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Atom AKA Mosley On TV
Date: November 1 2007
[ 
Mood: Muddy Talker ]
Mood: Muddy Talker ][ 
Currently: Reading Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology by James MacKillock ]
Currently: Reading Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology by James MacKillock ]The latest part of my analysis was prompted by an interesting 22-minute interview of Max Mosely by BBC's Hardtalk programme. The interview was largely about the McLaren/Ferrari case, and it does indicate that the off-line press can be a lot slower to wield their big guns than their on-line equivalents.
Before I give my own opinion, I thought it would be interesting to give you an exercise. The interview was broadcast on TV, but it is also available as a video on the BBC site. Listen to it throughout, forgetting any comments you may already have seen on this particular interview. The exercise is to see how well you think Max Mosely copes with this style of interviewing.
Hardtalk usually deals with politicians, which is why the interview style is so uncompromising. It is not a style seen or encouraged in the F1 paddock. Once the interview is over, then have a think as to how Max's answers would play out to the people watching who, as the interviewer puts it, "have no interest in Formula 1 but are very interested about the integrity of the major sports".
If you can't get the link to work, here are some choice quotes from the early part of the interview, to give you a flavour of Max's responses:
"Although it was very annoying for us and for the people involved, for the public, it just really adds to the general interest"
"Luca gets a bit carried away"
"I'm afraid one can only conclude they [McLaren] did [lie to the FIA about the confidential information]"
"Once we discovered that it was the case [that Pedro de la Rosa had e-mailed Fernando Alonso] it was not credible that no-one else in the organisation knew about it [the information]"
"There had been a stream of 300 messages for two or three months, then came the document"
The whole exchange about whether not taking away driver points for cheating is fair at the 5-minute mark is really interesting. Max says (or rather agrees) that Pedro de la Rosa and Fernando Alonso's exchange of Ferrari information was itself clear cheating (regardless of what led up to it), and then has an intricate debate about why Fernando (and, for that matter, Lewis) was allowed to keep his points. He didn't come out of it too well, with two distinct attempts to wriggle out of the interviewer's conclusions from his own previous statements.
"There's a strong Spanish and South American element in the World Council"
"Bernie isn't the main man in Formula 1...On 14 separate occasions, Bernie has advocated something which he didn't get in the World Council"
"Even if they excluded the cars, we are not obliged to alter the position of those below. Certainly we don't have to for very minor technical infringements"
I could go further, but you get the flavour of it from there. These are not answers that sound particularly good for Formula 1. We who are used to F1 probably shake our heads and regard this as typical Max. To a newcomer, these would be quite astonishing revelations.
Luckily for Max, Hardtalk is a late-evening programme which usually doesn't get massive audiences. However the audiences it does get are well-educated and knowledgeable. They are also used to seeing politicians on the programme who are trained for just this sort of interview. They would not have known whether Max had been trained for this.
The reason why the audience of the TV programme is important is because well-educated, knowledgeable people tend to rise to power in their own circles. In particular, this sort of programme gets watched by political commentators, so when Max was interviewed, the results quickly percolated through relatively unsympathetic political commentators through to the paper's sports departments. Their critical opinions would surely have accompanied the news.
Perhaps the sports people would not have been quite so keen to put this story front and centre if Max had found a way to not mention Mr Hamilton's name. He didn't. [url=http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpa...s_art_id=33339]
By criticising Lewis, he guaranteed a bad press for himself[/url]. You would have thought he'd learned something from Fernando Alonso's bad treatment in the hands of the British press. Apparently he hasn't.
Max's bizarre comments on the appeals courts won't help him either. If you want to maintain the neutrality of an appeals court, you do not cite your opinion - especially not if you are being questioned on the neutrality of said court. Nobody likes to see internal contradiction, especially from people who have influence over anything important to them.
The moment the off-line press decided to take a piece out of Max Mosely, the on-line world heard about it - and complained about it. Off-line papers generally have on-line vectors to their empires now, so even people who live in countries that do not get the interview will find out the salient points. The succession of Spanish interviews we've been "treated" to this year bear testament to this - again, Fernando Alonso would have had a more sympathetic audience had the on-line world not carried his messages across linguistic and geographical boundaries.
