So, this leak...

alastair said:
I really don't understand why United do things like this.

Firstly, there's clearly a mole in the camp. The answer is to find the mole, not ban the journalist.

Secondly, the whole point of journalism is, as the man mentions, to uncover stories. I'm not really sure what United expect them to do.
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Well to your first point, it's easier to ban the journalist than find the mole. Finding the mole can come afterwards.

To your second point, just because that's a journalist job, it doesn't mean that united have to be content with it. It's a conflict of interests and of course united will care more for their own interests than those of a reporter.
 
Genius Me! said:
Well to your first point, it's easier to ban the journalist than find the mole. Finding the mole can come afterwards.
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Banning the reporter changes nothing. He'll still get the interesting bits from the press conference and still have his mole. We should have done this on the quiet and dealt with this internally only.
 
datura said:
Posting the line-up early isn't really journalism, it just seems to be to garner RT's etc and boost his following.
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Would it be if he printed them in the newspaper in the morning of the game? It's the same thing. I'm guessing if he knew the lineup the day before, it would be in the paper. But even the players don't know. :lol:
 
Amir said:
Banning the reporter changes nothing. He'll still get the interesting bits from the press conference and still have his mole. We should have done this on the quiet and dealt with this internally only.
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I'm not saying I agree with it, just giving an explanation as to why he would be. I get that It's a journalists job to find out what he needs to find out, but then he can't be surprised if the club don't find his information amusing.
 
I love when football journalists get up in arms about being banned from a club. They think they're fecking David Frost or Seymour Hersh. :lol:
 
Sir Matt said:
I love when football journalists get up in arms about being banned from a club. They think they're fecking David Frost or Seymour Hersh. :lol:
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If your job is to report football news being banned from official contact with a football club you're supposed to be covering is actually fairly damaging. I don't get why you don't understand why they wouldn't be upset about it?
 
Stupid to ban him, obviously it's the mole they need to 'sniff out' not the journalist reporting the leaked line up. We have bigger problems than some random guy from The Mirror if somebody is selling off insider information.
 
I do understand why they're upset but I couldn't give a feck.

Ban more of them so I can laugh at them getting uppity.
 
Plugsy said:
If your job is to report football news being banned from official contact with a football club you're supposed to be covering is actually fairly damaging. I don't get why you don't understand why they wouldn't be upset about it?
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I understand why they're upset for themselves, but they act as though it is an affront to humanity and free press. In reality, they are reporting football teams and their matches. That's not to say that they aren't capable of real journalism and don't stumble into it occasionally, but their primary job is not the noble crusade they believe it is. The sanctimonious tone they take when a club bans them is laughable. It's akin to a fashion writer being upset because [insert designer] refuses to give them access, interviews, etc after they write a piece about an ugly dress.

If they ask stupid questions or questions that the press officer says will not be answered, whose fault is it when the club bans the journalist? These are private entities that divulge information at will in press conferences. If the journalist is reporting starting lineups for one team, it is providing a competitive disadvantage for the club. Banning the journalist reporting it won't stop it, unless he gets it by dead drop at Old Trafford, but why would the club continue to allow opposing teams an advantage by knowing their starting lineup?
 
Shane88 said:
I do understand why they're upset but I couldn't give a feck.

Ban more of them so I can laugh at them getting uppity.
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The Cardiff press conference today was a farce. The journalists there being outraged that the assistant manager wouldn't talk about Malky.



^ 40 seconds in



^ the first 10 or so seconds of that one
 
Damien said:
The Cardiff press conference today was a farce. The journalists there being outraged that the assistant manager wouldn't talk about Malky.



^ 40 seconds in



^ the first 10 or so seconds of that one
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Did I hear it right? Did one of those journalists say "well I'm afraid that's not good enough"? Really? Pathetic. Vermin.
 
I literally have no idea what on earth you're all on about. I'm not someone who will blindly defend the journalism industry, but I think they're absolutely in the right here.

Journalists are employed to break and report news about a wide range of things. In the football industry, the pressure is ramped up to fever pitch to find something out first and get it out in the public domain.

The Cardiff situation this morning was quite frankly an insult to them. They had to travel up the country to get there, and they are instructed to come back with some quotes from Mackay about how things stood at the club. Every PL club benefits from the press coverage about them, and consequently, they are committed to giving access to their players and managers at certain times of the week/month. For Cardiff to send the assistant along who then proceeds to ignore the biggest elephant in the room in human history whilst Mackay is standing outside is beyond a joke and outright disrespectful to the journalists who went to cover it.

