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Media coverage of FIFA needs a shift in priorities

February 29, 2016 at 2:33 pm

A man who may have ordered footballers in his own country to be tortured runs for the presidency of the most important footballing organisation in the world, and the Western media barely bats an eyelid. FIFA executives swap some cash in brown envelopes under a table, though, and the world goes crazy. We really do need a shift in priorities.

Are people in the West — media producers and consumers alike — still interested in human rights? The past six months’ coverage of the process to elect a new FIFA president suggests not, with determined activists in Bahrain managing to get only sporadic coverage of the story that the leading candidate for FIFA’s top job was accused of human rights abuses against his own people during a bloody revolution.

It was found out on Friday that Shaikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa had lost his bid for the presidency, with last-minute horse trading in the highly politicised process thought to be behind the surprising result. He does care about football, though, and has professional experience of managing the sport; he played the game at national youth level in the eighties, before joining Bahrain’s national football association shortly after graduating from the University of Bahrain with a degree in history and literature. Ten years later, in 2002, Khalifa was elected president of the association. He has spent the past three years overseeing FIFA operations in Asia, as well as securing a seat on the organisation’s executive committee.

It was only when Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein of Jordan, a rival candidate, spilled the beans about Shaikh Salman ten days before the vote that the British media finally picked-up the story, even though pro-democracy activists in Bahrain had been pushing the details for months. Why did it take so long for it to gain any traction? An easy explanation is that editors spoke out a week before the election because that was the most relevant time for the story to run; or, perhaps, that Prince Ali putting his name to the allegations made them more “newsworthy”.

Yet what was happening was very serious, and clearly warranted Khalifa’s disqualification from running for the post while the charges were assessed, at the very least. Here was a candidate who had been accused of torturing people, by the same footballers and athletes for whose welfare he was responsible. That’s not adding an extra zero to a bank account, or stealing sweets from children; that’s physical violence inflicted on bound, bleeding and bruised street protesters, two of whom happened to be the best footballers in Bahrain. Given that the entire context of the FIFA campaign to replace the disgraced Sepp Blatter was built around avoiding impropriety, a candidate accused of even marginal notoriety should surely have been quite a big story.

When it was revealed last year that Volkswagen was attaching illegal devices to its cars which would provide inaccurate information about dangerous emissions, it was noted by some British motoring journalists that this was a badly kept secret; they suggested that other car manufacturers should also be investigated. The British satirical and political magazine Private Eye noted that were it not for the expensive cars, trips to race tracks and delicious and very expensive lunches, those same journalists might have investigated the illegal devices themselves. As it happened, they chose not to, perhaps so that they could continue enjoying the perks of the job.

The same happened with FIFA in the decades leading up to Sepp Blatter’s arrest. It has long been painfully obvious that FIFA was a corrupt organisation. Again, the disinterest in winning a Pulitzer for exposing that corruption was partly because sports journalists themselves had no interest in investigating the same organisation which arranged their press passes, paid for their private box tickets at Chelsea or Barcelona, and flew them around the world to watch the best players play football, with five-star hotels and lavish drinks receptions thrown in for good measure. Sports news organisations had little incentive to make a song and dance about his candidacy when presented with evidence that a Gulf prince who was likely to be the next FIFA president had some decidedly serious skeletons in his cupboard, even with a World Cup tournament held in a Gulf State on the horizon,.

The blind spot about Shaikh Salman’s torture allegations speaks to a wider malaise; myopia when it comes to criticism of what goes on across the Gulf in general. Apart from Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States host increasing numbers of international business, education, political and sporting events, which many editors and journalists need to attend. Passing through passport control if you’ve just accused the ruler’s relative of unspeakable crimes can be a nerve-racking experience, perhaps not even worth the extra copies that your article will help to sell.

This brings me back to the original question: are people in the West, particularly in Britain, interested in human rights any more? Of course they are. Look at the public reaction to Daesh or the British government’s strengthening relationship with China, or the opprobrium regularly visited on Saudi Arabia (a country relatively few journalists actually have to visit); look at the reaction to the antics of Vladimir Putin. The media-consuming public demonstrate — often literally — their appetite for challenging controversial politics and individuals. It’s journalists and editors who need to be a bit braver in delivering the information upon which their activism can be built.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.