Todd “Swift Half” Carney must be the easiest sporting source of innuendo-driven, barely-substantiated material for the Daily Telegraph since Sonny Bill Williams had the audacity to decide he wanted to earn a proper living. Sadly it’s a little late in the day to discuss the journalistic nadir reached in August by Christian “Shit Scoop” Nicolussi, who exclusively (as in, no-one else could be bothered to report it) revealed that Swift Half had been out to the shops. But there is a chance to do a little compare and contrast between a vaguely reputable news source’s reporting and that of the scummy Telegraph.
As a journalist, there are two fundamental ways to report quotes. One is to place them in an appropriate context; the other is to twist them to fit what you believe is the best story. No prizes for guessing which approach the Telegraph’s Dean “Integrity” Ritchie goes for in his story about Swift Half possibly moving to Cronulla.
“Cronulla won’t publicly admit wanting Todd Carney – but the club cannot dismiss chasing the troubled star,” Integrity breathlessly reports. Which, I must confess, set my alarm bells ringing. Generally when someone “won’t publicly admit” something to a tabloid newspaper it means they either aren’t doing it or don’t have a clue whether they’re doing it, but the paper wants to run the story anyway.
But perhaps I am being too harsh, as Integrity’s story is not based on the information provided by ‘club sources’ or ‘a source close to Carney’ or some other euphemism for ‘the player’s agent desperately trying to create a market’. No indeed – in this case he has a real, on the record, source:
“Sharks chairman Damian Irvine said coach Shane Flanagan had not made any formal approach to Carney but admitted his club may soon be interested. ‘As with any player, if Shane and Darren (Mooney, football manager) come forward with someone like Todd Carney, then the board would consider it on its merits,’ Irvine said.”
That certainly is big news: what a shock it would be to see a heavily-inked alcoholic with a long record of trouble with the law turning up in Cronulla! Seriously, it’s a lovely place. But it would be a big story.
Except of course that a half-way responsible use of the comments provided by Irvine wouldn’t back up that story. Here’s the Sydney Morning Herald, on the same day as Integrity’s piece, putting a slightly different spin on things: “Asked last night about speculation in recent days that the Sharks wanted to sign Carney, who split with Sydney Roosters last week, Irvine said: ‘It’s unbelievable. I’ve had people ring me all day about this, and I’ve told them nothing has happened. We’re not talking to Todd Carney or David Riolo [Carney’s manager]. There’s nothing doing there.’”
The Herald also repeats some quotes made by Irvine earlier this month, in which he adds the information that Shane Flanagan “‘doesn’t want to get involved either’”, before bringing those up to date by stressing that “Irvine said the situation hadn’t changed”.
Seems pretty conclusive. But wait! Those idiots at the Herald might just have buried the lede – down at the bottom of their story is a very, very small big of ambiguity from Irvine. “‘It wouldn’t be my call,’ he said. ‘If it came to the board at some stage in the future it would be a board decision, but we haven’t discussed it so I’m not sure what would happen there…. If Shane and Darren [Mooney] decided they wanted Carney and put a case together, they could put it to the board and we would look at the pros and cons of it. That hasn’t happened and I haven’t heard any suggestion of it happening.’”
Surely that should be enough for a “refuses to rule out” story? After all, it’s not like the Telegraph itself has failed to report the fact that Irvine basically admits that he doesn’t know what might be going on. Here’s Integrity’s take on the same material: “‘Shane hasn’t said he is keen on Todd. Todd has a lot of issues outside football we would have to consider and we would look at the pros and cons if Shane came to the club’s board. He [Flanagan] hasn’t expressed a preference either way.”
What’s interesting about this is that both papers have received basically identical information from Irvine in the form of two key messages. The first is that Cronulla has made no approach for Swift Half and, so far as Irvine is aware, has no plans to. The second is that it wouldn’t be up to Irvine to raise the matter anyway – it would be the coach’s call, and that call has not been made.
Of course none of this conclusively proves that Cronulla is not going to sign Swift Half at some stage in the future – what it does prove is that the club’s chairman is outright denying that any such move has been initiated. Faced with the choice of reporting this material accurately or spinning it into a wafer-thin bit of transfer gossip, the Telegraph – inevitably – decides once again not to let the facts get in the way of a good story.
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