There's this massive myth out there that journalists are all the scum of the earth, looking to be the main story themselves. That is true of a few, undoubtedly. The majority, however, are under pressure in their jobs to report back some good quotes to their editor for their paper to sell copies/gain website hits and to be a success. These people have families to support and they'd lose their job very quickly indeed if they don't get any stories out there. When you go to Cardiff to cover their press conference, if you report back to your editor that their assistant manager is looking forward to playing Liverpool tomorrow, you're rightly going to look like a right idiot.

I sometimes wonder what planet people are living on, where they believe that clubs can be run like Pravda. It's a symbiotic relationship - the clubs need the press and the press need the clubs, and there are a few teams that decide they're not going to uphold their part of the bargain. It's not on.
 
alastair said:
I literally have no idea what on earth you're all on about. I'm not someone who will blindly defend the journalism industry, but I think they're absolutely in the right here.

Journalists are employed to break and report news about a wide range of things. In the football industry, the pressure is ramped up to fever pitch to find something out first and get it out in the public domain.

The Cardiff situation this morning was quite frankly an insult to them. They had to travel up the country to get there, and they are instructed to come back with some quotes from Mackay about how things stood at the club. Every PL club benefits from the press coverage about them, and consequently, they are committed to giving access to their players and managers at certain times of the week/month. For Cardiff to send the assistant along who then proceeds to ignore the biggest elephant in the room in human history whilst Mackay is standing outside is beyond a joke and outright disrespectful to the journalists who went to cover it.

There's this massive myth out there that journalists are all the scum of the earth, looking to be the main story themselves. That is true of a few, undoubtedly. The majority, however, are under pressure in their jobs to report back some good quotes to their editor for their paper to sell copies/gain website hits and to be a success. These people have families to support and they'd lose their job very quickly indeed if they don't get any stories out there. When you go to Cardiff to cover their press conference, if you report back to your editor that their assistant manager is looking forward to playing Liverpool tomorrow, you're rightly going to look like a right idiot.

I sometimes wonder what planet people are living on, where they believe that clubs can be run like Pravda. It's a symbiotic relationship - the clubs need the press and the press need the clubs, and there are a few teams that decide they're not going to uphold their part of the bargain. It's not on.
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I'd quite like that. I certainly don't need any other information than what the club is willing to share with me.
 
SirAF said:
I'd quite like that. I certainly don't need any other information than what the club is willing to share with me.
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I'm sure Alastair is as furious as all Arsenal fans when Wenger makes up that he doesn't see anything to avoid answering questions.
 
RORY65 said:
I'm sure Alastair is as furious as all Arsenal fans when Wenger makes up that he doesn't see anything to avoid answering questions.
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:lol:

I'd certainly rather see the team win, or gain an advantage however how small, than have full access to what's going on behind the scenes.
 
RORY65 said:
I'm sure Alastair is as furious as all Arsenal fans when Wenger makes up that he doesn't see anything to avoid answering questions.
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There are levels.

Why do the press fawn over Mourinho? Because he always gives them a quote. He understands the industry. Wenger normally gives them something too.

Defending what went on at Cardiff today is really baffling.
 
alastair said:
I literally have no idea what on earth you're all on about. I'm not someone who will blindly defend the journalism industry, but I think they're absolutely in the right here.

Journalists are employed to break and report news about a wide range of things. In the football industry, the pressure is ramped up to fever pitch to find something out first and get it out in the public domain.

The Cardiff situation this morning was quite frankly an insult to them. They had to travel up the country to get there, and they are instructed to come back with some quotes from Mackay about how things stood at the club. Every PL club benefits from the press coverage about them, and consequently, they are committed to giving access to their players and managers at certain times of the week/month. For Cardiff to send the assistant along who then proceeds to ignore the biggest elephant in the room in human history whilst Mackay is standing outside is beyond a joke and outright disrespectful to the journalists who went to cover it.

There's this massive myth out there that journalists are all the scum of the earth, looking to be the main story themselves. That is true of a few, undoubtedly. The majority, however, are under pressure in their jobs to report back some good quotes to their editor for their paper to sell copies/gain website hits and to be a success. These people have families to support and they'd lose their job very quickly indeed if they don't get any stories out there. When you go to Cardiff to cover their press conference, if you report back to your editor that their assistant manager is looking forward to playing Liverpool tomorrow, you're rightly going to look like a right idiot.

