By Tony Attwood
One of the issues that led to the start of Untold Arsenal as a daily blog, getting on for 20 years ago, was an observation I made as to the way in which some journalists commented upon the club, both before, during and after games.
Now of course those of us who debated such points were not so silly as to think that those of us who were Arsenal supporters got all the facts right, but we did note some occasions in which the press and broadcast media expressed an option or the sort of views that those of us who went to games found really rather bizarre.
But it was only when I was watching some matches and found myself sitting very close to some journalists that I realised how much they worked to ensure that they all expressed a similar point of view of the way the game went. Not just agreeing who scored a particular goal, but the overall style and approach of the clubs in the game. What they wrote, of course, became the established truth.
It was something I recalled when I started listening to and reading reports and broadcasts which suggest that Manchester City have taken such moments of uncertainty, and quickly been providing some journalists and commentators with a “definitive” (or put it another way – pro-Manc) view of what happened.
So it was with much interest that I read a piece in Sporting Intelligence which pointed out that Manc have been bringing pressure to bear on journalists – pressure to ensure what is written and said about Manc “in a positive way, that pressure coming either via incentives such as access, or threats of various kinds.”
This is a phenomenally serious accusation, as it not only questions the integrity of the press in reporting the game, but also the fact they simply kept quiet about this behaviour.
Now I must make this clear that I don’t have positive information about ManC influencing how journalists write up reports and what TV stations choose to show in replays, but it does become of interest to me since we have for a long time on this blog, argued that there is a bias in media reporting of football.
It is quit true that we have never specifically explored why that might be, so as a result we’ve not considered what appears to be the whole picture: that one or more clubs seeks to manipulate not just the referee, but also the media. Now this of course, I have no proof and this is quite separate from the allegations in the media about ManC spending far, far more money per season than they are allowed to, under the regulations. But given the number of accusations against ManC it begins to seem possible that while they were engaging in what led to the 115 proven allegations, they were also seeking to influence what is written and said about football in the media.
And that made me wonder, “How would we ever find out?” No one is going to admit anything and the proof would be hard to find. But the more I think about it, the more likely it seems that the club could encourage a certain “bias” in some of the reporting – and we would never know.
We have raised here the issue of what we called for many years the “anti-Arsenal Arsenal” supporters who claim to be Arsenal fans are ceaselessly critical of the club, the manager and the players. It was a form of criticism that quickly spread to the wider media and its effect always seemed utterly negative, and indeed it was to counter that approach, that Untold was set up.
Now I’ve always put this negativity among some Arsenal fans down to individual bias, and the fact that because of its past success Arsenal attracts some “fans” for whom nothing is ever good enough. But the fact that there might have been a constant campaign to encourage journalists and bloggers to paint Arsenal in a more negative light than they deserved, has grown for years. And then recently I saw this headline
“EXCLUSIVE: How controlling the narrative in the MCFC scandal reveals conflicts of interest”
That was in Sporting Intelligence blog and made me wonder again why these negativists pick on Arsenal such that Arsenal fnd it so hard to get as much positive coverage in the media as other clubs. Why, for example, even the club wouldn’t make much of Arsenal having reached 100 consecutive seasons in the top league – way before any other club. Hardly a word about it, yet it was an incredible achievement. Who, I wonder, told them to lay off that topic?
And why some Arsenal fans writing in blogs follow the approach of some of these journalists in being so incredibly negative, even when the club is doing well.
Of course I have no proof that any club deliberately seeks to influence journalists in this way, but there has to be some reason why so many publications and broadcasters were so constantly anti-Arsenal last season.
Could it be that there is a wider constant bias at play here? And if that is so, could it be that the other side of the coin is that while putting down Arsenal, the media are also in some way influenced to talk up certain other clubs? And if not, why are they so often, so anti-Arsenal?
