football
Show the red card to reporter bans
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T
he Newcastle Chronicle hief sports writer Lee Ryder has been covering the Newcastle United football beat for almost nine years, not missing a single match since 2006. But that record came under threat in October when the Premier League club banned Ryder and his colleagues from their media facilities. Matters came to a head at a press conference after the team’s defeat by local rivals Sunderland, when a Newcastle official stepped in to prevent the manager, Alan Pardew, answering a question from Ryder. Newcastle’s simmering war against their local newspapers – the Newcastle Chronicle, Journal and Sunday Sun was out in the open. The club had served the three Trinity Mirror titles with a ban from their St James’ Park press box in the week before the Sunderland game, citing unhappiness with coverage of a supporters’ protest march against Newcastle owner Mike Ashley before the preceding match against Liverpool, but the paper delayed making it public while the team prepared for one of their biggest matches. The club accused the titles’ reporting of being “antiNewcastle United”, yet there had been no editorialising in the coverage of the protests. “It was balanced reporting,” insists Ryder, “we weren’t taking sides, but we said this is happening, this is what fans are unhappy about, and we had done our jobs.” At the time of writing the paper’s journalists remain banned from the press facilities at St James’, their correspondents filing reports from the stands, while the club’s draconian stance prompted the NUJ’s North and Midlands Organiser, Chris Morley, to seek – and receive – public guarantees from the club’s next away opponents, Tottenham, that they would allow access to the papers’ journalists, though Pardew would still not answer
s Tom Davies tackle the issue of how are some football clubs ns imposing restrictio on journalists just because owners or e managers don’t lik ed what’s being report
questions from their reporters. Newcastle has previous form for this. Earlier this year, the club temporarily banned the Daily Telegraph’s Luke Edwards after he broke a well-sourced story about discord within their squad, but they are not lone offenders. In the past year, journalists have been banned or barred from asking questions at Port Vale, Crawley and Nottingham Forest. Worrying trends are emerging. The Telegraph’s Edwards feels some clubs want only “media partners”, not journalists: “They want local papers to be an extension of their official club publications, then they will give out nice fluffy interviews in return. Clubs want to direct everything to their own websites where they can make money.” The intense commercialisation of the game has increased the desire of clubs to monetise and control their media profile. The Guardian’s investigative football writer David Conn, who was barred from Leeds United four years ago following his reports of the club’s opaque offshore ownership structure, says some clubs don’t understand the value of their local media. “They don’t perhaps appreciate what amazing free coverage they get in newspapers,” he says. However, he acknowledges that most clubs have improved the way they deal with the press: “Media relations are much more grown-up than before. Most of them roll with the journalists, and have a genuine appreciation of the journalists they work with. It’s the exceptions that stand out. So what’s to be done? Conn believes that the football authorities should take more responsibility. “I do believe there should be a code of conduct that all clubs should abide by and that the FA and Football League adjudicate on.” The NUJ’s northern organiser Chris Morley, urging Newcastle to think again in an open letter, wrote: “When rich and powerful interests seek to ban those things they don’t like, it will almost certainly be viewed as bullying and overbearing by the wider public. In the meantime, NUJ members at the Newcastle titles will carry on doing their jobs. “If Ashley thought we were going to come to a standstill because of this,” says Ryder, “then he’s very much mistaken.” theJournalist | 19