The Age journalist Sam McClure has spoken on the “really difficult weekend” that saw him lose his 2020 Quill award for his reporting on the infamous Adelaide camp.
McClure, along with fellow journalist Caroline Wilson, issued an apology via The Age and other Nine mastheads earlier this month to Collective Mind, the organisation behind Adelaide’s training camp.
Collective Mind operators Derek Leddie and Amon Woulfe had taken legal action against McClure, Wilson, The Age and Nine on the reporting of the camp.
The story took a twist when McClure was stripped of a Quill award he won for his reporting on the camp, the news broken by News Corp on Sunday after the Melbourne Press Club board made a unanimous decision to revoke the Quill awarded to McClure in 2020.
Speaking on Sportsday on Monday night, McClure opened up about the “soul crushing” turn of events.
“It’s been a really difficult weekend, to be honest,” McClure said.
“No one wants to be put in that position, to make a conditional apology for the story that I wrote was one thing that I kind of made peace with, you know, big bad world out there, it’s a commercial decision.
“But to have my own cohort sort of abandon me and strip an award off me, well that’s what I’ve read, I haven’t heard from them, but if you read Newscorp that’s what’s happened.
“I haven’t been contacted by anyone about that, and that’s really hurt.
“The Age have gone back and asked for their version of events to be heard… (but) it seems like it (that it’s too late for that).
“It’s been a soul-crushing weekend, to be honest, it’s opened up my eyes in a way I kind of wish never had been.”
Sportsday co-host Gerard Healy noted he didn’t fully agree with McClure’s reporting of Adelaide’s 2018 pre-season camp, but said he couldn’t understand why the Quill award would be taken away.
“I think the apology, the conditional apology without liability, was an apology, I think, directed towards the reputation of Woulfe and Leddie and it didn’t seem to me to dispute the facts,” Healy said.
“So I’m not sure why you would lose a Quill award if the facts haven’t been disputed.”
McClure responded: “Yeah.”
“I’m sort of speechless at it, to be honest.
“Louise Milligan (of the ABC) won an award for a story about George Pell that the High Court found he was not guilty for, but did they take that award off her? No, it was still brilliant journalism.
“Look at what’s happening with Nick McKenzie and Ben Roberts-Smith in the Federal Court at the moment, the defamation laws are in this country what they are and I think we would set a dangerous precedent for journalism if we started taking awards off people after a publisher, not the actual masthead but a publisher, ends up making commercial decisions to settle with people.”
McClure and Wilson’s stories were taken down in the aftermath of the apology.
McClure also added he expects more to come out about Adelaide’s camp in due time.