For reasons that they are unwilling to share The Guardian has pulled the plug on £5,000 of advertising.
In the current climate where print advertising is under threat from all corners it seems incredible that a publication that likes to be viewed as alternative voice can turn down such a sum.
The advert was constructed through group funding arranged by Celtic Quick News to support the shareholders behind Resolution 12.
Talks had been underway for some time with The Guardian to carry the advert on June 1 and June 4 bringing attention to the licence issue that saw the SFA nominate Rangers for European competitions in 2011/12 despite having an overdue payable of £2.8m owed to HMRC on June 30.
Despite receiving correspondence through the proper legal channels the SFA have refused to discuss the issue with the shareholders with Stewart Regan trying to shift the goalposts by referring to March 30 when he finally spoke out about the matter.
The Tribune de Genéve carried the advert on June 1 but having taken payment and agreed to publish the advert suddenly The Guardian got cold feet and pulled the plug on the two part advert.
Explaining the chain of events CQN stated: “CQN received an email on Friday 27th May, from a senior manager who had not been involved in the booking, which said: “I regret to inform you that adverts such as this get reviewed by our editorial board and as such they’ve decided not to carry the advertisement on this occasion. We therefore will be cancelling the booking this end with no monies due.
“We will of course reimburse you in full and this has been actioned by myself already; it will be with our accounts team who will be making the necessary transaction as soon as possible.”
“The Statement had once again been spiked and would not appear in The Guardian.
“This happened on the same day that the Resolution 12 submission was formally sent to UEFA and a copy was posted to Celtic FC.
“Monday 30th May was a Bank Holiday, so on Tuesday morning CQN fully expected The Guardian to have returned the crowd funded money – again around £5000, so that other media outlets could be used. The strategy was to ensure that the Statement appeared on that Wednesday, the same day as the SFA AGM.
“The Guardian did not reimburse CQN as promised. The refund had not been ‘actioned already’ and indeed it took until this morning, Wednesday 8th June, before the funds were recovered.
“CQN spoke repeatedly to the senior manager in question and also to his colleague who organised the booking and explained that there were alternative plans for the funds, that the money was crowd funded with many hundreds of football supporters having contributed and that they had a right to know why the Guardian had taken the money, cancelled that booking and were frustrating alternative plan by not returning the funds.
“The Guardian’s sales manager, who took the booking, told CQN that the decision wasn’t taken by his boss or indeed his boss but even higher up the chain of command. He told us that it was a ‘unique situation’ that their team had never experienced before and could no understand why the Guardian were reluctant to return the funds as promised.
“CQN has an obligation to update everyone who contributed to this initiative on the difficulties faced. However we had to wait until the money was safely recovered.
“There may be questions for the Guardian from any of their readers interested in their handling of this.
“And for those who set out to frustrate our plans and suppress the message of the Resolution 12 statement – and we know you are reading this – the message from CQN is that you failed. And you have saved us £5000 into the bargain. This will be used in places you least expect, very soon indeed.”
Guardian columnist Roy Greenslade hasn’t been slow to highlight inconsistencies in how Scottish media sources have covered political matters related to Scottish football in recent seasons- it’s unlikely that he’ll cover why Resolution 12 was pulled from the pages of The Guardian.
