Submitted a FOI about Simon Stone's role to the BBC
Hello
This is a request for information under the FoI Act 2000 which has a public body BBC is mandated to supply
I would like information on the following for the period 2010 to 2025 inclusive
Simon Stone is titled as Chief Football News Reporter
1) What is Stone’s brief reporting football as a football news reporter
2) The leagues he covers, Is it just England or the UK or Europe?
3) Is Stone based at BBC Salford?
4) Which PL clubs are under the remit of Stone?
5) Stone attends PL manager’s press conferences in his BBC role, for which clubs?
6) Does Stone attend any other press conferences outside of the PL
7) Supply the figures for the number of press conferences he attended broken down to individual clubs
8) How many articles has Stone published broken down to individuals clubs
9) How many pre and post season tours has Stone travelled to, broken down to individual clubs in the last 15 years
10) How many times as Stone travelled to cover a club in a UEFA competition broken down to individual clubs in the last 15 years
11) How many matches has Stone attended in his professional role broken down to individual clubs in the last 15 years
12) Which football club is Stone a fan of? This is relevant to establish a bias which is contradictory to the BBC Charter
Here's is their reply
We have carefully considered your request and concluded that it is clear from your de-
scription of the information you are seeking that if the BBC held information of the kind
you have asked for, it would all be held for the purposes of journalism, art or literature.
The FOI Act does not apply to information held by the BBC for any of those purposes. This
is explained in an information sheet enclosed with this letter. To be clear, in this case we
have not searched for any information since any that we found would be non-disclosable,
and the searches would not serve any useful purpose.
However on this occasion, we are happy to voluntarily provide the below information in
response to your request:
“Simon Stone's role is chief football news reporter for BBC Sport. He reports on some of
the biggest stories in the world of football and is also one of a group of journalists that
cover specific Premier League clubs. Part of Simon's role is to cover key events involving
Manchester United, and this is the same as our other journalists following their assigned
club at key times. We can assure you that we’re always mindful of the costs behind putting
together our output, while at the same time trying to provide the best possible service to
audiences.”
Ive followed up with a request for a list of journalist allocated to specific PL clubs and how many tours they have been on
They have denied right of internal appeal, so I will take it to the information commissioner
