We know each other. You're a really nice guy and absolutely a City fan. The podcast is very professional and you obviously put a lot of work into it. It's what BBC Radio Manchester's Blue Tuesday should have been in fact.
But we've all said daft things at times, me included, and on Twitter I challenged your claim that the "vast majority" of coverage is fair and balanced. Of course not everything written about us is based on a negative agenda but I think quite a lot is.
I don't think it is fair and balanced in many areas and I've been one of the people trying to provide that balance over the last 10 years. None of the coverage of FFP/CAS was fair and balanced, as none of the journalists reporting on it took any trouble to understand the issues or the regulations. Whereas people like me, Stefan and others did have a detailed understanding of them. Did you ask either of us on the podcast to provide that balance?
I know Adam Crafton well, and as with you, would never get personal but that had material inaccuracies in it about our FFP case. It could also be read in a number of ways, depending on your starting position, but I thought that it showed the exceptional and genius strategy behind our commercial arrangements.
It's a regular feature of most televised games of ours, particularly against what we'll call the less well financed clubs, that the cost of the squad is highlighted against that of the opposition. Yet it's never done for clubs like united or Chelsea. These aren't isolated incidents are they?
You made some false claims about things that had been discussed at City Matters, about away tickets, without knowing the background and, as the representative of seasoncard holders, I messaged Richard offering to come on and discuss our thinking and correct what you'd said, which he ignored. That's when I stopped listening to Blue Moon podcast and I'm questioning whether you yourself really know what 'fair and balanced' is.
I remembered something else last night. Your and I were at a Football Writers Festival event a few years ago. I think you were on the panel, along with Oli Kay and Paul Lake among others. The subject was young players, as Kay had just published his book on Adrian Dougherty. Afterwards, Kay, yourself, myself and the Lakes were chatting and we got onto the subject of how the media operates. Kay was at The Times then and talked about what motivates the media. I always remember he said that he could write the greatest piece he'd ever written but if it didn't get enough clicks, then he would get his arse kicked by his editor.
That was The Times, not the Mail or other populist paper. We've seen it at the Guardian where the starting point is an almost racist hatred of our owner and his country. It's all about clicks, not balance. The question is, how many individual 'specific articles or items' does it take to indicate a pattern?
