Across the pond

It has taken me nearly a week  to calm down sufficiently to write about the entrapment by the Mail on Sunday of David Triesman, the chairman of the Football Association. My first impression was one of disbelief, that even the Mail could stoop so low, could score a new low in standards of decent journalism. The Mail, which purports to stand for everything that is good and decent in middle England, should put the boot in on a 66-year-old man AND on England’s 2018 World Cup bid.

If that’s Patriotism, folks, it should be sold with warning notice in large black print.

THIS PRODUCT SERIOUSLY DAMAGES THE NATIONAL HEALTH

It has driven out of public life a 66-year-old man, David Triesman, who has given quite exceptional public service in his four careers. He was General Secretary of the Association of University Teachers, where he skilfully directed the energies of the membership to fighting the savage cuts of Thatcherism and Blairism, which threatened the quality of British higher education. He made sure the moderate majority forces were present in the conference chamber to stop the union’s left wing, succeeding in their campaign for an academic boycott of Israel. 

Instead of resting on his laurels he took on, aged 58,  an even more difficult job – General Secretary of the Labour Party, at a time when morale was low and the membership dwindling. He did that job so well that he was brought into the Labour government  as a junior  minister two years later.

In January 2008,  the year he collected his free bus pass, he took on another challenging job. He became the first independent chairman of the Football Association, a job he expected to enjoy, because he is a fanatical football fan and Spurs supporter. He went into this job with a boyish enthusiasm, still fuelled by all his happy memories of those Saturday afternoons on the terraces.

Thanks to the Mail on Sunday exposure, his last dream job has ended in tears.

Judged by one journalistic standard this was a major triumph. The Mail scoop made headlines in the national and international media and forced the immediate resignation of the target figure. Triesman was exposed as a sexual predator, a married man who had taken advantage of a young woman employee. And as an rash leader who had made allegations of bribery against European football leaders.

Judged by another journalistic standard the story was a disgrace.

The young woman, Melissa Jacobs, was actually 39. She was not courted by Triesman until he was no longer her boss. Then he took her out to dinner a few times. The proof of his immoral yearnings comes from the publication of his private emails to her, which show that he was behaving like a lovesick teenager.

But ‘old man besotted with younger woman’ does not exactly make front page news, even in the Mail.

But, when you examine it, the second prong of the story, is even more of a disgrace. The Mail, according to The Guardian, paid £75,000 for this story, via the publicist, Max Clifford. At their final dinner together Jacobs was wired up with a hidden microphone. During the dinner Triesman confided to the civil servant who had worked for him when he was a government minister, that he suspected bribes were being offered by some of the Europeans.

Now this is an important story, worthy of serious journalistic enquiry. Had the Mail  followed that up and done a proper investigation into the truth of these rumours, I would be singing its praises.

In the event they chose to put two quite different stories together in order to ‘convict’ Triesman.

By so doing they commited the worst of all journalistic sins.

They missed the real story.