Ich würde die Fragen anders herum stellen: Warum interessieren sich so genannte Leitmedien nicht für Play the Game? In Deutschland ganz besonders (nicht). Warum sind sie, die doch sonst Korrespondenten zu fast jedem x-beliebigen aber angeblich wichtigen Fußballspiel schicken, jemanden zu Play the Game zu entsenden? Bring mich nicht in die Verlegenheit, aufzuzählen, wie wenige deutsche Journalisten ich 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 und 2009 bei Play the Game gesichtet habe.

Dagegen: David Walsh war immerhin zweimal da. Andrew Jennings (natürlich) immer. Declan Hill fast immer.

Nochmal: Die Fragen müssten eher an jene gehen, die fehlen.

Zum Glück ist der Begriff/die Institution Leitmedium längst aufgeweicht. So etwas gibt es ja nicht wirklich mehr – für mich jedenfalls nicht. Die Außenwirkung von Play the Game würde ich nicht unterschätzen, in der Branche (sportpolitisch) wird das schon beachtet. Das IOC schaut genau hin. Die Fifa hat sogar Spione geschickt.

Überschätzen ist natürlich auch unangebracht.

Freue mich schon auf die Antworten der OJA-Mitglieder. Die dürfen wir doch sicher auch hier lesen, oder?

Zum Thema schweigende (Leit-)medien: Es gab ja offensichtlich auch nicht das Bedürfnis, Weinreich-Texte abzudrucken (Lobenswerte Ausnahme ist natürlich der Deutschlandfunk). Ein Stück in der „Berliner Zeitung“ ist nicht gerade viel.

Liegt es vielleicht daran, dass Sie nicht nur Beobachter, sondern auch Vortragender in Coventry waren? Ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, dass Sie der „Süddeutschen“, der „Frankfurter Rundschau“ oder „Spiegel Online“ das Thema nicht vorgeschlagen haben … Wie waren denn die Reaktionen in den Redaktionen?

I hope the mass membership of the OJA is going to scream ear-splittingly at this disgraceful situation. Jean-Marie Weber, the biggest bribe-payer in the history of sport is admitted to their ranks? You guys must do a forensic analysis to discover who approved this membership application. Then evict the people responsible. If you don’t – your credibility is zero. And if Weber is still a member at the end of this month of June 2009 . . . start looking for new jobs.

The duty of reporters is to report on the dirty activities of crooks like Weber. What we see here is the reporters giving shelter and comfort to a man who has spent his long working life corrupting our sports organisations. Are there lessons to be drawn from this affair? Can we trust our reporters?
Sorrowfully,

Andrew Jennings

Well, fancy that. Didn’t you promise in your previous entries, you will write more about Jean-Marie? There should be quite an amount of material in the next future.

In my humble opinion, it isn’t very difficult to imagine, how and why he got into this. Now, IOC and FIFA don’t need to explain, why Jean-Marie is attending all of their conferences. He’s a journalist now and will not have any issues. And I doubt, he will ever be close to the persona non grata status, others had and have.

@ha: I doubt it. I think this is family business. Could be a matter of a few phone calls and the deal was settled. As Jens wrote earlier, the Association doesn’t seem to be the most active one. I think they had the idea that nobody would find out. But somehow they missed, that Jean-Marie does not have very much luck with his last name.

@AndrewJennings: Do you really think, the majority of the remaining 100ish so-called-journalists will scream? After everything I read during the last months (in a lot of archives thanks to the web), there doesn’t seem to be very much noise because of such things. How many of your colleagues screamed loudly when Fifa banned you? What was the reaction of the german journalist associations when Jens had his dispute with Herr Zwanziger over here? How intense are the articles about Mr Warner and what he did to the football players, there’s so much more as you will know better than me.

I’ll be happy, if I’m wrong, but I think there will be a few articles, a few lame explanations and then silence. Maybe, in the end there will be someone – maybe a secretary of the OJA or similar – answering, telling the world that they even have invited Jean-Marie. Because he can help the Association with his knowledge and contacts inside the sports family/organisation.

I hope for the very best and would be the very first to confirm my mistake. But I won’t bet anything a cent on the fellow journalists of the OJA. And not on the average blogosphere either. Jean-Marie’s case is – even with his incredibly poor history – too far away from being important to ordinary newspapers and blog-writers.

@Andrew again: Aren’t you now in the best position. You can bring Jean-Marie up and discuss with your fellows at the FIFA ethic commission ( http://jensweinreich.de/?p=3030 ) ;)

@Jens: A very good idea to include your international world into this blog. Hope, it will be worth it.

Some primary forensic analysis, as Andrew Jennings has suggested, might possibly be done just by looking at Jean-Marie Weber’s face to the result that „Who’s got the Peso – has got the say-so“.
Suspiciously, appearing in that list right next to Jens Weinreich, if you’d counted the shared letters in the two person’s names, you’d get a hiding, if not a whitewashing, of the bagman’s by 88.88 percent.
As Dan Hicks put it: Better by hook, better than crook.
Get him out o‘ there before it’s too late.

Hi Jens,

as an member of the Olympic Journalists Association I would like to repeat right here, what I have already written in my return-e mail :

Thank you for the information and for making public this unbelievable fact.

First I thought you would be kidding, but obviously it’s not a joke. Will be interesting to get to know how this was made to happen. I guess good old Juan Antonio was Jean-Marie’s attestor, once again.

Is this the IOC-attribution to the anyversary 10 years ioc-bribe-scandal ?

Herbert Fischer-Solms,
Deutschlandfunk