To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

Should Fi­fa make de­ci­sions on which coun­try is best suit­ed to host the World Cup based on whether or not me­dia in the par­tic­u­lar coun­try "in­sult" or not the high com­mand of the in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball fed­er­a­tion? It is one of a se­ries of in­ter­est­ing is­sues now alive be­cause of the rev­e­la­tion by Fi­fa Vice-pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er that al­le­ga­tions in the Eng­lish me­dia played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the de­ci­sion of the Fi­fa ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee to ig­nore the bid by Eng­land to host the 2018 World Cup. It was well ad­ver­tised here that the BBC Panora­ma pro­gramme dur­ing the week of the vote in Zurich ran sto­ries of cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ties al­leged­ly en­gaged in by at least three se­nior Fi­fa of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Jack Warn­er. Af­ter what he de­scribes as the "in­sults" heaped on the Fi­fa ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee by the Eng­lish me­dia, Mr Warn­er said it would have been an even greater in­sult for the com­mit­tee it­self to vote for Eng­land. Now there is some­thing of a con­tra­dic­tion in Mr Warn­er's state­ment, that is if he had been quot­ed cor­rect­ly by the in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia as hav­ing said that he had vot­ed for Eng­land in the ini­tial round of vot­ing: If in fact the Fi­fa vice pres­i­dent did vote for Eng­land, was he sup­port­ing the in­sults against the com­mit­tee?

But be­yond Mr Warn­er's vot­ing in the ini­tial round, there is need for re­flec­tion on whether or not a gov­ern­ment and per­haps 95 per cent of a coun­try's pop­u­la­tion should be pun­ished for sto­ries car­ried and po­si­tions tak­en by its do­mes­tic me­dia, more so if the me­dia are in­de­pen­dent of the gov­ern­ment and the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tions. There must be se­ri­ous con­cern when an in­ter­na­tion­al sport­ing body could pun­ish an en­tire pop­u­la­tion, ob­vi­ous­ly en­thu­si­as­tic for the pre­mier foot­ball tour­na­ment to be re­turned to their coun­try af­ter 44 years, not be­cause of a flawed or in some way in­ad­e­quate bid, but be­cause of "in­sults" by me­dia hous­es car­ry­ing out what is per­ceived to be their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate and re­port. If such pow­er were to be ced­ed to Fi­fa it would amount to the world foot­ball body be­ing able to ex­er­cise con­trol over what is re­port­ed and car­ried in the me­dia through its abil­i­ty to im­pose sanc­tions on a mem­ber coun­try sim­ply be­cause the foot­ball fed­er­a­tion is in dis­agree­ment with what par­tic­u­lar me­dia hous­es seek to high­light. When Fi­fa in­vites mem­ber states to bid to host an event such as the World Cup it would be sur­pris­ing if in­clud­ed in the cri­te­ria for qual­i­fi­ca­tion to host the games are stip­u­la­tions on what a coun­try's me­dia can and can­not do in the lead-up to the vot­ing.

On the oth­er hand, the Fi­fa ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee is made up of hu­man be­ings–not ro­bots and not com­put­ers. Clear­ly, the hu­man re­ac­tion is that if some­one is sub­ject­ed to full-scale, hu­mil­i­at­ing and vit­ri­olic glob­al at­tacks by rep­utable me­dia hous­es on the eve of an im­por­tant de­ci­sion, that per­son would not nec­es­sar­i­ly be well dis­posed to the coun­try where those me­dia hous­es are domi­ciled. It is al­most as though cer­tain seg­ments of the Eng­lish me­dia wished to stab the coun­try's bid to host World Cup 2018 in the back and en­sure that the knife did as much dirty work as pos­si­ble. As we ar­gued in this space on Mon­day, this is an is­sue that has at least three sides to it and while there may be anger in Britain over what they view as Mr Warn­er's treach­ery, there is no ev­i­dence that he has ei­ther an um­bil­i­cal or colo­nial link to that coun­try. His al­le­giance as Fi­fa vice pres­i­dent is to vote for the coun­try for which the grant of the World Cup prize would max­imise the spread of the beau­ti­ful game to the far reach­es of the world. While there may be con­tin­u­ing con­cerns about Mr Warn­er's dual role as min­is­ter and Fi­fa of­fi­cial, those are for T&T's Prime Min­is­ter to ad­dress in light of these new is­sues that have been made pub­lic.