Simon Rowlands: Why the racing media has a duty to be more sceptical on our behalf

If you have not already become a Twitter user then you really should consider giving it a go. It's where it's at for the latest information, the hottest gossip and the most up-to-date blogs.

You can follow who you want, from the great to the unknown, and ignore who you want, too. Horseracing, in a rare example of moving with the times, is all over it.

Twitter is also a fabulous place to have an argument.

The 140-character restriction means that you seldom explain yourself as fully as you might wish but you seldom achieve total meltdown either.

And your argument is unlikely to remain entirely between you and your cyber-adversary. The rest of Twitter may be looking on and may decide to give you a piece of its mind.

It reminds me of those schoolyard altercations that start with a few punches over something trivial and descend into an all-out brawl, with onlookers chanting "fight, fight, fight".

25 bald men fighting over a comb, as Borges might have put it. And, as it is Twitter, his description might- almost literally- have been correct.

I was reminded of this when caught up in a Twitter spat with a bookies' representative the other day.

The source of our "dispute" was his company's reporting of a huge cash bet back in April.

This bet may or may not have existed. But the point is that, if its existence can neither be proved nor disproved by the public, it is to all intents and purposes inadmissable.

Without proof, anything, however fanciful, could be claimed.

As one Tweeter interjected, "I slept with (insert name of supermodel) last night: disprove that".

The same principle informs the reason why I, and possibly others, have not written at length about the darker side of bookies' activities, namely the widespread restriction and closing of accounts that are not just successful but that even threaten to be successful.

It sticks in the craw to be told that (insert name of multi-million pound bookmaker) has just laid a bet of £50,000 when your £200 bet on the same horse has been knocked down to a fiver.

Believe me, this sort of thing happens.

Or, rather, don't believe me: almost all such "evidence" is anecdotal and can neither be proved nor disproved. See above.

More generally, the role of the media in reporting as fact what might just be spin or anecdote deserves to be held up to greater scrutiny.

I got involved in journalism because I believed, naively perhaps, that it was a means for pursuing "the truth" (whatever that might be), and that one aspect of that was holding those in authority and those with a vested interest to account.

Unfortunately, horseracing long since seems to have sold its soul in this respect.

Watching either of the dedicated racing channels involves being subjected to incessant bookies' adverts and more insidious advertorials from bookies' reps, without whom, we are led to believe, neither the presenter nor the viewer could possibly make sense of what was happening in betting terms.

This situation reached its nadir at the last Cheltenham Festival, when RUK's roving reporter kept "accidentally" bumping into bookies' reps, who promptly and predictably were granted the opportunity to plug their companies' latest offers.

It is no exaggeration to say that I see more (albeit on the screen) of one particular bookies' rep than I do of many of my nearest and dearest. I half expect to wake in the middle of the night and see him lying next to me, beaming boyishly while telling me his firm is "going biggest price for the next 10 minutes".

The point is not that a media outlet should have no commercial links- I am keenly aware that this blog is coming to you on a Betfair platform- but that it should not simply become a commercial mouthpiece. Not unless it wants its readers/viewers/listeners to feel that their intelligence is being insulted, anyway.

"Broadcasters have a commercial contract with certain bookmakers", I have been told. If so, they should at least be upfront about it.

They also need to remember at the same time that they have a commercial contract with their viewers. Those viewers are entitled to expect accurate and impartial information. Accurate and impartial betting information and bookie spin are incompatible in this respect.

An important way to keep the viewers on board is to exercise a healthy scepticism rather than craven obsequiousness. That's the kind of healthy scepticism that requires the various PR stooges to put up evidence to support their claims or to shut up.

If nothing else, there is no shortage of healthy (and, it has to be said, unhealthy) scepticism on Twitter.

You can follow Timeform on Twitter at @Timeform1948 and Simon Rowlands at @Rowleyfile