Gray & Keys In Sexist Row

[dom9]

Why would i be? I thought he was a great commentator/pundit.

You would.

[Rudo]

No-one's perfect Nigel, he might have got that one wrong but in the main i found his analysis informative and interesting but that's just me.

Didn't agree with everything he said, but mostly i thought he was a fair and honest pundit and commentator.

Think he's been stitched up majorly here, at the same time he's been very foolish. Any comments you make with microphones and **** strapped up to you can get out and this was the case.

[Mattshark]

Gray's analysis was superficial and ignorant most the time, the man was an idiot and his analysis was a joke.

[Rich]

No-one's perfect Nigel, he might have got that one wrong but in the main i found his analysis informative and interesting but that's just me.

Didn't agree with everything he said, but mostly i thought he was a fair and honest pundit and commentator.

Think he's been stitched up majorly here, at the same time he's been very foolish. Any comments you make with microphones and **** strapped up to you can get out and this was the case.

Seems to be.

[Shaggy]

And Paddy 'Dinosaur' Barclay who thinks Gray is in the top two football broadcasters of all time

[Rudo]

You'd think Andy Gray has a history with Everton FC the way you lot are going on

[Mattshark]

You'd think Andy Gray has a history with Everton FC the way you lot are going on

I think that is irrelevant to how poor, ignorant and selective Gray's analysis was. He deliberate ignored what he didn't like, glossed over what he liked when it was flawed and he lacked any sort detail and in depth view.

The man is an idiot.

[Vermilion]

And Paddy 'Dinosaur' Barclay who thinks Gray is in the top two football broadcasters of all time

omg that's just sick, totally ott credit of the very highest order. What a complete loon, i know it's just his opinion and he's entitled to it..but really!

[Shaggy]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/jan/26/andy-gray-richard-keys-sixist

'There's been a culture of bullying and sexism at Sky for a long time'

Three women who held prominent positions at Sky Sports describe a 'lads' club' and a 'climate of fear'

Matt Scott
The Guardian, Wednesday 26 January 2011
Article history

Richard Keys and Andy Gray were part of a Sky Sports culture which 'looked down' on women, claim insiders.


Photograph: Mike Egerton/Empics Sport


The only surprise about the events leading to Andy Gray's sacking as the most famous voice in football yesterday was that he had not made a similar gaffe in public before. That is the view of three women who have all held frontline roles at Sky Sports.

Fearing repercussions that could harm their careers if they were identified, the three spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity. But despite talking separately, their views echoed each other's; each describing the bullying and sexist culture they feel Gray and his co-presenter, Richard Keys, have fostered.

One former Sky journalist said: "It came as absolutely no surprise to me to see this. The surprise is that we haven't seen more. It's the kind of language and vocabulary that is used within the Sky football department all the time."

Another, who still works for Sky, said: "There are many stories of their shocking behaviour. [Gray and Keys] are hated by the crews. It's a climate of fear pervading. But as long as everyone is laughing and it's a joke it's all right isn't it? I believe sexism is systemic and not openly challenged but goes underground or disguised as jokes or 'just banter'."

The third separately cited how "just banter" is claimed as a defence, and explained why that claim holds no water. "Live football is well known as something everyone wants to work on. But no one wants to work with those two. They took the piss out of a runner for having no money. It's nasty bullying with an edge. It's not just banter."

All three women agree that Barney Francis, who has been managing director of Sky Sports since his appointment 18 months ago, has improved matters. His decision yesterday summarily to dismiss Gray shows that he will scarcely indulge a chauvinistic culture any longer. One said: "There has been a culture of bullying and sexism around Sky for a very long time, but recently Sky have been managing the bullying a lot better through changes in management. There were rumours of people being told off and that bullying behaviour was unacceptable."

Yet despite the positive steps made by Francis, the women all expressed a feeling that there must be more widespread surgery to eradicate what they described as a patriarchy that limits women's promotion prospects. "There's this blokey vibe and it's like a lads' club," said one. "At the BBC the head of sport is Barbara Slater. Sky are a long way from that situation.

"During my time at Sky Sports News it wasn't hidden that women were appointed to present on it primarily because of the way they looked. You can see how Andy and Richard are behaving like that because the people at the top have employed people without any experience. Clearly that's sexist and it means at Sky you are always looked down on as a woman involved in sport, full stop."

That view chimed with another's view. She said: "You'd get bosses saying, 'It's just fruit on the barrow.' I found it a very sexist working environment. The production staff found it incredibly frustrating: they're younger for a start than the management.

"But it permeated through the whole culture. When Sky Sports News first started the girls were in suits. Sky was still about the image but they wanted women who were interested in sport. "Any monkey can read an autocue and you can't build passion for what you do from nothing. But if you're a woman you were there as decoration. Anything else was a bonus. It's not that there is a criterion about how the girls look. It's that it is the main criterion."

Sky told the Guardian that it hires its presenters principally for their abilities as journalists and presenters. Nonetheless, one of the former Sky journalists pointed out that the fact that Gray and Keys's unreconstructed comments were leaked into the public domain reflects the glee that Sky employees would feel at their downfall.

"I think deep down Richard and Andy are just bullies," she said. "They bully new men in the game as well. It's how they operate. They don't have many friends there but after 20 years they've always been at the top of the game and earning a ridiculous amount of money, so I guess who's laughing?

"But they have ruled the roost for a long time and upset people for a long time. They got into bother with someone who had a schadenfreude motive. I am just surprised that you have a broadcaster with experience of 20 years talking like that in front of a mic and not expecting it to get out. It was not the first time they were caught saying things they shouldn't say. They think they can get away with murder. How arrogant."

