One of the more distasteful parts of trying to follow what might be called "the FIFA beat" if I worked in the MSM is the obligation I always feel to read FIFA's various lengthy committee reports (when available) and, worst of all, sit in front of a computer watching utterly nauseating events like Congresses and pressers.
(I am forever indebted to utterly respectable professional journalist Beau Dure, who freely admitted, on the day that CONCACAF's 300 page report from their independent corruption investigation was released, that he started to read the thing but then decided he'd just let me do it.)
But out of a sense of duty you the reader, I continue to punish my eyes, ears and sense of decency by listening to, for example, the media conferences Sepp Blatter always holds immediately after any important meeting, a circumstance involving a good deal of scotch stolen from the bosses' desk here at BigSoccer World Headquarters.
However, FIFA has just announced that they are going to relieve me of this odious chore on Friday by deciding against allowing his statement at the conclusion of the Executive COmmittee to be webcast.
Now a cynic might suggest that since the topic on everyone's mind will be the vote on whether to release the Garcia report and in consideration of Sepp's increasingly senile brain, FIFA wants a chance to edit any "misstatements" or other remarks likely to further inflame a controversy which they keep telling us is "concluded".
For an informed opinion on this, we could ask the FIFA Communications Committee, which is chaired by one Sunil Gulati.
Unfortunately, said committee has not been allowed to meet in six months and had nothing whatever to do with this decision. It came from that self-proclaimed fount of transparency and democracy, the President's office.
Still FIFA promises, in a letter responding to a complaint from AIPS (international sportswriters union) to "put the press conference a few hours (sic) as soon as technical possible (sic) subject to internet connectivity to upload the file as a re-live on our website."
(Somebody help me here: is "re-live" an actual thing or did they make it up to avoid saying "after we edit the thing"?)
They claim the reason for this decision is that some of the "journalists" who travel to these things objected to having equal access given to slug-a-bed cheapskates whose bosses won't spring for tickets to the kind of exotic locations in which these meetings are held.
Thus, I guess, reducing said journalist's ability to argue the necessity of paying for a couple days at a swanky resort. Which would be a real shame, although "I have to get my hands on Sepp Blatter's bland, self-congratulatory drivel first in order to scoop the competition"