For months now, most of the mainstream cricket press have patronised and belittled England supporters who’ve dared to question their line on Kevin Pietersen.
We’ve said that too many hacks are:
(a) Prejudiced against Pietersen.
(b) In hock to the ECB.
(c) Far too ready to accept the ECB’s anti-KP spin as gospel truth.
(d) Instead of asking proper questions, have just believed any old rubbish Paul Downton has told them off the record.
They’ve not liked it one little bit. “Keyboard ranters” is how Derek Pringle describes the likes of us bloggers and Tweeters. The fourth estate see us impudent, paranoid, deluded, and in the grip of conspiracy theories.
They say we should shut up and be grateful for their privileged insight into the real workings of English cricket. In their minds, we must accept that KP is a bad man because…because they say so. They know the inside track, goes the claim – although they couldn’t possibly divulge the details.
Unfortunately for Her Majesty’s Press, the whole charade has today blown up in their face. The edifice has collapsed.
Yesterday, Sun cricket correspondent John Etheridge boasted this exclusive:
https://twitter.com/JohnSunCricket/status/476479813449170945
But there was a tiny problem: it was complete bollocks. As KP himself quickly made clear, by producing a photo of himself with the very presents he had supposedly forsaken.
LIES from @JohnSunCricket this morning! Who briefs you, John? Care 2 check ur facts instead of misleading the public? pic.twitter.com/jn5fH3mT0r
— KP (@KP24) June 11, 2014
Caught red-handed, Etheridge had no option but a humiliating climb-down:
@KP24 Was told categorically at Lord's yesterday that gifts were returned and in ECB offices. Weird – will investigate. Can only apologise.
— John Etheridge (@JohnSunCricket) June 11, 2014
No word yet from Ethers about the progress of his inquiry – he’s not Tweeted since.
And Pietersen had another salient point to make:
2/2 @JohnSunCricket whoever is briefing the cricket press has an agenda…aren't you intelligent enough to have realised that by now?
— KP (@KP24) June 11, 2014
When Etheridge was presented with the strange claim about the gifts, why didn’t he ask KP for a response before publishing?
This story is surely just the tip of the iceberg. Remember, Etheridge was the chief hack behind the dossier tale – the absurd and as yet wholly unsubstantiated notion that the ECB had compiled a four-page document listing all Pietersen’s misdemeanours in Australia. He also reported vivid allegations about KP’s remarks in the near-mythical Melbourne team meeting.
Until he can convince us otherwise, we should assume that the ECB have repeatedly given Etheridge fictional stories about Pietersen, and he’s then obligingly printed them, verbatim.
And I bet you my house it doesn’t stop with the Sun man. This probably goes back years and has spread like a cancer across the entire mainstream press. Since 2009, where have all the anti-KP stories come from? ECB leaks, obediently served up as truth by the papers. For all we know, none of them at all were true.
But now the music has stopped. They’ve been caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
Oh how this compares to KPs thoughtful an considered article in the Daily Telegraph earlier in the week. Indeed anything the ECB have orchestrated.
I do hope that Pietersen is working with a decent ghostwriter, should be a bestseller.
Paul Hayward of the Telegraph is widely expected to ghost the book.
Don’t you mean David Walsh?
Ah, hadn’t seen that – shame in a way as Paul Hayward’s been all over the story.
Quite a few of us here, including TFT, have been asking very proper questions for some time about the drip, drip invective against Pietersen and the failure of the press to question the feeds they have been given or to seek Pietersen’s take on matters. We have been dismissed as outside cricket, acolytes, keyboard warriors and all manner of pejorative blocked and block heads.
Pietersen makes two interventions and extracts two apologies. Now we know this: (1) the ECB and its press have dismissed every criticism as barmy; (2) each time the person at the centre gets involved, the ECB/press admit they were wrong.
If Reith and Rusbridger were alive today they would be spinning in their graves!
Well Tregaskis you are umm very good but I think if Reith and Rushbridger were alive today they probably wouldn’t be spinning in their graves! LOL Sorry to have my little giggle on you. Nothing untoward meant tho. Just made me giggle.
Tres bonn otherwise.
