Martin Samuel’s daily mail attack on Arsenal – Part 1 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
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By: Anne
*Much thanks to Shard and bjtgooner for their research contributions to this article.
Last month, Arsene Wenger publicly called on Arsenal’s fans to ignore media pressure and support the team. Arsene said: “The media with us is very negative – if our fans go the way the media want them to go, we have no chance.”
Daily Mail columnist Martin Samuel apparently took exception to the above comment, which he subsequently used as a basis to personally attack Arsene in his Daily Mail column. Specifically, in response to Arsene’s suggestion that the media is “very negative” towards Arsenal, Mr. Samuel had this to say:
“You know Wenger is floundering when he talks as if the media is his enemy because no manager in the history of the English game has been treated with such reverence.
This is a man who admits he lies about his view of controversial incidents, to protect his players.
Indeed, he was quite possibly at it again on Saturday, claiming to be unsighted for Alex Song’s stamp on Joey Barton in front of the dug-out.
Yet still he is indulged.
‘Arsene knows’ was not just a mantra from the main stand.
When The Times named its 50 greatest football managers of the postwar era in 2007, Wenger came in ahead of Sir Alf Ramsey, Jock Stein, Johan Cruyff, Marcello Lippi and Arrigo Sacchi.
He is as prone to daft, illogical pronouncements as any Premier League contemporary, but remains, for public consumption, The Professor.
For such a genius, however, he has spent much of the summer acting the fool.”
In way of background, it’s worth noting that Mr. Samuel has some significant credentials as a journalist, most recently having won the 2011 “Sports Journalist of the Year” award from the Sports Journalists’ Association.
Nonetheless, Mr. Samuel appears to have somehow overlooked the fact that, when Arsene refers to the “media,” his own Daily Mail column is included in that definition. As just an example of the sort of negativity emanating from Mr. Samuel’s column, the above article in which Mr. Samuel defended the media’s treatment of Arsene was actually titled:
“Fail your Italian test and you’ll look even more foolish, Arsene.”
Samuel begins the article by invoking a familiar visual image of Arsene’s knowing “smile” that he wears when talking to the press, and continues to use it as a metaphor to cast aspersions on Arsene’s sanity, stating that:
“currently, as the evidence piles up against the confidence of that smile, [Arsene] is beginning to look ever so slightly crackers.”
Samuel then goes on to complain that Arsene has spent the summer “acting the fool,” in that:
“He demands that victory is achieved not just beautifully but ethically, economically, and with youth at its heart.
In doing so, he has imposed a set of arbitrary principles on the club that, while noble, make his task almost impossible.”
He then concludes the article by stating:
“If Arsenal fail to qualify for the Champions League, Wenger’s final justification for his methods is scotched.
Is there anyone better to manage Arsenal?
We would like to think not.
Yet in previous seasons that answer would contain no element of doubt. It does now.
At what point might that knowing smile become a rictus grin?
If Udinese win, perhaps.”
Thus, it would seem that Mr. Samuel’s reporting fits the very definition of “negative” reporting that Arsene was referring to. In way of further background, Mr. Samuel has actually been on the Untold Media radar for quite awhile now, based on the following report submitted by Shard, one of Untold Media’s Daily Mail researchers (also in August, the significance of which will be detailed later). Shard’s report below was referring to Mr. Samuel’s “match report” on Arsenal’s first leg Champions League victory over Udinese:
“I don’t think there is even one sentence in this article that can pass for fair reporting. This is purely and simply a propaganda piece, and really, it is quite amusing to picture Martin Samuel-sports journalist of the year, feeling proud of having his name attached to it.”
During this same time period, our other Daily Mail researcher, bjtgooner, also noted that Mr. Samuel’s reporting appeared to be “anti-Arsenal.”
Since Mr. Samuel chose to respond to Arsene’s comments about the media by claiming that “no manager in the history of the English game has been treated with such reverence” as Arsene Wenger, and taking the above into account, I, in turn, chose to write the following article as a response to Mr. Samuel, re-asserting Arsene’s contrary view that:
“The media…is very negative” towards Arsenal.
Furthermore, I believe that Mr. Samuel’s Arsenal coverage in particular provides us with an excellent case study that not only proves that such negativity exists, but also will allow us to demonstrate some of the finer points of exactly how it works.
Summary of Research and Conclusions
In conducting my research on Mr. Samuel, I analyzed all of his Arsenal coverage between 1 March, 2011, and the present, focusing on the following three factors:
1) the general tone of his coverage;
2) any possible use of “talking points;” and
3) the volume of his Arsenal coverage as a percentage of his total coverage.
Specifically, I was attempting to determine whether any trends and/or patterns existed in Mr. Samuel’s Arsenal coverage with regard to the above three categories, and also whether any such trends or patterns correlated with specific dates. Based on this analysis, I was able to identify certain trends and patterns in all three of the above categories, along with specific date correlations. The following is a general summary of these findings:
1) General Tone of Coverage and Talking Points
First and foremost, I want to emphasize that, regardless of any trends or patterns that may or may not exist in Mr. Samuel’s coverage, his reporting on Arsenal is nonetheless worthy of further attention based solely on the level of negativity that he has demonstrated in recent months.
