7 reasons BBC TV was right to door-step Bradley Wiggins at home: He sat on a throne at the London 2012 Olympics just weeks after winning the Tour de France. He has since been knighted, has benefitted from public money for years via British Cycling. Whether he likes it or not, the media is entitled to seek him out when it's in the public interest.
Door-stepping; it’s a journalistic practice that has been around for as long as the media has.
If people in public life can’t be reached for comment on stories, refuse to comment or the media wants comments from them immediately; journalists simply go to where they are and ring their doorbell or wait outside.
Mostly this is not done at people’s homes, as in the case of the BBC approaching Bradley Wiggins this week.
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Politicians are usually “door-stepped” at public events they attend to perform their public duty. Soccer players in the middle of transfer rumours, for example, are usually mobbed by a media scrum as they exit there training ground.
But if people at the centre of big stories, especially those where they have refused to comment, journalists have for many, many years gone to their homes and rang the bell or waited outside for the person to appear.
Calling to a person’s home is not the first choice of the media. But when all else fails it is an accepted practice it certain circumstances.
This week when the BBC TV crew called to the Wiggins house to ask questions about the jiffy bag delivered to Team Sky in France in 2011 - at the final stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné, which Wiggins won overall - it came in for a lot of criticism.
However, we think Wiggins should have been approached at his home; here’s why.
7 reasons BBC TV was right to door-step Wiggins at home
Wiggins is a genuine person of interest
The BBC was covering a story about the delivery of a jiffy bag to Team Sky in 2011. Wiggins former team doctor – Richard Freeman – and his former team principal – Dave Brailsford – along with British Cycling’s former technical director - Shane Sutton - have all said the contents of a bag was the decongestant Fluimucil for use by Wiggins.
The matter is being examined by a parliamentary committee in the UK and Freeman, Brailsford and Sutton have given their information to the committee.
The team refused to disclose anything substantive until it was called before the committee. The two people the committee has not heard from are the two at the very heart of the controversy; Bradley Wiggins and Freeman.
Public comment from them – not a private statement to UK Anti Doping - is badly needed. It's in the public interest.
Whether they like it or not, or whether Team Sky fans like it or not, there is an overwhelming case for the media to (a) get comment from Wiggins and Freeman and (b) push hard for that comment in light of their importance to the story and lack of public comment to date.
He was the rider the package was for
It should be said very clearly that there is no evidence whatsoever – absolutely none – that Bradley Wiggins or anyone at Team Sky broke any rules.
The absence of records to show what medicines the riders were taking – whether over the counter or those that required a TUE – is very damaging to the team’s credibility.
It set itself up as the best boy in the class; setting out the team was being created to win the Tour de France clean and generally putting itself on a pedestal above its peers in the sport.
Against that background – set out by the team for itself – questions about any medical package being delivered to Team Sky will be amplified in receiving more and closer public scrutiny than would be the case with other teams.
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Bradley Wiggins was the rider the team said the package was for. He may, of course, not even have known when he used the decongestant it had come from Manchester to France in a ‘jiffy bag’ that day.
He may simply have requested the product some days earlier and been told the team would have it by the end of the race.
It is very unlikely a rider leading a major international race would have involved himself in the logistics of the coach who brought the package from the UK.
But the whole episode has undermined the credibility of Wiggins himself, Team Sky, British Cycling and indeed British sport so much that Wiggins should have made a substantial public statement by now.
Even if he knows nothing about how he received the product, he needs to say that.
And in the absence of such a statement, the BBC is within its rights and, as the national public-funded broadcaster, is arguably obliged to find out where Wiggins is and go to him and put the questions to him. It was in the public interest for them to press Wiggins.
He’s benefitted from public money
Bradley Wiggins is a national hero, he’s received honours from the Queen and he’s been part funded by the British taxpayer through his whole career.
That status has been secured, of course, mostly by his own talent, sacrifice and hard work.
- Froome turns the screw as bad blood with Wiggins resurfaces
- Coach who took “medical package” to Team Sky hits out at media
The fact remains that he has been happy to step into the public realm – to receive public money, public honours, adulation and to represent his country – when it has suited him.
