As a professional footballer do you have an obligation to grant interviews with the press?
Paul Scholes has famously shunned doing interviews almost his entire career and has only recently done a few. This business with Joey barton is a prime example of someone that tries to be open and frank only to have his words twisted by the media with an agenda.
Personally if i were a pro footballer and some murky hack stuck a mic in front of me i would simply say "sorry i don't speak to tabloid journos as you can't be trusted to tell the truth without some kind of agenda led manipulation taking place." i would make a very public statement to the effect of "i will only give quotes via twitter or my agent and anything else you might read supposedly attributed to me is complete bollocks and should not be believed unless coming directly via the aforementioned mediums"
or words to that effect. if every footballer did the same then the tabloids would have zero credibility, not that they have much of it now but if every footy player effectively said the same thing then they would be totally undermined.
Paul Scholes has famously shunned doing interviews almost his entire career and has only recently done a few. This business with Joey barton is a prime example of someone that tries to be open and frank only to have his words twisted by the media with an agenda.
Personally if i were a pro footballer and some murky hack stuck a mic in front of me i would simply say "sorry i don't speak to tabloid journos as you can't be trusted to tell the truth without some kind of agenda led manipulation taking place." i would make a very public statement to the effect of "i will only give quotes via twitter or my agent and anything else you might read supposedly attributed to me is complete bollocks and should not be believed unless coming directly via the aforementioned mediums"
or words to that effect. if every footballer did the same then the tabloids would have zero credibility, not that they have much of it now but if every footy player effectively said the same thing then they would be totally undermined.