Given the subject matter of some of the most recent posts, I thought it was about time I dusted off my trusty Fauxfacts Media b/s article generator again. I plugged in some of the latest events, plus a couple of past Fauxfacts articles, and it came up with what's below.
FAUXFACTS NEEDS TO SEVER TIES WITH WILSON
Caboose Media - 12 December 2014
The unmistakable conclusion from its chief gossip columnist’s awkward and ill-timed silence is that Fauxfacts Media can never truly put the past behind it until it officially severs its ties with Carowhine Wilson.
Regrettably, the scars will take many years to heal before the media industry and the wider community can begin to forgive Wilson for her selfish and cavalier treatment of an issue that instead demanded cool-headed and unbiased analysis. The reality is that she is finished in her present role.
Fauxfacts Media must sack her and finally end her excruciating attempts to assassinate the character of one of the icons of Australian Rules Football and shred the reputations of one of the country’s most famous sporting clubs and its players.
Caboose Media understands that, as the dispute between ASADA and the AFL and Essendon entered another pivotal phase on Friday, the view among a number of her colleagues was that Wilson had already been ordered never to write on the saga again.
But the lumbering efforts of Fauxfacts Media’s management to deal with the issue appear to have muddied the waters. There is now confusion as to where the truth lies amid rumours of a gap year, the sack and a blanket ban on any more of her flights of fancy. In some quarters, it is also being alleged that matters are being made even more difficult by Wilson’s trademark refusal to begin making a series of belated apologies for her litany of errors.
Senior executives at Fauxfacts simply must move on Wilson, and not least because of her apparent unwillingness to put the company first. It is alleged that her private attitude has been one of growing anger and hostility and, while her handful of remaining confidantes at Fauxfacts insist she has moved on, this is not the case. There is even talk of a siege mentality. Other sources speak of increasing signs of delusion.
Having already had to deal with the spectre of colleagues’ internal fury with Wilson spilling into the public domain, Fauxfacts Media management are understood to have been examining the company’s legal position extensively over recent weeks. Matters are said to have come to a head last weekend when Wilson allegedly insisted that ASADA would not lose its Supreme Court bid this week to subpoena witnesses – and that she needed to write a week-long series of articles to this effect.
While it still remains unclear as to exactly how many times Wilson has breached her contract, and violated the Journalists’ Code of Ethics, what is obvious is that Fauxfacts needs to cut its losses.
The organisation has ill-advisedly afforded Wilson so much slack on so many occasions in the past that there was always going to be a time when its blind loyalty, and the strange cult of its gossip columnist, was going to come back to haunt it.
It is understood that the company hoped that a period of leave in the middle of the year would help her return 'a less troubled person' and that her urgent, mandatory enrolment in a training course on the issue of drugs in sport would assist her newspaper to move forward. It is alleged that the view of some at Fauxfacts was also that Wilson needed re-education on the basics of verifying unproven information provided by sources, especially those motivated by toxic levels of self-interest.
But none of this appears to have proved successful. Wilson’s refusal to accept responsibility for failing to ever tell the full story of the hopelessly bungled and politically motivated investigation of Essendon has allegedly now led to chaotic confusion about how Fauxfacts should cover the story in its final and most telling moments.
If Wilson actually thought she was smart to relentlessly and personally pursue one of the most successful, articulate and intelligent footballing figures in history in James Hird, then she has simply outsmarted herself. Her dangerous obsession with Hird and her bizarre personal attacks on his wife, Tania, have only underlined her own stupidity.
And, if Wilson wanted to be respected for her coverage of what now looks likely to end in one of the biggest debacles in the AFL’s history – as was originally her right – then she should always have been prepared to tell all sides of the story.
If she still insists on believing that the main person at fault is a man who ironically has always looked like being the least culpable, then her reputation is beyond repair. Worse, if she still can not see let alone concede that it was her responsibility to repudiate the wild allegations about uncontrolled drug regimes, “all those needles”, a captain who took banned drugs, and a stream of “mysterious … and dangerous” supplements, then she simply does not deserve to ever report on sport again.