Sometimes stories about the media leave you feeling grubby, and none more than the nasty tale behind this piece in the Sunday Herald Sun last Sunday, in which Channel Nine newsreader Peter Hitchener outed himself as gay.

It was a strange and oddly stilted piece – mainly a soft profile hung on Hitchener’s tenth anniversary as weeknight news presenter, with the “outing” contained three quarters from the top. There was a news page pointer that focussed on the one paragraph gay revelation. Why would Hitchener choose this moment? What could have motivated the paper, not known for its discretion, to do it in this way? Andrew Bolt congratulated the editor and reporter on their sensitivity.

But in the lead up to the publication there were some other events that leave us less certain that the congratulations are deserved.

This is not a story about Hitchener’s private life. He is entitled to exactly that. It is a story about journalistic practice and that unhappy ship, the Sunday Herald Sun.

It begins like this. About two years ago a Ballarat policeman was called to observe a parked car that had two men in it. He saw nothing other than two men sitting in a car together. There was nothing salacious, let alone illegal. The cop did a standard car rego check, and the vehicle came up as belonging to Peter Hitchener.

The copper filed a brief report and that was it.

Nevertheless it seems that the story got around the police force that Hitchener had been caught in a compromising situation in a car with a man, and somehow this found its way to the ears of one James Campbell, a freelance journalist and former adviser to Victorian Shadow Health Minister Helen Shardy.

Campbell, we understand, is in a strange position at the Sunday Herald Sun. Until recently based in London, he is not on staff but has been given a more or less permanent visitor’s pass and a desk in the newsroom, courtesy of his mate, Chief of Staff Chris Tinkler.

A few weeks ago Campbell rang the Ballarat copper asking about the parked car incident and Hitchener. That same night Campbell turned up on the doorstep of the policeman’s home. Asked how he had got the address he said he had checked the electoral roll, and proceeded to ask explicit questions about what happened in that car all those months ago.

The copper was alarmed enough to ring the Sunday Herald Sun newsdesk, which told him that Campbell didn’t really work for the paper. Then the cop alerted his superiors to what was going on.

That’s when things got murkier.

A week before last Sunday’s publication, Campbell contacted Hitchener and confronted him with a version of the Ballarat story. This was the beginning of a week of negotiation between Campbell, the paper’s editor Simon Pristel and Nine network publicity. This negotiation quickly escalated beyond the Melbourne Channel Nine publicity desk of Michelle Stamper to the offices of Melbourne Nine news director Michael Venus and the Sydney offices of Nine’s director of corporate relations Heidi Virtue and network executive director Jeff Browne.

The paper was bargaining for a full disclosure from Hitchener. The implied threat: that it would run with its Ballarat beat up if Nine and its newsreader refused to play ball. Nine relented in the end, agreeing to an interview between Hitchener and Sunday Herald Sun senior writer and gossip columnist Fiona Byrne. According to several sources, the interview was also attended by Browne and Venus.

When Crikey rang Channel Nine spokeswoman Michelle Stamper about this story early this week, she said that no threats had been made by the Sunday Herald Sun, and that the network was completely happy with the story. She later denied any knowledge of Campbell’s involvement.

Channel Nine and the Sunday Herald Sun united in maintaining the impression that Hitchener’s decision to out himself was his alone, and had nothing to do with pressure from journalists.

Incredibly, the editor of the Sunday Herald Sun, Simon Pristel, also said earlier this week that he was completely unaware of any involvement by Campbell or of the Ballarat incident. He said the profile was the result of a long standing request to interview Hitchener on his anniversary. He denied that any threats or pressure were used.

But today, told that Crikey was about to run this story, Stamper sent the following e-mail, asking us to attribute it to a “network spokesperson”. (Happy to do the no-names no pack drill routine, Michelle, when we are frankly dealt with. Not this time.)

Stamper said:

As your report states, when Police attended, they found “no evidence of anything illegal or salacious going on”. This is our understanding as well. It is true that the Sunday Herald Sun wished to do a feature piece on Peter focussing on his long career and Peter wished to also cover his s-xuality – probably the worst kept secret in television. Nine fully supported Peter’s decision.

Campbell himself met our inquiries earlier this week with a straight “no comment” and Fiona Byrne did not return calls asking for comment. Nor did Peter Hitchener.

The context for the story is an increasingly unhappy ship.

Late last month the journalists’ union issued a bulletin to staff at the Sunday Herald Sun urging them to join the union in clear anticipation of major trouble.

The bulletin claimed “numerous” staff had spoken to the union about “unfair and unreasonable treatment of staff by managers and the increasing pressures due to fewer staff and more work. The Alliance needs to hear from anyone else who is feeling pressured by management and objects to the name-calling, derision, warnings, threats, workrate reviews, pay cuts, loss of hours or ‘advice’ to quit.”

Another issue bothering the staff was the use of “untrained, underpaid editorial assistants on the Sunday Herald Sun in place of experienced, graded journalists.” The bulletin claimed editorial assistants were now rostered full time to do journalists’ work and have been “improperly directed to report and write major stories for the front of the newspaper as well as compile several pages at the back.”

Nasty.

Leaves you feeling dirty, really, doesn’t it?