Untold Arsenal on Twitter @UntoldArsenal
Antony Kastrinakis Goes Missing! (and Untold Media Watch Update)
By: Anne
As a follow-up to my last article, Antony Kastrinakis: defacing the Arsenal, in which I detailed the exploits of a certain Arsenal-hating journalist employed by the Sun, who publishes under the name of “Antony Kastrinakis,” I thought I would give you all a little update on Mr. Kastrinakis’ reporting (or lack thereof) since the time the article was published.
Just in way of background, in my last article, I detailed certain, abrupt changes in the VOLUME of Mr. Kastrinakis’ Arsenal coverage as a percentage of his total coverage. Specifically, I found that, in 2008, Mr. Kastrinakis’ Arsenal coverage constituted approximately 15% of his total coverage, but by the end of 2009, this volume had jumped to approximately 50% of total coverage.
Moving on to recent months, I documented another sudden and abrupt change in the volume of Mr. Kastrinakis’ Arsenal coverage:
“beginning on 28 June, 2011, Mr. Kastrinakis’ coverage of Arsenal made yet another sudden jump from approximately 50% of total coverage, to ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of total coverage. Just to repeat for emphasis: ONE HUNDRED PERCENT OF TOTAL coverage. In other words, beginning on 28, June, 2011, Mr. Kastrinakis has not written one, single article about any club other than Arsenal. (Full data set: 2011: 6/28-7/16: Total articles: 21; Ars 21).”
The overall number of articles written by Antony Kastrinakis in this time period is quite staggering. Between 28 June, 2011, and 16 July, 2011, a period of only 19 days, Mr. Kastrinakis published a total of TWENTY-ONE articles, all of them about Arsenal. And since the time period covered in my article, Mr. Kastrinakis published one additional article about Arsenal on 18 July, 2011.
However, having continued to monitor Mr. Kastrinakis’ Arsenal coverage since that time, I am very pleased to bring you news of yet another sudden and abrupt change in the volume of Mr. Kastrinakis’ Arsenal coverage that has occurred since then. Specifically, ever since 18 July, 2011, Mr. Kastrinakis’ Arsenal coverage has suddenly dropped from 100% of total coverage, to zero percent of total coverage.
That’s right. Zero percent. Starting on 19 July, 2011, Mr. Kastrinakis has not published any articles about Arsenal. In fact, he hasn’t published any articles at all. As the archives of both journalisted.com and the Sun reveal, it appears that Antony Kastrinakis has been completely MIA since his last article was published on 18 July, 2011:
http://journalisted.com/antony-kastrinakis
http://www.thesun.co.uk/search/searchAction.do?view=internal&pubName=sol&sortBy=date&query=arsenal
With that in mind, we here at Untold Media Watch would like to express our best wishes to Mr. Kastrinakis on his extended vacation, and our sincere hope that he is enjoying himself. After all, his months of relentless Arsenal-bashing must certainly have required a great deal of hard work, and the sacrifice of many hours of time. In light of these facts, we believe that Mr. Kastrinakis’ current vacation is most well-deserved, and we would encourage him to stay there for as long as possible.
In the meantime, we’ll be keeping an eye on Sun reporters Paul Jiggins and Charlie Wyatt, who appear to have taken over the Arsenal beat in Mr. Kastrinakis’ absence. And on that note:
CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS: When the season begins, Untold Media Watch will begin publishing weekly updates on the media’s coverage of Arsenal, and we are currently looking for volunteers to help us do research.
Specifically, each of us will be in charge of covering one particular media outlet, and following each match, we will be characterizing the game-coverage (pre- and post- match) along these lines:
(a) describe or characterize coverage [pro-, anti-, mixed]
(b) note any patterns [e.g. talking points, repeat themes, recurring themes] that characterize coach and team
(c) note any comparisons (or not) to Walter’s post-match review [is there mention and if so, what mention of any key calls, non-calls, penalties, turning points].
This research will then be submitted to me, and I will be compiling it into a weekly match digest (much thanks to Bob for developing this organizational framework).
The more help we can get on this, the better our coverage will be. So, if this is something that you feel like you might be able to help us with, I would REALLY like to hear from you. If you’re interested, please email me at anne.thompson.79@gmail.com. I’ll look forward to hearing from you.
Arsenal’s first foreign player, and Arsenal’s smallest ever squad
The Cesc Dilemma: the real reason why Cesc should not leave
Thierry tried to play but I said no no no
Will we score more? Looking ahead to the season
Want to be treated like an idiot? Try ESPN.
——————————
Really interesting stuff Anne, wish I could help out more. Any chance the journalist in question is simply going to write under another name, or writes under various other names?
