"Inappropriate behaviour"?
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Wow. There’s a familiar phrase. I know the effects of it, and I suspect it will now unfortunately follow Jitka Klimkova wherever she goes next.
The story of the former coach of the New Zealand women’s football team was laid out in the New Zealand Herald today, primarily taking aim at New Zealand Football for how it handled the allegation of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ against Klimkova.
But, as is often the case with these stories, there was so much missing:
The player who made the allegation had not spoken to the Herald, which also agreed not to name her (so, no first-hand account);
Ten other players did speak to the Herald about the unspecified allegation, but weren’t named (so, multiple cases of anonymous hearsay);
Klimkova wasn’t interviewed either (I don’t believe she’s ever spoken about it, likely for legal reasons);
And all of that without even addressing the big headline of “inappropriate behaviour”.
What does it mean?
Could it be a joke that didn’t go down well? Criticism? A raised voice? Verbal abuse? Harassment? Violence?
It could be anything, depending on how it is interpreted. But the sinister and alarming connotations of the phrase only allow rumour, speculation, misinformation, or outright lies to be spread.
Trust me, I know.
The other thing to consider is that Klimkova, who stepped down temporarily while the allegation was investigated, was then cleared by an independent third-party investigation.
She was supposed to return to the team for the Paris Olympic Games, but it seems the process of reconciliation and “restorative justice” between coach and players couldn’t be completed in time, so she skipped the Games and then resigned not long after.
In the end, Klimkova may well have something to answer to. But her side of the story has never been told. Everyone else has (anonymously) put in their two-cents-worth, while Klimkova’s reputation has taken a battering.
Maybe that’s warranted, but how can we know? And how does anonymous hearsay get us any closer?
The other interesting, but entirely unsurprising part of this story is how it was reported elsewhere.
The Herald’s main rival Stuff published it its own story which was simply a regurgitation of the Herald piece.
It quoted the Herald story EIGHT times, and as far as I can see didn’t add anything new of its own. There wasn’t even a byline on it - just the words Stuff sports reporters as the authors of the piece.
So what we have is one media outlet, reporting on the anonymous hearsay published by another media outlet, without (it seems) any attempt to corroborate anything.
But still the spectre of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ gets top billing.
And we STILL don’t even know what happened…