaves one wondering whether the author has actually ever seen him play. A beautiful passer of the ball he definitely was, however the least of his attributes was his physical strength - by his own admission:

"Alcohol did not affect my career, in part because I never had the physical build to play this game," he said.

"Soccer became my profession only when I was already 24. I was too thin and when I was young I did not have the opportunity to prepare myself physically for the sport."

Then we get to this (my emphasis):
His heroes included famous libertarians Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, the men who led the Cuban revolution of the 1950s,
Er...in what way can those two mass-murdering men ever be described as libertarians?

You can't even get away from BBC bias in a footballer's obituary.

Update: Thanks to Witterings From Witney in the comments, he's alerted me to the fact that the BBC (as expected) have made a silent edit to their obituary. It now reads:
His heroes included Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, the men who led the Cuban revolution of the 1950s...
But I have a screen print:

2 comments:

  1. I see Chris Snowden has just tweeted that the libertarian reference has been deleted.......

    I cannot resist the opportunity, bearing in mind the individual to which you refer and your blog colour scheme,

    Socra Bleu!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cheers muchly for letting me know, have updated my post. As gratitude I'll overlook your pun this time :-)

    ReplyDelete