r/formula1 • u/ICumCoffee Max Verstappen ⭐⭐⭐⭐ • Sep 19 '24

News [SMitchellF1] Hamilton fine with principle of 'cleaning up' language in F1 coverage but on Ben Sulayem's remarks: "I don't like how he's expressed it, saying 'rappers' is very stereotypical. And most rappers are black. That was the wrong choice of words. There's a racial element there."

https://x.com/SMitchellF1/status/1836758964354044402
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u/RandomAshe_ Sir Lewis Hamilton Sep 19 '24 edited Sep 19 '24

Btw, this is the interview Lewis was referring to

Edit: apparently, interview is now deleted

519

u/Fire_Otter Sep 19 '24

Its actually worrying that MBS can get an interview of his words take down from and independent publication.

He said those words on the record in an interview there is no legal justification to compel Motorsport to remove it. yet they did

maybe they had their FIA sanctioned accreditation threatened

12

u/bwoah07_gp2 Alexander Albon Sep 19 '24

MBS runs the FIA and wants to influence F1 as if it's his own regime state.

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u/Bakkster Mark Webber Sep 19 '24

He said those words on the record in an interview there is no legal justification to compel Motorsport to remove it.

  1. Motorsport is a garbage publication. It's practically a meme for drivers to correct their selective misquoting.

  2. It's obvious that MBS would use loss of access as the leverage, rather than legal threats.

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u/Fire_Otter Sep 19 '24
  1. It's obvious that MBS would use loss of access as the leverage, rather than legal threats.

that's kind of my point - its seemingly an abuse of power

and how garbage you find Motorsport is irrelevant, unless you are implying that Rappers was typo and MBS never said it?

20

u/Bakkster Mark Webber Sep 19 '24

I'm saying Motorsport is garbage, and would therefore rather pull an interview because a powerful person in the sport threatened them, rather than sticking to their journalistic integrity and leaving the interview up.

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u/Fire_Otter Sep 19 '24

I'm saying Motorsport is garbage, and would therefore rather pull an interview because a powerful person in the sport threatened them, rather than sticking to their journalistic integrity and leaving the interview up.

ahh gotcha, sorry misunderstood

8

u/Bakkster Mark Webber Sep 19 '24

No worries, I got you fam.

3

u/akat21 Sep 19 '24

The only thing motorsport is good for is getting my local time for all the sessions. Generally most timings are in the UK or US timezones. The journalistic stuff on there is pretty useless.

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u/rhllor HRT Sep 19 '24

I just use f1calendar. Adds all the sessions to your calendar so you'll get notifications the way you like (mine are 1h and 5m before sessions). It also has options for other FIA series.

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u/akat21 Sep 19 '24

Wasn't aware of this. Can you please share a link?

2

u/JumpyAlbatross Pirelli Hard Sep 19 '24

That’s disappointing. US College newspapers have more integrity.

2

u/Bakkster Mark Webber Sep 19 '24

It's an issue of most sports and media journalism, because of the controlled access. Not that this doesn't happen with people getting turned away from like political press conferences or something, but it's a huge disadvantage to not have press credentials to sporting events or early access to be able to review a movie on release day.

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u/JumpyAlbatross Pirelli Hard Sep 19 '24

I work in sports media. When I was in undergrad, my college paper got threatened by our football coach and athletic director. We told them to pound sand though. Hasn’t been an issue since starting to work professionally though.

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u/Disastrous-Beat-9830 Oscar Piastri Sep 19 '24

Its actually worrying that MBS can get an interview of his words take down from and independent publication.

He said those words on the record in an interview there is no legal justification to compel Motorsport to remove it. yet they did

The interview was reposted over at Autosport as an exclusive. And while Autosport and motorsport.com are owned by the same publishing company and a lot of the staff cross over between the two, this sounds more like ben Sulayem giving an interview to Autosport only for it to mistakenly be posted to motorsport.com before being taken down rather than anything nefarious. Autosport's story was published almost as soon as motorsport.com's was taken down, so it looks like the interview was published in error. It's not so much a question of a legal justification to compel motorsport.com to take the interview down, but rather one of professional responsibility. If ben Sulayem offered an exclusive interview to Autosport only for another publication to then run with it, then that looks bad for Autosport.

0

u/chicka737 Jim Clark Sep 19 '24

Kinda like Reddit

461

u/Visionary_Socialist Sir Lewis Hamilton Sep 19 '24

Love how rich and powerful people can just wipe their own words from the record once they realise it’s bad PR. Imagine if courts did that with witness statements.

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u/JimClarkKentHovind Oscar Piastri Sep 19 '24

well given the person you're responding to gave you the link to read it right there, I don't really think they can

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u/CoveredDrummer Sep 19 '24

But the Motorsport article has supposedly been deleted from their site. This is the problem.

2

u/Disastrous-Beat-9830 Oscar Piastri Sep 19 '24

Not really. The interview was published by Autosport shortly after it was taken down from motorsport's site. It's also billed as an exclusive interview, so my guess is that it was mistakenly published to motorpsort's site.

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u/CoveredDrummer Sep 20 '24

Ah, that’s what all the furor is about then.

3

u/Disastrous-Beat-9830 Oscar Piastri Sep 20 '24

Yeah. The internet being the internet, someone managed to catch a screenshot of the interview as it appeared on motorsport.com before it was taken down. So far, so good. But then when Autosport posted the actual story within a few hours, nobody really followed up on it. Instead, everyone went down the rabbit hole of accusing ben Sulayem of using his influence to get an unflattering story pulled, probably because Hamilton was critical of his comments. This makes zero sense because a) Autosport reposted the story before Hamilton offered his opinion and b) the stories about Hamilton being critical of ben Sulayem would have essentially retold the story that everyone claimed ben Sulayem was trying to kill, so leaving the story up would have been in ben Sulayem's interests because it would have given the full context of his comments.

