Former Australian men’s cricket captain Tim Paine has slammed sports media for failing to report on the secret abusive X account run by Foxtel’s cricket chief, accusing journalists of being too afraid to be critical of a high-profile figure from a major media company.
A Crikey investigation last month revealed that Fox Sports’ general manager of cricket Matt Weiss had spent years running an X (formerly Twitter) account that attacked colleagues, rivals, cricketers and political figures. Weiss continues to head up Foxtel’s cricket coverage despite both the company and Cricket Australia being made aware of this account in 2021.
Weiss has not responded to multiple requests from Crikey for comment.
On Monday morning, Paine, the ex-Test captain and recently appointed coach of the Twenty20 Adelaide Strikers, started off his SEN radio show by questioning why no “mainstream media” had reported on the Weiss revelations.
“I got sent that over the weekend … and I thought that is a very big story. I wonder what mainstream media’s got to say about it. Crickets,” Paine said.
Paine blamed the lack of coverage to journalists being “gun shy when it is someone who is high up the tree”, but accused them of hypocrisy over their silence on Weiss while choosing to report on his own sexting scandal.
“I remember speaking to numerous journalists at the time and saying … one, it’s a private issue. Two, it’s been dealt with three or four years ago. And they said, no, it is our — what’s the word they use? — duty. It’s our duty to report on stories like this,” he recalled.
“Now those same journalists, a number of them on this one, seem to have forgotten that one, and they just let it slide, which, again, just shows you the world we live in, in the power of certain organisations and whatever.”
He also suggested that News Corp’s ownership of Fox Sports had played a role in the the company’s silence on the controversy — “I imagine they’ve been told ‘do not put that on’,” — which undermines their critical commentary on stories like AFL coach Ken Hinkley’s post-game comments towards an opposition player.
“They’ve been pretty silent on the stuff we spoke about at the start of the show, those same commentators, so you can’t pick and choose what you want to call out and what you’re not,” Paine said.
After initially declining to comment, Foxtel announced that it was launching an investigation in response to Crikey’s queries about Weiss’ social media usage.
The company did not answer questions about when it first became aware of his secret social media account, which was an open secret in the company, or what the status of this investigation was.
Paine declined to comment for this story.