I sometimes wonder what planet people are living on, where they believe that clubs can be run like Pravda. It's a symbiotic relationship - the clubs need the press and the press need the clubs, and there are a few teams that decide they're not going to uphold their part of the bargain. It's not on.
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And equally the journalists are trying to get a story on the security of a man's job, alastair. How would you feel if I came into your work and asked you probing questions based upon the security of your job? I'd imagine you would be very uncomfortable, especially if your job was indeed insecure. Granted these people are paid a lot of money but that's not the point, Mackay has the right not to disclose that sort of information, especially considering (as far as I know) Cardiff City isn't even a publicly listed company so the internal goings on of the club actually have absolutely no bearing on public interest.

The clubs don't need the press, the press need the clubs. The press market is beyond saturated, what with blogs, the BBC, papers and websites. The clubs even have their own channels to break their news on so actually, the clubs can pick and choose who they let into their conferences based upon what those papers write about them and they have every right to do so.
 
SirAF said:
:lol:

I'd certainly rather see the team win, or gain an advantage however how small, than have full access to what's going on behind the scenes.
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No-one's asking for full access of team sheets or a camera in the dressing room.

Asking for the manager of a club to turn up to the weekly MANAGERIAL press conference isn't really much though.
 
Well, if journalists encounter problems in meeting their commitments, perhaps they should bear that very pressure in mind when they so freely criticise football managers who are perceived to be failing.
 
alastair said:
No-one's asking for full access of team sheets or a camera in the dressing room.

Asking for the manager of a club to turn up to the weekly MANAGERIAL press conference isn't really much though.
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I don't care. If Ferguson or Moyes don't want to meet the press (or ban someone) for reasons they think would benefit the club - so be it.
 
That'sHernandez said:
And equally the journalists are trying to get a story on the security of a man's job, alastair. How would you feel if I came into your work and asked you probing questions based upon the security of your job? I'd imagine you would be very uncomfortable, especially if your job was indeed insecure. Granted these people are paid a lot of money but that's not the point, Mackay has the right not to disclose that sort of information, especially considering (as far as I know) Cardiff City isn't even a publicly listed company so the internal goings on of the club actually have absolutely no bearing on public interest.

The clubs don't need the press, the press need the clubs. The press market is beyond saturated, what with blogs, the BBC, papers and websites. The clubs even have their own channels to break their news on so actually, the clubs can pick and choose who they let into their conferences based upon what those papers write about them and they have every right to do so.
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Press conferences aren't just people from The Telegraph. They have TV/Radio/Written conferences separately. Every team needs press. The press feed the public interest, with the public interest comes the television package, and from that stems the income.

I appreciate that it's uncomfortable for Mackay to do the interview, but he should have turned up and read out some kind of statement on the matter. Sending the assistant along is just disrespectful.

I agree with you that money doesn't come into it. I don't care what anyone is paid, but I do feel that when so many people are interested in football and when it is the media as a whole that encourage and facilitate that interest, the clubs should show a bit more respect at times.

Most do show it. Some choose not to, and I don't approve of it.
 
SteveJ said:
Well, if journalists encounter problems in meeting their commitments, perhaps they should bear that very pressure in mind when they so freely criticise football managers who are perceived to be failing.
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Agree. It's not like journalists are these innocent lambs that need protecting, but there should be rules in place about summarily banning journalists from the ground just because they found out your left winger got injured.
 
alastair said:
I literally have no idea what on earth you're all on about. I'm not someone who will blindly defend the journalism industry, but I think they're absolutely in the right here.

Journalists are employed to break and report news about a wide range of things. In the football industry, the pressure is ramped up to fever pitch to find something out first and get it out in the public domain.

The Cardiff situation this morning was quite frankly an insult to them. They had to travel up the country to get there, and they are instructed to come back with some quotes from Mackay about how things stood at the club. Every PL club benefits from the press coverage about them, and consequently, they are committed to giving access to their players and managers at certain times of the week/month. For Cardiff to send the assistant along who then proceeds to ignore the biggest elephant in the room in human history whilst Mackay is standing outside is beyond a joke and outright disrespectful to the journalists who went to cover it.

There's this massive myth out there that journalists are all the scum of the earth, looking to be the main story themselves. That is true of a few, undoubtedly. The majority, however, are under pressure in their jobs to report back some good quotes to their editor for their paper to sell copies/gain website hits and to be a success. These people have families to support and they'd lose their job very quickly indeed if they don't get any stories out there. When you go to Cardiff to cover their press conference, if you report back to your editor that their assistant manager is looking forward to playing Liverpool tomorrow, you're rightly going to look like a right idiot.

