Beerfan wrote:steve shearer wrote:I bore witness to the dying embers of that rivalry. It ended emphatically with the total and crushing defeat of AI.
Some heats you could see the total and abject humiliation being inflicted by Kelly on Andy. No mercy. Those last couple of years were brutal. They didn't make it into any videos and they weren't written about much by the surf media, didn't fit any of the convenient narrative templates.
No doubt Andy's drug use played a role.......any rational observant person could see he was spiralling downwards and the obvious reason: drug use, was being consistently and systematically ignored by the surf media or denied in some bizarre effort to "protect" Andy.
What was really being protected though was the relationship with one of the surf media's main sources of advertising revenue, ie Billabong.
Were lessons learned ? Not sure. I didn't see one surf writer of the time do a skerrick of self reflection and maybe admit they got it wrong.
The surf media killed Andy, is that what you're saying Steve? Again?
Fcuk Beery, I believe you have basic comprehension skills. Try again.
A blind eye was turned. That's already been well established.
This guy was no chump. It was a three time world champ. Bong's main man, a bloke making them millions in board short sales. There was a hell of a lot to lose if his image was suddenly and irrevocably shattered. And so we got the euphemisms : "oh he's burnt out on competing" , "he's been partying a bit hard and needs some time off" etc etc etc
Surely now, a few years after the event we can debate the merits or otherwise of that decision?
Mate, if it wasn't for the ferocious, fearless reporting and investigating of a few journos Lance Armstrong would still be standing on the podium claiming Tour De Frances and saying he was clean.
You understand the role of journalists? They are supposed to go behind the public relations spin and corporate interests and report the truth, not be fcuking agents for disseminating corpo marketing BS.
The magazines are too beholden to the corporate advertisers, the journalists too close and chummy with the athletes they are supposed to be reporting on....it's just simply not possible for such conflicting and entwined interests to deal with a situation like AI. They'll wish him the best, pretend they are acting in his best interests and turn away.
Would AI still be alive today if that had happened? No possible way of saying. But the massive shake-up and testing regime could have come in a lot earlier than it did.
I didn't and have never said the surf media killed AI. Thats a ridiculous position to take.
But AI's death revealed systemic failure in the surf media to do anything like it's real job.
Has anything been learnt should be the question asked now.
Tbh, and I know everyone here has had an absolute gutful of my take on this, so don't worry we'll go back to lovey dovey pally wally in a minute, I doubt it. In fact quite the opposite.
In all the hand wringing washups after the event the surf media poked around everywhere except in it's own backyard. They looked at managers, surf companies (ever so gently, hey they had careers to protect).....I don't think one outlet thought: hey we're the media, wasn't it our job to report what was happening? We knew the guy was spiralling down the plug-hole for years and it's not as if he was the only high profile surfer to get enmeshed in a bad drug addiction.
Most surfers who slid off the rails and lost sponsorship could be quietly and efficiently disappeared by the surf media, a shameful situation in itself, ala Shane Herring and Nathan Hedge.
Now, we have Surfing Australia building it's own media network, the ASP generating its own content. And journalists working for same. That makes the problem worse, not better.
The question: Can an organization report impartially on itself and it's activities? has been answered via direct evidence over a long period in an emphatic NO. Of course they can't. They'll always act in their own self interest, not the public interest.
