Item (Wilson) 1: No one, it seems, except for the Essendon Football Club and certain individuals within it, could now deny that the Bombers have brought the game into disrepute. No one, unless they were living in another stratosphere, could not agree that the club and key football department officials failed dismally to look after their players.

My Comment:

1. At this point in time, there was no evidence that the Essendon players used illegal substances. Thus, your comments could only be based on governance and occupational, health and safety issues.
   
   
2. You breached so many Press Council and Age rules there were obviously just as many governance issues at the Age as there were at Essendon and the AFL. 
   
   
3. You hadn’t even defined what bringing the game into disrepute was, let alone proved it.
   
   
4. You hadn’t produced any evidence for your readers to assess, so it was impossible for them to decide whether they believed Essendon had brought the game into disrepute.
   
   
5. Point two of the summarised Age code states that “Staff should seek to act always in the best interests of the public and the maintenance of good faith with the community we serve, rather than for the benefit of sectionals. 
   
   
6. Point four of the Age summarised Code states that “Staff should seek to present only fair, balanced and accurate material”. You breached both principles in attacking Essendon and Hird for governance and OH&S breaches but by failing to mention the AFL’s governance and OH&S breaches. 
   
   
7. The AFL was party to at least three agreements – the bi-lateral agreement with Essendon which enabled it to compete in the competition; the tripartite agreement between the AFL, Essendon and each player; and an agreement with the Australian Sports Commission. All agreements carry governance and duty of care responsibilities to the players. The AFL failed its governance responsibilities in many areas: 
   
   i. Clause 12 of the tripartite agreement says: “The parties to this contract (AFL/Essendon/the player) shall use their best endeavours, in relation to any matter or thing directly within their control, to bring about compliance with all the provisions of this Contract.” 
   
   ii. Demetriou breached Clause 4.6 of the AFL’s anti-doping code by not informing ASADA in early 2012 that Essendon had marginalised its doctors? Clause 4.6 of the AFL’s anti-doping code says: “Where reasonable and as soon as the AFL becomes aware that a possible Anti-Doping Rule Violation may have occurred, the AFL will immediately advise ASADA of the possible violation. The AFL will provide ASADA with all information pertaining to the possible Anti-Doping Rule Violation.” 
   
   iii. The AFL’s anti-doping code stipulates that the AFL should have written to Essendon chief executive, Ian Robson, and informed him about the AFL / ASADA meeting with Paul Hamilton, James Hird and Danny Corcoran on 5 August 2011. The AFL failed to do so. If that letter had been written this whole sorry saga may not have occurred.
   
   
8. The lack of evidence notwithstanding, it is impossible to judge whether Essendon brought the game into disrepute until you had investigated the AFL’s governance failures and determined how much those failures contributed to Essendon’s failures. 
   
   
9. General attacks on unnamed individuals were a weasel’s way of writing. The Press Council and Fairfax codes of conduct required you to name such individuals. 
   
   
10. You didn’t detail any damage caused to any of the players. As the was no evidence they took substances on the banned list, there was no reason why they would have suffered any damage? 
    
    
11. You made no attempt to make a case about who was ultimately responsible for looking after the players. You should have documented the job responsibilities, procedures and performances for not only the Essendon board, but the CEO, human resources manager, the OH&S officer, football manager, coach, doctor and financial controller. Then the reader could have assessed who was most responsible. 
    
    
12. According to the law, Hird ranked about 13 or 14 at Essendon in terms of responsibility. If we threw in the AFL Commissioners, Demetriou, Gillon McLachlan, Brett Clothier and the HR manager, all of whom had more responsibility than Hird, then he doesn’t get in the top 25.  

Item (Wilson) 2: Every other club, every other player … wants this sorry story completed. And yet there is every suggestion Essendon remains determined to fight any harsh punishment from the AFL, that it will dig its heels in at the insistence of new chairman Paul Little and pursue what it sees as its right to play finals. Should the AFL strip the club or attempt to strip it of premiership points, Essendon seems to want to challenge that charge. Such strategy would be madness, but that is not the only complex and difficult issue facing the AFL and one of its largest and oldest clubs.

My Comment: 

1. This comment epitomised your prejudice against Essendon. Essendon had had barely enough time to read the interim report let alone dissect it, and you were lamenting what action you thought Essendon may take. At this stage, Hird hadn’t even received a copy of the report, let alone discussed the implications with his legal team.
   
