Broad-based bias Anonymity: Despite Stuart Broad's superb first Test, The Courier-Mail refused to recognise his efforts. The treatment of English cricketer Stuart Broad by the Brisbane Courier-Mail during the first Test represents something I haven't seen in this country before. This is the newspaper (owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp) that during the recent election ran a full-sized front-page photo of Kevin Rudd with a quote of Tony Abbott's - "Does This Guy Ever Shut Up?" - as its headline. In the case of Broad, The Courier-Mail took upon itself the role of orchestrating the crowd response to the English player before he even took the field, by running a large photo of Broad on its front page above a line that described him as "a smug Pommy cheat." A tough start to the summer: Stuart Broad. To call him a smug Pom is merely insulting. Calling him a cheat goes to his integrity as a sportsman. A cheat is someone who robs not only his competitor but the game itself. Thereafter, The Courier-Mail refused to name Broad in its match reports - referring to him as "the 27-year-old English medium-pace bowler" - and cut him out of a photo of celebrating English players that appeared on the front page on the morning of the second day. In the course of his match commentary, former Australian captain Mark Taylor described The Courier-Mail's treatment of Broad as "rubbish." He was right. For a start, it was ignorant and, or, hypocritical. Broad was being demonised for not walking during the recent Ashes series in England. Forty years ago, the great South African batsman Barry Richards said the only time an Australian walked was when he ran out of petrol. Walking is not part of our cricket tradition. Adam Gilchrist's gallant exits without waiting for the umpire to officiate represent an exception, and not the rule, of Australian cricket behaviour. Furthermore, in the brave, unapologetic, intensely competitive way that he plays the game, Stuart Broad is the archetype of the Australian cricketer lionised in this country for the past 40 years. Australian crowds don't have to like him, and they probably would have booed him anyway, but the only possible effect The Courier-Mail campaign could have was to inflame the crowd's animosity towards him. And what is most irksome - the whole anti-Broad "campaign" rested on a phony premise. An English person visiting Brisbane for the Test and reading The Courier-Mail would assume that the newspaper represented an Australian attitude. What it represented was the idea of a few people in a newspaper office using the biggest show in town to get its "brand" before the public. What The Courier-Mail is doing comes straight from the playbook of the English tabloids and, last Saturday, Christopher Dore, the editor of The Courier-Mail, defended the assault on Broad in the way that the British tabloids invariably do. It was a joke, the criticism had come from jealous media rivals, the campaign had got "traction" for The Courier-Mail all over the world. Broad duly received his share of backhanded compliments and Dore finished by saying, "Purists have suggested The Courier-Mail has disrespected a talented sportsman. That's rubbish. We would never have bothered with any player who wasn't an exceptional talent. Jonathan Trott, you're safe. On Monday, Shane Warne (yes, Shane Warne) wrote the following in his column in the London Telegraph: "The one thing to mar the week was the treatment of Stuart Broad by the Australian print media ... What they did to Broad and the England team was childish, immature and it was embarrassing for Australians to watch it going on." That same day, the story broke that Trott had gone home for "a stress-related disease." There is no dishonour in that. There are people with stress-related diseases everywhere, their minds chattering through the night as they rehearse what may or may not happen the following day. More and more are going to appear in top-level sport as the demands on, and scrutiny of, players increases. At the same time, there is an element of danger in cricket that demands high levels of skill and courage to contend with. That's part of the game. People say sledging is also part of the game. I wish it wasn't, simply because most of it is dull-witted and repetitive. You go to top sport to see the best, not hear the worst. It may be that the red-hot spirit the game is played in makes it impossible for some people to stop giving vent to their frustrations and feelings, but Dave Warner's ill-judged remarks about Trott at the post-match press conference illustrated precisely why these insults should never be traded off the playing field. To quote no less an authority than Stuart Broad, that's a line you don't cross. But where, on the field, does the line lie? What I know is this: if any Australian uses the manner of Jonathan Trott's departure to sledge an English player - or even appears to do so - he will find himself a notorious figure, not merely in Australia but in all countries in which cricket is news. And any such individual would be foolish to expect he would be treated any more fairly than The Courier-Mail treated Stuart Broad.