Ethics and Accuracy: Reporting on football transfers with Nick Mashiter
The gossip, the drama, the deadline day deals; the transfer window is one of the most anticipated events in the footballing calendar.
Twice a year fans flock to journalists both online or in the paper in search of their teams’ latest dealings where they will find either elation, devastation or frustration but if you support West Ham, it’s usually a mix of the last two.
As a fan transfers seemed simple. One club would ring up another club and ask to buy their striker for £25 million which they will either accept, reject or negotiate right? Stepping further into the Football Journalism industry I have come to realise just how wrong that view was.
Transfers are ridiculously complicated transactions that take time, precision and expert negotiating – unless you’re Todd Boehly and you can afford to chuck £70 odd million at a potentially fraudulent Ukrainian.
Transfers are complex but reporting on them can be even more so. In this ever-growing industry, Journalists have to weave through a potential minefield of issues to publish the reports that are so desperately craved. None are more important to transfer reporting than accuracy and ethics.
The interest in transfers has skyrocketed in recent years and the emergence of social media has meant that fans are constantly demanding fresh news but they know little about the work that goes on behind the scenes to provide them with the content they crave.
Midlands football reporter for PA Media Nick Mashiter, knows these struggles all too well.
Step one – Making contacts.
Without your sources you don’t have a story, so a contact book is a journalist’s prized possession. Although numbers are now usually stored on a mobile, just remember you’re one 90th minute row z shot from Mason Mount in a semi-final against France away from smashing your phone and losing everything – not that I’d know anything about that…
The amount of work that goes into gathering and keeping in touch with contacts is completely overlooked. Can you even picture how long Fabrizio Romano has spent gathering his contacts? He must have more bags under his eyes than Tottenham have trophies.
But just how do these reporters make their contacts? Do they pester? Do they pay?
Well, it turns out you could find their number online and buy them a pint down your local.
On building contacts Nick said: “A lot of it is down to relationships and who you’re able to speak to, who you know or who you get introduced to.
“But numbers are surprisingly easy to find online, it’s a really simple thing but Google. There are numbers I’ve got that have led to stories because I’ve searched for this person online and the website they work for will have a number on there. You’d be surprised how many times that happened to me!
“Over Christmas I met up with an agent and went for a casual drink, which is just what you do. I want to be able to go and meet them because ultimately if I’m asking them to tell me things then I prefer to actually know them.”
“Accuracy is God.”
In this day and age accuracy is everything. With one big mistake, years of credibility and reliability can be lost. Reporters are under immense pressure to ensure a story is 100% accurate before it goes out but that will often take time, which fans may not understand.
Nick said: “Accuracy is God, you want to be accurate all the time but there is a desperation from fans to know everything at every minute and social media doesn’t help.
“With the greatest of respect to football fans or the wider public, a lot of people don’t recognise the job of the media and how those relationships and contacts, and how football transfers, work at the same time.
“Things change, I’ve written stuff that I know is 100% accurate at the time but then the players joined another club. If you’re writing something that you know is accurate there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Cast your eyes back to 2013 when Norwich announced Dutch striker Ricky van Wolfswinkel for a then record fee of €10 million. Originally seen as a promising signing having just scored 14 goals for Sporting CP, the Dutchman failed to kick on for the Canaries, scoring just two goals in his three-year spell – a move was definitely on the cards.
“I got told he was going to Birmingham City. Birmingham really wanted him and as a Midlands reporter I thought that was interesting.
“I got it confirmed by the club as you do and they said they were very keen and a deal was quite far down the road. I put a story out and literally about five hours later he’d moved to Holland and joined Vitesse!
“I spoke to Blues, and they said it was a surprise to them and to the player as well. It’s one of them where you know its accurate and even the club have stood it up, you have really solid foundations to write the story and then within a few hours it’s just changed completely.
“I didn’t get a lot of grief about it to be honest but on the face of it you could say well that’s completely wrong he joined Vitesse, well no because everyone in Birmingham was expecting him to join Birmingham, even the player.”
Ricky van Wolfswinkel tekent voor drie jaar in Arnhem! Welkom terug, Ricky! #Vitesse https://t.co/xuJowKk17Q pic.twitter.com/WvkgpsdBlc
— Vitesse (@MijnVitesse) July 28, 2016
It just goes to show how quickly things can change in football and even when you are 100% right, the game will find a way to make you wrong.
To publish or not to publish? – An Ethical minefield
Football is littered with ethical debates but many of them go on behind the scenes. Journalists can find themselves presented with a great story but they could risk losing a vital source by publishing it. It’s a feeling Nick is familiar with but one that he urges the importance of.
“About 85% of things we chat about or get told we don’t write. I’ve been asked not to write stuff, this January there was a transfer going on and I was asked by the agent not to write about the player and the transfer so I didn’t.
“Sometimes the agents or the manager are potentially too close to the transfer so they can’t tell you about it or they’ll tell you about it but you can’t write it and that’s to then therefore protect your relationship.
“You’ll see all this news that you knew about coming out elsewhere but you have to kind of suck that up a little bit, if you want to protect you relationship for further down the line for bigger stories then that’s what you have to do.
“I would never put something out that someone wouldn’t want out because that trust and that relationship is everything and it so difficult to earn it and so easy to lose it.”
I don’t know exactly why Klopp refused to speak to James Pearce but it might be about an article Pearce and Hughes co-wrote for The Athletic in 2021 which Klopp called lies and fake news. It’s probably that.pic.twitter.com/AeINRg2LlQ
— The Tactical Times (@Tactical_Times) February 4, 2023
Fake news is in abundance especially around the transfer window. Agents are looking to bump up the prices of their players and it is well known that some of the rumours linking players to clubs are fabricated for all the wrong reasons.
“Again it comes down to knowing you’re trusting the right people and building that relationship. I know of agents who have asked journalists ‘if you put these three stories out I’ll give you two true ones’ – that happens, I know it happens. That’s not happened to me because you have to pick and choose the right people to speak to,” said Nick.
It just shows the importance of choosing who to trust and who to protect. You can often pick out which rumours are lacking authenticity and the reporters who are putting out fake news to gain some ‘credible’ stories are simply robbing Peter to pay Paul. They will eventually find themselves out in the cold.
There is so much more to transfers than meets the eye and even more so for reporters. So next time you start whinging about why you’ve not had an update from Fabrizio or David Ornstein, just remember the work that goes into sourcing that update and making sure its accurate.
Things can change at an instant. You should also be grateful that you don’t have to pay for Nicks phone bill!
