Following the release of the club accounts from season 2013/14 on Friday, Dundee Football Club were angered and disappointed in the way that some media outlets chose to report the story.
For the avoidance of any doubt caused by these sensationalised and misinformed articles, the club would like to formally state that Dundee Football Club currently do not have any debt. This was incorrectly reported by both the BBC and The Courier.
As a media partner of the league with a national reach, we feel that certain members of the BBC let themselves down with their comments; in particular, during a radio broadcast on Saturday evening. The club contacted the BBC during the show, as did many of our supporters, and while it was semi-clarified during the show, the comments made did not reflect the truth. Simple, basic journalistic fact-checking beforehand would have meant that these comments could have been avoided.
The club have been disappointed on a number of occasions with The Courier this season, deepened due to the fact that this is a local publication.
Back in October, The Courier erroneously reported unfounded allegations of sectarian chanting within the home end at Dens Park. This is an issue which the club took very seriously. While retaining a dignified silence in public, we spoke to senior staff members at The Courier and made it very clear of our feelings on this matter, which they ensured us they understood.
On Friday, having just released the accounts, we were stunned to see a factually inaccurate interpretation of the document under a sensationalised headline appear on their website. Our expectations for their professionalism were higher than the reality of it, unfortunately.
Contact was made again, and the story was amended, although still not to a version which reports the situation correctly.
The article which appeared in Saturday morning’s paper did correctly reflect the story; however, the original damaging article still remains online.
Further to this, on Saturday evening we were surprised to see a post on the publication’s social media making light of a situation that we take very seriously, accompanied by an unprofessional and inappropriate comment. The post was deleted on Sunday morning, but as far as we are concerned the harm was already done.
With all of this in mind, discussions within the club are ongoing as we look at all of the options available to Dundee Football Club as to how to proceed.
This is not a decision we will take lightly. We value the reputations of our supporters and club; both of which could have been tarnished by the serious and chronic misrepresentations as detailed above.
