[Archived] What is general feeling towards the media

[rovertakenmb]

I found it really difficult to sum up my feelings towards the media.

In May 2010 Rovers beat Villa to finish in the top 10 of English football yet again. (Incidently the team that day included Phil Jones, Martin Olsson, Junior Hoilett and Grant Hanley!) The achievement went virtually unreported by the media - as did Allardyce's comments after the game that England would regret not taking Paul Robinson to the 2010 World Cup. I guess people had to find out the hard way.

It does make you angry that two years later so many Rovers "experts" are now doing the rounds with some big opinions on a subject they weren't that interested in only 2 years ago. Some of the reporting of the protest, the Yakubu-Kean high-five, the Bolton game and the Kean-love have been astounding. This has helped shape what a lot of fans think about the media.

The flip-side is - how much of a story would we have if it wasn't for the journalism of Nick Harris who brought us the Hunt letter, the Williams letter, the story about the bank overdraft and details of the Rochina transfer? David Conn told us what to watch out for right at the start and Henry Winter offered support for the protest when a lot of his peers were still either sitting on the fence or turning their noses up at proper fans. Andy Cryer has had a fairly impossible task but I think he has been as openly critical as anyone of the Venky regime.

It is a difficult one. Just interested to know what people think on the matter as it is something that I found quite difficult to sum up my feelings on.

[DE.]

There are a few journalists I respect for their handling of our situation - Henry Winter, Nick Harris, Martin Blackburn, for example - but generally speaking the media have done nothing but help take us down the path to destruction. The majority of journalists have been total cretins, failing to do any research and happy to stick the knife into the Rovers fans while lauding the "dignified" Steve Kean.

In short, fk em all.

[bob fleming]

There are a few journalists I respect for their handling of our situation - Henry Winter, Nick Harris, Martin Blackburn, for example - but generally speaking the media have done nothing but help take us down the path to destruction. The majority of journalists have been total cretins, failing to do any research and happy to stick the knife into the Rovers fans while lauding the "dignified" Steve Kean.

In short, fk em all.

Nuff said. Saves me typing. Sky Sports have also been appalling - then again we all know why that is. Pathetic.

I long for the day when a journalist summons the courage in a press conference and loses patience "Sorry Steve, your talking absolute ######, you have done for the past 20 months as well. No I'm sorry Agnew I will not be quiet. We need some answers to the following questions...."

Yeah. Dream on. Too risky I hear? Affect on sales figures? Nonsense - absolute nonsense. The truth would sell. Being banned for asking questions would sell. Not being able to read Keans bullshit every day would be a blessing - sales would probably increase for the LT.

[rovertakenmb]

Quality comment Bob Fleming!!!

I long for the day when a journalist summons the courage in a press conference and loses patience "Sorry Steve, your talking absolute ######, you have done for the past 20 months as well. No I'm sorry Agnew I will not be quiet. We need some answers to the following questions...."

[Majiball]

SCUM

[bluefred]

apart from the odd one or two journos the majority are a bunch of spineless ass licking t@ssers.

[Baz]

Totally agree with DE4life and Bob Fleming.

The majority are totally rubbish and sheep-like, just repeating whatever nonsense is spouted from Kean,Agnew and Venkys. I think this is because they simply are not interested in Rovers. However, a few of these are now beginning to turn towards backing the fans.

Andy Cryer has done a 180 in past few months into someone totally backing the fans, and openly criticising the current shambles, so much credit to him for that.

[K-Hod]

There are a few journalists I respect for their handling of our situation - Henry Winter, Nick Harris, Martin Blackburn, for example - but generally speaking the media have done nothing but help take us down the path to destruction. The majority of journalists have been total cretins, failing to do any research and happy to stick the knife into the Rovers fans while lauding the "dignified" Steve Kean.

In short, fk em all.

Totally agree with this. The above journalists aside, they've all been quick to change their tune following relegation. Scumbags.

Nixon is still defending Kean, and others are still saying our fans were out of order. Beggars belief.

[PAFELL]

If what is happening at Rovers was the situation at any of the top 4 clubs. The media would be all over it. But as it is rovers it is a none story. I mentioned on twitter yesterday if the media were going to do an article on the situation of the club not selling season tickets. The reply I got was it is not a story. Rovers being the only club not to be selling season tickets in all the top 4 leagues, beggars belief. Yet it is not a story of interest.