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With that comes the responsibility to provide answers when pressing and genuine questions arise.
And the media is entitled to create a doorstep scenario where questions are put and a response, or lack of, can be recorded and broadcast for public consumption.
His silence is damaging other people
Bradley Wiggins has been caught up in a very controversial and damaging episode that goes way beyond him as an individual. There is no suggestion he has set out to damage anyone.
But the inability of Wiggins, Team Sky and British Cycling to face this controversy head-on and set out everything they know and those things they can’t explain/offer proof of is now damaging other riders.
A number of senior people at the top of broadcaster Sky have come out to support the team in recent days and British Cycling has been told it must reform or lose funding.
Clearly many of those involved accept that this has reached a stage where public statements are needed to steady the ship and reform is needed to weed out bad practices and repair public confidence.
Yet Bradley Wiggins doesn’t seem to think these circumstances apply to him. BBC is entitled to go to him and press him for responses given he has passed up so many opportunities to make a comment.
His therapeutic use exemption
The ‘decongestant in the jiffy bag’ controversy cannot be considered or analysed in isolation. Bradley Wiggins was late last year at the centre of controversy when it emerged he had taken corticosteroids under TUE before the Tour de France in 2011 and 2012 and the Giro d’Italia in 2013.
He did so sanctioned by the UCI and having gone through the proper channels. But some riders have said when they took the same substances it increased their power and brought their weight down a little at the same time.
And some of those riding against Bradley Wiggins have said that, while he broke no rules, what he did was not ethical.
No sooner had his TUEs been leaked than the ‘jiffy bag’ controversy broke. It means Wiggins credibility has taken a sustained battering from a number of directions.
The parliamentary committee inquiring into the jiffy bag incident is also looking at the lack of record keeping in Team Sky-British Cycling around the purchase and consumption of corticosteroids.
As the rider who used the contents of the jiffy bag and the corticosteroids under TUE, but made no comment publicly on the committee’s inquiries into those areas, the media is entitled to be proactive in seeking such comment.
His responsibility to cycling
British Cycling has boomed in recent years, with Bradley Wiggins the hero leading the parade. He is, without question and no matter how many Tours Chris Froome wins, the most significant figure in British cycling history.
It is obviously not a problem Wiggins created, but the Lance Armstrong era and decades before saw a huge culture of doping in cycling. It was a damaged sport and it remains damaged.
Bradley Wiggins and his team presented themselves as the remedy; the people who would prove the biggest races can be done clean.
Now that that is being questioned – even if there is no proof Wiggins took any banned substance – Bradley Wiggins has an obligation to the sport to speak up for himself.
He runs his own team and he has a responsibility to it, not to mention the high performance riders currently in British Cycling.
He is duty-bound to provide as much information now as possible. And if it takes journalists calling to his home to remind him of that, so be it.
Cycling badly needs an aggressive media
If Bradley Wiggins decides to make no comment at all on the jiffy bag saga and journalists weren’t aggressive in seeking that comment, one has to ask whether that would be good for cycling.
For decades the relationship between the media and the riders and teams was too close. Hard questions simply weren’t asked and the sport was allowed to slip into huge problems.
The media became part of the problem – it was their job, perhaps above anyone else, to reduce the comfort zone. The controversy Bradley Wiggins finds himself at the centre of is different, to be fair to him.
He broke no rules on the TUEs and there is no evidence there was anything banned in the jiffy bag brought to France in 2011. This centres of ethics and accountability and the hypocrisy of Team Sky.
There is no evidence of doping. But cycling will be best served by a media that keeps asking questions and shows aggression, within reason, in asking those questions.
Doorstepping is ugly, but sometimes it just has to be done.
Arguably if journalists had down the years shown a bit of the initiative BBC did this week, cycling would never have been given the comfort zone it was to shelter the industrial-scale doping that it did for so long.
The media needs to hold cycling's feet to the fire from time to time, even in a case like Bradley Wiggins where the issues are transparency, accountability and ethics rather than prima facie doping.
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