I don't think the team will notice, they live in a bubble and won't be reading this stuff.
Media Thread - 2021/22
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I don't think the team will notice, they live in a bubble and won't be reading this stuff.
dickie davies
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Yes it does
If you access the BBC from abroad there are ads
dickie davies
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Well I hope they're sat in their ivory bubbles feeling absolutely disgusted with themselves
HelloCity
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2017
It was a strange, and lengthy, defence of his colleagues and in particular the Adam Crafton piece on the relationship between sponsors and owners. Even Mooney admits that there journalists out there who look to "antagonise" City supporters but his solution is for us to simply ignore their lies and duplicity. My solution would include journalists who recognise that trait calling out their peers for their dishonesty and their lack of professionalism and showing support for those fans who engage respectfully and intelligently in debunking the stream of misinformation.
Crafton maintains that the article was a balanced, general insight into the nature of what could be described as 'associated transactions' following the introduction of the PL's new guidelines. Well he would say that wouldn't he! The article was so heavily weighted towards City and clearly structured to present those deals as somehow nefarious, questionable and just a little bit dodgy despite being perfectly legal. Equally he seems to believe that because he's managed to get a negative response from City fans and a positive response from 'rival' fans that demonstrates his article was fair. I may be wrong but that just makes me think his article was perfectly structured to appeal to those people who see City as 'cheats' and always will regardless of there being no evidence to support it.
Mooney, voice of the fans. I think not!
The perfect fumble
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I read the article, it actually made a few good points buried amongst the bollocks, but the reason there was so much bullshit is it swerved the elephant in the room, and that's the nature of business in the oil rich Middle East.
To understand how things work in Saudi and the Gulf think prohibition Chicago. There was a main gangster family and then smaller ones who had their own areas of the city and their own specialisms, like gambling or prostitution, the main family controlled the booze, friction was kept to a minimum coz it was bad for business as everyone had a slice of the cake and therefore something to lose if it all went pear shaped.
The ruling families of the Gulf are the same, the big cheese owns the oil and the lesser families have construction, or hotels or banking or whatever.
The population of the UAE is just under 10 million, 1 million of them Emiratis with members of the ruling families numbering in the thousands, and as there's a tendency among the powerful to keep everything nice and snug they all inter marry.
Consequentially everyone is at least a second cousin to everyone else among the rich and powerful, hence accusations of cronyism from know nothing journalists when City gets a sponsorship deal from a company run by Khaldoon's sister in law's nephew. I'll wager there's very few sizeable businesses in the UAE where the owner, or someone on the board, is not related in some way to someone associated with our owners.
The article did make a couple of valid points at the end. If City needed a quick top up of a few million quid, I suspect a call to the extended network of grandchildren, nephews and uncles back in the UAE, would produce the required low level sponsorship, and I imagine western companies wanting to win major contracts in the UAE could do worse than sponsor Man City in some shape or form.
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halfcenturyup
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Agreed, mostly. It's a damning indictment of journalism in this country that there hasn't been any article about our owner over the last decade that places him and his family into the context of how the UAE is run, and how business is done there. You know, something educational rather than something as simplistic as that's different to how we do it, so it must be dodgy. Which is what Crafton's piece was.
eyalluvitt
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“Goals from 80 million Harry Maguire, 60 million Bruno Fernandes and 50 million Fred helped the Reds to a spectacular win over the big spending Yorkshiremen”
JULES
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not here there aint!
SatOnTheWall
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There is where I am.
Spurs quarter 69
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Won't read a paper till Tuesday avoided all news and sports coverage last night, as for Spurs hope to see them f**k*d at the Turf on Wednesday night, always hated the bastards.
dickie davies
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I like Dave Mooney, but he doesn’t speak for me
1961_vintage
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For sure in mainland Europe they do.
And domestically every BBC department competes for budget. These guys are not measured on accuracy, fairness, interest or integrity of content. They are measured on clicks n hits. Hence they gear everything to appeal to the 694 billion rags and 700 trillion scousers around the globe in the hope of securing their budget (and salaries) for the year ahead.
BlueMooney
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This is absolutely not what I've said. The TL;DR of that thread was that the vast majority of coverage of City is fair, but there are some fans in a race to be offended that will find fault where there is very little to complain about. That's quite a big difference between (as someone on Twitter put it) "apparently we're all paranoid".
But, of course, the nuance in the whole thing can't be summed up in such a short sentence and one of the reasons why I'm not getting into specific articles or items is because it becomes a long list of "go on - defend this one!" when that's not what I'm saying in the slightest. There *are* things that City fans can rightly feel upset about in the way the club is covered, but a lot of what gets posted in this thread or most of what I see complained about on Twitter is perfectly fine - and the more that gets shovelled in together, the more diluted the actual grievances get.
Again, in that thread, I said I understood why people would question why The Athletic piece by Adam Crafton was done. This is purely conjecture, but I suspect it's a precursor to a something on Newcastle later down the line, but I've no idea what Adam is working on. Equally, City's business deals are the subject of interest in the wake of the CAS verdict and the recent news around 3Key. People are interested, rightly or wrongly - and here is a piece that says all of the sponsorships City have entered into are legit. Next time someone tells you about all of that dodgy money being pumped into City through the back door, you can literally point them to an investigation by a national publication that shows it's all above board.
