The editor of Scottish football website Scotzine claims that he has had his accreditation revoked by the Scottish FA after complaints were lodged against him by established media players.
Andy Muirhead launched Scotzine five years ago and last year was given access by many clubs to cover matches and post-match press conferences.
He said that his problems began when he applied to cover the Scottish Cup Final.
I was informed by the powers that be that a complaint had been sent to the SFA about my attendance within the media given that I was not officially accredited. There was also another issue with several comments which I made on my twitter page…
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Muirhead said he was also wrongly accused of being abusive to Scottish journalist Graham Spiers – something Spiers himself is apparently unaware of.
Muirhead reports that he has now had his accreditation to cover all future all future SFA games – even womens’ matches and under-21 games – revoked.
According to Muirhead, the issue ‘exploded’ when he gained access to a Scottish Premier League game directly via the club and then broke an unwritten rule not to publish comments made at the post-match press conference until the Scottish daily newspapers had come out the following day.
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Now the Scottish Football Writers Association has, according to Muirhead, written to clubs asking that he have his accreditation revoked.
Muirhead feels like he has been squeezed out by Scottish football journalism’s “old guard” after making one innocent mistake about the reporting of post-match comments.
And he has quoted an email sent to him by one Scottish football journalist:
“You find yourself in this situation because people have taken issue with embargoed quotes being used before they should have. Now, that might not seem like the biggest crime in the world considering this is a hobby of yours, but for people who actually do this to put food on the table, it’s simply unacceptable.”
As Muirhead notes, all journalists have made mistakes – and he feels hard done by that he is being apparently bullied out of the profession for his one.
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