A Sky spokesman said last night: "There was evidence at the weekend and we took action. Today there has been new evidence and we have taken entirely appropriate action. If people are saying there is a culture of sexism here that shows we don't tolerate it."

[Shaggy]

It's hard to imagine a 'Save Richard Keys' protest at Sky Sports HQ

Sky's failure to impose more than a temporary suspension on Richard Keys calls into question the integrity of the channel's bosses


Richard Williams
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 25 January 2011 21.51 GMT



Andy Gray has been sacked, but Richard Keys is serving only a temporary suspension following his sexist comments at the weekend. Photograph: Fiona Hanson/PA

The alacrity with which the Sky Sports bosses dispatched Andy Gray to the knackers' yard suggests that they saw no merit in flogging more life out of a dead workhorse. To a channel whose public image is established by the cast of interchangeable junior estate agents and blonde autocuties reading out the bulletins on Sky Sports News, the old centre-forward had passed his sell-by date some time ago.

Otherwise it would be hard to explain why he should have been dismissed for the lesser of the two off-air indiscretions made public in the last couple of days. The attempt at a crude exchange with his colleague Charlotte Jackson, revealed on YouTube, represents a somewhat lower order of offence than the generalised lack of respect displayed in remarks aimed at a female assistant referee, Sian Massey, whose professional competence was called into question on the grounds of her gender alone.

When Gray called across the studio to Jackson with a leeringly suggestive invitation to help him position his transmitter inside the waistband of his jeans, at least he was looking her in the eye. Or somewhere. Massey, by contrast, was slandered safely out of earshot, in theory if not in practice.

In the estimation of pretty well everyone except Gray himself the one-time penalty-area bully has long since lost the aura of authority created by his playing career with Aston Villa, Wolves, Everton and Scotland. When the world – ie. the Premier League in Sky's terms – was new, he embodied a certain gritty outspokenness that lent an air of authenticity to the channel's glossy coverage, with its fanfares and fireworks.

But YouTube, that deadliest of witnesses, harbours a whole series of occasions on which Gray could be expressing opinions on football matters that entitled him to be seen as the voice of the people only if the people concerned yearned for the days of leather balls, dubbinned boots and casual prejudice.

Most people will rejoice that an underlying attitude of sexism has been made public and that at least an exemplary punishment has been inflicted. Virtually universal condemnation of the words spoken by Gray and his colleague Richard Keys when discussing Massey's participation in Saturday's match at Molineux indicates that social progress in the wider world has indeed penetrated and is exerting an influence on the sometimes sealed-off world of professional football. Just as the fall of Ron Atkinson put the use of racial epithets even further beyond the pale, so the pillorying of Gray and Keys will accelerate the acceptance of women within football more effectively than any number of well-meaning campaigns mounted by the Football Association on behalf of its female constituency.

Sky's failure to impose more than a temporary suspension on the second culprit, however, calls into question the integrity of the channel's bosses. Keys' observations on Massey's supposed competence rendered him every bit as guilty as Gray and to relieve him of his duties on a permanent basis would have been to send out a genuine message of social responsibility.

Perhaps Barney Francis, Sky's managing director, feels that Keys is too valuable to sack. If that is what he thinks, much of the nation would disagree. Tonight the emergence of another clip seemed to provide a further illustration of his unreconstructed view of womanhood. It is hard to imagine a Save Richard Keys protest outside the channel's Isleworth headquarters. To anyone outside the close circles of the two presenters the only immediate cause for regret is the understandable decision of the referees' association to withdraw Massey from her scheduled duty at tonight's match between Crewe and Bradford. Noting the unusually high number of applications for media accreditations, particularly the requests for photographers' passes, they concluded that the 25-year-old official would not be permitted to go about her duties in the right sort of ambience.

The Sun – owned by Sky's major shareholder, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation – also sank to predictable depths this morning, filling its front page with a photograph of an off-duty Massey dancing at a social function, wearing a skimpy top and a short denim skirt. It was the sort of utterly harmless image that many women of her age put up on their Facebook page but its use here was blatantly exploitative, freighted with a nudging insinuation but having no bearing on the subject's role in the story.

Nevertheless the events of the past few days represent a victory for enlightenment. Even the darkest and dustiest corners of English football have been shown that a woman official can go about her job with impeccable diligence. Once the fuss dies down, Massey and her female colleagues will find their progress made a little easier by the indiscretions of a couple of men who stand exposed as the embodiment of nothing but their own limitations.

[Craig_H]

No he definitely wasn't, he was really really ****. I remember watching us play City (got beat 3-0) and he was drooling at how good our formation was before the match and how his mate Roy picked an attacking side compared to the dull ones put out by Benitez. You can't be serious.

When Gray wasnt being all 'Grand Slam' and sensationalist, and when he wasnt driving agendas, he wasnt too bad IMO.

Granted, sensationalism and agenda-driven ****e was the bulk of his craft, though.

[fah-q]

I don't understand this strange defence some people have been taking over this, when did "just banter" become a let off for outrageous and uneducated behaviour.

Is there a magic cut off point between "banter" and Racist/Sexist/Homophobic/Vile abuse?

[fah-q]

They've also made it very difficult for Sian Massey to carry on her career. She is going to (excuse the pun) have to have massive balls from now on, especially as a Lino dealing with all the neanderthals behind her and the media spotlight highlighting every mistake she makes.

[Rudo]

They've also made it very difficult for Sian Massey to carry on her career. She is going to (excuse the pun) have to have massive balls from now on, especially as a Lino dealing with all the neanderthals behind her and the media spotlight highlighting every mistake she makes.

She'll just have to grow a pair.

*gets coat*

[Rudo]

No but on a serious note, it's not fair on her. The women's been caught up in all this and it's through no fault of her own.