Oh dear his Nakis have been Kastrated!! No more balls to play with!!!
A good article, Anne. Good riddance to bad Kastrinakis. Hope he stays away for a long time or risk exposure like his employers.
Hi Anne
Did we ever get to know who he was (i.e. his country, his origin or anything).. I strongly feel that he was just a name nothing else..
Lets see..
If a story isn’t reported, does it happen. A Man Utd reserve 11 get beat(including evra and Smalling)8-2 and it doesn’t get a mention in the papers. Not of importance really and slightly off topic, but if Arsenal had lost this game 8-2 or Man Utd had won 8-2 similarly, we would have heard about it.
@Phil:
Sure it’s possible that the journalist in question writes under different names. The Sun, just in itself, publishes a lot of articles without any attributed author.
Agree with @Phil, could he change his name or maybe he’s just passing the bashing baton on to someone else
@Menace:
Clever, albeit twisted 🙂
@LRV:
Seconded.
@Abhishek Kumar:
We don’t know a lot about him. However, on my last article, commenter AZ was able to provide a video. Don’t know how much that tells us really, but it’s there
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/football/2711993/Benitez-faces-toughest-test.html
wot! after the impressive ref review, here comes the next revolution – media watch.. its time the world see some stats on how bias peeps are against Arsenal!!! kudos to Anne and Untold team~~ keep up the good work!
@Arsene-al:
Well, I’m currently keeping an archive of ALL of the Sun’s Arsenal coverage, so if he (or someone else) tries to start doing the same thing under a different name…let’s just say that it would be INADVISABLE to try it at the Sun. 🙂 If that happens, you can most certainly expect an update from me 🙂
@Anne,
kastri sounds like a reasonable fellow in that interview. he may even have a good understanding of the sport and may have kicked a ball in anger himself. it would seem that he was directed to make a switch to become an anti-arsenal lightning rod. his sudden absence may indicate the sun was caught with a mirror up the skirt and have put kastri on ice, or he may have developed a distaste for his own unprofessional tactics and decided to walk out.
another incredible alternative is that his editor may not have noticed his sudden change until you exposed him. yes, they can be that daft. one thing is sure: his style and volume have been directed by someone else.
@mike in atlanta:
Yeah, he does sound fairly reasonable in that interview. Although it doesn’t really tell us much about him. I’d say he’s still something of an enigma, so to speak. And as of now, the question of his motive remains undetermined. I’d say that we all probably have our own theories of motive, but so long as AK remains MIA, there’s no reason to document any of that 🙂
But yes, I would definitely say that he was being directed by someone else. And although I would personally LOVE to claim credit for getting rid of him, the truth is that we don’t know if it’s anything more than a coincidence. Questions, questions… 🙂
Is it really a coincidence that he disappeared after you exposed the Sun and Kastrinakis like that Anne?
If the Sun has a hidden agenda and instruct someone to run a campaign against Arsenal it could well be that after being exposed they removed at least his name to the articles.
I was just wondering if there could be an internal dissident silent person in Arsenal circles who wants to change things at Arsenal. In the board or somewhere around the shareholders? Would anyone out there benefit from the name Arsenal being dragged through the mud? Let us say…someone who wants to buy some shares? Bad name=lower price of shares??
All very interesting and good stuff…This mistery man/woman(who knows?)seems to have all the necessary credentials (being a Murdoch journalist) to imagine/write/print/hack .. whatever he/she has been insructed to do about Arsenal by the management of Newscorp.Who will then claim infront of a parliamentary select commitee,that they have no knowledge of who instructed the said person and who paid him/her for their work for the Sun. I think the commitee likend this to ‘selective memory’ ..blah blah…And it seems now that he/she has done a bunk,probably just got a top job with the Met advising the police,or more likely now is fearing prison for more criminal misdemeanours,whilst working for Murdoch…..Unlike Anne’s Untold Media Watch,Murdoch’s and the press in general’s coverage of Arsenal is laughable…
Interesting…..
@Anne
Well done Anne for exposing the biased and almost malicious work of one Mr kantakerous. I don’t know if you ever listen to TalkSport and especially smarty pants Adrian Durham. The other day he was going on and on about how poor Arsenal were in the game we drew against Henry’s Red Bulls and he invented stuff like “Nasri was awful as well” when Nasri didn’t even play! Shocking, disgraceful. It’s a shame we have some Arsenal fans and even worse some Arsenal ex-players and one ex-manager jumping onto that bandwagon.
