It's time to set the record straight and point out the not so obvious reality of boys clubs known as the contemporary surf media and their benefactors. The 5 most read surfing magazines aren't magazines at all. They are cooperative surf brochures, the producers of which have literally sold themselves out to a couple of handfuls of commercial interests in exchange for favorable imagery and commentary.

The villains of this fraud are the publishers and editors of large surfing magazines. They are financially supported by an oligopoly of surfing related entrepreneurs who hold these so-called journalists’ ethical standards for ransom. Think of state controlled television in Russia and you’ll get the picture.

The victims are the unknowing purchasers of these surf magazines who have been lead to believe that the top 44 surfers in the world (and 56 of their bro-brahs) are exempt from the social and ethical standards people like you and I are held to. When you pay money for Surfing Magazine, you are being ripped off and your intelligence is being insulted, if however inadvertently.

The not so well known fact about professional surfing is that most pro surfers have many secrets like most of them are stoners, drunks and, in many cases, downright thugs. The press paints the picture that top pro surfers’ shit doesn’t stink while the plain fact is exactly the opposite.

The reason outsiders have no clue of this reality is because surf magazines can’t tell you what happens on the tour, at tradeshow after-parties and out in the lineups of high profile surf spots. If The Surfer’s Journal ever reported that Joel Tudor likes to smoke pot, OP would cancel their advertising contract without notice. JT has gone on the record as such however it has been tucked away nicely. Larger surf mags have more dollars to lose if they publicize these issues.

For the Record, Reality Surf Check recognizes that Joel Tudor is perhaps one of the most influential and relevant surfers of our time. Reality Surf Check thinks it perfectly okay for people to smoke pot. However RSC needs to call the “mags” out on their hypocritical agendas and non-objective bias toward their adveretisers. They would never suggest anything negative about any surfer who is sponsored by one of their advertisers. And if they did mention anything negative it would be diluted if not swept under the rug as hearsay. Instead, the “mags” repeatedly pump the riders of their favorite advertisers. This is a fraud and a breach of journalism’s ethical standards of objectivism. Surf magazines are a fairy tale. Their editors are lying to you. They pump a small group of surfers and sponsors who are on the inside of a very closely held circle of sellouts. Their days of flourishing are over. Like cockroaches, they will scurry for cover as RSC turns the lights on to their dollar –driven agenda; they are all in cahoots to defraud you.

Mainstream sports athletes are held to the same standards as you and I and because of their high profile status, the mainstream media puts them under much more scrutiny. The 17 Minnesota Vikings players who allegedly carried-on in illegal and immoral activities aboard two party boats are under the spotlight because they (the players and their employer) are not in any boy’s clubs like pro surfers are. I suggest that pro surfing teams like Volcom’s have perhaps carried on in a similar (and probably more extreme) manner and that the insiders of surf magazines are well aware of it. It’s just that they cannot and will not report on it because they’ll get in trouble for not presenting these pros in the most positive light.

The bigger surfing gets the sooner the fraud will be exposed and the masses will know better than to put any credence into the words published in these surfing brochures which have been designed to look like journalistic periodicals.

-Otto Teller