A regional daily’s new sports reporter has been told he will no longer be covering the biggest football club on its patch after making a series of derogatory references to it on Facebook.
The Sunderland Echo says Liam Kennedy has been taken off Sunderland AFC duty after the publication of a series of old social media posts containing expletive-ridden references to the club’s fans and revealing him to be a supporter of arch-rivals Newcastle United.
Liam, pictured left, issued a public apology on Friday after a number of the posts from six years ago appeared online on fans’ forums.
As reported on HTFP this morning, Liam recently left Dundee’s Evening Telegraph to take up the role covering Sunderland at the Echo.
The Facebook posts, which Liam himself labelled “pathetic and infantile,” made references to ‘Mackems,’ a nickname for people from Sunderland which is usually regarded as derogatory.
The row echoes that of former footballer Lee Clark, who joined Sunderland from Newcastle in 1997 but was later forced to leave after being pictured wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Sad Mackem Bastards”.
In a statement posted on the Echo’s website this afternoon, editor Joy Yates wrote: “We have received a large number of complaints about comments made by journalist Liam Kennedy before he was employed by the Sunderland Echo. We have taken these concerns from our readers very seriously.
“The Echo has a dedicated team of staff writing, gathering and overseeing sport content – Liam is one of these journalists. For a number of reasons, the decision has now been made that Liam will no longer be covering SAFC.
“We are always happy to take on board feedback from our readers. I hope we can bring this issue to a close and continue to provide unrivalled and award-winning coverage of the club that is as important to us as it is to our readers.
“The level of response on this issue from our readers highlights how important our coverage is to the fans and the city and for this we are appreciative and proud.”
In the apology, which was issued on the Sunderland Echo’s website on Friday, Liam said he was “ashamed” of the posts.
He continued: “It embarrasses me to see my name against such abhorrent language online. The pathetic, infantile posts were penned before I was a professional journalist. I am a different person now. It was a long time ago.
“Not to make light of the situation, but they were seen as jokes among friends. The subject matter may have been derogatory, but it was not ever directed towards anyone in particular
“I was young, daft and trying to be clever. It turns out, putting things like that online was not so clever at all.
He added: “In the time since those social media messages I have started a family and have a beautiful fiancee and three amazing children.
“I took this job not only because it was a fantastic, rare opportunity to work at a brilliant title, and get my teeth into the coverage of a massive Premier League club, but also to make a better life for my family. To bring my kids closer to home.”
Liam went on to admit his allegiance to United, but denied that personal persuasion had ever “clouded his judgement”and that his coverage of SAFC.
He said he was “100pc committed to providing 100pc committed to providing Sunderland fans with the best possible coverage of their football club” – although the newspaper’s statement would appear to have superseded this.
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So, why couldn’t the editor of the Echo (second worst paper in the North East) do a digital check before offering the job?
This poor lad is now on a hiding to nothing. Whatever fans of Subderland are known for, it isn’t their thoughtfulness, even-handed approach or intelligence. He’ll be abused and pilloried for ever and a day.
What a blunder by Echo editorial execs
This will one day become the subject of a journalism lecture about how not to make an appointment.
First, some context, The Sunderland Echo’s print edition has collapsed to the extent where it has lost 54 per cent of its circulation in four years. Its in-depth coverage of Sunderland Football Club is almost the last card it has to play.
You could argue the identity of the Sunderland Football Correspondent – there have been only five in the paper’s history – is more important than that of the editor itself.
To have appointed a Newcastle fan might have been an imaginative decision- most of the national and regional writers who cover Sunderland support Newcastle, although such is the quality of their copy you would never know.
However, none of them had the name of Newcastle United tattooed on his leg as Mr Kennedy does. None of them, as far as I am aware, have called the citizens of Sunderland “scum” on a Facebook post. None of them have used a newspaper column, published in December, to say that their most fervent wish was for Sunderland to be relegated.
This is the man the Sunderland Echo imagined was the ideal candidate to oversee the last big circulation driver the paper possessed.
Had they not published the apology, the story might have been limited to the far shores of the internet forums. Instead, it was picked up and feasted on by rivals such as the Newcastle Chronicle. At the time of writing there have been more than 100 comments on the Echo’s website, nearly all of them calling on Liam Kennedy to resign.
Both the appointment and the handling of what followed have been a disaster and symbolic of the Echo’s decline. I write that as someone who spent four very happy years there.
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Thrown him under the bus there. Plenty of journalists cover sports and clubs they don’t like, just as plenty of political reporters cover politics that isn’t theirs, that’s the difference between a journalist and a blogger – cold objectivity.
For me though this just shows the danger of social media. There is nobody, in any walk of life, who’s never said anything that could be brought back and used against them in some form.
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This is yet another striking example of the shape of the future for many young people. They use social media to swear, curse, criticise unnecessarily and often stray into legal hot water.
Please, if you’re a student and you’re reading this, don’t say anything on social media that you wouldn’t say to your parents.
Besides, it is infinitely more witty and intelligent to create a crafted, considered post than a crass one.
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Given the apparent sentiment he has made public in the past, I don’t understand why he would want to be the football writer covering that club?
However, journalists – at least in my day – wrote stories based on facts and writers were allowed opinion, particularly sports writers. Has he covered a game yet? Was his reporting of it so bad?
