Black and white media to blame

Today’s breathless announcement that James Hird has ‘done a u-turn on coaching’ is disingenuous at best.

 

Hird had made a number of guarded responses to extraordinarily direct questioning over his coaching aspirations. At no stage did he announce he was available to coach Essendon in 2011, yet the lead of a Caroline Wilson piece in The Age this morning scurrilously suggests that was the case.

 

Hird had been asked, somewhat provocatively, to make specific comments about his coaching ambitions. As is common in these situations, his responses were general in nature and sought to give him some wriggle room without putting his hand up as a coaching aspirant in the immediate future.

 

The only place where there has been any misunderstanding has been in the fevered imaginations of ‘journalists’ like Ms Wilson.

 

Not for the first time, the media’s desire for controversy and a one-on-one ‘battle’ between two high-profile people has outweighed any adherence to journalistic principles.