The antagonism towards the Mail on Sunday for its single-handed destruction of England's bid to host the 2018 World Cup football championships is gathering pace.

I'm beginning to wonder whether it could lead to a boycott of Sun-Hillsborough proportions because of growing outrage from all manner of people.

As was reported yesterday, Gary Lineker decided to stop writing for the paper. And the vast majority of the 289 comments on that story are clearly hostile to the Mail on Sunday (MoS).

Take a look also at the 300-odd comments below the Sunday blog posting by David Bond, the BBC's sports editor. They are overwhelmingly critical of the MoS.

Some 84% of callers to TalkSport said the MoS was wrong to publish. The Press Complaints Commission has received about 55 complaints. Then there are the Facebook pages, such as Boycott the Mail: England fans united and The Mail on Sunday ruined our world cup bid... so let's ruin their paper (with, admittedly, very few members).

I have rarely known so many journalists who disagreed with the paper's decision to publish. At a media gathering last night I couldn't find one who believed the story of Lord Triesman's private conversation with a duplicitous girl-friend was valid.

One former high-ranking newspaper executive told me that his son had written to the MoS editor (Peter Wright) to say he would no longer be reading the paper. Nor would his friends.

Now take a look at what the BBC's Bond had to say about the affair in his blog on Monday. He rightly points out that the story was originally rejected by another paper (the News of the World, I understand).

He also takes up the point made by so many about the dubious ethics involved in obtaining the story, which has been a hot topic on many radio phone-ins over the past couple of days.

Triesman was tricked by the woman, Melissa Jacobs, in the most underhand fashion. Pretending to be his friend, she covertly recorded their private conversation, probably encouraging him to be indiscreet.

In truth, he wasn't that indiscreet. Aside from the business about whether Russia might offer bribes in order to win the World Cup bid, he said nothing of real consequence. Who, for example, could disagree with his views on John Terry?

Given that they had been colleagues and friends for some time, Triesman could not possibly have suspected what she was up to. He was entrapped. But, aside from the woman's desire to make money (along with her agent, Max Clifford), here was no point to the exercise.

To publish Triesman's views - even if tendentious and false (and maybe they were not, by the way) - could not be said to be the public interest. And, as the commenters to websites, the radio phone-in callers, the Twitterati, and a host of journalists keep pointing out, it was certainly not in the national interest.

I find myself in agreement with Philip Stone, the American media commentator, who writes on FollowTheMedia:



Frankly, it was journalism at its most disgusting – a former girl-friend invites the head of the UK Football Association and leader of its 2018 World Cup bid to a private lunch, she carried a secret wire, he talked about some extremely damaging international football bribery allegations, she sold that to a Sunday newspaper for £75,000, he had to resign and justifiably the newspaper got lambasted for an exclusive story that may well have destroyed the 2018 bid.

Stone thinks "the best news to come from all this is the wave of public opinion against the newspaper."

Then he consider the MoS response, which is an attempt to extricate itself from the mire in which it now finds itself. Here's the statement:

This story concerns very serious allegations of corruption at the highest level of sport, made by a man who was leading the England World Cup bid. The public is clearly entitled to know about such allegations. We would also like to make it clear that Melissa Jacobs put details of her relationship with Lord Triesman on the internet, and made her recording of her conversation with him, without the knowledge or involvement of the Mail on Sunday. There is no question of entrapment, the paper was simply reporting events that had already taken place.

This is a definition of disingenuous. The paper paid £75,000 for something already available? Pull the other one.

The MoS is trying to escape from its responsibilities in this matter. It made a severe error in publishing a story obtained from a woman who, as the London Evening Standard revealed, was recently treated for mental health problems.

David Bond, incidentally, raises all sorts of questions about the story's provenance in his Monday blog that require answers.

The MoS would do well to own up to its mistaken editorial judgment. Its readers, and England's football fans, deserve an apology.