Dear Mr Blunden
Subject: Ice cream is not the only scoop
As you are aware, I have distributed over a million words on the AFL/ASADA/Essendon saga.
At a guess, I have sent the Herald Sun over one hundred stories that have never been published anywhere. My name has never been mentioned in the Herald Sun. Friends suspect Rupert has said my name is not even allowed to appear in the Herald Sun obituaries.
I have had very limited feedback from the Herald Sun. Mark Robinson was kind enough to tell me to “go XXXX myself”. Carly Crawford and Eddie’s little puppy Jon Ralph, both asked me not to write to them again. And you pulled yourself out of a sick bed to send me a nasty email explaining that Herald Sun did not have a hyphen.
My recollection is you said inserting a hyphen in Herald Sun was such a fundamental error you could not trust the veracity of any of the 500,000 plus words I had sent you.
To be fair, you also made a feeble attempt to defend the Herald Sun running a front-page BS story about the Australian cricket team in the Perth Test allegedly deciding that one of them would be dismissed off the sixth ball of an agreed over. Talk about prostituting the paper’s reputation just to sell a couple more papers.
Last week I sent you six major stories and still the Herald Sun didn’t publish any of them:
- After engaging a Queens Counsel to vet my work, I not only alleged that it was possible the AFL defrauded Essendon of $2 million but the QC and I identified 12 possible criminal offences by the AFL
- I proved that the Victorian Police Commissioner Graham Ashton not only lied to me but in what is a major cover-up, he refused to investigate my allegations of fraud by the AFL.
- In a 135-page document, I provided irrefutable proof that the Court of Arbitration for Sport panel that heard the WADA v Essendon case was biased, inept and ran a corrupted hearing. Surely, if I am correct, this would have been an international story worthy of a Walkley for one of your journos. I know these days journos get their stories by listening to Talk Back Radio and reading tweets but surely there is someone in the building who has the stamina to read and understand my dissection of the CAS decision!
- I proved in the Essendon case WADA was corrupt and perjured itself on a number of occasions. Another international story.
- I provided irrefutable evidence that the Senate Community Affairs Committee led by Senator Duniam covered-up ASADA CEO Ben McDevitt misleading Parliament.
- I raised some issues that needed investigating to ascertain whether AFL Chairman Richard Goyder was still qualified to be a company director.
Your treatment of me reminds me of an old Fred Trueman story:
In a county match, Fred’s first ball hit the batsman on the half volley six inches in front of middle stump. Fred’s appeal was turned down.
Fred’s second ball was a foot shorter and hit the batsman just below the knee in front of middle stump. Fred’s appeal was again turned down.
Fred’s third ball sent the middle stump cartwheeling. Fred turned to the umpire and said: “I must be getting close.”
After last week’s six scoops, I feel I must be getting close to having a story published in the Herald Sun.
Your response to me suggests that you missed journalism 101 when the copy-boy explained that a scoop wasn’t only what went on top of an ice cream cone.
Bruce