It’s…. The Sun’s (partial) account: How the tabloid’s readers are denied clues in the Wagatha Christie case
The slightly alternate realities of British newspapers.
The Everett interpretation of quantum physics, as highlighted in classic scientific treatise and Gwyneth Paltrow-vehicle Sliding Doors, suggests time branches like a tree with an alternate reality for every possible action1. A variant of this idea can also be applied to British newspapers — the Wright interpretation of tabloid/broadsheet perspective has it that each editorial line exists in its own slightly different reality.
And so we come to the similar but slightly different timelines of reporting on one of the greatest gossip stories of all time — the Wagatha Christie saga.
The Homeric clash between Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy sparked into life on October 9 2019 when Rooney revealed she had set an Instagram trap to snare a sneak who she suspected of leaking stories about her to The Sun. She wrote a sentence designed to please every messy bitch who lives for drama:
I have saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them. It’s ................ Rebekah Vardy’s account.
Look at all those ellipses. Don’t do the pause, Coleen, you’re not Simon Cowell.
On the same day, Vardy “took to her social media” — as tabloids are required to phrase it — to vehemently deny that she was the leaker. Meanwhile, The Sun, acting as though the author of its Secret WAG column was spilling the Pentagon papers rather than details of who hogs the sunbeds, refused to comment on the source of its stories.
In February 2020, Vardy appeared on ITV’s Loose Women — Frost/Nixon with better makeup — and said the feud/row/spat [delete as preferred] was “one of the worst things I had to deal with apart from being abused when I was younger.” By June 2020, news of Vardy’s £1 million libel case against Rooney had broken.
On October 2 2020, Rooney filed a 55-page defence, including images of the Instagram posts that she claims Vardy leaked to The Sun.
In November, Vardy won the first big clash of the court case when Judge Mr Justice Warby ruled that Rooney’s Instagram post pointed to Vardy being the source of the leaks rather than simply pointing to anyone who had access to her account. Rooney’s spokesperson dismissed the development as “a technical legal ruling on the meaning of the post that changes nothing.”
By January 2021, news trickled out that Vardy and Rooney would hold a mediation session on Zoom. In February they took part in that process — their first meeting in years — and by March it was announced that it had failed and the libel case would go to trial.
That trial is now ongoing and that’s where we come to the various minor alternate realities presented by British newspapers.
Sun readers who stick to the paper’s coverage of the story would have no idea that it plays a pivotal role in the battle. Its report yesterday, headlined WAGS AT WAR Rebekah Vardy WINS latest round of Wagatha Christie battle in blow for Coleen Rooney contains no mention of the ‘Secret WAG’ column or that its source could be revealed in the court action. Nor does it hint at why it might be so keen to take Vardy’s side in the case.
Paul Sims and Holly Christodoulou write that…
Rebekah Vardy has today scored a knock-out blow against Coleen Rooney in the latest round of their blockbuster Wagatha Christie case.
… before outlining the recent events in the case from the perspective of the Vardy camp and providing this ‘context’:
Coleen turned detective in October 2019 and accused Rebekah of sharing stories from her personal Instagram account.
Accused Rebekah of sharing stories with whom? The Sun doesn’t want to say for fear of turning into the Spiderman meme.
Even The Sun’s more expensive thesaurus-owning stablemate The Times reports more thoroughly on the case. Its report yesterday was headlined Wagatha Christie libel battle may unmask author of Sun column and noted:
Yesterday a High Court judge ruled that Rooney could argue that Vardy was behind the Secret Wag diary in The Sun on Sunday. Rooney claims her rival is the primary source of the column, which “leaked private information about high-profile footballers and their partners”. The diary included details of players’ alleged affairs and drug use…
… Mrs Justice Steyn said the alleged close relationship between Vardy and the tabloid newspaper was “one of the building blocks” of Rooney’s defence. The judge found that the short-lived column was relevant to the case, saying: “The allegation that [Vardy] had, or was the primary source for, a gossip column about professional footballers and their partners in The Sun is logically probative similar fact evidence.”
The ‘Secret WAG’ column ended immediately after Rooney revealed her claims on Instagram. The Sun had breathlessly promoted it as “a Prem Wag… revealing top-secret bombshells”.
Stories from the Secret WAG included claims that an air stewardess stopped a potential hotel room ‘tryst’ with a player after he stripped off and revealed a tattoo featuring his wedding vows, gossip that a Man City player secretly ditched his girlfriend for another woman, sending her to live in a hotel until he begged her to come back, and the suggestion that two Chelsea players kept a flat near the club’s training ground purely to house their mistresses.
