O’Neill answered a fresh question. The Scottish media should now explain months of coverage.

The hypocrisy is staggering. Five months after Celtic won the title, the Scottish mainstream media are still putting Martin O’Neill on trial over the pitch invasion—while the people who shaped the coverage are rarely asked to account for their own part in it.

The Daily Record’s latest story combines O’Neill’s fresh pre-match answer with old material from his May talkSPORT interview. Asked if he would have accepted Hearts supporters celebrating on the pitch had the roles been reversed, O’Neill said yes. The article then returns to Jim White’s old question about whether Celtic’s title was “tainted”.

That is not a new scandal. It is a fresh answer wrapped around an old argument, after months of stories and commentary.

So where is the equivalent scrutiny of Keith Jackson, Pat Nevin, Ryan Stevenson, Andy Halliday, Tony Bloom and Jim White? Have they been asked to revisit what they said during the title-day coverage with the same persistence now applied to O’Neill? Have the pundits who helped shape the national conversation been challenged to explain their framing?

O’Neill is questioned again. The media’s own conduct remains largely outside the frame.

A one-way inquest

Jim White put the “tainted” question to O’Neill in May. O’Neill answered it. Now, five months later, the same framing is being revived, as though the manager’s response is the unfinished business.

Keith Jackson’s “missing minute” angle became another major part of the story. The Scottish FA later published the officials’ audio and confirmed that referee Don Robertson ended the match after speaking with Derek McInnes. That should have settled the argument over how the game ended.

Yet the headline conversation keeps circling back to O’Neill. Why is the manager expected to explain himself again while the people who promoted the “missing minute” framing are not facing the same demand to account for it?

The same question applies to the wider commentary. Nevin, Stevenson, Halliday and Bloom all became part of the public discussion. Their roles and words were not identical, and this is not about pretending they were. It is about asking why the media’s attention is so relentless when O’Neill speaks, but so much less sustained when the spotlight should turn back towards the coverage itself.

A newsroom cannot lecture everyone else about accountability and then treat its own choices as beyond review. A pundit cannot help drive a story for days and months, then expect the public to forget the contribution once the next headline arrives.

Where was the proportion?

The Daily Record again says “thousands” flooded onto the pitch. Contemporary coverage described hundreds. If there is a reliable count supporting “thousands”, publish it. If there is not, stop using the most dramatic number as though it has been established.

The invasion should be criticised. Supporters should not have entered the field, and Celtic apologised for the scenes. That does not justify turning one moment into a months-long media prosecution of the manager who refused to condemn every supporter in the terms the press demanded.

Why was “tainted” allowed to dominate the story? Why did the pitch invasion repeatedly eclipse the achievement that had just been decided on the pitch? And why, five months later, is the central question still what Martin O’Neill thinks, rather than whether the media covered the event fairly?

This is selective scrutiny dressed up as an endless demand for answers. O’Neill has answered. The media should now answer for themselves.

The day Celtic won it

O’Neill’s view has not changed. In the new interview, he described the title day as one of the great days of his managerial career. On title day itself, he praised Hearts’ season and said he hoped he would have shown the same respect if they had won the championship.

That is a consistent, generous view of the opposition and an honest description of what the day meant to him.

Celtic won their final seven league matches and beat Hearts in a decider that looked lost until the closing stages. The comeback was extraordinary. The title was earned through the players’ resilience across the run-in, not diminished by the way the celebrations were later framed.

Billy McNeill once said: “There’s a fairytale about this Club.” That afternoon felt like one.

The pitch invasion deserved criticism. O’Neill’s answer about the emotion of a title celebration was perfectly legitimate. The Scottish mainstream media have spent months returning to his words. Now they should turn the same level of scrutiny on their own coverage.