A weekly newspaper has apologised to a football manager after he slammed a “disgraceful” match report which “incorrectly criticised” his players.
The Mansfield Chad has published the apology to Mansfield Town FC and the team’s manager Adam Murray after admitting to running a “misleading” report, written by a freelancer, following a 0-0 draw at Portsmouth.
The apology comes after the Johnston Press-owned Chad recently decided to stop sending its own staff reporter to cover away fixtures.
While it is understood the decision was made partially to cut costs, among other contributing factors, JP says the Chad remains “committed” to covering the club.
The newspaper was one of several in the company’s North Midlands and South Yorkshire region to pilot its ‘newsroom of the future’ initiative, which sees journalists work across multiple titles within the same area.
The National Union of Journalists has described the incident as an “inevitability” as a result of the move.
The offending report appeared on the Chad’s website, and was later amended, while the same initial copy was also used in specialist publication the Football League Paper.
In an interview on Monday Mr Murray, pictured above left, described the report as “disrespectful” to his team.
The apology on the Chad’s website, published after the interview, reads: “Chad Sport would like to offer its apologies to Mansfield Town and manager Adam Murray for any offence caused by our match report on Saturday.
“The report incorrectly cricitised Stags and Adam for the tactics used during the battling display, which secured a superb 0-0 draw at Portsmouth.
“Our report was commissioned from a freelance supplier and WAS NOT written by a Chad reporter.
“Chad Sport are fully behind Mansfield Town and the excellent work Adam Murray is doing in laying the foundations for what we all hope will be a successful play-off push.
“We would like to assure everyone connected with the club that such misleading reports will not appear on the Chad Sport platform in future.”
The apology has been accepted by the club.
A spokesman for Mansfield Town FC told HTFP: “Following yesterday’s news conference at One Call Stadium, Chad, the local newspaper, with whom the club maintain an excellent working relationship, have apologised to the club and Adam Murray for the ‘misleading’ match report on Saturday’s impressive 0-0 draw at high-flying Portsmouth.
“For purposes of record, news agency Sports Beat, who had sent a freelance reporter to cover the game (whose report was used by the Football League paper and Chad) have also contacted the club’s press office to apologise for the report.”
Concerns had been raised about the Chad’s decision not to send a reporter to away games at a meeting of the NUJ’s Nottingham branch earlier this month.
Branch chair Diana Peasey said: “Sadly there is an inevitability in what has happened.
“When you keep cutting experienced staff, such as photographers, reporters and can’t stump up to pay for your own football correspondent what does that say about the enduring quality of the paper and its ability to survive.
“It’s a huge own goal and the paper should be red carded for it.”
A spokesman for Johnston Press said: “We are constantly looking for new ways of delivering the best possible all-round service to Chad sport fans.
“We remain committed to covering all Mansfield Town FC games, home and away, and consider our relationship with the club one of our biggest strengths.”
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I’m afraid this sort of thing is going to be commonplace in a future where the provenance of articles which appear in local newspapers can no longer be trusted.
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What was “misleading” about the match report?!
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Did no-one read this ‘misleading’ report before it went on the website?
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More to this than meets the eye, methinks. As Ex-hack asks, what exactly was “misleading” about the report? Did he get the players’ names completely wrong? Given their league positions, a point away at Portsmouth was a good result for Mansfield, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t lucky or played well. Something fishy here…..
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Having read all the match reports, I can see where Mr Murray is coming from. It was as if this freelancer was in the pub instead of at the match and didn’t tally with the official match stats AT ALL. I am glad Mansfield have highlighted the issue and given it wider audience. We’ve complained about cost cutting on here for years, but the fans were unaware judging by the angry reaction on a Stags fans forum. Let’s hope it prompts a u-turn on this kind of policy from JP.
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The quality of Sportsbeat copy has dropped sharply in the past year or so. We still buy it in but it almost always needs a complete rewrite; at the very least you’re renosing the first 4/5 pars.
I think they cut their freelance rates and so are basically just using fans with laptops these days.
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From the tenor of the JP comment, they are pretty shameless about this. But given their policy, isn’t it interesting that the match report didn’t come from the Portsmouth News, which is a JP paper? Might the editor or sports ed there, who would only be interested in highly partisan coverage, have said “on your bike, we’re not doing that”? The idea of a paper of the Chad’s standing not sending a reporter to away matches of their football league club is horrifying. A resigning issue for the editor. He/she should have walked rather than allow it to happen. There is, of course, a creative way forward – get the costs of proper away coverage sponsored by an appropriate advertiser.
One more thing, the final comment from JP that they are “committed to covering all Mansfield matches” is just doublespeak and means nothing. They are treating readers and their staff as fools. Covering matches is not the question being asked here – it’s about WHO covers them.