While The Times’ reality at least mentioned The Sun’s role in the case, you had to hop over to The Guardian timeline to get a fuller perspective. It story, written by the paper’s Media Editor Jim Waterson and headlined Rebekah Vardy may be forced to reveal any conversations with Sun journalists, explains:
Rebekah Vardy could be forced to provide Coleen Rooney with copies of any conversations she has had with journalists at the Sun, following the latest twist in the long-running “Wagatha Christie” libel case.
In a victory for Rooney, the high court ruled on Wednesday that Vardy’s past communications with journalists at the tabloid were relevant to the case, as they may indicate she was more likely to leak private information about Rooney to the same reporters.
As a result, the court will consider claims that Vardy was “heavily engaged on social media with various Sun journalists” and allegations she was the individual behind a gossip column entitled The Secret Wag – named after the wives and girlfriends of England players.
The Vardy/Rooney case coverage is a kind of proxy war between different papers. The Sun is undoubtedly on Vardy’s side and skews its coverage as such, while excluding any and all references to it or its journalists from its ‘reporting’. In the Victoria Newton-era, The Sun is trying to shed the grubbier parts of its image, hence the editor’s ludicrous claim in The New Statesman recently that:
It’s our job at the Sun to hold the powerful to account without fear or favour, and we’ll carry on doing so.
In truth, The Sun exists entirely to instil fear on behalf of its proprietor and to give and expect favours in turn. It’s a fear and favour factory.
Rooney’s lawyer, David Sherbourne, claimed in court back in June that Vardy benefitted financially from stories given to The Sun:
He said Mrs Vardy used her close relationship with The Sun or its journalists "for the purposes of promoting or financially exploiting her public profile".
The barrister claimed she would receive a split of commission and revenue for stories given to The Sun through the Front Row Partnership, a PR agency where Mrs Vardy was a client.
Where other papers fall in the Wagatha Christie coverage depends on their political positioning and their relative disdain for The Sun in particular.
The Times mentions the risk to The Sun in part to give itself some distance from its more salacious sibling but is by no means consistent in reporting on stories that involve its stablemate.
The Daily Telegraph, which took enormous delight in publishing allegations that Wayne Rooney — Colleen’s footballer-turned-manager husband — paid for a threesome with two sex workers back in 2010, is no fan of the Rooneys. It’s not a surprise that it is Team Vardy. But being arguably the most snake-like of the British newspapers, there’s every chance it’ll flip if the case goes against Vardy.
The Daily Mail, which overtook The Sun to become Britain’s biggest selling paper in June last year, always takes the chance to slap its rival around so follows the same line as The Guardian only with far more words and a surfeit of pictures. Its excitable coverage is headlined Coleen Rooney's team claim '2-1 victory' in latest stage of 'Wagatha Christie' court battle as judge rules 'The Secret Wag' column IS relevant but dismisses claim Rebekah Vardy was attention-seeking by sitting behind her at Euros match.
The legal action is ongoing and whatever the papers may claim about small wins or losses during the process it’s not at all clear who, if anyone, will come out on top from the case. What is abundantly clear though is that relying on a single paper to give you the facts on any given story is a bad idea.
On one level the Wagatha Christie case only matters to the participants, their families, and their well-renumerated legal representatives — the bill for costs ticked over to £1.3 million in March and will be far larger by the time they’re done — but it will have wider implications. If the source of The Sun’s Secret WAG column is revealed, it’ll lead to a cascade of recriminations and further stories from the football world but will also flip over the rock to reveal the squirming reality of how the tabloid gets its scoops in the post-Leveson age.
As a consumer of the news, Wagatha Christie is also a salutary reminder of how ‘news’ is rarely any less slanted than the contents of the editorial pages. There is no such thing as ‘objective’ news, only news written by people who try to present multiple perspectives.
Even before a journalist puts their hands to a keyboard editorial priorities and decisions are at work. Who is assigned to write the story? Why is that story being covered at all? What is the angle going to be? Who’ll be quoted and who will be ignored? Which facts are relevant and which can be omitted? And why?
It is extremely rare — vanishingly so — to encounter a news story in a British paper that is not pushed through the prism of that publication’s prejudices. Even if the original writer does not inject them they’ll come in at the editing stage or be made apparent by the chosen introduction or headline.
In the multiverse of the British media, who’s ‘winning’ and who’s ‘losing’ in the Wagatha Christie battle really depends on what paper you’re reading on any given day. And when all’s said and done, the hacks (and the lawyers) will be the only real winners in this one.
I know this is a simplification, please don’t email me, physicists.