@Walter:
I doubt that it’s a coincidence. But I don’t want to overplay my hand and jinx myself…Not when there are so many more fish in the barrel 🙂
However, I don’t think that the Sun only removed his name from the articles. I’m probably going to try to come up with some actual statistics for the Sun’s general Arsenal coverage at some point, but as of now, I’m monitoring it, and their total coverage seems to have dropped in volume with the absence of AK.
Overall, their Arsenal coverage is still terrible, but at least it’s less terrible than it was 🙂 And if that has to do with my article, it’s actually a better result than I was expecting, so I guess we’ll just have to keep going and see what happens.
Oh, and I also think your ideas on motive are interesting.
@Anne in re to atlanta,
is’nt the whole Murdoch empire currently full of enigma’s? Theoretically(that was not a pun intended) they are all facing prison so surely they are all passing the buck
@Rog B:
The thing about journalists is, they don’t have any position of ACTUAL power. Sure, none of these people are ever going to be taken to court for the things that they’re doing. In any case, talking points campaigns aren’t illegal, so there wouldn’t be much basis to take them to court, really.
However, the only reason that journalists have any power at all is due to the fact that people trust them as a source of information. If you can show that a particular journalist/periodical/etc. isn’t worthy of the public trust, then you don’t even need the courts. To defeat them, all you have to do is make people realize that they shouldn’t be taken seriously.
That’s our goal with Untold Media. We’re not going after the power structure, or attempting to name names, or anything like that. We just want to erode the effectiveness of their tactics, if that makes sense.
@Rog B:
I don’t know how far up the chain this NOTW investigation is actually willing to go. I doubt we’re going to be seeing Murdoch in jail anytime soon, or anything. However, if you are going to go after Murdoch, I guess there’s no better time to do it than now. I’ve personally looked into his business dealings a bit recently, and I turned up a couple of interesting things:
1) Murdoch has apparently done more business with Malcolm Glazer (ManU owner) than has previously been reported:
DODGERS NOTEBOOK: `NOTHING’ NEW ON SALE FRONT.
Byline: Jill Painter Staff Writer
PHILADELPHIA – The sale of the Dodgers from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. to Malcolm Glazer in May, is not yet complete and won’t be approved at the baseball owners meeting next month because it isn’t on the agenda, a source close to the situation said Tuesday.
The Daily News first reported Glazer, who also owns the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was finalizing an agreement to purchase the Dodgers and was in exclusive negotiations. Glazer still has to work out issues with the NFL, namely the league’s cross-ownership rules, according to sources.
“Our discussions with the Glazers are continuing,” News Corp. spokeswoman Teri Everett said. “Nothing has changed.”
ALSO:
2) Murdoch’s companies have been documented, at least at one point in 2010, as engaging in transactions involving Arsenal stock. Although this would need to be looked into further to truly determine the full implications, it’s apparent that, if Murdoch DOES own and trade in Arsenal stock, he’s clearly not a disinterested party in the affairs of the club:
OFFEREE: British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc
Offer period commenced: 07:32 15-Jun-2010
50p ordinary ISIN: GB0001411924 NSI: 1,752,842,599
ADRs ISIN: US1110131083
OFFEROR: News Corporation Limited
Offeror identified: 07:32 15-Jun-2010
Disclosure of dealings and positions in this offeror is not required
@toto:
If we can get more Untold Media volunteers, TalkSport is on my list of media outlets that need to be monitored. As of now, we don’t have anyone to cover them.
@JamesO:
I agree with you.
@only 1:
Thank you 🙂
@Dark Prince:
“Interesting…..”
That might be the most understated and ambivalent post that I’ve ever seen from you 🙂
Yes Anne that makes sense,sorry to introduce a little current public feeling (bias) in my post’s,but in your reply as you state,the only reason journalists have any power at all is due to the fact that people(myself included) trust them as a source of info. Clearly that breach has been broken and you have explained the best way to deal with it. So with constructive reply’s such as mine and many others to your blogs with clear and abject answers from Untold in reply,the reason people like ‘us’ reply goes without saying,regular vistors to this site know what you are doing. Unfortunately with so many ‘supposed’ Arsenal fan websites that all of a sudden seemed to have appeared in the last three or so months on Goonernews,I feel Untold is just appearing as ‘AN other AFC website’ without anything clearly distancing itself from what appears to be the commercial trash that seems to fill the Goonern. feed. This website and a very small few others to me,give clearly what Arsenals fans want and deserve,yet on the face of the Gooner feed,there seems to be little if anything to distingish you and the few others from the 90% trash that we get on the feed..I can’t fault anybody to do with Untold,it’s what I and many others want,I dunno maybe you like the annonymty,shame if you do,but I it’s your choice…10 out of 10 Untold and Anne. P.s excuse my grammar I only got a C in English o Level
@RogB:
I appreciate the time that you’ve put into your posts here, and my responses were intended to do nothing more than elaborate on the points that you were already making. I agree with your comments about the oftentimes sad state of the Arsenal blogosphere these days, and I’m glad that you like what Untold is doing. And we’re certainly not trying to remain anonymous 🙂 If you want to help out on that score, anything you can do to spread the word would be appreciated 🙂 Thanks again for registering your comments.