I have a few friends who work at Brighton Hove Albion. I was talking to one of them last night and I mentioned the situation about the season tickets. He was totally stunned. Then told be brighton have already had 92% of people renewing, with an additional 3000 others, who were on the waiting list, already purchased their tickets. Were talking nearly 20,000.

Yet to the media, rovers not even having season tickets for sale - is not a story. But again if it was happening to any of the top 4 clubs - the media would be all over it.

Rovers are at times a club too small for the media to give a dam about.

[Stuart]

I think that pretty much sums it up PAFELL.

[darwenfish]

Interesting article in " When Saturday Comes " current issue titled Wild Rovers . The article focuses on the current lack of any communication from Venkys ,the fact that Rovers' fans have a right to feel aggrieved and the lack of support the FA etc.

[Amo]

Scum. Subhuman scum.

[david_daft]

With the odd exception, lazy and ill informed.

I stopped buying newspapers and watching telly 2 years ago and missed neither, it's not just sports journo's

that are lazy and can't be bothered researching stories properly.

You can follow decent journo's on Twitter or blogs, save some cash and not have to wade through the sh1t.

[gumboots]

I think the decline in sports journalism has partly come about, like many of the changes we complain about, with the huge growth of football as an industry rather than what it was back when i was young - local sport largely for locals. In those days your local journalist would have contacts at the club who knew what was going on. They would tell whatever they felt could be told and it would be printed. Nowadays clubs are huge with so many different people working in their own area and nobody knows what goes on across the club but a handful of people who won't be telling. The employment of a press officer to present the club permanently in a good light is commonplace now and getting past that press officer is no easy task even if you are the BBC or whoever.

At the same time clubs like Man U are "superclubs" supported by folk across the country and the world. There is an insatiable appetite to get information about them and most journalists gravitate towards them. Takes the focus off the smaller clubs and means that getting info about them into the national press is harder. why chase a difficult story when Man U or City or whoever are playing that night and you can fill your pages with inane stories about them?

Most of the people working at places like the BBC are not bad journalists - they just focus on the big clubs for various reasons, not always of their choice, and everyone else goes under their radar. I think many, when they are confronted with facts, are shocked. Hence why so many have come round to realising that Kean is a useless manager and the fans had every right to protest fairly late in the day. When we actually got relegated the stark facts were there in front of them. But before that they didn't really have to look. Real investigative journalism from more people might have helped us, but it was never going to happen whilst we looked like surviving, or while there were other more glamorous things to talk about.

[Mattyblue]

They couldn't give a monkeys about clubs like us is the crux of it.

Keeping the LMA, SEM, PL onside is far more important than nomark fans at some northern backwater club.

Also, the truism 'nobody in football does a bad job' is at work here. Fans of clubs like BRFC should let Stevie 'learn his trade'. 'Good man is Keano, we met at some corporate gig for something or other'.

[Athlete]

They couldn't give a monkeys about clubs like us is the crux of it.

Keeping the LMA, SEM, PL onside is far more important than nomark fans at some northern backwater club.

Also, the truism 'nobody in football does a bad job' is at work here. Fans of clubs like BRFC should let Stevie 'learn his trade'. 'Good man is Keano, we met at some corporate gig for something or other'.

seeing as Anderson/SEM represent a lot of pundits and SEM being under Kentaro who represent and sell match rights for the FA I'd suggest that a lot of the media is boxed off against us...

[thenodrog]

They couldn't give a monkeys about clubs like us is the crux of it.

Keeping the LMA, SEM, PL onside is far more important than nomark fans at some northern backwater club.

Also, the truism 'nobody in football does a bad job' is at work here. Fans of clubs like BRFC should let Stevie 'learn his trade'. 'Good man is Keano, we met at some corporate gig for something or other'.

I trhink 'truism' is the wrong word there Matty.

[thenodrog]

seeing as Anderson/SEM represent a lot of pundits and SEM being under Kentaro who represent and sell match rights for the FA I'd suggest that a lot of the media is boxed off against us...

Football has a symbiotic relationship with the press and media. Football revolves around 'gossip' and feeds from it. It's used within football to unsettle players and clubs. It's used to sway public opinion etc too. It's used to sell papers. It's used to fund the now massive betting industry. Media men need reliable sources not closed doors, unanswered phone calls and worst of all 'bum steers' otherwise their credibility and usefulness in the industry suffers.