Or has this happened before even a word was written?
Personally, I think his response warranted a second chance – if indeed it would have been a ‘second chance’.
I think the editor, not the writer, has made the balls up here.
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It’s sad to see that some people can hold a whole town of people in contempt, simply because they support another football team.
Archetypal football fan.
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I don’t think this is a ‘mistake’ that can be attributed to anyone, it’s the lad’s own opinion expressed – presumably – on his personal account YEARS ago. The paper should have just stood its ground, maybe he could have apologised but said he was a young lad and it was an off the cuff remark from way back when. Nobody has done anything ‘wrong’ here, it’s the world we live in – and that’s a different argument.
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Tim Rich, great, well considered comments. The Echo’s decline is due, in part, to the quality of its senior staff. These are the people who appointed this fella and have now effectively hung him out to dry.
It won’t be these editorial executives who have to face the abuse, they’ll just sit back and watch the continuing decline of a once decent paper
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Isn’t it about time Harry Blackwood got that monkey off his back? Time for another hanging at Hartlepool. I’ve never read such a bitter person’s comments. Tarring all fans from Sunderland with the same brush is ludicrous. And another thing, you refer to Subderland. As you are an ex-editor and presumbably a stickler for accuracy, please could you tell me where Subderland is?
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Like I said in an earlier post. Hung out to dry
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The key problem is that too many young people, in particular, think their views on social media are completely divorced from those comments they write for their papers etc. Absolutely not true. Maybe I am long in the tooth but I was brought up journalistically that you kept your private views private if you were writing about an organisation or whatever.
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This is a ridiculous decision but it seemed that Sunderland message boards were proposing a boycott of the Echo and its website in a massive over-reaction.
As someone who works for a paper with one massive football club on patch i can say that at least 90 per cent of our web traffic comes from stories about that club.
A boycott, even of only a few hundred people would decimate their web figures.
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Don’t you dare put this on Sunderland fans Desker and don’t put it on Sunderland Echo readers either – they are the least culpable people in this sorry saga.
The Sunderland Echo’s sports coverage has been admired for generations by readers and Saturday evening’s Football Echo was a loved publication for more than 100 years.
That there have only been five chief sports writers for the paper in more than a century tells its own story – it is a position of trust and of responsibility and readers/fans expect that person to have an empathy and appreciation of the club they cover. They rely on building up a relationship with that writer over the years – the sort of relationship that used to be the bedrock of local papers.
How were readers/fans expected to react when they found out that the new man at the heart of the Sunderland Echo’s coverage had within the last 12 months publicly said he would enjoy seeing the club relegated and described a Sunderland shirt as the worst possible present. There was also the small matter of him being colourfully abusive of a leading Sunderland player, contributing to abuse of a former Sunderland manager while, most damning of all, professing his “hate” of the people of Sunderland, describing them – and by extension fans and readers of the Sunderland Echo – as “scum”.
In those circumstances no-one can blame Sunderland fans or Sunderland Echo readers for kicking off, especially those who remember the paper’s previous sales pitch: “it’s like a friend dropping in….”
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I’m sorry Harry Blackwood et al but regardless of whether this has stemmed from social media or not the journalist has labelled the vast majority of his readership as ‘scum’ as well as other derogatory comments. This is not in dispute. This makes his role at the paper untenable. It may have been a mistake he made a few years ago but I don’t attribute any blame to those who objected to someone who intends to be a key local voice and who has clearly held the majority of his readership in such contempt. Lets be clear its not even the football comments he made that were unacceptable but calling people from Sunderland i.e. ‘Mackems’, (which isn’t an insult by the way), Scum (which is an insult).
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As we read these comments, football writers accross the country are speedily scrolling through their social media deleting tweets and posts.
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Most people seem to have entirely missed the point here. The fault lies entirely with the people who employed him in the first place. Yes, his comments were stupid but if he’d not been appointed there wouldn’t be an issue.
Ex-reader, no monkey on my back. I’m even handed. When I see incompetence I comment on it. The n is next to the b on a keyboard and I have a small phone and big fingers. I’m more than happy to take you on in a spelling bee contest if that would make you happy. There will only be one winner.
PS Dave S has misspelled “accross”. Don’t tell him I tipped you off 😉
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I would not be the least bit surprised if in the not too distant future we read the reporter in question has “left the business to seek new challenges.”
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Presumably the guys working on the nationals and reporting on every club in the Premiership all only support one team themselves, so probably secretly despise clubs they’re reporting on, as I say, it’s down to them to stay neutral as a matter of professional pride. There’s different ways of looking at this, as a fan, as a non fan, but looking at it as a journalist who many times has had to keep a lid on his own personal views, the only issue here is the problems caused by social media.
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This lad’s first mistake was making his derogatory comments on social media.
His second was failing to declare his foolishness at his job interview.
His third was failing to resign because there’s no future for him at this newspaper.
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I think they’ve missed a trick here. While some may boycott, I’m sure many more will buy the paper and visit the website just to find out what the ‘former mackem-hater’ has written about their club this week.
He could have been the Tyne and Wear sporting equivalent of Katie Hopkins!
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Simple. Write your column. Keep your mouth shut.
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