-Anne
I take that as a no then,ah well I understand
Anne I was gonna mention Murdoch ‘SKY’ trying to buy Manu but I thought that was so obvious to everybody I did’nt bother. Plse contact me with regard to TALKSPORT media watch,
@Rog B:
A no? I didn’t mean to tell you no on anything, so I think I might have misunderstood something in your post. Can you clarify 🙂
As for Untold Media Watch, if you might be interested in covering Talk Sport, we would be more than happy to have your help. My email address is included at the end of the article above. If you email me, I’ll be able to get back to you immediately. Thanks.
Kudos to Untold’s media watch for an instant impact on media coverage of Arsenal’s business. I think the more the media know that its tactics and biases are going to be examined and exposed, they more they will have to be more gaurded and more subtle. Moreso, in the aftermath of the demise of News Of the World.
Kudos to Anne for a groundbreaking effort in the world of football blogs.
@Anne,
Thanks for the tremendous work that you are doing, in response to your call for a brave one to watch talkshite, i can track their website but i cannot commit to listen to the tripe they talk ad infinitum. i can have a daily peruse of their site to catch up with the latest slander if it’d help.
Anne just keeps impressing…
Regarding AK, good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. And well done to Anne the Excorcist for that. I hope that “journalist” never comes out of whatever hole he’s crawled into.
On another note, who’s investigating the phone hacking scandal? It might be useful to draw their attention to Untold, particularly the Media Watch. If they can’t smell this particular rat (AK), maybe they can get a few ideas from here on who to keep an eye on in future.
@shakabulagooner:
Thank you very much 🙂 I as well hope that shining a spotlight on the press will force them to be more “subtle,” as you put it. That’s the idea of what we’re doing here 🙂
@Ugandan Goon:
There are plenty of media outlets aside from Talk Sport if you’re interested in volunteering. We could definitely use your help 🙂 Did you just send me an email, by any chance? I just got one from someone whose name I didn’t recognize from comments.
@C4:
Thanks. Glad you liked the article. Personally, I think it would be too much to hope that AK never shows up again, but we can keep our fingers crossed 🙂 I’m keeping an eye out for him. Don’t know how much help I would be to the NOTW investigation, but I suppose anything’s possible 🙂
@Anne,
I didn’t send the email, despite my online moniker, i am sorry to announce i have a very ordinary name and totally non-threatening to look at. please let me know what other outlets you have in mind, Talkshite is an intellectual black hole none should peep into if they want to keep their sanity.
P.s Can it be hoped the esteemed European football correspondent for the sun is on enforced leave until the phone hacking scandal blows over?
Really interesting stuff and not for the first time from Anne! I am a bit lost for words at some of this stuff. I wonder what they will find out about Murdoch if they look hard enough, and as we all know people in some very high places have every reason to be very upset with him.
As for talkshite today, they spent several minutes trying to get Nigel winter burn to say he expects us to finish out of the top 4. I do not listen to it that much but there are huge biases at work, with high profile presenters who support spurs, Chelsea, Liverpool, utd and then the usual pro utd stuff on top.
Even our ex players seem to get coerced into the anti arsenal line, none more so than our friends Messers wright and Robson . Stan dogger collymore, Adrian Durham, mickey Quinn, have been amongst the worst offenders.
As I say I can only take so much of this station, some of it turns my stomach and has done since most of them seemed to turn on wenger and cesc for the shawcross erm tackle.
@ Anne
Another great piece of work Anne, it looks as if you have caused the Sun to wind in AK for the time being – quite a victory for fair play!
I’ll send you an email, probably tomorrow evening.
@Ugandan Goon:
I’m not really committed to any particular media outlets. What would you be most interested in covering? Or which would be easiest and/or most convenient for you?
