Facts lost in the feeding frenzy

It was a letter-writer to the Daily Star, of all papers, who summed it up best. "The story that's unfolded in the Daily Star has been almost unbelievable," wrote S. Norton of Birmingham.

That letter appeared nine days after Bob Woolmer was found dead, and four days after the Star had reported: "Woolmer's murder has all the hallmarks of an underworld 'hit'. Police sources say the strangling, coupled with the administration of snake venom, is the style of a Yardie hired killer. He would have been paid by the angry, match-fixing Mafia overlords Bob was threatening to expose."

Well, perhaps. But the story that unfolded in the media - not just in the Daily Star, not just in Britain - was indeed unbelievable. I am writing this column three weeks after it happened. There is currently only one undisputed fact: the simple one, wretched enough in itself, that Bob Woolmer has died. Everything else, including the supposed certainty that he was murdered, is now being questioned.

Pending further developments, this may not be turning into a triumph for the Jamaican police and their British front man, Mark Shields. It has certainly not been a triumph for the international press.

Most murders, whether in Britain, Jamaica or anywhere else, are squalid little affairs. The police soon have a fair idea whodunnit and why - whether it is a gangland feud or an emotional tangle. If the latter, an arrest, or at least a warrant, may follow quickly. And at that point, in Britain anyway, the press are gagged by law. Such cases rarely gain more than local attention. This was different. It was a sensational case, with global resonance (even the New York Times and Le Monde got stuck in). And almost every aspect of it was baffling.

Inevitably, the media descended on the Jamaica Pegasus, a claustrophobic place at the best of times, since the streets of Kingston are famously uninviting. And the reporters were effectively trapped inside because that's where the action was. Shields was there, and all his investigators. It was also the site of all the press conferences.

The first task of a reporter in that situation is "Don't miss the story". If a well-known cricketer had been led across the foyer in handcuffs, your career would not benefit if you were on your balcony reading a book. But the story was elusive, making the atmosphere tense and febrile.

The hacks could only hang around, talking, speculating, theorising. And guessing. The second task is to do better than just keeping up, by beating the opposition to extra angles. The pressure to do this depends on the newspaper. But that's how guesses mutate into newspaper "facts". According to a huge splash headline in the Daily Telegraph on March 24: "Cricket coach was poisoned and strangled, police believe."

"Police believe food or alcohol delivered to Mr Woolmer's hotel room in Jamaica after Pakistan's shock World Cup exit might have been poisoned to incapacitate him before he was killed," the story went on. Other papers did not follow up this angle because, so far as it can be discerned, the police did not believe this. Maybe he was poisoned and strangled. But my understanding is that Shields was asked whether the police would check the possibility that Woolmer's food might have been poisoned. Of course, he said. What else could he say? "Nah, we won't bother."

Was it a possibility? Of course, it was a possibility. Then, at different stages of the newspaper production, the story gets, as we say in the trade, "tickled up". Front page headlines are no place for nuances, even in once old-fashioned broadsheets.

That's just an example. There are many more: "Enhanced CCTV footage in the Bob Woolmer murder case has identified people in the vicinity of his room on the night he was killed." - Daily Mirror, March 29.

"Enhanced CCTV footage in the Bob Woolmer has revealed nothing new, police said last night." - Daily Mirror, March 29. Different strokes for different editions.

There was the strange case of the three Pakistanis: "Three fans wanted over coach killing" (Daily Telegraph, though the one in Sydney this time, March 28). No, they weren't (Birmingham Post, March 28).

And the even stranger case of the 11 Pakistanis: "Players didn't kill the coach" (Sydney Telegraph again, March 27). They might have done, you know, said The Times of India, gleefully rubbing salt in their neighbours' wounds. "The Jamaica police made it amply clear that it was not giving the team a clean chit in the Bob Woolmer murder case." (same date)

And so on. It was a horrendous time for the Woolmer family, a dreadful one for cricket. And hardly journalism's finest hour, either.