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11/ Behind the scenes, Collingwood was backgrounding journalists on ‘concerns’ about Heritier’s ‘mental health.’ McGuire lied to one presenter off-air, saying that Heritier had come to him to personally apologise for his comments. Tier was actually in LA at the time.
12/ The Project agreed to cover the story. I thought this was a good thing - Waleed Aly is a well-known fan of AFL, and no stranger to racism. I’d seen him give a lecture on Michael Long. He was outspoken about Adam Goodes in 2013.
13/ The final TV package was around 10 minutes. But the actual interview went for an hour and a half. I know because I was in the room with Heritier and Waleed. The conversation started out fine, but soon turned into a gruelling, circular cross-examination.
14/ The questions were bizarre. For example, if Heritier was telling the truth, why wouldn’t more players admit to a culture of racism at the club? Imagine staking a victim's credibility on why none of their abusers had publicly admitted to their behaviour.
15/ Waleed claimed early on that he didn’t have ‘Collingwood’s side of the story.’ This is simply not true. I found out later that CFC had direct conversations with Waleed where they attacked Heritier’s credibility, claiming that he had mental health issues and an axe to grind.
16/ It was obvious later that this had a clear impact on the interview and the way The Project presented the story. An hour and a half of this brought Heritier to tears. Still, we hoped that Waleed was just being extra rigorous and the final edit would be good. It wasn’t.
17/ The final package made no mention whatsoever of the AFL’s top executive being caught out in a total lie about the league meeting with Heritier. You might think that this was an important point to make.
18/ The interview package was bad enough, but the editorialising on the panel afterwards was worse. Again, Helliar attacked Heritier’s credibility because 'nobody' at the club would confirm his claim about a nickname. Andrew Krakouer had done so publicly.
19/ So Heritier’s claims about racism, detailed in both a feature-length documentary by an award-winning filmmaker and a published op-ed in the Guardian, didn’t pass the rigorous journalistic standards of *checks notes*... Peter Helliar and The Project.
20/ Not sure whether Peter Helliar, who performed for years in character as the larrikin Collingwood supporter ‘Strauchanie,’ was the best person to objectively judge whether Heritier’s claims about racism at CFC were true or not.
21/ Even Waleed had to correct himself and Helliar. He admitted that Andrew Krakouer had confirmed the nickname, but dismissed this because he was apparently a ‘rare person.’ What? The way the testimony of an Aboriginal man was waved away was just stunning.
22/ Waleed repeated that he didn’t have Collingwood’s story, and mused about whether or not Heritier just didn’t understand that the AFL and CFC were maybe nicer than he realised. Yes, the same club and league that had been lying about him and calling him crazy.
23/ This wasn’t ‘not going on record’ or ‘not having the other side of the story.’ This was collusion. This was the biggest infotainment show in the country doing free damage control for the AFL and CFC by recycling tropes about Heritier being an angry, untrustworthy Black man.
24/ To call this poor journalism is too kind. It was unethical and dishonest. This was two powerful institutions, the AFL and Collingwood, gently leaning on their TV friends to manage a situation for them. It killed what could have been a real conversation about racism.
25/ Heritier is one of the most honest and genuine people I know. He gave his life to that game and that club, and had nothing to gain by coming forward after retirement. All he wanted was to make the game better for those who came after him. He deserved better.
