Balance or what?

Mainstream media regularly gets a bagging for its mono-voice - be that criticism from Gerard Henderson about the left leaning Age and ABC, or the rest of the commentariat about the "conservative" agenda of the Oz.

So it was pretty intriguing to see "balance" from on-line media site iTWire. It carried two pieces by renai Le May that bagged the opposition's approach to attacking Quigley. It then had editor Stan Beer's own column defending the coalition's approach. He writes, in part;

It is both proper and desirable for Coalition members of the Senate Estimates committee to subject Mr Quigley to an intense and thorough grilling.

Mr Quigley is a big boy and there is no doubt he can defend himself in Senate Estimates. He doesn't need the media jumping to his defence. In fact, a supposedly impartial media should be asking many of the same questions as the questions being raised in Estimates. In a free country that's what the media and the Opposition are supposed to do.

Problem is that at least one commentator, me, has been saying that it is right to subject the NBN to intense scrutiny - but the scrutiny needs to be focussed on what NBN Co is doing now, not on the recruitment process for the CEO.

But full credit at least to Stan for running the syndicated column from Renai...unless they were just to give credibility to his own column.

Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est