Chelsea: Fiction travels around the world before John Terry gets his kit on

Everyone’s favourite subscription-based sports site took a break from facilitating one man’s petty campaign of resentful lash-outs to peddle a completely baseless tale. Why get Chelsea rumours for free when you can pay for them from only the Very Best Journos?

We are not journalists here at The Pride of London. We are commentators, pundits, analysts, opinionistas, hot take artists, drop-outs, s**t-stirrers, p**s-takers, sportos, motorheads, geeks, wastoids, dweebies, d**kheads and at least one of us is a degenerate gambler. But we are not journalists. Journalists have credentials that give them access, access that gives them sources and sources that become relationships they can take with them as they move from one media outlet to another. Journalists report facts within necessary context, which people like us then turn into lengthy analyses, opinions and the rest. Journos don’t need to make things up about Chelsea FC – they can call somebody up and find out the truth. Whereas we have to speculate en route to tenuous conclusions, an on-the-ground journalist has direct access to the people who can confirm or deny a fact before publication.

You know what separates us from a particular digital media platform, other than the fact that we don’t charge a subscription? We know who and what we are.

John Terry was the subject of a story that did the rounds throughout Monday. The subject, but not a source. The story contended that Terry directly influenced Chelsea’s decision not to buy Sergio Aguero.

Many hours after that story went live and was picked up in excerpt and comment form by dozens of media outlets big and small yet all somehow less respected than the originator, Terry posted an Instagram Story asking “Where do they get these stories from? If they bothered calling players agents it would solve a lot of nonsense!”

Even as I write this on Monday night, United States Central Standard Time, stories regurgitating the original claim are popping up on NewsNow.

This little incident is particularly amusing in light of what I wrote yesterday about football being a rumour swamp, and how clubs can mute those rumours by encouraging transparency from their key individuals. I even specifically cited the role of staff members’ social media, in that case Jody Morris’.

John Terry only needed a few seconds on Instagram to dispel a rumour that never should have been printed. Had anyone at that journalistic endeavor “bothered calling players’ agents” or asked before publication “Did you bother to call the players’ agents, or anyone else directly involved in this story?” Terry would not have needed to respond and that endeavor would have been spared the well-deserved mockery. Terry was transparent and proactive. The reporter was not. Terry won.

It’s not tooting our own horn to point out that “Where’d ya get that from?” is a regular question Travis and I ask our contributors when they include a quote or stat without attribution in an article. Aj and Khaled before us did the same, because it’s just one the absolute fundamentals of what anyone should do before they click “Schedule” or “Publish.”

The Terry-Aguero story came not from part-timers but from the credentialed media, the people who are given access not only to the media room for press conferences but to the players, coaches and others around the club. I’ve long lamented how the assembled Chelsea media squander the opportunity they have to ask real questions of Chelsea managers at the press conferences. Here we have a case of these outlets and individuals squandering the trust Chelsea FC have reposed in them by not asking any questions at all.

If they choose not to do the basic due diligence which they have the access and relationships to do, on what grounds do they deserve that access or those relationships? I’ve had falsehoods peddled about me over the years. I’m not particularly keen to let those people back into my life.

We can debate the circumstances in which a subscription-based model of digital journalism makes sense for the publication and the reader (I don’t think it ever does for a general sports audience), but I think we can agree up front that first-hand, verifiable and exclusive sourcing is a minimum requirement.

Football rumours, hot takes and clickable headlines should be no more expensive than a dime a dozen. They certainly should not be denominated in dollars. Particularly not when opinion, analysis and commentary like ours costs you nothing more than a few pop-up ads.

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