We have all been saying such things since this damn fiasco started. Apart from Piers Morgan being very stupid on behalf of KP, I think KP has shown real restraint. Good move on his part as the ECB continue to hang themselves with their drip, drip venomous annihilation of KPs reputation. As I said to DP last week, when one tells porkies, one has to have a damn good memory! Thankfully none of the members of the Old Farts Club, aka ECB, seem to have an elephant’s brain – more like a collective pea brain! Thus the “anointed” ones in the know and who must be obeyed, no matter what. continue to make a pig’s ear of everything. Downton must be the PR disaster of all time in cricket. That clears up the inner machine. Then of course we have the hangers on and frenzied leeches in the press, not forgetting former players who like to put the proverbial boot in. Selvey, Pringle (no one can really consider him a writer of any worth), Dominic Corke, Mark Nicholas, even David Gower and then of course we have the sad old miserable git, Bob Willis. So many of them who either choose to follow the ECB line or deliberately trash KP for the fun of it. They had all better be very worried as they have all made severe allegations about KP both in print and vocally on radio and TV. That could cost them all very dearly indeed. Still as my dad used to say: “You make your bed and you lie in it…” which fits the ECB well enough. Then of course you have the press and former cricketers, aka the Leeches Club: “You lie down with dogs and you wake up with fleas…”
I just hope that KP doesn’t go on the rampage in the Autumn but just asks the ECB et al to prove their allegations with concrete proof. Then we might see just how badly they all fare. I hope they are all exposed for the lying, cheating miscreants they truly are. KP may well indeed be a “maverick” and his antics in South Africa were very very stupid, however I do think that a lot of the stuff that has come out of the ECB has been the unbelievable misuse of their position, appalling misjudgements on just about every level as well as flagrant misuse of “friends” in the press and media! Hopefully their lies will bury them all.
Great piece Maxie. On the money again.
I recall one of Etheridge’s little beauties was the claim that KP very loudly pronounced to the team at Sydney about the FACT that he had booked his return ticket home for a day of the game. Of course, the FACT that this claim could only have been made if he’d had a glass against the wall eavesdropping or, heaven forfend, he was fed it by someone in the inner sanctum, has passed us all by, given we are a bunch of tin-foil hat, the end of the world is nigh, live at home with mum oddballs.
I was told it categorically [by the ECB we presume] just about summed up the whole approach of the compliant media. Never seek to question those who have much to defend.
Good work, as always, Maxie.
Thanks. Yes, the “categorically” is a gem. He makes it sound like the resignation of a cabinet member, not some daft line about a commemorative cap.
@meersy – Is it such a cushy job reporting on English cricket; always being in the sun, trying to rekindle former glories (or lack thereof), that lead these so called “reporters” and “journalists” to toe the line so obediently, like love sick lap dogs?
Despite being proved to be wrong on so many occasions they follow with blind loyalty!
Is it fear of ruffling feathers and falling out of favour with those who decide who to talk to and who to exile that leads to this propaganda nonsense?!
Do the truth sealing journalists lose their assignments for not pulling punches?
Fleet St correspondents tend to judge themselves and each other on their scoops, not the fairness of their analysis. So they tend to foster relationships with sources for scoops, and when one lands in their lap, they go to town. I imagine Etheridge’s boss is more interested in getting eye-catching stories than they are in being fair to Pietersen.
It would be a fine thing if these buggers actually put some analysis into their pieces at all wouldn’t it Maxie? Derek Pringle just cannot resist his drip, drip venom and sweeping statements about KP. Like, for instance, the headline that read, KP causes problems in every dressing room he goes in? That sort of thing. Then there was the piece about none of the England Players supported KP? He seems to constantly write against KP no matter if there are conflicting reports in the media. He really is a piece of work and no mistake. I hope he gets his comeuppance. And whatever you do, don’t tweet him telling him he is wrong, as you will be rewarded with a very nasty reply. These ECB hangers-on really are something else.
Still what do I know? I am a mere “outsider” who should just shut up and go and watch England play for unbelievable prices. Yay.
He didn’t check with KP because, like almost all of the embedded correspondents, he has no relationship with him and hasn’t since at least early 2012, if not early 2009. He gave up trying to play their games years ago, and rightly. Always bear this in mind next time one of them offers their ‘objective’ view of his sacking.
A call to his agent wouldn’t have been too much to ask, tjhough,
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts aye? A plague on all their houses.
Anyone care to enlighten me what the point of the press is? Once upon a time, they were there to give us news – “fresh off the press”. For many years now, we’ve been able to get the news from TV and Internet and a damn sight quicker. So now the papers are filled with opinions, gossip and stories they just make up. That’s why I don’t read them.
I am really glad that you continue to expose the press corps for their blatant bias…. Please keep it up. Pietersen’s article in the Telegraph was excellent too. The ECB have lost the public?
Absolutely. Don’t stop guys as you are doing a magnificent job in your real and bona fide analysis of this sordid stuff.
Ever since his “badger”hairstyle I have always thought that KP was a bit of a prat, great cricketer but a bit of a prat. My thoughts in this regard do not however stop me enjoying his talent when he is full flow. I also do not believe ,even if he is a bit of a prat that he deserves the vituperative, derogatory spiteful commentary that he the press throw at him. Now it has got to the extent of this Etheridge pillock printing outright lies. Having had this proved it is now incumbent upon us the “keyboard ranters” to refer to Etheridge as “that liar Etheridge” and see how he handles a constant campaign to vilify him (as KP has had). He now has no credibility whatsoever and his witterings should be ignored in their entirety.
[…] Selvey and the rest of the press pack are briefed off the record by the ECB (and some of the tales turn out to be pure fiction). […]
[…] that in a fit of pique Kevin Pietersen returned his ‘100th cap’ presents to the ECB. Or did he? If you’re reading John, just to jog your memory, you did once say you’d provide a full […]