   
2. Charges hadn’t even been laid yet you believed Essendon had to accept any penalty no matter how harsh the penalties may have been. It’s extraordinary that a person with such an attitude was ever employed as a journalist in Australia.
   
   
3. Although no charges had been laid, and although no hearing had even been set, you stated that (Essendon) challenging that charge (sic) …would be madness.In typical sloppiness you forgot to tell your readers what charge would be madness to challenge.
   
   
4. You were also implying Essendon was responsible for the “sorry state not being completed”.  Interestingly, five months after Essendon stupidly capitulated, the “sorry state had not been completed”.  
   
   
5. You were was so anti Essendon and Hird, you were prepared ignore their fundamental right of natural justice. There was a certain procedure to follow. Collect the evidence; examine the evidence; make recommendations; the prosecutor decides on the charges; the accused is given those charges and time to prepare a defence; a hearing is conducted at which time the defendants present their cases; a jury determines ‘guilt’ or ‘innocence’; and someone determines the penalties. 
   
   
6. You were, so, certain Essendon would be stripped of points, you had obviously received another leak. 
   
   
7. You and your boss should have been re-assigned as junior court reporters, so, that they could learn how the justice system worked in Australia. 
   
   
8. Basically, you were saying Essendon and Hird should accept whatever penalties were handed out, irrespective of the charges and irrespective of how draconian the penalties were.  
   
   
9. As much as clubs and players wanted the whole sorry saga to end, the football community was entitled for justice to be done, irrespective of how long it took.
   
   
10. Many football lovers also wanted transparency. They eschewed cover ups. They detested unbalanced and unfair reporting. They hated seeing journalists sacrificing their principles to curry favour with powerful institutions such as the AFL. 
    
    
11. Your arrogance in suggesting it be madness if Essendon challenged any decisions against them is mind-boggling. If Essendon and James Hird believed they were not being treated fairly, they had a right to challenge any decisions. 
    
    
12. Presumably, with an attitude such as that, you are not a member of the union. You just accepted what the boss says.

Item (Wilson) 3: One individual Essendon will not be able to negotiate on behalf of as part of any deal is its coach James Hird whom the club appears to have lost control of. 

My Comment: 

1. “Deals”. Having taken the high moral ground and railed against negotiations it is incomprehensible that you were countenancing the possibility of Hird negotiating a deal. 
   
   
2. You were denigrating Hird without offering any evidence how the club “appears to have lost control”. 

Item (Wilson) 4: Hird has worked passionately behind the scenes to create a narrative pitching him as a victim of the AFL and certain sections of the media he believes have been determined to destroy him.

My Comment:

1. This implied that Hird had done something underhanded. You had an obligation to spell out exactly what Hird had done behind the scenes and had an obligation to make the case that such action was underhanded.
   
   
2. You offered no evidence to support your claim.
   
   
3. Ladies and gentleman of the jury, I have led you through a sordid time for the media in this country, led by a woman who furiously ignored everything her newspaper claimed it stood for.  Instead of being ‘Independent Always’, of honouring, all those noble sections of The Age’s Code of Conduct, or the Journalists Code, even the codes of common decency that the rest of the community abide by, you carried out a vendetta so reprehensible that it beggars, belief.

You just have to ask yourself: What had James Hird done to you. that you should destroy him on the flimsiest of evidence?  So, flimsy that after all this time, ASADA, the body generously funded to seek out the evidence, and with the full co-operation of the AFL’s Integrity Unit, and with we should add, the full co-operation of James Hird, has found nothing.  

The lack of quality of the evidence is best summed up by the statement of Brett Clothier, the Head of the AFL’s Integrity Unit who sought to claim a place in history by being the first person to provide evidence to his own investigation. Have you challenged him on this gross abuse of natural justice.  

By hiding behind anonymous sources, smear, rumour, by being the messenger for people who were breaking the law, and who were too cowardly to reveal their identities, you lost your independence and became part of the AFL PR machine. 

As the evidence has been laid out before you, it is obvious that you had committed many, many wrongs. The most notable of these is that you have managed to bring the reputation of journalism into even more disrepute than it had been before you started on this sorry, malicious vendetta against James Hird.

Sadly, journalism doesn’t have a code, nothing anything like it, for charging people such as you with bringing the profession, if it does answer to that high calling, into disrepute. It says much about the depths which modern journalism had already plummeted. That you were able to take it even deeper into the morass, to an even greater low, is the final, compelling evidence that it is you, not James Hird, who is the guilty one.

Bruce Francis