Clickbait And Confusion

The truth of Everton's ongoing PSR case.

By JohnB

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We live in a clickbait world. A world where misinformation and often ignorance circulates around the globe with undue haste. Whether something is true or not, matters not. We all know this, and sadly the echo chambers of social media, like X, the platform formally known as Twitter, are an active breeding ground for rumours, with an inevitable impact on people’s lives and mental state. 

In our 21^st-century lives, we depend on good journalists to do their research, write considered articles that may have at their heart an opinion, but are nevertheless built upon the solid foundations that only facts can bring.

We are, though, frequently disappointed by the quality of journalism, which can be distorted by the drive for advertising revenues and clicks, or a sensational headline written by a sub-editor with a fetish for the magic word of: “EXCLUSIVE!”

Compound these first-world challenges with a demand for football journalists to be able to be required to report upon complex legal cases brought by unregulated businesses like the Premier League against its own members (the clubs), and it is not too difficult to imagine things going wrong and any semblance of truth being lost upon the way. 

A recent case in point is the tale of a disgraced red-top newspaper presenting a new story about the potential for a further points deduction for Everton under the Premier League’s Profit & Sustainability Rules (PSR).