(Sorry for the long post here...)
I don't really post too often any more on Blue Moon, but I'd like to just step in here... Hi - I'm David and I produce Blue Moon Podcast.
I'll come to the media stuff shortly, but first off I wanted to just address this. Because, in a way, you're right - when I started the podcast and now as I continue the podcast, I'm in it for myself... but probably not in the way you'd think. When I started it, it was 2009 and I'd just finished university, looking for a job in radio. In the meantime, I decided to set up the show because I'd started listening to podcasts there wasn't anything like them that covered solely City, so I went for "the gap in the market" as they say.
Back then, I was shit at making radio - and that's why I couldn't get a job in radio. Through doing the show, I got better and it's helped me land several jobs making radio in the last ten years. It's not the 'mainstream opinions' on the show, as someone has put it in this thread that helped with that - it's the production skills... how things sound, editing, mixing, that sort of thing. My jobs have been in news production, not sport - and, apart from the very odd getting-a-guest-on-air moment down the years, nothing to do with City.
Hosting The Athletic's City podcast, Why Always Us?, did come as a direct result of producing Blue Moon Podcast - but to have had this as my goal at the outset in 2009 would have been an incredible piece of foresight! This show is more of a collaborative effort between me, Sam Lee, occasionally Jack Pitt-Brooke, and the Athletic's production team. Editorially, we have a lot of control - and Sam and Jack's opinions aren't policed, they're free to say what they believe.
For full disclosure, too, through 2012-2014 I also wrote a couple of books about City - which I was able to sell, largely through Twitter, based on having some followers from making the show.
It's worth quashing the myth, though, that Blue Moon Podcast - and the books, for the record - are a huge financial benefit. The podcast itself, through using studios, web hosting (which
@Ric paid a ton of money for, too!), traveling to interviews, owes me about £3,500. It now has a Patreon which pays a lot of its fees and the advertisements, which started this season, supplement that - but it now only just about brings in enough to cover its costs. Two of the three books I wrote made me a loss. One, the interviews with the Wembley 99 squad, is in profit - by a few hundred pounds.
So there are fringe benefits, but I also get to create something that I enjoy creating. About 10-12 hours' work goes into each podcast - from the pre-records (features, interviews), the planning (future ideas, setting up interviews, travel), the show itself (getting to the studio and recording), to the edit (putting all the elements together and mixing it down).
Further fringe benefits have also including being able to interview ex-players - many of which, for better or worse, were my heroes from the late 90s. Very occasionally I've been able to interview current players, but this comes with a process of speaking to the club's press office continually and usually being turned down for media requests. The last first team player we interviewed was Fabian Delph in 2015 - and only because he was doing an interview with the Premier League and agreed to have a 10-minute chat with us afterwards. Since then, we've asked and been told no - regularly.
If that is the bit that makes me 'in it for myself', then I guess I'm in it for myself - because it's fun making the thing.
Now... the fake news/media stuff.
I'm genuinely interested in this and, I'm not going to lie, I was surprised to read the actions that Facebook has taken. There's an important distinction to be made between 'fake news' and 'news that portrays City in a negative light' - and in the wider context of news, working for news radio stations in the past, this isn't exclusive to City, it's crept up everywhere and you can probably thank Donald Trump for all of this.
'Fake news' is ultimately not true. So the articles that Facebook is removing is stuff that is from an untrusted source - this 'Mirror Herald' isn't a news site. I'd be very surprised if they were removing articles from The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Mail, The Mirror, The Sun... I'd more expect them to be hitting those pages that spoof themselves into looking like genuine news websites, but contain only propaganda or contain only paid-for advertorials.
The rest isn't fake news. So stories that City have spent a lot of money, for instance, aren't what City fans want to hear and many may judge they've been published in bad faith - that's another thing and that's not what Facebook will remove.
Martin Keown not liking City's spending or mentioning it every breath he can, as someone mentioned in this thread for instance, isn't fake news, it isn't libellous, it isn't something the club can sue him for... It's a fact that they have done. Whether he likes it or not is his opinion and, whether or not you or I agree with him, it's fair comment based on that fact.
And this is where my position on a conceited agenda against City comes into play. I've worked in enough newsrooms - albeit broadcast newsrooms and never print newsrooms - to see that there isn't time to decide how to best spin a story. When we've got 10 minutes until an item is due to be broadcast and still no guest to talk about it, there isn't time to work out which guest will be better at making United look better or sticking the boot into City. Do the wrong guests get booked under such time pressures? Absolutely. Is it maliciously an attempt to undermine City? Definitely not.
This also doesn't just apply to City - it's all of the broadcast news. Are Labour, the Conservatives, the Greens, the Lib Dems, whoever being purposefully attacked? No, they're not. It's Occam's Razor - the simplest solution is probably the right one: Wrong and bad decisions are sometimes made under time pressures.
Bringing it back around to the podcast, whether or not listeners believe people on the panel or myself have been sneering is a judgement for them to make. I don't believe we have been, others may disagree - though I do think it's a shame that people would stop listening to the show because of what I think about any agenda and therefore not listen to people like
@Gary James on the history of City's transfer record or Stat City talking about the Sven season - and all of the ex-player and ex-manager interviews we've done. But, as I say, each to their own.
Where I will apologise - and it's something I've taken a personal policy of not commenting on because of the reaction it got so I'm going to say no more about it after this - is that old 'expose of the media agenda' satire I wrote in about 2015. It was never intended as a dig at City fans (though I can see, looking back, why it was taken as such and it's my fault that it was). That was intended to poke fun at the idea of a media-wide agenda - where newspaper editors met with BBC Breakfast, Radio 4, BBC online, TalkSport, whoever... to decide how they were going to deride City despite all being in competition with each other.
The intention was never to suggest that everything written or said about the club is great - or even in good faith.
For that, I'm genuinely sorry. For not believing in a media agenda even in light of what Facebook is doing, I'm not.
