1961_vintage said:
It's simply the difference between on the one hand "journalists" and on the other hand "presenters of information".
A journalist will find the story, research it, analyse it, validate it, write it and publish it as a means of earning a living.
A presenter will regurgitate information in the same way that a fly regurgitates any old shit it happens to land on.
To be a journalist requires skill and endeavour. To be a presenter requires nothing more than an overtly sycophantic disposition.
People like Mourinho and Twitch, with their endless stream of egotistical soundbites, enable presenters to make a living despite their lack of ability - hence their popularity in the wider media.
Pellers represents hard work - hence the underlying antagonism, especially given that he coaches the lottery-winning football abomination that is Manchester City.
Knowing this gives you the context within which media observations on our Club should be viewed.
This is fair comment but I would add, if I may, that every journalist wakes up hoping that today's the day that the big story will land on his or her lap. There's an old cliché about good hacks going to the game and hoping for a good story rather than a great game. Like all clichés, it has survived because it's fundamentally true - although not always for the magnificently altruistic reasons that many of the more pompous wordsmiths (hi, Paddy, hi James) would like readers to believe. If Suarez scores four wonder goals against Norwich, there's the match report and maybe, hopefully, if the editor likes you and there hasn't been a natural disaster in Milton Keynes, a thousand word, colour piece on great Uruguayan strikers or something but, if Suarez sinks his molars into the backside of a female referee's assistant... kerching!!
The thing is, as you so rightfully point out, City no longer give any cheap stories away. We're no longer the go to guys for a spot of light relief after the real football has been reported on. Even the holes in the fence at Carrington appear to have been plugged up! Stuart Brennan made a telling comment on this board last year when he said that the relationship between City and the MEN changed when City revamped their website (in the process, using it as their preferred outlet for media announcementsis what I believe he meant).. Not having a pop at Stuart (because I actually think he does a great job under the circumstances) but for guys like him, that decision was a blow, professionally and financially. It's no wonder then, that we're not flavour of the month with the Fourth Estate. Liverpool were once praised and nauseum for 'not washing their linen in public', City receive no such plaudits for replicating that stance because, unlike Liverpool of old, we keep the media at arm's length on every aspect of the club; the good, great and downright propagandist included.
For now, it suits the club's strategy to do so and you can easily see why. The whole City Football Group project is in its infancy and inevitably there will be setbacks along the way. The last thing the powers that be need is for those failings to be reported in the sensationalistic manner that has become the mot de jour of British football coverage in the last twenty years. Worse again, they don't want other being any chance that our rivals will know our next move (we might never have signed Lampard, if they'd foreseen it, for example). Better to tell them nothing and let our hard fought achievements do our talking. So far it's worked a treat - even if it has created a culture of bias in many sections of the media. Who cares? Two leagues in three years and four trophies in four years are a soothing balm as well as a just reward. If this strategy means we've got to put up with feint praise and condescending sneers until such a time as the project has gathered enough momentum so as to render any sensationalist stories a nuisance rather than a grevious blow, then that's just the way it is. Suck it up but try to be philosophical about it. Like all things, this too shall pass.
