“We have approached Police Scotland for comment.”

That is how the Daily Record chooses to end its piece today on the spectacle of Hearts supporters and Celtic supporters fighting outside Celtic Park yesterday.

We have approached Police Scotland for comment.

Well, here is an idea.

How about approaching yourselves for comment?

Because whilst I am not suggesting Daily Record reporters were outside throwing punches, and I sincerely hope none of them were, that newspaper and the Scottish media more broadly have questions to answer about the atmosphere they have helped to create.

They have spent months stirring this pot.

They have amplified grievance. They have indulged conspiracy theories. They have repeatedly framed ordinary football rivalry in the most inflammatory terms available, particularly around Hearts and Celtic, and then when something ugly happens they retreat into the role of detached observer.

That is not good enough. You do not get to spend months turning the temperature up and then act as though you had nothing whatsoever to do with the room becoming hotter.

No, they did not organise the fight. No, they did not tell anybody to throw a punch.

But media organisations influence tone, atmosphere and perception, and when you repeatedly feed supporters a diet of grievance, injustice and supposedly outrageous wrongs, you cannot then be surprised when some people start treating the rivalry as something darker than football.

Look at the dangerous rhetoric that has surrounded discussion of what happened at the end of last season. I got up this morning and wrote an article on that very subject, and the language around Hearts and that title race has become increasingly poisonous.

The piece I highlighted from the Scottish Daily Mail is a perfect example of what I am talking about. A senior journalist describing the end of last season as a “travesty”. Talking about refereeing decisions as though Hearts had been robbed. Describing the final day against Celtic and the pitch invasion as a permanent “stain on Scottish football”.

That rhetoric did not emerge from nowhere and nor do it go nowhere. This stuff comes out of bitterness and anger and frustration and guess what it amplifies?

Hearts Football Club itself has plenty to answer for in deliberately whipping up the anger of its own supporters, using grievance to deflect attention from the failings of its team.

But we also live in a country where the media ecosystem amplified all of that with a megaphone. Not just a megaphone, but one wired into a thousand-amp sound system.

And what was the message?

You did not lose the title. It was stolen from you.

That is the implication which has been pushed over and over again.

One of the most irresponsible things you can do in sport is tell people they were cheated simply because you do not happen to like the result.

We are not talking here about Manchester City and the entirely different world of disputed commercial arrangements, disclosure failures and formal allegations over financial rules.

We are talking about a handful of refereeing decisions that Hearts supporters, Ibrox supporters and members of the press did not like because they had their hearts set on the fairy tale of Celtic not winning the league.

And notice what I said there.

Not the fairy tale of Hearts winning the league.

The fairy tale of Celtic not winning it.

Because for a lot of these people, Hearts becoming champions was almost secondary to stopping Celtic.

So, what exactly did they think would happen when they told a support which had not won the title in more than 40 years that it should have done so, and that the only reason it did not was because something corrupt or improper centred on one club prevented it?

Most supporters will hear that, complain about it and move on. But some people will take it all the way. That is why words matter. That is why framing matters.

That is why repetition matters. Remember, we discussed that the other week.

And that is why the people who helped create this atmosphere do not get to stand back now, look horrified at the consequences and pretend they had nothing whatsoever to do with turning the temperature up in the first place.

The media in this country behaves so irresponsibly at times that it takes your breath away.

But what is worse is what happens afterwards. After they have amplified the anger, after they have fed the grievance and after they have spent months telling supporters that something unacceptable happened, they back away.

They clutch their pearls.

They talk about how awful it is that people cannot simply accept football results. Yet their own message, repeated over and over again, has been that the result itself was not legitimate.

You cannot spend months telling people that something was stolen from them and then act astonished when some of them become furious about it.

Hearts fans were criticised yesterday by a journalist who supports their own club for their songbook at Celtic Park.

I am sure it was horrendous. I am absolutely certain it was bile-soaked and hate-filled.

We are public enemy number one for that club now because its supporters have been spoon-fed this grievance narrative for months.

I am not excusing the behaviour of their fans yesterday. Not even slightly.

Of course I am not.

But what did people think was going to happen?

Every newspaper article that goes back over the end of last season seems to mention the pitch invasion, often in language which implies that Celtic supporters ran onto the field to attack Hearts players.

This is an absolutely horrific narrative to keep spinning: that Celtic are somehow the beneficiaries of improper decisions, that Celtic itself is uniquely malign, and that its support is populated by thugs.

That is the narrative, and I am used to seeing that kind of thing on Ibrox fan sites.

I did not expect to see versions of it repeated so blatantly across parts of the Scottish football media over the last five or six months.

We have all joked about it.

We have laughed at how hysterical some of the coverage became. We have laughed at how ridiculously over the top some of the reaction was, pushing what I have called the most deranged and stupid conspiracy theory in Scottish football.

And God knows it has some competition.

But in the end, it is not really a joke, is it?

It is not funny when the temperature rises to the point where you start seeing scenes like those outside Celtic Park yesterday. And no, I am not claiming that a newspaper article made somebody throw a punch.

That would be absurd.

But Hearts have come to Celtic Park dozens of times throughout years in which we have swept the boards and won almost everything available to win, and I cannot remember scenes like that. Those scenes are of much more recent vintage.

And so is the grievance culture surrounding this fixture.

Of course there are Hearts supporters who would have believed the conspiracy theories without anybody in the media encouraging them.

But what did I say recently about repetition?

There is a reason political parties use it. There is a reason propaganda works through repetition. Because repetition works.

So, when a grievance is not merely fed but watered, when people in the mainstream media keep validating it, amplifying it and spreading their shit on it day after day, something eventually grows out of that soil.

And sometimes what grows is ugly.

That does not make the media responsible for every individual act of violence. But it does mean they have a responsibility to examine the atmosphere they helped create, and I would have far more respect for the Scottish media if they were willing to acknowledge that.

But they will not. They never do.

They will back away, condemn the scenes and behave as though the rhetoric surrounding this fixture emerged from nowhere.

That is hypocrisy. And worse than that, it is dangerous hypocrisy.

Because they have no shame about turning the temperature up and even less sense of responsibility when somebody else has to deal with the heat.

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