I sometimes wonder what planet people are living on, where they believe that clubs can be run like Pravda. It's a symbiotic relationship - the clubs need the press and the press need the clubs, and there are a few teams that decide they're not going to uphold their part of the bargain. It's not on.
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I agree with you, in general, but the Mackay situation was absolutely ridiculous this morning.

Some woman asked the first round of questions, was told very clearly that the subject of Mackay was not up for debate and then immediately asked again. She was once again very firmly told that the topic wasn't up for discussion by Kerslake.

They then all played the same game with him, it might have been 'disrespectful' by Kerslake clearly could not talk about it and they looked downright stupid trying to get blood from a stone.
 
alastair said:
There are levels.

Why do the press fawn over Mourinho? Because he always gives them a quote. He understands the industry. Wenger normally gives them something too.

Defending what went on at Cardiff today is really baffling.
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Mourinho didn't turn up to his press conferences for the last few months in Spain, the reason the British press like him is because he'll come out with some bollocks about eggs not because he's particularly accurate in what he says to them. I have some sympathy for the Mirror journalist because he's just passing on what some prick in the club is telling him although I don't whether what he's doing is journalism or a desperate attempt to get a few people to look at his twitter on a Saturday afternoon.

However with regards to Cardiff, it's a hugely fraught situation that could erupt at any moment and McKay is about to lose his job. I think the Cardiff fans would appreciate him trying to avoid making it any worse a day before an important game and he may not want to go out and speak to a load of people about the fact he's about to be sacked. It's a pre-match press conference and of course they can ask whatever they like but that doesn't mean that anyone has to answer it.
 
That'sHernandez said:
And equally the journalists are trying to get a story on the security of a man's job, alastair. How would you feel if I came into your work and asked you probing questions based upon the security of your job? I'd imagine you would be very uncomfortable, especially if your job was indeed insecure. Granted these people are paid a lot of money but that's not the point, Mackay has the right not to disclose that sort of information, especially considering (as far as I know) Cardiff City isn't even a publicly listed company so the internal goings on of the club actually have absolutely no bearing on public interest.

The clubs don't need the press, the press need the clubs. The press market is beyond saturated, what with blogs, the BBC, papers and websites. The clubs even have their own channels to break their news on so actually, the clubs can pick and choose who they let into their conferences based upon what those papers write about them and they have every right to do so.
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That's all well and good but in the real world the fans deserve to know what is going on at the club. Imagine if the Glazers were as mental as Vincent Tan and all we had was the Man United twitter account telling us that Rooney was the player of the month. Brilliant that is.
 
NinjaFletch said:
I agree with you, in general, but the Mackay situation was absolutely ridiculous this morning.

Some woman asked the first round of questions, was told very clearly that the subject of Mackay was not up for debate and then immediately asked again. She was once again very firmly told that the topic wasn't up for discussion by Kerslake.

They then all played the same game with him, it might have been 'disrespectful' by Kerslake clearly could not talk about it and they looked downright stupid trying to get blood from a stone.
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:lol: I agree that the woman was being ridiculous in the end. She should have just walked out.
 
Let's face it, the journalists were taking advantage of this particular situation; why else, then, would they normally & customarily play ball when press officers warn them not to ask about certain things? Not this time though; they're the definition of chancers.
 
RORY65 said:
Mourinho didn't turn up to his press conferences for the last few months in Spain, the reason the British press like him is because he'll come out with some bollocks about eggs not because he's particularly accurate in what he says to them. I have some sympathy for the Mirror journalist because he's just passing on what some prick in the club is telling him although I don't whether what he's doing is journalism or a desperate attempt to get a few people to look at his twitter on a Saturday afternoon.

However with regards to Cardiff, it's a hugely fraught situation that could erupt at any moment and McKay is about to lose his job. I think the Cardiff fans would appreciate him trying to avoid making it any worse a day before an important game and he may not want to go out and speak to a load of people about the fact he's about to be sacked. It's a pre-match press conference and of course they can ask whatever they like but that doesn't mean that anyone has to answer it.
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The Waitrose eggs thing was great for the journalists though. They go back and tell their editor that they can write a headline about how Mourinho harped on about egg standards. It creates hits and makes fans read it. Finding out the United team early creates Twitter hits, yes, but it increases the Mirror brand.

