Archive for football

No, 1980s hairstyles haven’t made a comeback at Southampton Football Club

12 August 2010 , , ,
Latest news in the ongoing saga of Southampton Football Club’s attempts to ban photographers from its matches, and instead insist the media buys official photographs from itself, is that the Bournemouth Daily Echo has joined the Plymouth Herald in refusing to play ball. The Herald is using a cartoonist instead of using photographs, but the [...]

Southampton bans photographs; newspaper employs cartoonist

9 August 2010 , , ,
Southampton football club have joined the long list of clubs that ban or want to ban the media from their matches as it suits. Back in November it was Portsmouth FC banning a journalist whose coverage it didn’t like and Alex Ferguson for a long time did not allow the BBC to interview him, again because he [...]

The coalition agreement: culture, Olympics, media and sport

26 May 2010 , , ,
Welcome to the fifth in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here. It’s rather a mouthful of a title for this section, but it reflects the diverse remit of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Almost inevitably it is made up of [...]

Alex Ferguson forced to unban BBC

18 November 2009 , , , , ,
A follow-up to my post When is it ok to ban a journalist?, about the habit in football of clubs banning journalists who say things they don’t like (can you imagine the uproar if a public sector body tried to do the same?): Sir Alex Ferguson will have to end his six-year ban on giving interviews to [...]

When is it ok to ban a journalist?

10 November 2009 , , , , ,
Portsmouth FC have banned a local newspaper journalist from their ground after taking  dislike to a piece that he wrote. Although the club has neither suggested the article broke any law nor is libellous, it has decided to ban Neil Allen for an “indefinite period” from home matches, press conferences, speaking to the players and [...]