Editorial note: This article is an opinion piece based on Ashley Geelan’s June 19, 2026 VicNews article, its later correction, and screenshots of his public Bluesky replies supplied to Geelan Lies on June 20, 2026.
Ashley Geelan has found the one form of journalism he cannot handle: his own
There is an old boxing line about a fighter with a glass jaw. He can throw punches all night, but the first one that comes back makes the whole act wobble.
That is where Ashley Geelan appears to be this week.
For years, Geelan has dressed up fact-light, emotionally loaded reporting as public-interest journalism. Names in headlines. Personal details. Breathless framing. Big claims, thin proof, and very little care for the people on the receiving end. But when someone mirrors that same loose, theatrical style back at him, suddenly the tone changes. Suddenly, democracy is at stake. Suddenly, a Facebook post is not just a Facebook post. It is harassment, stalking, lies, damage, family impact, and a reason to stand up.
The irony is doing all the heavy lifting here.
The article that started the tantrum
On June 19, 2026, VicNews published an article titled “Former Mernda footballer harasses journalist online”. The piece was written by Ashley Geelan and concerned a Facebook post that claimed Geelan had barricaded himself inside a building near Cramer Street in Reservoir.
The VicNews article says Victoria Police told the outlet that Geelan was not involved in the incident. If that is accurate, the original Facebook claim was wrong. Fine. Correcting false claims is fair game.
But Geelan did not stop at correction. He turned it into a full personal spectacle. The article named the alleged poster repeatedly, tied him to a football club, reproduced abusive private messages, framed the conduct as possible harassment and stalking, and originally used the wrong footballer’s image before publishing a correction.
That last part matters. VicNews later admitted: “The original image posted in this article was not of David Hutchinson, but of another former Mernda FNC football player.” The outlet apologised for the error, then insisted the rest of the report stood.
So Geelan’s complaint about inaccurate personal targeting arrived inside an article that inaccurately targeted someone else with the wrong image. You could not script a cleaner example of the glass jaw problem if you tried.
The meltdown after publication
After publishing the article, Geelan posted it to Bluesky through the Geelan Mitchell Media account. Screenshots supplied to Geelan Lies show him defending the article in a string of emotional replies.
He wrote that he would rather be reporting on other matters, but said he would “stand up” when faced with what he called provable lies affecting his family. In another reply, he argued that people who publish lies do not get to avoid being named. He then speculated that the subject of the article was more worried because his football club and league now knew about it.
That is the interesting part. Geelan was not just correcting the record. He was broadcasting consequences. Club. League. Damage control. Reputation. Employment. All the pressure points he normally seems comfortable applying to other people.
In a later reply, when another user raised the risk of defamation and reputational damage, Geelan dismissed the idea of courts and lawyers. He wrote that the problem was already solved, then asked: what if the person’s employer saw what he had published? He finished by saying he had corrected the record and that the fallout was “their, not my, problem.”
That is not merely a correction. That is the punishment being said out loud.
Then came the correction about the wrong photo.
And even after that, he kept going. Another screenshot shows him suggesting that the account connected to the story had disappeared shortly before the club president contacted him. A reply from another Bluesky user warned that publishing something like this publicly without proof was serious because it could do real reputational damage.
Exactly.
When Geelan gets Geelaned
The glass jaw is not that Geelan objected to a false claim. Anyone would object to being falsely dragged into a police incident. The glass jaw is that Geelan seems genuinely shocked that other people might play by the same rough rules he uses.
Loose claim? Public name? Emotional framing? Social pressure? Reputation damage? A headline designed to make one person look terrible?
That is not some alien tactic. That is the Geelan method with the mirror turned around.
And once the mirror was up, he reacted exactly like someone who can dish it out but cannot take it. The public replies were not calm journalism. They read like a man furious that his own formula had been applied to him.
He has every right to correct a falsehood. He does not have a right to pretend his own outlet has always handled other people’s names, reputations, and private lives with surgical care. The wrong-photo correction alone should have caused a pause. Instead, the response was essentially: yes, we used the wrong image, but the rest stands.
The real lesson
Geelan’s article is useful, just not in the way he intended. It shows how quickly he recognises reputational harm when he is the subject. It shows how comfortable he is escalating a dispute into a public naming exercise. It shows how little room there is between “I was wronged” and “here is a full public article about the person I blame.”
Most of all, it shows the glass jaw.
Ashley Geelan wants the freedom to publish sharp, personal, emotionally charged material about others. But when the same style comes back at him, he calls it harassment, talks about family impact, and turns the grievance into content.
That is not strength. That is a very fragile chin.
Sources:
- VicNews: “Former Mernda footballer harasses journalist online”, published June 19, 2026.
- Reader-supplied screenshots of Geelan Mitchell Media’s Bluesky thread and replies, supplied June 20, 2026.