Wayne Rooney and David Beckham receive differing reactions from the tabloids regarding allegations of trysts with prostitutes

Football throws up many surprises, with this week’s action from the Premier League being a case in point.

The weekends results were filled with upsets as West Brom beat Arsenal at home and stuck three past them in the process, United could only manage a draw at Bolton and Liverpool were turned over by Sunderland.

These stories though were confined to the back pages, as footballers have also been dominating front page headlines recently with alleged off the pitch scoring, in particular Wayne Rooney and David Beckham, although in an odd twist, both stories have been handled very differently by the media.

In essence both of the scandals share a common theme in that a hugely successful English player has been accused of sleeping with a prostitute.

In Rooney’s case he was alleged to have been bedding prostitute Jenny XXX over a number of months, which the United star hasn’t denied and has led to the moral obsessed red tops looking on in horror from the vantage point of their high horse.

Beckham has also been allegedly been involved with hooker Irma Nici, although he has strenuously denied these claims and has reportedly issued a £16 million libel writ against her according to the Daily Star.

Whether these individuals did participate in paid sex is no of interest to me though, as despite it being morally objectionable, it belongs to their personal life and commenting or speculating on the subject is the reserve of tabloid gossips and is little more than a voyeuristic glance into someone’s life, which isn’t far behind peeking through your neighbours bedroom window and having a wank in the bushes.

Instead the manner in which the stories have been treated by the press has intrigued me, as either they seemingly know something that the reader doesn’t, or they are collectively exposing their prejudices towards Rooney and their love and admiration for nice guy Beckham.

When the story about Rooney’s indiscretions broke he was hung drawn and quartered by the tabloids and was seemingly guilty from the stories inception.

However when allegations surrounding Beckham’s infidelity surfaced the tabloids agreed in unison that Beckham was innocent and surprisingly lent their support to the star instead of rummaging for a filthy headline grabbing story that they usually love so.

Never ones to sit on the fence over a story, both The Sun and the Daily Star have branded Nici a lyer.

Whether this is because they have evidence to support their claim or evidence to rubbish hers is unknown, although if there was, surely it would have been made public by the gossip hungry rags.

Both stories have relied on evidence from the prostitute in question to provide sordid details about an alleged tryst with a footballer, but the stories have been treated very differently in the press thanks to Beckham’s strenuous denial of the claim, although this rarely stops the tabloids fashioning an article or two.

This isn’t to say that Beckham is guilty of anything untoward, but usually a strenuous denial is seen as a desperate reaction to try and save face by the tabloids and rarely is it accepted as whole hearted truth.

Publishers of the magazine that broke the story In Touch Magazine must have had some evidence of an affair to go ahead and print the story as the inevitable libel writ would far outweigh the value of selling a few extra magazines that week.

Nici is managed by a third party and her media team said “there is more to this story that Irma hasn’t told yet” would could be just a desperate attempt to keep the story alive or a plan to slowly bleed money out of the tryst.

Even if there are to be further revelations regarding Beckham’s alleged affair with the prostitute, the tabloids have already seemingly made their mind up regarding his innocence.

The story will undoubtedly dominate the red tops over the coming weeks as both Nici and the rags drip feed information to their gossip hungry readers, but seemingly Beckham will benefit from a bias usually reserved for politics.

Time to work on your media image Wayne.

Posted By Dan Mobbs - Tuesday September 28, 2010.
Tags: David Beckham, Wayne Rooney