The Italian Automotive Journalists’ Union [UIGA] has responded to Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur after the Frenchman launched a scathing attack on the country’s media, which has speculated about his future at the Formula 1 giants.
Vasseur has been the subject of rumour about his position with the Scuderia, with the team having endured a difficult first half of the F1 season, in which it has failed to score a single Grand Prix win, and achieved a meagre three podiums.
In a blistering tirade, Vasseur referred to the rumours as “stupid” and said the speculation was damaging to the team as a whole, and to the individuals who work for it.
Vasseur referred to previous speculation about Ferrari’s desire to poach Italian Red Bull engineer Enrico Balbo to the team, and how it had affected its Head of Aerodynamics, Diego Tondi.
“I know that I spoke about the story with Balbo on Friday, because last year Balbo was a good example. It was in the press that we signed Balbo, but I had to Google Balbo because I didn’t know the face of the guy, and I had never met him before.
“But you can imagine that Diego, who is the head of Aero, when he saw something like this in the press, it’s quite harsh for him.
“He doesn’t know if it’s true or not. This is putting a kind of… tension is not the right word, but entropy or distraction into the team.
“At the end of the day, we are in a competition with other teams. If we are distracted or not focused on the right thing, we will lose the competition.”
UIGA: Honesty and not ‘support’ of team crucial to its reporting
The response of the Italian media isn’t late in arriving. In recent hours, the UIGA published a statement in which, without naming Vasseur, made its feelings clear.
“In recent days, some statements coming from the motorsport world have shed important light on a situation that concerns us closely: the role and the responsibility of the sport information, in particular when it moves near delicate areas as those of the internal dynamics of a team or a society,” it read.
“A famous team principal of an Italian team has expressed concern about the diffusion, from a part of the press, of unconfirmed news regarding possible changes at the top of the technical area, considered harmful for the team’s internal weather.
“In detail, he underlined how some rumours, regarding leading figures coming from the competitors’ teams, can create insecurity among the workers and fuel tensions that make it even more difficult to achieve ambitious sporting goals.”
The same team principal wanted to distinguish between the journalism done with rigor and professionalism, and what, he says, gives in to the temptation of sensationalism and of the so-called ‘clickbait’, contributing more to confusion than to clarity.
The statement continued that it was standing by what it believes to be a principled and ethical way of reporting the speculation, stating that it is not the job of its journalists to report in a partisan manner towards Ferrari, or any other Italian-based team.
“UIGA retains the necessity to reaffirm a simple and fundamental principle: sport journalism, like every form of professional information, must always be inspired by fairness, verification of facts, and awareness of the context in which it operates.
“No pressure, direct or indirect, can or should restrict freedom of the press. But this freedom is all the more valuable when it’s accompanied by a full assumption of responsibility.
“It’s not the journalists’ job to ‘support’ a team, but to report honestly what happens. However, this can never justify the dissemination of unverified news that risk compromising already complex balances, with concrete human and professional repercussions.
“In this sense, the controversy raised in recent days, beyond the tones, represents a useful opportunity to reflect, as a category, on the balance between the right of reporting and respect for people in a media season where speed and spectacularization are likely to have the better quality, we must defend the value of sober, accurate and independent information.”
READ MORE – Is Fred Vasseur the next F1 boss on the Ferrari chopping block?
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