These may seem at first glance to be the most self-serving rules imaginable. "Hold everyone in the community accountable except those who might actually respond by scrutinising you" and "turn a blind eye to a mechanism that keeps providing you with stories".

"Typical - hypocritical - hack."

I'm not going to talk here about why I don't feel qualified to judge other journalists. That's a treatise for another day.

Leaks, on the other hand, are topical at the moment given the situation at Parramatta, where chief executive Paul Osborne flew to Melbourne to meet Kiwis coach and Storm assistant Stephen Kearney about the Eels job - one which Daniel Anderson already has.

News of the meeting leaked out. In any other season, when a team was not stripped of two premierships, this would be a scandal to end all scandals.

Radio commentator Ray Hadley believes the new board at Parramatta needed help from the media to be elected last year and directors are now returning the favour by leaking info to the press.

These leaks, apparently, are bringing down this proud club.

I disagree; ‘shoot the messenger' is still a stupid and morally shallow approach even if the messenger is talking off the record and finishes by saying "this conversation never took place".

I don't write about leaks, or conduct investigations into who made them, because leaks are the truth. And it's my job to find out the truth. And exposing leaks cuts off my access to the truth - and therefore it cuts off yours and if I was writing about something less trivial than football, it would stop the wheels of democracy turning.

The real debate, the only one that matters, is why Paul Osborne went to Melbourne, with his team still in the running for the finals, and interviewed another coach about taking a job that was already filled.

He says he wasn't following instructions from the board, that he was exercising "due diligence" in case they wanted a new coach, in the case of Parramatta missing the finals.

There was a similar situation recently when Eels star Jarryd Hayne went to a meeting with would-be recruit Quade Cooper. Hayne didn't want his presence publicised because he is mates with current halves Daniel Mortimer and Jeff Robson.

So when it made the paper, Hayne was upset. He should have been upset at himself for going behind his mates' backs - if people did fewer things they didn't want others to find out about, the world would be a better place.

Why on earth didn't Osborne make discreet contact with Kearney through a sufficiently-removed third party, just like everyone else does in rugby league every day? Does he not have a phone? Or an email account?

Or was his trip to Melbourne intended to show people what a wily and cunning CEO he is?

You see, it's people's actions that cause embarrassment, damage and even humiliation - not leaks.