However, during the time period covered, I did manage to identify some trends in the tone of his coverage. In general, Mr. Samuel’s coverage was negative throughout the entire period. However, during the period from 1 March, 2011, to 30 June, 2011, Mr. Samuel made more effort to disguise this negativity, with the effect that his negative tone was more subtle than it is at present.
However, beginning on approximately 1 July, 2011, there was a noticeable shift in the tone of Mr. Samuel’s coverage from subtle negativity to overt negativity. This change in tone of coverage coincided with the emergence of certain talking points that were not present as a general trend in Mr. Samuel’s coverage prior to 1 July, 2011, and which appear to be associated with the “crisis and anxiety” talking points campaign that has been previously documented in our previous Untold Media Watch Reports on both the Mirror and the Mail.
This campaign appears to have been significantly ramped up during the month of August, which also coincided with a sudden spike in Mr. Samuel’s:
2) Volume of Coverage
Because of the format in which Mr. Samuel’s articles are published (some single-topic, some multi-topic), it is difficult to calculate volume statistics, and I was forced to do numerous calculations to come up with statistics that I deemed credible. However, as can be seen from the statistics below, every calculation I did showed an improbable spike in Mr. Samuel’s Arsenal coverage in the month of August, when this same “talking points” campaign also appears to have gone into full force.
In the interests of space, I’m not going to go into detail here about exactly how I came up with these calculations. If you have any questions, please ask in the comments.
Findings on Volume of Coverage
Volume of Arsenal coverage as a percentage of total coverage by month (no differentiation based on category of article):
| March | April | May | June | July | August | September |
| 24% | 13% | 22% | 17% | 33% | 62% | 40% |
Full Stats: Ars 6/25; Ars 2/15; Ars 5/33; Ars 4/23; Ars 4/12; Ars 8/13; Ars 4/10)
Findings: Increase from July- present with spike in August.
Volume of Arsenal coverage in Multi-Topic articles as a percentage total coverage in Multi-Topic Articles. (This set of percentages is calculated by determining the total number of multi-topic articles published in a given month, and the percentage of those articles that included Arsenal as one of the topics covered):
| March | April | May | June | July | August | September |
| 50% | 50% | 57% | 50% | 80% | 100% | 75% |
Full Stats: Ars 4/8; Ars 2/4; Ars 4/7; Ars 4/23; Ars 4/8; Ars 6/6; Ars 3/4)
Findings: Increase from July- present with spike in August.
Volume of Arsenal coverage in Single-Topic articles in relation to total topics covered in Single-Topic Articles. (Due to the low number of articles in this category, I’m listing both the percentages and the actual numbers):
| March | April | May | June | July | August | September |
| Total: 17 Arsenal: 2 (12%); | Total: 11 Ars: 0 (0%) | Total: 16 Ars 1 (6%) | Total: 15 Ars 0 (0%) | Total: 7 Ars: 0 (0%) | Total: 7 Ars 2 (29%) | Total: 6 Ars: 1 (17%) |
Findings: The numbers in this category aren’t high enough for the percentage volume to be significant. However, there is some indication that Samuel has increased output in August and September.
Volume of Arsenal coverage (as topic in multi-topic articles) as a percentage of total topics covered in multi-topic articles
| March | April | May | June | July | August | September |
| 9% | 9% | 5% | 6% | 9% | 20% | 15% |
Full Stats: Ars 5/58; Ars 2/22; Ars 4/77; Ars 4/67; Ars 4/45; Ars 9/46; Ars 4/27
Findings: Volume increase in August and September but not July; higher in August.
Volume of Arsenal coverage (as topic in multi-topic articles) as a percentage of total football topics covered in multi-topic articles
| March | April | May | June | July | August | September |
| 20% | 22% | 10% | 14% | 22% | 32% | 29% |
Full Stats: Ars 5/25; Ars 2/9; Ars 4/40; Ars 4/29; Ars 4/18; Ars 9/28; Ars 4/14
Findings: Volume increase in August and September but not July; higher in August.
Volume of Arsenal coverage (as topic in multi-topic articles) as a percentage of total football topics covered in multi-topic articles, as compared with club receiving highest volume coverage in month (or next-highest if Arsenal has highest volume)
| March | April | May | June | July | August | September |
| Ars 20% | Ars 22% | Ars 10% | Ars 14% | Ars 22% | Ars 32% | Ars 29% |
| ManU 16% | ManU 44% | W. Ham 15% | ManU 21% | ManC 22% | Spurs 11% | Liverpool 21% |
Findings: statistically significant change in August and September; Spike in August.
Total Word Count of Arsenal Coverage in Multi-Topic Articles
| March | April | May | June | July | August | September |
| 2796 | 784 | 1541 | 422 | 1191 | 6402 | 1217 |
Findings: statistically significant change in August and September; Spike in August.
Having thus identified a spike in Mr. Samuel’s Arsenal coverage that occurred during the month of August, 2011, in Part II of this article, we will take a detailed look at the “crisis and anxiety” talking points campaign that was also in full effect during the months of July and August, as it was reflected in Mr. Samuel’s Arsenal coverage.
To be continued in Part II…