Courage And Cowardice Magnified Online
Whether good or bad, the internet and social media have a tendency to maximise our virtues and our faults.
The Week
… began with World Press Freedom day and ended with an Irish columnist getting sacked for running a sock puppet account used to attack his opponents - including female colleagues using sexual references and comments on their appearance - and glorify himself.
The columnist in question, Eoghan Harris, is feted by the (far) right as a man who “tells it like it is” - in reality, he is a crushing bore who has written the same column every week for the last 20 years about how he is right and everyone else is wrong.
When caught out, he went on the radio to defend himself - I haven’t heard the interview yet, but I have seen some transcripts and you can listen to it here.
It’s ironic that such a dinosaur would meet his professional end (or the first of them, at any rate) while being grilled by what he fears most - a competent female journalist who does not fear him one bit.
Cue the acolytes fawning and bleating about “cancel culture” as the consequences of his actions came back to haunt him.
Social media is for the most part a shitshow - what started out as a way of connecting people has been weaponised into the mainlining of fear and distrust, and of providing a viciously effective bullying tool. It is used against journalists, and in particular female journalists.
On Monday, as media workers tried to shine a light on this issue, 12 journalists with Sweden’s Expressen newspaper were photographed with placards featuring some of the abuse they have received online.
“Up with a knife in the c**t of sexist feminists.”
“Going to kill you, come out if you dare, you whore.”
“You’re going to die, you immigrant whore.”
The last one was sent to the woman in the top right of the above picture, my friend Alexandra Pascalidou.
I don’t see her often but her career, which has taken her from the tough suburb of Rinkeby to the heights of public service broadcasting and resulted in some superb work, has seen her subjected to the most vile abuse.
Born to Greek parents, she is the kind of woman that annoys the shit out of men. Many are struck by her size when they first meet her - she’s one of those people who looks taller on the TV - but she is a bundle of firecracker energy, a burning intellect with a passion for telling stories that otherwise would go untold.
Her book “The Mothers” tells the stories of women who have lost children, mostly young men, to gang violence in Sweden. It is an angle that no-one has previously approached the subject from, and an amazing piece of work.
She has her critics and she has made her mistakes - but even if she hadn’t, she would be subjected to the death threats and the rape threats and the sexism that pervades this space.
In a week where we started off celebrating the freedom of the press and ended up revealing that one of our colleagues was a coward anonymously attacking others, it’s worth considering what courage is, especially when it comes to women in the public eye.
The Podcast
… was a long time coming this week. Three different episodes were planned but none of them happened - instead I spoke about the story above and a documentary that has been made here about Sweden’s handling of Covid, and how a heroic healthcare whistleblower was given a warning by her employer for being disloyal in revealing the system’s shortcomings. Listening to it I was struck by how her story was amplified through social media - without it, there may never have been an outcry or a documentary at all.
Give the podcast a listen if you’re pottering about today. If you like it, give it a good rating and a review.
The Global Situation
… seems to be getting better, although it will be a while before we’re back covering sports events the way we used to.
I spent last night on a Zoom call with some very good friends in Dublin, reminiscing about covering weekends full of Premier League games in London and how the press events for the upcoming Euros will mostly be covered online.
Yesterday I spoke to Finland’s captain Tim Sparv, who is by far my favourite person in the game, and we came to the realisation that there will be no chance to meet in person when he comes to Stockholm as part of the Finns’ training camp, or in Copenhagen where they will play Denmark.
It’s hard not to feel for the Finns - this will be their first time at the finals of a major championships, and it really is a watershed moment for long-suffering Finnish fans. It’s a shame that very few of them will actually get to see the games, and that Tim and his team won’t get to have them in the stands when history is made.
The Olympics still looks like it’s happening, and I discovered the other day that I have been shifted from soccer, boxing and skateboarding to surfing, sailing and boxing, which gives me about five weeks to learn all I can about the first two sports before filing previews. Not ideal, but not unusual either - journalism is not, as fans of Eoghan Harris would have you believe, about knowing everything, it’s about asking the right questions to find out what you need to know.
And with that, I’m heading out into the cold spring sunshine. The sparrows nesting in our eaves have been chattering for hours, and Gaelic football returns to the Swedish capital today as a new club from the town of Gävle comes to visit.
Nature is healing, so to speak. Peace comes dropping slow.
Have a great week, wherever you are in the world.