Manchester United have banned four journalists from this afternoon’s press conference. Their explanation stems around not being contacted about certain stories before publication.
As a journalist, I don’t agree with the banning of journalists but it’s point of principle. The stories ran on Erik ten Hag’s job security should have been checked with the club.
Especially when Sky Sports reporter Kaveh Solhekol was bold enough to suggest that 50% of the dressing room has turned on Ten Hag. He was one of the four journos to be banned from Tuesday’s press conference.
The others include the Manchester Evening News’ Samuel Luckhurst, The Mirror’s David McDonnell, and Rob Dawson of ESPN.
This comes after defeat to Newcastle on Saturday led to an array of stories about dressing room unrest.
United have released a statement on the matter ahead of the press conference. It read (via the Metro): “We’re taking action against a number of news organisations today, not for publishing stories we don’t like, but for doing so without contacting us first to give us the opportunity to comment, challenge or contextualise.
“We believe this is an important principle to defend and we hope it can lead to a re-set in the way we work together.”
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This is a common practise, United under Fergie would ban certain outlets and journalists, even City reviews some journalist’s work before they are posted or will not even be allowed to post the piece. Chelsea is arguable doing worse and they have not had half the provocative posts because they filter information and Liverpool also had rough patches last few years and went mostly under the radar. These filters are important for cohesion in a club.
United since Fergie has been a Free for All for terrible journalism, no filters by the club. It has created a breading grown for outlets to post provocative, irrelevant and misleading pieces of journalism. We had a whole day where headlines were “Rumours of United players complaining about the kit’s comfort after a loss”, what a perfect timing, not even Aston Villa with their kit issues has had 1/10 the attention.
We want proper relevant journalism from all teams when thing actually happen, not stuff like that.
This would not happen under Fergie because the moment they posted stuff like this, Fergie’s team would hunt down the outlet or journalist and ban them from attending Press Conferences. Leakers in the United dressing room were sold or sent to the Gulag where they would eventually be released, it happened a few times, now there is no filter or control.
Banning outlets will not solve United’s issues but it definitely does not help the players or staff with stupid extra pressure.
United higher ups are dumb for not having done this before, but then again, for Ed Woodward “any attention is good attention”. If they actually cared, they would also find the leakers in the dressing room and sell them.
Obvious United sells the most news-wise but hopefully long term this leads to better more relevant journalism and we hear more from other clubs that deserve attention when things actually happen.