DAILY RECORD DAVID MURRAY INTERVIEW: ONE APOLOGIZES, THE OTHER REVISES
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- Jun 27
- 4 min read
Craig Whyte will always be remembered, and loved, by Celtic fans as the man who killed Rangers.
However, as the great liquidation of 2012 fades into memory, and football historians reflect on just how that glorious moment in Scottish history was allowed to happen, David Murray will always warrant at least an honorable mention.
No amount of half-hearted apologies, made during a soft-ball sales pitch for his new book, masquerading as an interview in The Daily Record, will change that.
Daily Record David Murray Story Shows The Media Still Haven’t Learned a Damn Thing
It is kind of refreshing though to finally see someone connected to Rangers at that time finally admit even a surface level of personal culpability, as opposed to blaming the usual variety of scapegoats.
During what has become known as the Banter Years (though at this stage, I think we’re headed for a Banter Epoch), I've seen all manner of unhinged blogs, podcasts and angry, impotent interviews from various “staunch Rangers men” blaming everyone from The SFA to Peter Lawell, Nicola Sturgeon to The Vatican, and let’s not forget the conspiracy theorist’s favorite: the “Global Jewish Cabal”.
I mean, let’s get real, we all know it’s The Green Brigade’s fault. Because, according to the Record, The S*n et al, it’s always the Green Brigade’s fault!
On a more serious note, the level of revisionism in today’s Daily Record David Murray stories, of which there are a few (probably enough for multiple blogs, if I can get enough energy drinks in me), is absolutely off the scale, even by the Daily Record’s usual, rock-bottom standards of bare-faced lying.
Remember the “Motherwell born Billionaire with Off-The-Radar Wealth” as described in the words of Keith Jackson, Jim Traynor and numerous other journos at the Daily Record in 2012?
Well, today, the Record unironically and with a straight face, called that same man, our hero, Craig Whyte a “Walter Mitty figure” and a “mysterious Scottish Businessman”.
Meanwhile every Celtic-minded blogger, journalist and podcaster was telling anyone who would listen as early as mid-2011 that Whyte was obviously “at it”. None of the claims about his wealth stacked up to even the elementary sleuthing of “internet bampots” as The Record and company branded us back in the day.
These days, “internet bampot” has become almost a badge of honor. I’d certainly sooner be called a bampot than write for the Daily Record, that's for sure.
The Record bigged up Whyte’s reputation as a Monaco-based high roller, but didn't bother to check that his flat there was actually rented.
They showed his “castle estate in the Highlands” as proof of his Scrooge McDuck levels of wealth.
Before he even completed the Rangers deal, he had run into arrears on the mortgage for said castle and his family were preparing to move out. Again, 5 minutes of genuine journalism could have told you this.
And yet here we are again, Rangers have just been sold once again, to a guy that none of our mainstream media has bothered to research, beyond cutting and pasting superlatives from his company’s homepage.
How could somebody like Andrew Cavenagh, just as Craig Whyte did more than a decade ago, come to own a version of Rangers, without anyone in our press corps having any real idea how much money the guy is actually worth?
How is it that, even now, after the latest Rangers takeover is completed, and the EGM done and dusted, that no-one still has any idea how much of the 20 million investment will actually be spent on players?
Also, why is the fact that this money is being raised via yet another share issue rather than direct investment not a major source of concern for our media?
The answer is quite simple actually, and ironically it comes courtesy of David Murray today.
The likes of the Daily Record and other gutter press have no interest in truth, knowledge or actual journalism.
It’s all about telling their ever decreasing audience what they think those idiots want to hear.
That’s why nobody bothered to ask the questions that needed to be asked in 2012. That’s why no-one is bothering to ask them now. And when David Murray, who I honestly think does, at some level, feel some remorse for his role in the death of Rangers, shows up willing to accept the blame and say sorry, The Record said: “Thank you very much”.
He’s just given them carte blanche to continue spinning a web of lies and half-truths to a Rangers support increasingly desperate for some hope, any kind of hope that the “good old days” of Murray’s financial doping of Scottish football will somehow return.
Murray said of Craig Whyte that he acted “in good faith” and “based on the information available at the time.”
Funnily enough, I’ll bet a significant slice of that information probably came from the Daily Record and its team of adoring Craig Whyte fans.
Murray is partly responsible for 2012 and indeed today’s ensuing hilarity around Rangers financial woes. However, the Daily Record is just as, if not more so to blame than either Whyte or Murray.
It may have been Whyte who concocted the scheme, and Murray who fell for it. However, it was the Scottish who pushed it, gave it their seal of approval without bothering to do any actual journalism.
The newsman leading the charge then, as now, was Keith Jackson.
Perhaps Andrew Cavenagh’s shrewdest move yet, was allowing Jackson to be the first one to break the story of this takeover. After all, he has form for being led astray by promises of untold wealth, and false dawns down Ibrox way.
Once again, The Daily Record plays the role of useful idiot to Rangers’ latest “savior”.
Get the popcorn ready folks, this might end even more spectacularly than the first time Rangers died.
