THE World Anti-Doping Agency's second report this week by its independent commission confirmed "embedded" corruption in a damning critique of the International Association of Athletics Federations. Notably, but not exclusively, it involves the global body's former president, Lamine Diack, but also two of his family. It even implicated Russia's president, Vladimir Putin.

WADA's evidence of extortion around burying positive doping tests consigns the IAAF to the depths of a cesspit hitherto the exclusive sporting preserve of the Olympic movement and FIFA.

No condemnation is too strong, and we make no apology or excuse for conduct which the commission believe "cannot be ignored or dismissed as attributable to the odd renegade acting on his own . . . The circle of knowledge of the offending conduct within the IAAF is much larger than has been acknowledged."

However, reports of the investigation have revealed elements of the media making the evidence fit their perceived agenda, demonising and discrediting Sebastian Coe.

For weeks, they have been attempting to brand the position of Diack's recently-appointed presidential heir as untenable. It has been alleged Lord Coe must have known or suspected, yet failed to ask appropriate questions.

Yet the chairman of the commission, Canadian lawyer Richard Pound, said in presenting his report that he: "could not think of anyone better" to deliver the sport from crisis.

Having heard all the evidence in the forensic 89-page report, Pound is best placed to pass judgement, and the majority of British athletes have agreed.

Coe has repeatedly been referred to as Diack's No.2, not least by the BBC in coverage of the WADA report. This is sloppy and inaccurate. Was it designed to make Coe appear complicit?

Below the IAAF president there is a senior vice president, Robert Hersh. If Diack had a No.2, it was surely he, yet the American has not been pilloried like Coe. Under Hersh sit three vice presidents, of whom Coe is one. The others are a Qatari, Dahlan Jumaan Al-Hamad, and Sergey Bubka the former pole-vaulter whom Coe defeated for the presidency. Three of four vice presidents have escaped censure in the very British game of dethroning icons.

Full-time IAAF staff in their Monaco headquarters were surely best placed to be aware of Diack's conduct than vice presidents whose appointments are largely honorary, or council members who have no involvement with day-to-day operations. Coe was in the Monaco office fewer than a handful of days annually.

Perhaps most pertinently the IAAF constitution allowed Diack to conduct major negotiations on his own. Only if he felt it "appropriate" did he have to consult his vice presidents or treasurer. So he operated unchallenged.

Unsurprisingly, WADA's commission concluded the IAAF: "lacked a system of governance," and recommend a full overhaul.

For all that investigations by a German TV company, and later the Sunday Times, have ultimately led to this damning indictment of athletics, the independent commission declined to accept the conclusions of Australian scientists Michael Ashenden and Robin Parisotto. Consulted by the two media, they claimed the IAAF had enough evidence to have sanctioned numerous athletes.

But WADA say: "It would not have been legally possible to bring a successful sanctioning process against any athlete based on the values in the IAAF database."

Indeed, the commission revealed there was no such database, just a collation of some tests - a list significantly excluding all out-of-competition ones worldwide for three years. Including Russian ones.

The investigation said the IAAF was, "among the most active anti-doping organisations; . . . has played an active role in the advancement of the applicable science," and that IAAF follow-up on suspicious readings: "have generally been thorough and reasonable."

Far from being insufficiently active on EPO testing, WADA's report concluded: "The IAAF has been extremely active in this aspect of the fight against doping in sport."

The Australians, it emerged, had incomplete information (lack of out-of-competition tests from 2007-2010). "To draw definite conclusions on the basis of incomplete data is a serious issue and they should have taken more precautions in that regard."

Much of the case against the IAAF was on a false premise, and the IAAF rebuttal of their evidence was accepted.

Diack's betrayal was exposed later, and Interpol and the French police are investigating: Operation Augeas - named by someone with a taste for mythology and a tendency to prejudge matters. It refers to Hercules's labour of cleansing the Augean Stables, now a metaphor for purging corrupton. Not much evidence of objectivity there, even if the Senegalese now seems bang to rights.

The IAAF ethics commission is also investigating deputy general secretary Nick Davies whom WADA concluded "was well aware of Russian 'skeletons' in the cupboard".

Notorious marathon cheat, former London and New York winner Liliya Shobukova, paid $469,000 in a bid to escape a doping ban. The grubby conspiracy failed to deliver, so she demanded the bribe be repaid.

A Singapore-based company, Black Tidings (Launder Black Cash, in Hindi!) returned 300,000 euros. The president of the All Russia Athletics Federation, Shobukova's agent and coach, Diack and his sons, and Gabrielle Dolle, head of the IAAF medical and anti-doping department for 20 years, were all implicated.

Yet to me, the most disturbing issue is not the IAAF corruption. The commission's remit was just Russian doping, but they found evidence of a high prevalence of suspected blood doping in Turkey, Ukraine, Kenya, Morocco and Spain. When the independent commission was launched, I observed to WADA's Scottish president, Craig Reedie, that there was huge evidence of doping elsewhere. "This is enough to swallow at the moment," he told the Herald.

But in light of this report, WADA must spread its net to other nations and other sports. To imagine this is confined to athletics would be naive.