Craig Whyte has lifted the lid on the cosy relationship enjoyed between Ibrox and the Scottish media.
The succulent lamb days of Dave Murray have gone down in football folklore with the former Ibrox owner feeding stories to his favoured reporters knowing that there would be no critical comment on club finances and horrendous performances in Europe.
As an extension, as the Alfredo Morelos translation story has shown, throwing mud at Celtic wouldn’t do anyone any harm if they wanted to stay in the loop for exclusives direct from Ibrox.
Whyte was welcomed with open arms by the mainstream Scottish media who informed the hard of thinking about the billionaire from Motherwell.
With his dodgy business background the new chief at Ibrox was amazed at the favourable treatment that was guaranteed by his new found status.
On Friday ‘Into The Bear Pit’ is released with Whyte talking to The National about the power of Traynor to manipulate large parts of traditional media.
Whyte claims: “Jim Traynor used to send me his articles through before he’d print them, and I’d correct them for him. In the pre-internet days, Murray must have had complete control.
“Some journalists were happy to have a good relationship with Rangers if that meant getting stories, even if as a result it became difficult to criticise the club. Traynor had got in touch … about a month after I went into Ibrox. We went for lunch at the Rogano restaurant and from that day he hounded me for a job.
“I was never that impressed with him. I would soon discover he could fly with the wind. I had dinners with all the editors and learned very quickly that if there was a negative story I could call some of them up and have a pretty good chance of getting it stopped.
“With the Daily Record I had a 100% chance, and it was the same with The Sun. I used to call the editor of The Herald. I had a 50-50 chance of getting things stopped there. If it didn’t get stopped, you threatened them with withdrawal of access, that they wouldn’t get stories.”
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Sixteen months after being introduced as a billionaire Whyte put Rangers into administration, in June 2012 HMRC rejected a CVA putting the club into liquidation.
