Shall We Talk About Journalism? Part 7: The Power And Pitfalls Of Contacts
Sources are everything. Sometimes they need protecting. Sometimes you need to protect yourself
Note: I entered journalism without any training at the age of 29 but became Football Editor of The Times. I’ve written for many publications, including columns for The Independent and the Evening Standard. I’m now a freelance writer and host The Athletic’s Liverpool podcast
Journalism is one of those businesses where you get lied to for a living. It’s best to develop a habit of never taking anything you hear at face value. Even your most trusted sources can be dangerous.
One former Premier League manager gave me a reasonable story. It was plausible. When I checked, it was true. After it ran in the paper, the manager shot it down in public, lamenting how far standards of journalism had fallen. He messaged me. “Sorry mate. You know how it works.”
And I did. Sometimes you’re just a pawn in someone else’s game. Rule One: try not to get taken. For a fool.
In the piece in this series about reporting, I emphasised the importance of contacts. A good contact is to be cherished. But you need to be careful.
When you get a titbit of good information, there’s a great temptation to put it into the public domain immediately. A one-hit story may attract attention and earn positive feedback from your boss but a reporter needs to think strategically. What impact will rushing a piece to print or the airwaves have on your relationship with the source? The one thing you don’t want to do is burn your contact.
Here's an example. In the summer of 2012, Brendan Rodgers made his Premier League debut as Liverpool manager at The Hawthorns. It was not a good day for Rodgers. His team were stuffed 3-0 by West Bromwich Albion.
John W Henry, Liverpool’s primary owner, passed on to me an email where he and Rodgers discussed the performance. Reading it back now, it feels relatively mild. In the context of the moment, it was explosive. ‘We’ve got a splash [back page] and five spreads,” our Merseyside reporter said. “Or five splashes.”
Had we chosen either route, it would have been the last email of this sort to drop into my inbox. Instead, we held off, used the details to inform any stories on the subject of Liverpool and found ourselves getting gold-standard information for a number of years.
No, there was no single, award-winning exclusive from the cache of emails, but our coverage of Liverpool – and the Premier League, because remember, owners are party to many secrets – was significantly better than most of the opposition.
During this period, many in the Liverpool fanbase, at least on social media, thought I had an irrational hatred of Fenway Sports Group and was slaughtering the owners on the flimsiest pretexts. The reality was so different.
We were using information directly from the top of the club but remained critical when necessary. As long as we were fair, there was no problem.
Again, this is an area where you have to divorce your personal fandom and feelings from the professional side of your life. I was not, and never have been, an admirer of Rodgers. Publishing some of the information in its raw form might have caused ructions in the dressing-room. Well, actually, it might have provoked war. The question I always tried to ask is “what’s best for the reader?” For me, the only agenda was trying to produce the best football section in the national press.
My view? Let managers get themselves sacked. They’ll eventually do it without your help.
Sometimes you need to protect contacts from themselves. David Beckham did an interview with The Times’ best operator around the time Johnny Depp’s Charlie And The Chocolate Factory was released. Beckham said he felt like Willy Wonka when working with children at soccer schools.
Beckham was talking about the Gene Wilder version in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory rather than Depp’s rather sinister, unsettling modern portrayal. There was an internal debate at the paper between those who were quite happy to misinterpret the former England captain and those who recognised that Beckham hadn’t realised that he might cause a manufactured media storm. In the end, the sane point of view triumphed. There was no tabloid-style headline or a Beckham-Depp tabloid style mashup graphic. The relationship between Beckham and the paper continued.
On another occasion, I asked a Premier League manager about his earliest leadership influences. He answered, unselfconsciously, with the name of a fascist dictator. Now, there was, at the time, at least one other manager in the top flight who had far-right instincts but the man I was speaking to did not have such questionable politics. The best advice I could give was that he should think of a different answer the next time that question was asked and that we should both forget the exchange ever happened. Easy headlines are short-term gains but a long-term loss.
I remember one piece where a manager was slaughtering the owners of his club – anonymously, of course. He was billed in the article as “a source close to the situation.” Except the reporter had quoted him so well that it was obvious to anyone paying attention who the mole was. Thankfully for all involved, the club’s owner wasn’t paying attention. If you’re trying to keep the identity of your source secret, at least disguise the direct quotes.
Contacts can be like children: they can have tantrums, they can make daft decisions, they can lie to you and sometimes they ask you to lie for them. And you need to be like a parent, which means always retain an awareness that they are not your mates. They may well shaft you at some point.
But you should never shaft them. You need to build up a reputation for being trustworthy.
So play the long game. Hopefully, there’s an expansive career ahead of you and you can go back to a good source again and again.
Just remember, you’re not their PR representative. Make sure you keep boundaries in place.
The best journalists – in any discipline – have the best contacts. Sources equal stories. They are the key to success.
Next Monday: Multimedia
Week 1: How to start writing
Week 2: Life as a reporter
Week 3: Sub-editing, the highs and lows
Week 4: Columns, interviews and features
Week 5: Match reporting under pressure
Week 6: Ethics and lack of them