Johnson said: "If you take certain comments that have been written immediately after the event and only report the negative things it is clearly not a true reflection of the mood of the squad. They are opinions and certainly not truths, written in emotive times for anyone. A lot of them we were aware of as a management group.
"I find it, the way it's been reported, the imbalance of that reporting, is to me one of the worst things. In that report there is obviously praise for some people. I don't think it's fair on the players – one thing that team did was stick together.
"You sometimes let things go by but the way this has been reported has been so inaccurate that I had to come here. A lot of the players are horrified as to how this has come out and how it's been portrayed.
"To pick out the most emotive and the worst comments is dangerous and very damaging."
On the subject of his team of coaches, who were the subject of a number of critical comments from unnamed players, Johnson said: "Coaches aren't there to be liked. It's not a popularity contest. We live and die by what we do. As a coach you pay the price and some of us did that." Brian Smith, the attack coach, resigned on Thursday.
Asked about the incident in which three players were accused of inappropriate behaviour towards a hotel chambermaid – which, according to one of the leaked comments, led to a suggestion that the woman should be paid around £14,000 in "hush money" – Johnson said: "I had spoken to the girl involved before, after, a number of times. The players had involved had apologised, we thought that was the end of it.
"Three weeks later there was a demand through a lawyer for money. We said to the players: 'You need to now get independent legal advice, all of you.'
"I said to them: 'You need to apologise to her.' And that's what they did. You have a number of outside factors involved including the media and a number of influences round her which kept the story going for a number of weeks."
Asked about the suggestion that the players had been advised to pay the woman in question, Johnson said: "She asked for compensation and an option you could do was to do that."
Johnson was asked if he regretted his handling of the affair in which players, including Mike Tindall, were photographed and filmed in a Queenstown bar.
Johnson said: "Mike knew what he had done and where that would lead to. He was in a bad place and had put the team in a bad situation and at that point you have to support the player.
"I spoke with [the players] after the Queenstown incident and left them in no uncertain terms as to where I thought they were at that point and after that there wasn't an issue until the end of the tournament.
"With hindsight we would have changed a lot of things and made life easier for everyone. We made mistakes as a group and could have handled things differently."
Johnson dismissed questions about the position of Rob Andrew, the RFU's elite rugby director, who on Thursday said he would not resign.
Asked about the level of support offered to him by Andrew during the World Cup, he said: "The key thing there is hindsight. We said right at start, if you make one wrong step it goes right to the top of the game. The ramifications are huge and some players were late appreciating that.
"I've no regrets with what I did. You act in the best interests of the team and the individual at the time."
Johnson said "I took the responsibility, that's why I'm not in a job now, I accept that," but he added: "There are good things there as well. We won 10 out of 13 games. We won the Six Nations Championship. Brian has been criticised but we scored the most tries in two of the three years he was there for the Six Nations.
"There are facts that are being papered over. There is a good group of players there with a fantastic attitude that want to be successful who are horrified about how they and the team are being portrayed. There is a good core group who will be ultimately stronger for this when they come out of the other side. It is pretty horrible right now."
