Some say that Max’s private life is just that, and what the president of the FIA gets up to in the bedroom should remain there. Others feel that the potentially racist overtones from the recently alleged ‘orgy’ discredit the 67 year-old to the point where he should resign. I should point out that despite the video and photographs, nothing has been proven just yet, but regardless of how you feel, it does seem a little strange that the mainstream media are shying away from the story.
As of typing there has been little coverage on the major Formula One sites. It took until today for Autosport to say anything, and when they did it was just to quote the chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, Bernie Ecclestone, Stirling Moss and the official FIA position of ‘keeping out of it for now’. ITV-F1 have said nothing and many other sites are equally as shy. The bloggers however are having a field-day, and the forums have been overwhelmed. In fact, Autosport have tried to close one of the threads discussing the story, only for their subscribers to start another one, and another one, and… They then went on to criticise Autosport for censoring their voices after some had paid to join their services. Of course, Autosport reserve the right to control their forums, but I can understand their users frustration when little reasoning is given to them.
In fact, the Times Online has been the only real mainstream media outlet to grab the story and offer comment. Perhaps this is some form of payback for the FIA going after Times columnist and respected commentator Martin Brundle for his ‘witch-hunt’ remarks last season? This is even mentioned in the article by Ashling O’Connor and Ed Gorman. Either way, the Times, also owned by News International who own the NOTW, published this article and felt it necessary to add a little bit at the bottom, titled “The wit and wisdom of Max Mosley”.
To say it has been an interesting morning is an understatement, but I must add I have only found it interesting because of the way the media is handling the ‘scandal’. The silence from the Mosley-camp is deafening, but then Max is a clever man. He may not have always applied his intelligence particularly well when dealing with Formula One, but he is intelligent none-the-less. I’m sure his lawyers are going to earn their pay-packets this week.
And perhaps it is just this reason why the media aren’t all over Max Mosley at the moment.
Update: ITV-F1 have now added comment.
I wrote something along these lines this morning but WordPress seems to have eaten it which is very frustrating!
Mosley must be thinking of taking legal action against the paper or we would have had a mea culpa by now…
Apparently Max is consulting his lawyers. He had better be! But I’m not sure his silence is a good move – a straight denial would at least have made it clear that he wasn’t accepting the accusations.
Never write in WordPress (or any other blogging software), Keith. Do it in a simple text editor that never falls over and then copy and paste it into the blog editor. 😉
I think the more mainstream site starting to cover it now is a sign that there’s sufficient evidence to back it up don’t you think?
I can understand their reluctance to start with, given the FIA and therefore Max’s stance on taking legal action willy-nilly, they can all expect to be hit should it turn out to be false but they seem to have consulted their legal people in advance of running the story.
Even the News of The World’s handling of it has been a little strange. I caught the morning news and the story wasn’t even in their first edition yesterday, then it appeared on the front page of the later editions. Given that it was filmed on Friday and therefore not exactly breaking news the only reason for them delaying the printing was to check all the facts added up – obviously because it was a Sunday paper they would have had to keep it quiet for another week had they missed this week’s edition.
Mind you, on a GP weekend it may have caused even more embarassment!
Looks like no one felt like loosing the pit lane or Paddock pass …
I could happily have lived my whole life without knowing this, I’m not a prude, far from it, but Max? Ewwww
They may have some kind of set time they want to wait before covering a story like this – see if it gets retracted or disputed or whatever.
It’s weird how there was silence, then a lot of sites covered it at once, and now the others are catching up.
[…] It’s strange how not many of the usual news outfits have picked up on this story (as Oliver rightly points out over on his site). […]