But that's besides the point - I said I didn't want to get into specifics of pieces and I'm not here to debate that piece.
The main reason I wanted to reply here is what's often put to me: "pursuing a career in the media". I've seen this before ("he just wants to be a sportswriter" etc etc). It might surprise you, but I've actually got what I consider to be the perfect job right now. I said in the thread on Twitter who I work for so that I could be clear, but let me give this even more personal data (that the whole discussion probably doesn't deserve) so that I can be even clearer and, even if you don't agree with me, you can see that I'm speaking from what limited experience I have rather than acting as a stooge or trying to worm my way to the top (of where, I'm not really sure).
I'm freelance. I work in news production for BBC 5 Live across various programmes. That generally means pitching news stories and potential guests to speak to, and then contacting those guests to invite them on air. It's interviewing those guests to find out more about the story or their experience and taking a brief of what they'll say or what they think so we know what they can talk about. It's writing scripts for the presenters to read and generally making the programme ready for broadcast. This is not anything to do with the station's sport output, in fact I've never worked on a single sport programme in my six years at 5 Live.
I work for The Athletic, producing their City podcast with Sam Lee. I have no insight into what anybody at The Athletic is writing about or working on - I literally speak to Sam over the weekend and between us we decide what would be an interesting topic for the show. Then I go away and write some scripts and some questions I can ask him, while he brings the info and the stories. Then we record, I edit it and I upload it.
I make Blue Moon Podcast, which, while not a roaring success, it doesn't cost me money to make anymore, so I can be glad about that.
I've been working in various media jobs now for nearly 15 years and I've hit a point where I've never been happier. I can choose (ish) when I work and I get to talk about City with nobody telling me what I can and can't say. I have no editorial pressures and no need to have contacts at City to find stories and information out (I have none). I'm also making radio, which is far more fun than writing daily under pressure because the desk needs a story covering or whatever.
That's my motivation - so you can believe all you want that I say what I say about coverage of City being an attempt to cosy up to people, but it's really not the case. Would you believe, I actually have writers, pundits and journalists that I like and dislike, too.
Ultimately, though, I just don't understand what people mean by "The Media" anymore. If I'm being honest, I'd love to be able to make a living talking about only City on podcasts - would that still make me part of "The Media" as a self-employed podcaster? What is it? We talk about newspapers, websites, TV news bulletins, rolling news, Sky Sports, social media platforms. All of this is "The Media" - but I see a big difference between finding unfair what Miguel Delaney has written compared to what some blogger for Football Fancast has tweeted or what some YouTuber has made a video about.
(Importantly, I'm not criticising anyone's right to feel annoyed by anything, but I do think the response needs to be proportionate.)
What I was saying in that Twitter thread was that most of what is written about City by journalists IS balanced, but that doesn't mean you have to like it. Balanced isn't about portraying anybody in a positive or negative light - something can be balanced and a negative story. Balance is all about letting all sides have their say.
From my brief stint as a blogger, I know that City do take action where they think things are unfair. I've had a call from the press office in the past over an opinion piece I wrote on ticket prices, for instance - and I'm hardly one of the "big boys", I was a fan writing what I thought.
There's also a massive difference between opinion pieces and news pieces, but that all gets bundled up into one. Opinions can't be true or false, so when I see tweets about Journalist X lying about City and then I see it's them giving an opinion that City fans would disagree with, I find it hard to be upset.
Does this mean I think everybody that's ever written about City is perfect? No. Does this mean that I think nobody makes mistakes? No. Does this mean that I don't get pissed off with how the club is written about? No. Does this mean that I wish Jamie Carragher would commentate on every City game or that the cost of City's line-up is fair game in ever pre-match build-up? No.
It just means that there is far more nuance than anybody gives any time to - but in trying to talk about that nuance, I'm called all sorts of names under the sun and have what I'm saying misrepresented, while my motives are questioned. People might not agree with me, people might think I'm a dick, fine - but Christ at least let it be for the things I think.
I apologise that you've had this essay in response to your post and I promise I'm not having a go at you. I just thought it'd be worth explaining my position rather than having it talked about without my input.
This is a strawman - nobody is claiming that I am, least of all me. Nobody could possibly be the voice of any fanbase because, again, everything is far too nuanced.
Maybe this is for the best. After all, I'm just as much small fry as that Football Fancast blogger or YouTuber I created up there and, as much as I work for two media organisations, I'm hardly "in the media", whatever that means. If you don't like me, you can avoid my stuff pretty easily - I know what listener figures my podcasts get.
He’s not claiming to, tbf.
The article is fairish if you step back from the every fan in built bias.
We all know though even if that article was a prelude to one on Newcastle and how they will go about getting sponsors, that there’ll be no article on any other club in the premier on how there owners get sponsors the palls acts!
The shirt sponsor for Liverpool when Henry just took over the first offer was around 15m then the association palls act came up trumps and ended up with a 24m one. Now am not arsed because all clubs are probably do the same! What I want is fair we don’t get it.
We all know though even if that article was a prelude to one on Newcastle and how they will go about getting sponsors, that there’ll be no article on any other club in the premier on how there owners get sponsors the palls acts!
The shirt sponsor for Liverpool when Henry just took over the first offer was around 15m then the association palls act came up trumps and ended up with a 24m one. Now am not arsed because all clubs are probably do the same! What I want is fair we don’t get it.
dickie davies
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