@Mandy Dodd:
Glad you enjoyed the article. And as for what kind of dirt you could find on Murdoch if you really dug into all of his affairs? I’m not sure if my imagination can even stretch that far 🙂
@bjtgooner:
I’ll look forward to hearing from you 🙂
Just like to join in and say what a fantastic pro arsenal site this is. i would like to agree with all the anti Arsenal media comments, but just as bad is the lack of negative comments made about our rivals when they fail ie as was mentioned earlier Man U 8-2 loss, but also liverpool L3-0 L3-0 3-3 last three friendlies, 5 years no trophy and now no europe which Mark Lawrenson on the BBC web site says is a good thing, and they will finish 4th at our expense!Talksport are definately serial offenders (we have Harry/Kevin/Joe on the line..Spurs love in!!)I also think Sky Sports news and ESPN are just as Bad.
@Anne,
i live in the U.K, so can easily access most of our papers, i have to admit that i am going to have to look again at all the articles in this series to gauge how i can be of use- i will email you later tonight with an idea or two and we can discuss viability.
@ Anne :
Well done and keep it up . You go, girl ! In the background I keep Queen singing ” The first one bites the dust !Then another
one bites the dust ! And another one ,and another one ….”.
@Ugandan Goon:
That’s fine. I only want people to do it if they have the time, so just let me know if you do 🙂
@Brickfields Gunners:
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves now 🙂 Remember, the idea is to raise public awareness, not to take out journalists…:)
@Shard:
Sorry, off topic, but please call me ASAP if you happen to get this. To everyone else, back to your knitting. Cheers 🙂
Anne,
On the Murdoch-Glazer 2004 tie:
In 2004, the National Football League (where Glazers are big owners) rejected their cross-league bid to buy the LA Dodgers from Murdoch’s News Corp. And Murdoch sold the Dodgers to a higher-bid by Boston real-estate mogul Frank McCourt. Now in 2011, the McCourts have been very-publicly and nastily divorcing and ruining the Dodgers; so that Major League Baseball has pressured the McCourts to sell the Dodgers and the bidding for them is underway. The Glazers failure to get the LA Dodgers is one of the reasons that they are thought (says the LA Times) to have greatly increased their shares to a controlling position in ManUre.
Maybe he’s just on holiday ;(
I’m prepared to help with any research, although the only papers I look at are the Metro and Evening Standard (dreadful Arsenal coverage) and I am definitely not prepared to listen to Talkshite.
I could also cover any online websites/blogs, although not Phil McNulty’s as I have already been banned from the BBC comments for pointing out his anti-Arsenal bias.
p.s. as a small update:
In 2011, the Baseball Commissioner (who has the power to suspend ownership that violates the interests of baseball) took a stand against McCourt when he rejected McCourt’s request to borrow $200 million from Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Entertainment Group, which previously owned the team.
So Manure’s Glazer and BSkyB’s/Sun’s Murdoch may well have a strategic business alliance, but, on the surface at least, it was not “consummated” in the attempted LA Dodger sale (by Glazer from Murdoch) in 2004; and McCourt, the Glazer’s rival, had actually turned to Murdoch interests for the rejected loan noted just above. And so it goes….
@Anne,
I very much liked how you went about debunking the “cesc to barca” saga that has provided a handy cudgel with which to whip arsenal fans into a frenzy of self loathing and intense infighting- the horrible truth being that all the whining and “Wenger out” stories owe their roots in the the irrational fear that if cesc goes then arsenal shareholders will pick up a nice dividend as we cast our eyes around for the next youth product to sell.
As tony pointed out on this site some time ago, this is not the first time it has been down and i am sure the cleverer editors will have this formula down to a tee.
Every close season most people batten down the hatches and prepare for an onslaught of shit until the transfer window / international break is over and the real football starts again.
I have a couple of ideas for the media watch column, first, there is the issue of the underlying concepts akin to what social reformers might use to influence society- we see policy rolled out across the world that ahs no basis in fact but has a certain resonance with “ordinary folks”- the common sense that is infact wrong as tony pointed out sometime this month, we need to gett hold of a few of these ideas and make them recognisable so that reasonable antidotes can be devised.
Then i thought of tracing stories back to their genesis, as you did so well with the Cesc story, in tracing them backwards we could track the subtle modifications in the story to pinpoint the motive of each author to see the quite often leaps tenuous links- i firmly believe these stories come from the same germ and then take on a life of their own as each sports desks tries to out do it’s rivals with the latest “exclusive”.
The idea s are still half formed and i am thinking about format and still need to do a bit of research into political science / the dark arts of media communications.
I will keep you updated on all progress.
ugandan goon,
please don’t underestimate the capacity of the “non-ordinary” folks for being misled and self-deluded. the media-shite works because it does not operate on the rational/logical level and anyone is susceptible, or can use their (too rare) common sense to see through it.
@Anne — Great Job Anne. But then, couldn’t expect anything less from you. You have spoiled us. Just like Arsene. And please take that as a big compliment. Love your work. 🙂