Has The Relationship Between Football Journalists And The Public Broken Down Beyond Repair?

Has The Relationship Between Football Journalists And The Public Broken Down Beyond Repair?
14:05, 28 Jun 2018

The relationship between mainstream football journalists and their readers has always been a detached one, fractious at times. They are the village gossip who we find distasteful yet still we lean in close whenever they have something juicy to report. In this regard the profession who self-deprecatingly refer to themselves as ‘hacks’ are deserving of some sympathy because hypocrisy is at work here. We look down on their lack of morality yet continue to read every salacious word. That must be annoying to say the least.

In recent times, however – and by recent it could be argued to have worsened significantly in the last twelve months alone – this uneasy alliance has given way to open antagonism. We, the British public, have finally grown tired of their mischief-making and persistent attempts to undermine our national football teams, particularly prior and during major tournaments. We find their targeting of certain players to be spiteful and unjust. We see them on Sky’s Sunday Supplement clearly having a very high opinion of their viewpoints and recoil from their self-proclaimed celebrity.

Some of this hostility can be put down to a post-Brexit backlash with the accredited press perceived as the establishment of sports media. In this current climate establishments are getting a damn good kicking and Ollie Holt, Paul Hayward and co are no exceptions to that rule. Mostly though social media is the root cause simply because back in the day, should you take umbrage to an especially mean-spirited think-piece or the comparing of an England manager to a vegetable it would be necessary to pen a letter of complaint, find a stamp and source the address of the person responsible. Now they are instantly accountable on Twitter. A few strongly worded characters and the click of a button and you’ve made your feelings felt.

In due course private resentment has become public condemnation.

All of this however amounts to stating the bleeding obvious or at least is hardly treading fresh ground and would not warrant any comment here unless a new development further changed the landscape. And it has; a startling one no less that makes precisely little sense. The journalists have begun to fight back.

They have naturally always defended themselves – as was and is their right – but never before have they closed ranks and so venomously bit the hand that feeds them. Never before have they so candidly revealed an industry-wide attitude towards its customers that essentially boils down to contempt. Where this leaves them and how this all plays out only the future knows.

It all began in earnest with Raheem Sterling and it began with defence, not attack. As the bizarre and persistent vilification of the Manchester City striker in the tabloids stooped to ever-more dumbfounding levels of ludicrousness we duly weighed in on the football hacks demanding that enough was enough. ‘Leave the lad alone, ffs’: that’s pretty much what a thousand angry tweets can be condensed to.

Some, to their credit, agreed but others cried foul. ‘It’s not us, it’s the news-desk,’ they exclaimed, frustrated at the misdirected fury, only their attempt to distance themselves from the drawn-out sorry episode didn’t wash because it was undeniable that the witch-hunt of the 23 year old was first spawned on the back pages before transferring to the front. They had to take some responsibility. They had to be held accountable.

Even so, as is often the way with social media storms, it gradually passed and perhaps even calm may have prevailed had The Sun not exploded in faux-indignation over a tattoo of a gun. Then all hell broke loose.

Yes this was still first and foremost a tabloid story rather than a football one except this wasn’t about off-duty Sterling shopping for batteries in Poundworld but a photograph taken on a training pitch with calls for the England star to be withdrawn from Gareth Southgate’s World Cup squad. Now there was a crossover.

‘It’s not us, it’s the news-desk,’ the football hacks exclaimed once again.

‘Bull****’:  that’s pretty much what a thousand infuriated tweets can be condensed to.

Realising their pleas of innocence was being outright ignored on this occasion the hacks’ group mentality dramatically changed as their frustration swiftly turned to exasperation. Interactions with the public on their timelines became combative, dismissive at times and pious elsewhere. What a strange situation this was. First their industry outraged and then they talked down to us, the very people they need to continue to exist and consume their product in an ever-diminishing marketplace.

Anyone who has ever witnessed a company make a PR gaffe online and unintentionally incense the public – and then seen the lengths they go to in order to remedy their standing – will know that this was a brand new ball game with very odd rules.

And it was at this point in time, when the chasm between football journalists and their readers was wider than ever before and with trust at an all-time low, that England coach Steve Holland was photographed brandishing a team sheet ahead of the Panama game and Armageddon 2 started up.

In dealing with the unilateral condemnation that followed ‘TeamSheetGate’ the reporters’ preferred form of defence now was attack. They even eschewed their long-favoured riposte of the story being in the public’s interest because publishing an expected line-up ahead of a World Cup game clearly wasn’t. Instead there was wilful warfare from the off with even high profile former players being sucked into the vortex. The Telegraph’s Matt Law was belligerent to Gary Neville for criticism of his colleague’s behaviour. Oliver Holt took vicious sideswipes at Danny Murphy. Paul Hayward meanwhile accused the vast majority of us who disapproved of the ‘scoop’ of being hypocritical due to past examples of Twitter ‘dehumanising’ players.

All for one and one for all they were aggressively unrepentant with the general consensus being that not only were they under no obligation to be England’s cheerleaders but we – the public – were naïve to assume they should be.

If the decision to run with the story appalled then the attitude of the press pack only heightened ill feeling.

“They just love feeling important. It’s truly cringeworthy,’ was one tweet.

“The media have come out of this looking daft,’ was another.

One prominent tweeter called them ‘braindead’ while another claimed they were ‘out of touch’. Yet another deemed them to be ‘traitors’.

By displaying their brittle egos and thin skin and more so a bloated sense of their own importance the footballing MSM have damaged an invaluable connection they may have previously had with their readership. They have circled their wagons and alienated themselves from basic market forces and plain common sense. They have lost the ability to read their readers. These are very dangerous failings given that they need us significantly more than we need them and particularly so in these modern climes.

Of this someone should tell them, but really can you be bothered with the inevitably scornful, supercilious reply?

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