Banning journalists can cost them their jobs. If it's warranted, fine, but for naming the team because your team has a leak? Not acceptable.
 
alastair said:
I literally have no idea what on earth you're all on about. I'm not someone who will blindly defend the journalism industry, but I think they're absolutely in the right here.

Journalists are employed to break and report news about a wide range of things. In the football industry, the pressure is ramped up to fever pitch to find something out first and get it out in the public domain.

The Cardiff situation this morning was quite frankly an insult to them. They had to travel up the country to get there, and they are instructed to come back with some quotes from Mackay about how things stood at the club. Every PL club benefits from the press coverage about them, and consequently, they are committed to giving access to their players and managers at certain times of the week/month. For Cardiff to send the assistant along who then proceeds to ignore the biggest elephant in the room in human history whilst Mackay is standing outside is beyond a joke and outright disrespectful to the journalists who went to cover it.

There's this massive myth out there that journalists are all the scum of the earth, looking to be the main story themselves. That is true of a few, undoubtedly. The majority, however, are under pressure in their jobs to report back some good quotes to their editor for their paper to sell copies/gain website hits and to be a success. These people have families to support and they'd lose their job very quickly indeed if they don't get any stories out there. When you go to Cardiff to cover their press conference, if you report back to your editor that their assistant manager is looking forward to playing Liverpool tomorrow, you're rightly going to look like a right idiot.

I sometimes wonder what planet people are living on, where they believe that clubs can be run like Pravda. It's a symbiotic relationship - the clubs need the press and the press need the clubs, and there are a few teams that decide they're not going to uphold their part of the bargain. It's not on.
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So all week (and more) they've been going on about the problems with Mackay and Tan, then the night before a huge press conference ahead of a game that should be one of the biggest moments in Cardiff's recent history (for good reasons) the press reveal that Tan has told Mackay in an email to resign or be sacked from his job.

All Mackay would have been doing for most of the week is trying to prepare his team for the game amidst this media attention which he wouldn't have wanted. Less than a week before Christmas and he knows it's a matter of time before he is sacked which is horrible. His position is pretty much untenable with the tensions between him and Tan, but he has to keep going on.

For that information about the resign or be sacked to be let out in that manner so close to the press conference meant that it would have been ridiculous if Mackay did show up as all the questions would be about him and not the team or this game that was so important.

The Cardiff fans would understand Mackay not showing up in that instance, and the treatment to the assistant manager was terrible. Yes, the journalists have a job, but so do Mackay and the assistant manager and the press were being disrespectful to someone who was uncomfortable in that situation by insisting he talk about something that had been clearly outlined was off the agenda (Mackay).

There was no way anything new was going to come out of the press conference anyway as most of the gossip was in the papers overnight and you wouldn't expect any club to comment on a situation like that.

I kind of get what you're on about, but in this case the journalists aren't in the right in my opinion.
 
I don't understand all this defending the press. It's their job to try and get stories that very often people don't want them to get at and very often it falls well within their remit to piss people off. Serious investigative journalism is good but that very rarely revolves around asking someone the same question 16 times, or leaking information that a party clearly wants kept secret only to be shocked when they're not happy.

If Moyes wants to ban the wanker who is letting out his secrets, fair play.
If someone doesn't want to answer a question, fair enough.

No one is obliged to say anything they don't want to. You don't have to answer a question just because some dildo with a press badge asks you.
 
alastair said:
The Waitrose eggs thing was great for the journalists though. They go back and tell their editor that they can write a headline about how Mourinho harped on about egg standards. It creates hits and makes fans read it. Finding out the United team early creates Twitter hits, yes, but it increases the Mirror brand.
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It isn't a club's - or a manager's - job to boost readership for a publication or website account.

alastair said:
Banning journalists can cost them their jobs.
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That decision rests with their employers, who'll be the ones to evaluate whether their employee stepped out of line or, alternatively, whether the club in question has acted unfairly. You know all this, so any cri de coeur on behalf of journalists is both unnecessary and curious.
 
alastair said:
The Waitrose eggs thing was great for the journalists though. They go back and tell their editor that they can write a headline about how Mourinho harped on about egg standards. It creates hits and makes fans read it. Finding out the United team early creates Twitter hits, yes, but it increases the Mirror brand.

Banning journalists can cost them their jobs. If it's warranted, fine, but for naming the team because your team has a leak? Not acceptable.
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I agree it's a bit petty. If it's any consolation he's only missing a David Moyes press conference, he's not going to be missing out on anything entertaining or any interesting quotes.
 
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