Reporters and their provoking ways

Anybody who’s watched a post match interview in the last five years, particularly on Sky Sports will read this article and it will resonate with it. The way that some of them are conducted is embarrassing, frankly.

I have little time for most football journalists. They are however much better than the roving reporter types that litter the dugout (technical area for you younger readers) area during a game, keeping us up to date with the latest substitutions and comments/instructions arising from the teams benches. I’m not quite sure what kind of a state we’ve got ourselves into when we're at the stage we need to know the finer details of a substitution before it has been broadcast to the rest of the stadium. Do we really need these people telling us that Joe Bloggs will be replacing Fred Bloggs in a minute? Isn’t that what the bloke sitting in the gantry with the big furry microphone is supposed to do? When the substitution actually happens?

The worst part of their job though surely is the post match interview. I personally find it very cringe worthy TV most of the time. They seem to be under instruction from their bosses to be as intrusive and aggressive as possible, the air they carry is almost one of belief they have a right to the inner-workings of the club. The most irritating thing is they pretend to be acting on behalf of the supporters, as if they have a right to know certain things and the reporter is going to make sure the truth will out.

I’m happy to see the manager of my club interviewed after a televised game, I look out for it because I want to know how he thought the game went or why we lost or what we did well to enable us to win. But when the reporter steps over the boundaries it becomes uncomfortable to watch. A recent example of this was the media’s relentless pursuit of Roberto Mancini after the Tevez debacle. The questions were relentless, and always the same. What was the media hoping for Mancini to say? “Ohh yes that traitorous c*nt, if he comes anywhere near my dressing room I’ll shoot the bastard”   It became embarrassing to watch Mancini squirm with awkwardness.

In fact, the purpose of these intrusive and aggressive interviews are to provide a hot comment or two for the “boys back in the studio” to dissect and discuss. It has nothing to do with the supporters (it seldom does when the media are on the case) and is always geared with an ulterior motive in mind. The pinnacle of the frustration for me though is when they repeatedly ask a manager what he thought of the referee’s performance. You’ll note they never do this when the referee has been largely anonymous (as he should be) and will only ever ask when there has been a controversial decision or decisions. What I find so frustrating is they know full well that the FA take a dim view of their soldiers being attacked and will come down heavily on managers doing so, usually via a fine yet they still persist. Most managers are wise and swerve these questions but sometimes a manager will be so enraged by a poor decision it only takes a few words from the interviewer and bang, he’s said too much and will be up in front of a court martial at Wembley before he knows it. It’s a shocking tactic employed by the media and further proof that they have no interest in the game, merely interest in selling their product, be it newspapers or TV subscriptions.