As football fans, we see what we want to see. We defend our own, and attack others. Our club is the best, and that’s that. We can attack our own of course, that’s our prerogative, but outside criticism is seen as bias and prejudice.
Ben Goldacre, a well-known campaigner against lies told about science in the media, once commented in a column on the following experiment:
“What do people do when confronted with scientific evidence that challenges their pre-existing view? Often they will try to ignore it, intimidate it, buy it off, sue it for libel or reason it away.
The classic paper on the last of those strategies is from Lord, Ross and Lepper in 1979: they took two groups of people, one in favour of the death penalty, the other against it, and then presented each with a piece of scientific evidence that supported their pre-existing view, and a piece that challenged it; murder rates went up or down, for example, after the abolition of capital punishment in a state.
The results were as you might imagine. Each group found extensive methodological holes in the evidence they disagreed with, but ignored the very same holes in the evidence that reinforced their views.”
I mention the above as a somewhat clumsy analogy about football fans. As you’re probably aware, we’re blinkered hypocrites, the lot of us. Or maybe you weren’t.
But you probably were.
And so this is how it works. Craig Bellamy plays for your team and thus he is brilliant, such dedication, passionate, all that charity work in Sierra Leone (amazing work, for sure), puts 110% in, sued so many papers for lies told against him (14 actions in one year in fact), says it as it is and so on. Then he leaves, signs for Spurs, and slags off City, and he’s a prize a***hole, falls out with every club he goes to, gobs**te, always knew he was trouble, his knee’s gone, horrible tattoos.
I’m just about to enter the second camp.
Robinho? All these stories about him wanting to leave are rubbish, of course he’s not lazy, he scored 15 goals, a good return, took time for him to settle, niggling injuries, flying round world with Brazil took it out of him etc. Why do the media have to stir up trouble all the time? On news that he refuses to return to Manchester? What a ****. Lazy, pompous, arrogant, piece of ****. £200,000 a week and he couldn’t be arsed training most days, he’s treated us all like fools, good riddance, falls out with every club he goes to, only puts in effort for Brazil, etc etc. £300,000 a week and it’s too cold for him, boo hoo, get the violins out, my heart bleeds.
And so the re-writing of history continued when Milner looked poised to sign for City. Suddenly on website letter pages, Villa fans comment on how he was average, a one-season wonder, overrated etc. Young is the real talent at Villa Park. Last season he was the messiah, now he’s just a very naughty boy. And as for O’ Neill? Rubbish. Long ball merchant, boring to watch, terrible in the transfer market, wouldn’t make changes, set in his ways.
(Of course City have paid too much for Milner, but leaving that aside, he’s a very good player, with commitment, dedication, and a desire to succeed. Villa will miss him, whatever their fans say, but the money provides an opportunity to replace him and perhaps acquire another couple of bargains as well. Everyone wins, I guess.)
As I write, City are linked with Balotelli (in fact, he’s just signed!), but United were rumoured to be after him too. So what do I think of him? Well, put it like this. If he had signed for United, he’s a young hothead with an attitude problem, an immature child who is seriously overpriced. Now he has signed for us, he is misunderstood, had to put up with racial abuse, got huge potential and Mancini will get the best out of him.
I hope that makes my feelings clear.
And then there are the contentious match issues. Battle lines are drawn up, and the same event, viewable form multiple camera angles and at 4 different speeds, brings out totally different opinions on who was to blame and what should be done. Would we have it any other way?
Take Ben Thatcher’s elbow on Mendes a good few years ago. If Mendes had got up, I argued to anyone who would listen (and a few who wouldn’t), there would have been no media furore. I studied the replays trying to find some evidence, any evidence that maybe it wasn’t as bad as it looked. It was. I saw De Jong’s karate kick on Alonso in the World Cup final and argued, “well surely he would not deliberately try and maim someone?! Nah, it was just clumsy and mistimed…”
I still think this, even though I imagine it makes me look like a fool. Now if a United player had made that tackle…..
But for me, the best example of the blinker-wearing approach of football fans is a contentious penalty decision. Here we have the perfect example of a football fan seeing what they want to see. I once saw Sun Jihai win a penalty against Everton with an appalling dive that took in a triple salko, pirouette, a wave to the crowd, a pretend knee injury and he still had time to look appealingly at the referee. We could all see it was a dive. But in my mind, I tried to reason he was expecting a bad tackle so was merely jumping out the way and besides, thirteen years previously Everton had got a really dodgy decision against us, so it all evened up really.
Did Stephen Hunt mean to hurt Cech? Did Taylor mean to cripple Eduardo? Was that elbow deliberate, or just used for leverage? Did he go down easily there, or was he clipped? All the answers depend on which team you support. You scour the replays, and you home in on the clip that best fits the opinion you want to have.
So according to your particular allegiance, two possible interpretations emerge from a crunching, injury-causing tackle/foul:
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Scenario a: defend tackle, slam the outrage being shown over incident, use other examples to show how similar incidents didn’t get such coverage. Write angry letter to football365.com. Sulk for 2 days.
Scenario b: slam tackle, perhaps suggest the player has got form for this, slam the lack of outrage in the media over this horrendous foul, use examples of your team getting slated for much lesser incidents. Write angry letter to football365.com. Sulk for 2 days.
Of course, this hypocrisy is essentially pointless – the need to defend our corner comes from the tribal nature of football, but why would I need to defend Ben Thatcher? I am not responsible for anything players do – it is out of my hands, as, like 99% of football fans, I am powerless to change their behaviour, or more importantly, my club’s fortunes. A passionate crowd can help a home team, a dedicated supporters group can change the course of a club, but on the whole we make no difference. We follow blindly through whatever crops up.
