bertisbigbanana
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 13 Apr 2010
- Messages
- 233
I'm sure you mean no offence, so I'll take none, but unless you take a particularly keen interest in the way City are reported on especially by the BBC i really wonder if you are able to put this particular incident in context.
The BBC - particularly but not exclusively through social media - have in recent years taken a large number of potshots at City. Mostly they take the form of little digs and sly innuendos but sometimes it is less subtle. There is a whole thread relating to a complaint to the BBC made in relation to one such dig (if you are interested, put 'Complaint to BBC re Pete the Badge' in the search box and read into it further.) There are many other examples - some serious, others trivial beyond belief - in the 460 pages of this thread, which incidentally began in the close-season. There is a BBC journalist called Simon Stone whose pieces about City almost always contain such digs and innuendos, and even though City were utterly brilliant last night he was at it again last night during the BBC's live feed. Again, put 'Simon Stone' into the search box and you will find many examples of the same sort of thing. There are a number of similar examples, which many City fans are quite frankly pissed off royally by (especially given that the BBC as a state-funded broadcaster has a legal obligation to be impartial in all matters). And of course the contrast with the way United are portrayed by the BBC is particularly keenly felt.
Opinions vary as to why this is so. Some take the view that for click bait reasons stories favourable to Manchester United and/or critical of Manchester City will always attract more website traffic, and the BBC is in that respect no better and no worse than any other traffic-chasing website; maybe the large number of fawning documentaries shown by the BBC about United related matters supports this view. Some take the view that there is a large number of United supporting employees at BBC Sport and that rather than anything more sinister this is just the product of simple tribalism from United fans in positions where their tribalism has an outlet. It's fairly well documented that Simon Stone, having used him as an instance, is a United fan, which may explain some of his output, but that may also have something to do him being treated like a complete idiot by pep Guardiola at press conferences. There are those who think there is no bias whatsoever, but frankly there aren't that many who think the BBC's reporting of City is broadly fair and even handed. Whatever its cause, most City fans regard the BBC's reporting of City with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
As to the matters City fans complain of, many do not seem, in themselves, to be particularly major issues. Yet as with any systematic pattern of behaviour, when you look at individual examples in isolation the individual complaints can appear trivial or petty but that is to ignore the wider context, without which it is impossible to view the thing properly. A drop of water looked at in isolation is a drop of water, but it is something else completely when viewed in the context of chinese water torture treatment.
So when an article about the U17 World cup refers to Jadon Sancho, and refers to the club he plays for, and refers to Kirby's winning penalty and mentions that he is a Palace player, but refers to the goalkeeper's outstanding performance without mentioning that he is a Manchester City player, you do wonder why that particular editorial decision was taken. Was it a deliberate snub? We'll never know, but against a sustained background of sly little digs, biased comments and the like, you might not find it surprising that City fans (who are probably a lot more attuned to notice this than you are) assume the worst.
Good post.