Access All Area's : Propaganda Tool?

Ok the nature of this piece is going to be a critique and a moan if you will, but first off I do appreciate the new openness of the club, and inviting in the cameras and Natalie Jackson to talk candidly about the club and peoples desires for the club and where to take it.


That said it does merely smack of spin. That since the great falling out in January and February and the calling into question of Fawaz ownership of the club this has been a big PR exercise to mend a few fences and rebuild a nice big bridge.

First off the whole spiel about this being an access all areas expose and insight into how the club is run is a little over the top on bravado. We didn’t’ see anymore than most other clubs would expose and any manager worth his salt will be putting in similar methods as Billy does. That I guess or employ a lot more people to assist in it.

The pains they went to show that Billy does love the academy, and that he goes to games and is trying to involve on the hand does dispel the rumours he was always against it, and that is good to see, but again it’s like we are going too far the other way to trying to prove it.

What we just had was the interview at Fawaz house. Now don’t get me wrong he said all the right things, but he was hardly going to get tripped or tricked into saying the wrong thing by Natalie Jackson. It’s not an uncommon rumour that Fawaz looked at Everton first and in that regard his whole I always loved Forest thing he sort of said (Ok he said Clough) was a bit farfetched. On the same hand if you’re paying (presumably the BBC didn’t spend our license fee on this) for a journalist to go to Kuwait and stay there, you’d sort of want control of the script. Because it was, those questions clearly would have been vetted with only a little artistic license for expanding on points.

The attempts to illustrate how rich Fawaz was though were a little disconcerting. Look at my warehouse full of (at least all of which red) cars, some of which worth vast sums. Look at my palatial manor, with the interview being done in front of suitably cool football wallpaper motif (not an obvious crass image, but still retro and suited enough to be regarded as kooky)

Yeah ok, I think the whole manner which this was tackled bothered me and like many fans I should just lap it up, but it just seemed like a political broadcast on behalf of Fawaz, bought to you by the one journalist Billy knows dares not write anything bad about him so as to not to lose her favoured position to get all his exposes.

I don’t think we needed that last part. I thing genuinely show the training and the efforts put into games but the last part really cemented it to me as basically Forest manipulating the BBC into showing the happy warm side of the arrangement. Get Fawaz to admit errors, look a bit furrow browed, but then make sure you say all the right things about the future.

I am firmly behind this regime at the club. I doubted Billy, and I did briefly doubt Fawaz, though I was never one of the great many people in January and February who decided he was poison (I saw one fan say he’s the worst thing ever happened to Forest, and had a bit of argument with another who ranted about how we’d been bought by the wrong group and should have waited, we couldn’t) But I don’t think we need saccharin piece on how the club is all together.

A number of people lap it up completely. Most I know seem to take some of it with a pinch of salt. I.e. we are only seeing what the club want us to see. But it did feel like a mini version of the much derided “Being Liverpool”

It clearly illustrates a new direction in terms of PR and media relations at the club following all the sackings; maybe it’s a good thing that there is clearly new openness. But there’s a line I think we sailed too far over. We don’t need illustrations of how wealthy Fawaz is; I simply don’t see the need. I haven’t seen other chairman doing this, and there is always a case of them trying a little too hard to prove this begs the question, why is there the need?

This new direction of utilising the media although clever is also firing a little off target. Any key element for me would be at least a little more self effacing, and Natalie Jackson is hardly the greatest journalist to ever forge a career. There are more capable people out there who could do that better job, but clearly aren’t the favoured choice of Billy, just look at the lack of Radio Nottingham pieces.

I am not trying to be over critical here before people suggest an unprovoked attack on the club. I am not that guy. It’s just a comment on how the facts and to a degree fan opinion is being moulded and manipulated in a very clever PR ruse. January and February have largely been forgotten now. Those question marks and frustrations forgotten and it’s not largely been down to spin, no it’s been down to success on the pitch.