Apologies to Salomon Kalou

It was a fairly innocuous piece that appeared in the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard just before Chelsea`s Community Shield match against Manchester United. Chelsea players had celebrated Salomon Kalou`s birthday at a club called Whisky Mist. In both papers, the emphasis had been on the glamour of the event, and the tone of the piece was generally neutral.

Both reports said that the festivities had cost £120,000. Hold on, run that past us again, £120,000? That`s a hell of a lot of money. Apparently John Terry splashed out some £70,000 on a bottle of champagne. Is it possible to pay such a sum of money for a bottle of champagne, even at a top London nightclub? A number of people were said to have been interviewed for this fearless reporting, including club staff.

Still, it must be right of players to spend that kind of money if they want to. I wish I could.

The next day, the story was all over the place, but suddenly the tone changed. From being neutral (or 'look at how glamorous is the lives of the rich and famous`) the subsequent reporting became nasty and vindictive. In particular there was a piece in the Daily Mirror that used the language of a Class War fanzine, slamming these idle rich from being so profligate at the same time as ordinary people, presumably workers, were having such difficulties paying their matchday tickets in this time of crisis. Bizarrely, the cost of this indulgence rose from £120,000 to £140,000 according to the Daily Mirror, which had no reporter at the scene but somehow manage to increase the budget of the party by £20,000.

As night follows day, however, Chelsea reacted against this guff, declaring that they were a tissue of lies. In particular the numbers being quoted in these newspapers were completely wrong. Therefore the club took newspapers to court or to the press complaints commission, in order to rectify the mendacious reports.

Chelsea have been successful in this endeavour, with the apologies and rectifications trickling in. It started with the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard. Over the weekend, The Sun, The Sunday Times and the Observer had to show contrition also, publishing their corrections. The original piece in The Sun was entitled 'Bubble Dumb` which tells you all you need to know about how they had presented the piece, whilst fellow News International publication ran with the headline 'Pathetic sight of fool's gold'.

Astonishingly, in the corrections, the actual sums of money that were splashed out for this party were revealed. The total takings for the club that night were £20,000, and apparently Salomon`s birthday party cost … £6,000. We can understand the confusion, though: when you are a tabloid journalist, all figures are multiplied by twenty. As part of the clarifications, it turns out that the cost of this party was laid on by friends of Salomon unconnected with Chelsea. It was also made clear that John Terry did not make any payments. Not even a £50 bottle of champagne, let alone on that was alleged to have cost £70,000.

'We are happy to set the record straight` said the Sun and the Sunday Times, whilst the Observer 'apologised for the error`. Not half as happy as the Murdoch papers were to publish articles slandering Chelsea players and portraying them as having considerable less sense than money.

It`s a general comment on the press in the UK that despite the mechanisms for redress, such a false report about a birthday party can become fact, and so widely reported. The emphasis was clearly on the sums of money involved. £120,000 is an obscene amount of money to spend on a birthday party (unless it`s Elton John`s 60th). However distasteful it might be, it is the right of the individuals involved to spend that money on a birthday party (or for that matter a new sports car). The tone of many of these articles was to invite condemnation for such an ostentatious display of vulgarity, not to mention trying to pitch football fans against players by pointing out that it is those fans who were paying for that party. With the revenues of clubs so heavily skewed towards TV rights and marketing, fans` ticket purchases pay for about a third of players` salaries, a nuance completely lost on the newspapers.

And there is a huge difference between a party that costs £120,000 and one that costs £6,000. Had the newspapers done their fact-checking and found out that the party actually cost 5% of the sums mentioned, we are fairly sure that nobody would have bothered publishing that article.

Chelsea, of course, were right to harangue the newspapers into printing corrections, retractions, clarifications and apologies. Newspapers hate to have to do that, so they might think twice before pursuing Chelsea players` out of hours behaviour.

We are, however, still waiting for the apology from the Daily Mirror, given that their piece was particularly bitter and unpleasant, possibly tainted by the long-standing dispute between redtop and football club. We hope that the club will pursue the newspaper until the bitter end, and enjoy the sight of the self-righteous newspaper squirming badly.

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