Pavlos Joseph: center of a made-up story
Apparently England’s boring, soul-sucking 0-0 draw with Algeria didn’t provide enough talking points for the media vultures to pick through.
Cue a hack reporter, an England fan who made the long trip to Cape Town, and a wayward trip to the bathroom.
We remember the story, don’t we? Superfan Pavlos Joseph was looking for a toilet deep within the bowels of Green Point stadium when he took a wrong turn and ended up face-to-face with David Beckham and the England squad in their changing room. There, he expelled into the world his now famous quote: “David, we’ve spent a lot of money getting here. This is a disgrace. What are you going to do about it?”
Since then, we learn about the wonderfully seedy side of journalism with the arrest and detainment of Simon Wright, 44, reporter for the Sunday Mirror and apparent amateur dramatist.
Wright is accused of “defeating the ends of justice” and “flouting the provisions of the South Africa immigration act,” enough to appear in a special World Cup court (whatever that is) before being released on bail, as a police review of the CCTV tapes show Wright helping keep Joseph safe from the police hunt after his trespass into the England locker room.
Let’s review:
- Wright was seen on CCTV cameras assisting Joseph with his quest to get into the locker room and speak to Beckham, whose recollection of the “chat” is entirely less exciting (“…Joseph only said “hello” before leaving the dressing room.”)
- After the incident, with the police engaged in a hunt for Joseph, Wright is alleged to have smuggled the wanted man back to the safety of a luxury hotel.
- In no way related to this harboring of a wanted man, Wright and the Sunday Mirror got the exclusive interview with Joseph, presumably from the comfy confines of the hotel.
Said General Bheki Cele, national commissioner of police: “The police have reason to believe this incident was orchestrated, and involved the co-operation of a number of individuals. This is revealed by initial investigations and what has been observed from CCTV footage. The police strongly believe the motive was to put the World Cup security in a bad light, and possibly to profit from this act.”
What makes the allegations against Joseph even more disgraceful/hilarious is the fact that there were a million great stories surrounding England’s quiet capitulation without needing to resort to hackery, lies, and manipulation. Yet, it’s the skulduggery that you get from a tenured tabloid that really sets them apart.
The newspaper backs their man — “[Wright] was engaged in a legitimate story for his newspaper and any suggestion that he or the newspaper was involved with Pavlos Joseph before he entered the England dressing room is entirely false.” — but the entire story just proves my point from earlier today about the craven, attention-seeking nature of the English press.
I get that these daily cycles of trauma, redemption, and bigger trauma shift the papers and boost sales, but they could have simply done what Richard Williams did and spout mindless xenophobic garbage instead of flat-out inventing drama that wasn’t there to begin with.
Somewhere, Stephen Glass is smiling. Jayson Blair too. Imagine if either had dirtied their hands covering a soccer beat.
Mitch Albom doesn’t see what’s wrong with this story.
Beckham suggested that the guy swore at him a lot, at the time–papers are scum.