I'm constantly amazed at the number of people who don't believe that the media indulges in systematic bias against certain clubs, when they absolutely do. I'm similarly amazed by those people who will acknowledge the possibility of political bias on the front pages of particular newspapers, but deny the same possibility when it comes to the back pages.
Just taking the Mail as an example, every article comes with a comments section. The paper's aim is to ensure that as many people as possible click on those articles, in order that they might maximise the advertising revenue central to their continued existence. It does this on the front pages by appealing to its largest readership demographic. Endless negative stories about lefties, teachers, lazy public servants, Meghan Markle, soft judges, asylum seekers, the cancel culture, 'militant' unions, remoaners, Gary Lineker etc etc are always the order of the day, because the Mail knows its foam flecked gammon army will hammer away with such fury that their keyboards will catch fire.
As to the back pages then, which two clubs have far and away the biggest fan bases in this country? And which club do you think is an oven ready enemy for both, having deprived them of hundreds of millions in prize money and trophies since 2011? Once you've joined the dots by answering those two questions, the penny should drop. City have been portrayed as football ruining, cheating, nouveau riche, sportswashing, plastic, no European pedigree, obscene spending (complete with squad cost comparisons, once famously when we weren't even one of the teams playing), human rights abusing, dodgy Arab owned, corrupt, 'dirty' oil money funded, success buying filth, non-stop for 15 years now, and our 'guilt' as regards the current PL investigation has long since been declared as fact.
Other papers, most notably the Guardian, have clear editorial policies when it comes to City and I defy you to find a single article from Miguel Delaney, Barney Ronay, Jonathan Liew etc that doesn't contain at least one of the phrases "state owned project", "oil funded" or "sportswashing". I've seen other journalists call our fans 'grubby apologists' and 'filthy rats', I've seen domestic broadcasters stuff their panels with rag pundits for our European games and listened to them call us mercenaries and wait until the half time interval to pan the camera around the crowd and sneer at us for having empty seats, and I've turned on the radio and heard us called "disgusting" and a "Frankenstein club". It's been relentless and no other club has ever had to put up with an onslaught of even remotely comparable degree. It doesn't mean that all journalists and broadcasters are out to get us, but compared to our immediate rivals we're a country mile ahead in the vilification stakes