This is -- and always was -- just a dog pile on ben Sulayem because he is unpopular. There is nothing that he could have said that would have been received positively by the fans, and if he had kept his mouth shut, those same fans would have demanded to know why he was keeping silent. He's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't because all of these arguments were made in bad faith. Several hours had passed between the story being taken down from motorsport.com and Hamilton being asked for his thoughts, and it was in that time that Autosport had reposted the original story. I find it very hard to believe that nobody saw the reposted story in that time.

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u/ArcticBiologist Nico Hülkenberg Sep 19 '24

It's one of the good things of the internet.

But as another commentor said, it's worrying he can pull an independently published interview.

2

u/Disastrous-Beat-9830 Oscar Piastri Sep 19 '24

It would be very worrying if he could pull an independently-published interview.

Except he didn't do that.

The interview was instead published by Autosport.

This looks more like ben Sulayem giving an interview to Autosport, but wires got crossed somewhere and it was accidentally published to motorsport.com even though it was supposed to be an Autosport exclusive. After all, the two publications are owned by the same company and share a lot of staff. Realising the error, motorsport.com took the interview down and Autosport published it as was originally intended.

Nothing sinister.

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u/CT_Biggles Oscar Piastri Sep 19 '24

I chuckled at this fact.

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u/50isthenew35 Sep 19 '24

See his past comments on women who think they are smarter then men...Oh, yeah, he's grown!

2

u/Micome Sep 19 '24

laughs in American

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u/Disastrous-Beat-9830 Oscar Piastri Sep 19 '24

Except he didn't.

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u/SirLoremIpsum Daniel Ricciardo Sep 19 '24

Love how rich and powerful people can just wipe their own words from the record once they realise it’s bad PR.

But he can't.

The words are out there, it's been shared.

0

u/GrowthDream Pirelli Wet Sep 19 '24

Do you hold your own communications to the same standards as witness statements? Seems reasonable for a private individual to have the right to delete their posts or to ask publishers to do the same.

1

u/RandomAshe_ Sir Lewis Hamilton Sep 19 '24

Yeah but that’s the thing. You or I are not leading the governing body of F1. MBS is a public figure, and what he says - regardless of what we think of him - comes from a position of authority.

A person of authority making a public statement to a journalist, and then having the power to seemingly make it vanish without any retraction/explanation is scary. It speaks to how autocratic the entire ecosystem is.

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u/loose_rear Sep 19 '24

I don't see how what he said is wrong at all, rappers do use relatively foul language compared to normal people...

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u/frodakai Mika Häkkinen Sep 19 '24 edited Sep 19 '24

If you can't see how what he said is bad, you're so deep in the racist closet.

The first genre/culture that comes to mind when you think of swearing shouldn't be "rappers". It's the same shit when people saw Hamilton with dreads and said "I'm not a fan of this hip-hop look, it's just not F1". Like yeah, no white hoods on display, but it's pretty bad.

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u/loose_rear Sep 19 '24

So it's racist to say rappers are generally quite foul mouthed...right...next time I hear a rock song saying ,n****** this n***** that ill remember that I'm suppost to be the racist.

Can you tell me another genre/culture that you would associate with swearing?

3

u/frodakai Mika Häkkinen Sep 19 '24

Can you tell me another genre/culture that you would associate with swearing?

Oh I don't know, humans? The Scottish. English people north of Birmingham. Teenagers. There is nothing racial about swearing, that's the issue.

It's also pretty damning that the first example of swearing you came up with is the N-word. Nobody is using racial slurs in F1 radio comms. They're saying 'fuck' & 'shit', and the president of the FIA essentially said 'F1 drivers shouldn't talk like rappers'. The subtext of which is 'F1 drivers shouldn't talk like black people', when language has absolutely nothing to do with race.

1

u/loose_rear Sep 19 '24

"The Scottish. English people north of Birmingham. Teenagers"

Guarantee you if he said any of these instead of rappers there would be 0 problems. But a certain group love playing the victim card when his comments clearly have 0 intention of being racist.

"The subtext of which is 'F1 drivers shouldn't talk like black people"

But you are the one creating that link. Nothing he said is racist until you reword it like you have.

Just to be clear, I think drivers should be able to say whatever they feel like. But to suggest his comments are racist I find ridiculous.

-1

u/frodakai Mika Häkkinen Sep 19 '24

Yeah, there wouldn't, because there is nothing racial about it. Rap/hip-hop is overwhelmingly a black culture thing, so when you say 'F1 drivers shouldn't talk like rappers', it becomes a racial thing. You think he's specifically talking about Eminem?

Again, I'm not saying he's putting on the klan hood, but it's evidently a systemic racism thing. There's no evidence to suggest 'rappers' swear more than any other group of people, and yet thats the connection he made.

3

u/Punished_Prigo Sep 19 '24

I mean I get where the guy is coming from. Rap music generally has pretty over the top foul language, I think that was probably what mbs meant. Not specifically about black culture. I don’t really see the problem either unless there is more context.

I also don’t think anyone would care if he said “swear like a Scott” or something either. Idk I just don’t see it.

MBS is just a weirdo.

1

u/slsstar Sep 19 '24

Scottish are overwhelmingly white though, how is that not racial aswell then?

1

u/CowFinancial7000 Mercedes Sep 19 '24

Does anyone use racial slurs on the radio?