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If you’re going to continue publishing a newspaper rather than go all Trinity Mirror and just have regional websites, then at least try to do it properly. Invariably, in places where there is a League football team, coverage of them is the most popular mass-interest content in the paper. It seems, increasingly, that the bean-counters – who know a lot about counting beans, and little about what sells newspapers – come up with stupid “savings” like not sending your own man to away games. In the case of the Chad, it appears they ended up with a report written from the angle of a bitterly-disappointed Portsmouth fan, rather than one delighted with a hard-won point for Mansfield. Hopefully the agency providing the report was briefed to do “the Mansfield angle” – if so, that was obviously ignored, perhaps by an inexperienced writer. There is also, as someone else said, the matter of whether – or if – it was subbed, because you could sit at home without ever seeing the game, and say: “That’s a really good point for Mansfield against a top team – let’s give them some credit.” Feel sorry for the Sports Ed, because bean counters + monkeys + peanuts = not the way to ensure your newspaper’s long-term health!
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So the message is we are committed to covering the club, just so long as they play within 3-5 miles of the office.
I’m guessing the club attracts 2-4,000 fans for home games every week and probably only about 10 per cent of those travel to away games. So at a conservative estimate you probably have 1,800 people in the town interested in the club enough to watch home matches but don’t travel to the away ties and therefore would welcome some proper coverage of their team – and that is assuming that the club has no casual fans either.
If the paper has a strong enough readership without targeting that sizeable group, then fair play. If not, as an outsider, it seems a bit of a short-sighted decision to rely on agency copy in the first place.
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‘Misleading’ or not, it isn’t an excuse that it was written by a freelancer. The vast majority of newspapers use freelance court reporters and it wouldn’t be an excuse if something defamatory or prejudicial was included in a story.
Is it understandable they are using freelancers? Yes. It is excusable that the story wasn’t given the appropriate level of scrutiny? No.
Either there was nothing to apologise for, or it would have been apparent when the copy came through that something was awry.
Papers have got to stop hiding behind ‘lack of resources’ for putting in place the right checks.
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In the interests of fairness I think HTFP also needs to contact the freelance reporter to get his or her side of the story. After all, match reports are invariably opinion-led. HTFP’s story here has criticised the reporter so this needs a response from the journalist in all fairness.
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JP weeklies don’t have proper local sports editors ( just someone with the title in many cases) and they don’t even bother to send a reporter to HOME games even for reasonably big clubs. So fans never get a neutral balanced report, just one reflecting the bias of the club official or keen fan who sends it in. And they don’t appear to be sub-edited, just dropped straight into a box on the page. What a mess!
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Mr Peanut meet Mr Monkey
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There is something wrong here. As others have pointed out, what was disrespectful to the club? It smacks of a cover-up of some kind.
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Right. A bit of clarification.
First of all, let’s take that Johnston Press/Pravda spokesperson to the front desk and give them their P45s. That comment is an utter joke and flies in the face of reality.
Secondly, for non-sports folk – it’s quite clear to me what’s happened here – and it’s an object lesson on why local should mean local.
Readers/fans expect and demand that their football team’s progress is reported objectively by their local paper while also taking local sensitivities into account.
So take the recent Tyne-Wear derby which Sunderland won 3-0. To readers of the Sunderland Echo, this is an amazing, heroic victory and should be reported as such; to Newcastle Chronicle readers it is a diabolically unjust defeat to incredibly lucky Mackems and should be reported as such.
It is what being local is all about.
What has happened at Mansfield was that they employed a Portsmouth freelance who wrote it from the south coast perspective – probably that Mansfield were boring, negative and useless – instead of from the Mansfield perspective that this was a brilliant away point gained at the home of the league’s form team.
If I was the Mansfield manager I would be fuming too at the apparent negativity of my local paper, if I were a reader I would be perplexed at why my local team is being hammered by my local paper after such a useful result.
And if I was management at the Mansfield Chad, I would hang my head in shame and embarrassment.
After that, I would find anyway I could to keep the reporting of Mansfield Town local – even at away games!
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“…secured a superb 0-0 draw at Portsmouth.”
Let’s not go too far the other way with praise, hey…
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1. I thought sportsbeat was a training college, not a ‘freelance agency’ which implies it already has trained staff. Correct me if I’m wrong please. I’ve had loads of trainees approach me as ‘freelancers’ because they or their college think it sounds better than ‘trainee’.
2. Why does a newspaper have to be 100 per cent behind local sports teams? Blind support such as this seems to suggest never happens in any other fields ie local politicians, businesses
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Just for clarification M and Y News Agency are the local agency for the south coat but were not responsible for the report/s in question.
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