Of course, this is all entirely predictable to anyone who's been following F1 for a long time.
Max is used to quite cushy paddock interviews, where he can largely get away with vague and contradictory answers due to a combination of power and time constraints.
Before I give my own opinion, I thought it would be interesting to give you an exercise. The interview was broadcast on TV, but it is also available as a video on the BBC site. Listen to it throughout, forgetting any comments you may already have seen on this particular interview. The exercise is to see how well you think Max Mosely copes with this style of interviewing.
Hardtalk usually deals with politicians, which is why the interview style is so uncompromising. It is not a style seen or encouraged in the F1 paddock. Once the interview is over, then have a think as to how Max's answers would play out to the people watching who, as the interviewer puts it, "have no interest in Formula 1 but are very interested about the integrity of the major sports".
If you can't get the link to work, here are some choice quotes from the early part of the interview, to give you a flavour of Max's responses:
"Although it was very annoying for us and for the people involved, for the public, it just really adds to the general interest"
"Luca gets a bit carried away"
"I'm afraid one can only conclude they [McLaren] did [lie to the FIA about the confidential information]"
"Once we discovered that it was the case [that Pedro de la Rosa had e-mailed Fernando Alonso] it was not credible that no-one else in the organisation knew about it [the information]"
"There had been a stream of 300 messages for two or three months, then came the document"
The whole exchange about whether not taking away driver points for cheating is fair at the 5-minute mark is really interesting. Max says (or rather agrees) that Pedro de la Rosa and Fernando Alonso's exchange of Ferrari information was itself clear cheating (regardless of what led up to it), and then has an intricate debate about why Fernando (and, for that matter, Lewis) was allowed to keep his points. He didn't come out of it too well, with two distinct attempts to wriggle out of the interviewer's conclusions from his own previous statements.
"There's a strong Spanish and South American element in the World Council"
"Bernie isn't the main man in Formula 1...On 14 separate occasions, Bernie has advocated something which he didn't get in the World Council"
"Even if they excluded the cars, we are not obliged to alter the position of those below. Certainly we don't have to for very minor technical infringements"
I could go further, but you get the flavour of it from there. These are not answers that sound particularly good for Formula 1. We who are used to F1 probably shake our heads and regard this as typical Max. To a newcomer, these would be quite astonishing revelations.
Luckily for Max, Hardtalk is a late-evening programme which usually doesn't get massive audiences. However the audiences it does get are well-educated and knowledgeable. They are also used to seeing politicians on the programme who are trained for just this sort of interview. They would not have known whether Max had been trained for this.
The reason why the audience of the TV programme is important is because well-educated, knowledgeable people tend to rise to power in their own circles. In particular, this sort of programme gets watched by political commentators, so when Max was interviewed, the results quickly percolated through relatively unsympathetic political commentators through to the paper's sports departments. Their critical opinions would surely have accompanied the news.
Perhaps the sports people would not have been quite so keen to put this story front and centre if Max had found a way to not mention Mr Hamilton's name. He didn't. [url=http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpa...s_art_id=33339]
By criticising Lewis, he guaranteed a bad press for himself[/url]. You would have thought he'd learned something from Fernando Alonso's bad treatment in the hands of the British press. Apparently he hasn't.
Max's bizarre comments on the appeals courts won't help him either. If you want to maintain the neutrality of an appeals court, you do not cite your opinion - especially not if you are being questioned on the neutrality of said court. Nobody likes to see internal contradiction, especially from people who have influence over anything important to them.
The moment the off-line press decided to take a piece out of Max Mosely, the on-line world heard about it - and complained about it. Off-line papers generally have on-line vectors to their empires now, so even people who live in countries that do not get the interview will find out the salient points. The succession of Spanish interviews we've been "treated" to this year bear testament to this - again, Fernando Alonso would have had a more sympathetic audience had the on-line world not carried his messages across linguistic and geographical boundaries.
Of course, this is all entirely predictable to anyone who's been following F1 for a long time.
Max is used to quite cushy paddock interviews, where he can largely get away with vague and contradictory answers due to a combination of power and time constraints.