And so I shouldn’t really feel the need to defend City’s spending policy, but in the last blog I did just that. At the end of the day, I didn’t have any say in the takeover, and I don’t have any say in how they act. And let’s face it, there’s not a group of supporters in the world who would start protesting because their owners were spending TOO MUCH money. Maybe an Amish club, but I imagine their Fit & Proper Persons Test is pretty damn strict.
You will often hear people say things like “club X have always played attractive football” or “their supporters demand attacking football” and the like, but I have my doubts at how many managers have changed their own tactics because of some supposed historical demand from the fans. Maybe it has influenced the odd managerial appointment though. So as a mass, supporters can influence, but individually few do, and thus few are accountable for what their clubs do.
This leads me onto another point. We all have at least a hint of bias as fans, but that raises the question of whether journalists are too. Presumably all football journalists support a particular team. I’ve rarely met a fan of football who had no club allegiance, and those few I have met I have subconsciously treated with suspicion (like people who don’t own a television). What is football without glory, without rivalry, without defending your corner and attacking someone else’s, the highs and the oh-so-many lows?
Personally if I was a journalist writing about the Premier League, I would find it difficult to write impartially on City, and by association, United also. So I did a little experiment, using webchats, twitter, emails and the like. I asked every football journalist I could find the following question:
“Do you think it is possible for sports journalists to write fairly and impartially on football when they support a particular (high profile) team? My experiences suggest not…..”
These were the replies, in full. I won’t name names, but they all write for national papers, with one exception.
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“Good question Howard. As football fans we all have certain teams in our heart. I don’t think my lifelong allegiance affects my objectivity when reporting on that team or any rival teams. You may beg to differ….
“I’m not sure whether Crystal Palace counts as a high-profile team, but one of the most important tools for a modern newspaper reporter is the ability to write with conviction.
“I don’t expect anyone to agree with my opinions, but my aim is to write with integrity, as well as providing a well-reasoned and balanced argument based on my knowledge of a subject.
“When I have covered Palace in the past, a number of managers criticised me for being too critical of the club and I wouldn’t disagree.
Being professional is one thing, trying to disassociate myself from the team I have followed throughout my life is entirely different. I’m professional in the day job.”
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“Quite why so many fans are obsessed with what teams journos support is beyond me!”
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“It does not matter which team individual writers support. This is like saying you must be pro-police to cover crime. What matters is content and getting the balance right between city and united coverage.”
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“Depends Howard. If I’m writing a news piece or a match report, then it has to be objective. If it’s a piece that clearly marks me as a Liverpool fan, then it does what it says on the tin. Some hide their allegiance, I don’t. Anyway, I’ve been accused of all kinds – being an Everton fan or Man United. Most of my reporters are passionate fans of clubs. Hang on, all of them. We argue and abuse each other but are professional enough that you’d never know from their writing.
“I support Cambridge United so impartiality has never been a problem. Sometimes supporters can be the harshest judges so I don’t think that’s a specific problem. A bigger issue is probably trying to think and write independently when you are dealing with contacts, individuals you like.
“Although every football reporter goes into journalism with some kind of allegiance, very few stick with it as they progress. From my point of view, the old rivalries disappear when you get to know people and players from other clubs. Similarly, you can find people who work for the club you ‘supported’ difficult to deal with, so that also helps get rid of loyalties.
“A few guys certainly get too wrapped up in England team results, but the vast majority of reporters I know do not allow any allegiances to colour their judgement. At the top end of the profession, you can’t get away with club bias. I know many fans think we are all Utd / City / Arsenal / Chelsea fans. I’ve been accused of being all four, so that sums it up!”
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“I am a journalist who happens to cover football. So the ethics of informing people of the truth, being accurate, objective, fair, impartial and proving debate, must hold true. Supporting a team doesn’t give a journalist a right to express opinions, unsupported by facts or a sound basis. It therefore helps if a sports reporter has been first trained as a news reporter. There is no need for a journalist to make their allegiance to a team known to the public. It serves no benefit to them, the reader or the club. It can only invite criticism from fans. The loss of impartiality affects the credibility of the journalist and that of the media outlet.”
“It is an interesting question, and I am not sure that it is possible for any journalist to write completely impartially about a match in a division in which their team competes. Obviously you try to comment as fairly as possible, but journalists, much like every other football fan, will have their prejudices and they will inevitably colour their writing. It just depends on the writer as to how much they can mask the level of their impartiality. Some clearly find it tougher than others!”
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“Yes of course it’s possible. It’s part of the journalistic DNA. But not a problem I face because I support Dundee!”
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So there you have it. Most journalists asked think that professionalism in their job overrides any personal allegiances they may have. I can’t say I am convinced. The journalists that replied have pretty good reputations in my opinion, and I believe them. I’m not convinced by journalists as a whole though because, like you all I would wager, I think a particular newspaper has it in for my team (it’s the Mirror by the way), and even more so, I think individual journalists do too. Above all, I have seen certain journalists, usually from the redtops, spend the last few weeks intent on carrying out a hatchet job on our national football manager with reporting that bore no resemblance to the standards of objectivity and impartiality mentioned in the email replies above. Much of the coverage has been nothing short of a disgrace, and an abomination. And the one journalist that replied saying bias does come into it works for a redtop. Make of that what you will.
As I have mentioned, for years now I have seen some of them repeatedly pen articles slagging off my club at every opportunity possible, which if we had been on a blazing trail of tyranny would be fair enough – but let’s face it, we haven’t done enough to be considered the spawn of Satan just yet.
Give it two years.
Written By Howard Hockin
