Sportings clubs would not tolerate when mistruths are told outside their tents, so why do they accept those within their four walls?

Since sporting clubs have been able to create their own media products, many have struggled to stay on moral high ground when needing to tell the truth.

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Remember the days when sporting clubs, particularly football clubs, would ban the media?

They would put themselves on a high moral ground. They repeatedly demanded accuracy and fairness in reporting of their events, their people and their decisions.

And now they can do that reporting themselves. In some cases, in particular with the Adelaide Football Club, these sporting empires have greater media departments with more staff than radio and television stations.

But how do the clubs, especially AFL clubs, stack up when it comes to being truthful to their fans and the public?

Fremantle Football Club puts itself up for serious review in the honesty and trust stakes last week when the Dockers detailed the latest off-field moment of concern with Melbourne recruit Jesse Hogan.

Certainly Fremantle coach Ross Lyon was very assertive in how he expected the media to be accurate on its reporting of Hogan’s rather concerning status, not only as an AFL player but as a young man coping with the demands on his life.

“Clinical anxiety,” the Dockers told the world of Hogan’s problems, particularly with alcohol that had him turn up to training in an unfit state last week - and not play in Fremantle’s season-opener at the weekend.

Fremantle Dockers coach Ross Lyon.

But the media masters at Fremantle have been challenged - and rightly so - by the medical doctors who know a fair bit about mental health issues. The medicos say “clinical anxiety” is a made-up diagnosis - not a good move by an AFL club that has been very loud about demanding accuracy in the media.

One specialist told The West Australian newspaper that “AFL media spin managers” should not be deciding on the terminology for psychological disorders. This should be left to health professionals.

Fremantle took the term “clinical” as a preface to anxiety off its website after this term was challenged by many medical experts in Perth. The Dockers should never have put such a phrase before the public - and its fans - in the first place.

The Fremantle Football Club has taken a major dent in the credibility stakes. And the Dockers should expect even the simplest statements that come from its media office to be scrutinised with a hard eye from now on.

AFL clubs are losing the high moral ground - and their fans should be putting just as much heat on their clubs’ front offices as they have done over time with abusive mail to traditional media outlets (usually with no name and no address to know the sender).

One of Australia’s strongest voices in sports coverage, The Australian’s Patrick Smith, made a superb point at the weekend of how this abuse from AFL clubs’ media departments is doing damage to how mental health is understood across the community.

He wrote: “ .. a mental health issue appears the AFL’s new cover-all for poor player behaviour.”

This runs the risk of a cynical reaction whenever a player declares he has mental health problems. And those are sincere in their declarations on their mental state do not need such.

“The football environment,” adds Smith, “has been contaminated. It has been soiled by season after season of club officials and players deliberately lying.”

Smith wrote in 2011 - and it has not become any better since: “Lying is football’s second language. No one in the game is to be believed without heavy interrogation. Not the AFL, not the clubs and not the hangers-on.

“All of this mischief must stop.”

In 2011 - and today - is remains so true. Sporting clubs put up the bar for how they wanted - and demanded - accuracy in reports on their workings. Now they need to live up to that high moral standing with their own media operations.

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