Hence the complete U Turn of our own in house journo in late Dec 10 once the Fat Controller recognised his influence over a section of BRFC fans. I once described his influence over the nickoteens as being like a latter day Pied Piper. Sure as eggs are eggs he was got at and persuaded which side his bread was buttered on. Unfortunately in appropriate racing parlance the horse he was forced to back turned out to be better suited to pulling a milk float.

[jim mk2]

National newspaper journalism has changed significantly over the past 20 years or so. Back in the good old days of hot metal and old techonology nearly all the nationals had Manchester production bases where papers were printed with a local / regional bias by a specialist team of editors each night. For instance, the Express had Midlands, Welsh, Lancashire, Yorkshire and North East editions and on big football nights would often produce Manchester or Liverpool slip editions.

With the advent of new technology in newspaper production (Murdoch, Shah etc) all those Manchester production bases have now closed and all the papers are produced in London with usually one early edtions for the whole country (often without football results) and fewer late editions. Combined with the decline in the number of reporting staff the result is fewer stories on the "smaller" clubs and of course a greater focus on the so-called big clubs, which of course help to sell the newspapers.

Rovers were very big news when Jack Walker arrived and we were a Premier League force. It also helped when we had high-profile managers such as Hodgson, Hughes, Souness and Allardyce who were always good for quotes and made the headlines. However the sad fact is now we are relegated we are no longer newsworthy and papers certainly do not have the resources to allocate manpower to a possible story about possible corruption at a club certainly seen to be in terminal decline.

[thenodrog]

National newspaper journalism has changed significantly over the past 20 years or so. Back in the good old days of hot metal and old techonology nearly all the nationals had Manchester production bases where papers were printed with a local / regional bias by a specialist team of editors each night. For instance, the Express had Midlands, Welsh, Lancashire, Yorkshire and North East editions and on big football nights would often produce Manchester or Liverpool slip editions.

With the advent of new technology in newspaper production (Murdoch, Shah etc) all those Manchester production bases have now closed and all the papers are produced in London with usually one early edtions for the whole country (often without football results) and fewer late editions. Combined with the decline in the number of reporting staff the result is fewer stories on the "smaller" clubs and of course a greater focus on the so-called big clubs, which of course help to sell the newspapers.

Rovers were very big news when Jack Walker arrived and we were a Premier League force. It also helped when we had high-profile managers such as Hodgson, Hughes, Souness and Allardyce who were always good for quotes and made the headlines. However the sad fact is now we are relegated we are no longer newsworthy and papers certainly do not have the resources to allocate manpower to a possible story about possible corruption at a club certainly seen to be in terminal decline.

Correct. MU owed a lot to the Manchester based newspapers in those days.

btw your final sentence is one of my main reasons for suggesting that 92 league clubs is way too many and that this area in particular would be better served by just 1. Wecome aboard.

[jim mk2]

Correct. MU owed a lot to the Manchester based newspapers in those days.

btw your final sentence is one of my main reasons for suggesting that 92 league clubs is way too many and that this area in particular would be better served by just 1. Wecome aboard.

Wrong. The Manchester-based production and writing staff at the Mirror, Mail, Express (tipped off by the likes of Alf Thornton, Peter White etc) covered clubs such as Rovers, Burnley in far greater depth than over the past 15 years or so. The inexorable rise of MUFC is a worldwide TV phenomenon and has nothing to do with a Manchester-based press.

Lancashire United would never work and you know it.

[thenodrog]

Wrong. The Manchester-based production and writing staff at the Mirror, Mail, Express (tipped off by the likes of Alf Thornton, Peter White etc) covered clubs such as Rovers, Burnley in far greater depth than over the past 15 years or so. The inexorable rise of MUFC is a worldwide TV phenomenon and has nothing to do with a Manchester-based press.

Lancashire United would never work and you know it.

Well BRFC, PNE, BWFC and BFC certainly aren't working in the 21st Century are they? None of em can stand on their own feet, all of them are looking in vain for some billionaire with a death wish to sub their excesses forever. Financially unviable, we are effectively are the OPIGS of football.

Be interesting to know what is the combined debt and what is the combined income.

[Mattyblue]

Those Thames Valley Royals could have been a powerhouse by now...