Excited Journalist Reads Minds

Daily Telegraph journalist Phil Rothfield admits the Waterhouse-Singleton betting scandal story has got him all excited, injecting himself into the tale thus:

IT'S the biggest sporting stoush this writer has seen since the Super League war in the mid-90s.

Perhaps he needs to calm down a little.

Getting over-excited can lead to writing like this, a few paragraphs earlier:

(Channel 9 commentator Andrew Johns) said he didn't recall speaking to anyone but Singleton about More Joyous on the Saturday of the race.

His phone records showed otherwise. He'd in fact been in phone conversations with Hayson, former jockey Allan Robinson and Newcastle trainer Kris Lees.

And writing like that can get you sued.

Johns' phone records - unless all phone calls are being recorded by 'the authorities' now - show nothing 'otherwise' of the sort. That he shared phone calls with people does not indicate what they were talking about.

Legally, the journalist and his employer are teetering on the edge.

-- Nick