The Cyprus Football Association’s (CFA) intervention – specifically by George Koumas – in the Cyprus Sports Writers Union (EAK) journalism awards “constitutes an improper and entirely condemnable action”, as the Union of Cyprus Journalists states.
But this pales in comparison to the fact that the Sports Writers Union yielded to this intervention and reversed its decision to award our journalist, Fanis Makrides.
This is a disgrace to journalism and suggests unacceptable collusion. The sports journalists have effectively admitted through their actions that instead of holding the Cyprus Football Association to account, they’re engaged in unholy dealings with it at the expense of press freedom.
This comes almost simultaneously as the president of one of the major clubs, Omonia, dared to state publicly that “the CFA operates in an unprecedentedly corrupt environment, tailor-made to serve personal interests and agendas”.
So instead of journalists investigating and exposing this “corrupt environment”, a football club does the exposing while journalists cover it up.
They’ve given the CFA the right to dictate which journalistic work deserves awards and which doesn’t.
A twelve-member committee from the Sports Writers Union evaluated journalistic pieces and decided to award first prize in the feature/investigation category to Fanis Makrides’s investigation.
Just days before the ceremony, Fanis was informed that the Union had decided to “suspend” (what does suspension mean?) his award because the CFA had sent them a letter expressing “surprise and displeasure” about the report, noting that “its content is rejected”.
Rejected by the CFA, and the Union’s journalists accept this rejection!
In fact, in September 2023, he revealed in a front-page story in philenews the findings of investigating officers appointed by the Ethics and Sports Protection Committee to examine whether there was a conflict of interest regarding George Koumas’s roles.
The matter was serious enough that the Committee appointed investigators – lawyers Elias Stephanou and Efthymios Th. Efthymiou – to examine it.
The details of the case aren’t relevant to this article. What concerns us is the behaviour of the Sports Writers Union’s journalists.
As the Journalists’ Union statement notes, “the suspension of colleague Fanis Makridis’s award, following the CFA’s inconceivable intervention, is a disgrace to freedom of expression, pluralism of views, and press freedom”.
It’s outrageous that those being scrutinised can dictate whether their scrutineers are doing their job properly, and that the scrutineers bow to such dictation.
A disgrace indeed. Even more shameful is that the Sports Writers Union, following the backlash, attempts to lecture others about responsibility with a legalistic statement citing “the constitutional principle of innocence until proven guilty” and attributing the award suspension to “matters of a legal nature”.
We journalists have fought for decades to prevent “matters of a legal nature” – always raised by those under scrutiny to silence us – from impeding our work, and suddenly a major journalists’ union adopts precisely what we don’t want impeding us.
The award decided by the twelve-member committee (which included industry experts, not random individuals) merely recognises journalistic work. It neither endorses the content nor passes judgment. It only evaluates the journalist’s work.
And in this case, they deemed it worthy of first prize. The CFA’s disagreement shouldn’t concern journalists. How could it? Everything else is pretence meant to cover up the criminal collusion between journalists and the Football Association.
Only responsible journalism suffers from this.
P.S. Bravo to the dean of sports reporting, Petros Hadjichristodoulou, who – while receiving his award for his excellent book “OFF THE RECORD” – refused to accept the honorary plaque, denouncing the Union’s unacceptable decision.
At least he left a glimmer of hope that we’re not all the same.
