Qatar’s ‘sports-washing’ World Cup has backfired in PR terms, but it's taken the heat off world football’s corrupted governing body FIFA who gave it a green light in the first place. Mediawatch talks to a whistleblower who became a journalist and publisher herself to get the story out.
Photo: AFP
The tiny Gulf state of Qatar was obviously ill-suited to hosting a World Cup, but back in 2010 it persuaded delegates of football's world governing body FIFA otherwise.
Qatar has spent a fortune on it since then, but not on the wages of migrant workers who built the facilities, or their health and safety. About 6000 of them have reportedly died building the stadiums since 2010.
But why spend so much money and risk so many lives? In a word: ‘sportswashing’ - whereby a country or organisation seeks to improve its reputation by hosting or sponsoring a big sports event, with the help of the media.
On the podcast The News Agents, veteran political journalist Jon Sopel reckoned Qatar might now now have buyer's remorse.
He said someone who has worked closely with the Qataris said they were now asking why they had bothered.
“We spent 200 billion dollars on this. We are vilified over LGBTQ rights. We are attacked for being corrupt over the manner in which we got the World Cup,” said Jon Sopel, channeling his unnamed source.
‘We are seen as kind of Victorian in the labour laws that we have in the way that guest workers have been treated. Nothing good has come to us as a result of this. And...
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