Mark Day, and by Crikey he's mad about Carl Williams and the Melbourne Storm ...

(Above: an evocation of the ecstatic state that can be obtained by reading News Ltd newspapers, with or without mushroom assistance).

Poor old Mark Day.

The job of being a lickspittle lackey to Chairman Murdoch's media empire is always a tough one, but when you throw in a dash of paranoia, it gets all the more problematic.

His fixation on Crikey is fast becoming tragic. Crikey, for those who came late, is a minnow of an independent online rag, and a bare echo of the grand old days of Richard Walsh and the Nation Review, which fancied itself as lean and nosey like a ferret, but featured Bob Ellis and so became flatulent and bloated.

Since Crikey has taken Monday off, like sensible folk, or like dole bludgers, it's likely we'll have to wait awhile for them to resume their war with Day.

So let's follow Day down the rabbit hole, while nipping a little mushroom for sustenance, as we ponder the logic in Crikey's comment on Williams' murder indefensible.

The logic gets a bit arcane, but it seems the nub of the charge is that Margaret Simons, who once worked for the coffee grinders at The Age, preparing snooty copy for latte sippers, dared to suggest that the Herald Sun (known fondly as the Hun to all those who like to cock a snoot at Godwin's Law on a daily basis) might not have helped matters for Carl Williams by making it known he was on the take for 8k for his daughter's school fees, thereby tipping the nod, or nodding the wink, to anyone in the interested underworld that he might be on the turn.

Day indignantly quotes Simons, while resolutely refusing to link to her, perhaps because he believes that intellectual property rights should be over-ridden, since information and opinion is vital to democracy, and he's indignant that her story Did the Herald Sun kill Carl Williams? is currently trapped behind the Crikey paywall.

How dare they constrict access and want to charge for their content, when Chairman Rupert is only just beginning to think about it in most parts of the world! (though you can also access Simons at her blog here).

Does Simons seriously suggest it's not a story when it emerges that the cops are paying a killer's daughter's school fees?

She writes: "It would be nice to think that the Hun's senior editorial team thought about the rights and wrongs of publishing in this context.

"But we all know that, particularly under the paper's current gung-ho leadership, it is far more likely that they looked no further than the scoops on offer. Publish, and let the cards fall where they may."

Well by that logic, can we add an addendum?

Does Day seriously suggest it's not a story when it emerges that a newspaper regularly suggests a notorious crim is on the turn and regularly receiving a little taxpayer graft for what ails him, and then suddenly he gets bashed to death? And that therefore Simons was only doing what comes naturally when confronted with an eggbeater and a nice pile of egg whites? In true Chairman Rupert tabloid style?

Yep, it seems everything is okay for Day:

Well, she's got that right. That is exactly the job of newspaper editors. If it is legally possible to tell the truth about issues of public concern, then it must be told.

Uh huh. So Simons has done her thing, and it seems thus far that it's legally possible for her to publish her hints and innuendoes. Run insinuations up the flag and see who salutes. But do go on Mr. Day:

To suggest that editors actively engaged in a plot to engineer the assassination of a criminal in jail is absurd. To suggest reporters and editors conspired or were used in committing criminal activity is outlandish and defamatory.

Uh huh. Well if you read Simons, and as Day himself is forced to admit, that's not exactly what Simons said, but never mind, if you want to hang someone from the yard arm, you need to drum up as many offences as possible. Can we just suggest that to suggest that Simons was suggesting that editors were actively engaged in a plot to engineer the assassination of a criminal in jail is absurd, and unsustainable, and unsustained, and entirely misses the nuance of Simons' piece. We'll leave the explaining of the how and the why to Day.

Come to think of it, Day is extremely free with the notion of defamation. To which there's only one response. If it's defamatory, take Simons to court and do her like a dinner, perhaps a nice leg of lamb, with lashings of rosemary, and a nice payout at the end of the meal.

Or is Day's talk of defamation just puffer fish humbuggery? He dishes out the word "defamatory" three times, and on the usual rule of logic, say it three times and it must be true. So where's the court action?

Could there be a tinge of paranoia?

But we have come to expect nothing less from Crikey. This is a repository of opinion, not so much non-mainstream as anti-mainstream, and particularly, anti-News Limited.

Uh huh. Which is of course in its own funny roundabout way to assert that if you're anti-News, you're anti-mainstream, because News Limited is the mainstream. And here I was thinking that News Limited was actually the chief source of sublimely silly and eccentric copy for loon pond. And Fox News just an aberrant mechanism for the expression of absurd and sinister world views.

Well what to do about this outrageous situation? Surely it's to bring out the baseball bat and give Crikey a few whacks:

Crikey's position in the media world is left of centre, anti-establishment because it has nowhere else to go. If it were not a gadfly, a pricker of pomp and pretension, it would be nothing. It breaks virtually no news; it relies on controversial comment for its existence and carefully crafts this formula to keep the subscriptions rolling in.

That's fine; scrutiny is one thing, but feeding the obsessions of its owner is another. Crikey publisher Eric Beecher is a former News editor with an axe to grind.

Uh huh. So that's fine, provided they draw a magic ring around News Ltd, and don't speak of the cavortings and carry-ons of the dominant print empire in Australia. Now that makes a whole heap of sense. Just like a squawking flock of pink flamingoes makes for a fine spectacle in nature.

Speaking of axes to grind, and obsessions, has Day ever consulted a psychiatrist about his obsession with Eric Beecher and Crikey and former News editors grinding their teeth as they pound their keyboards? Excluding himself of course ...

But not content with ravaging Crikey over Simons and Carl Williams, he gets even more indignant over the Storm saga:

Crikey's treatment of the Melbourne Storm Rugby League scandal further illustrates the point. An opinion piece by James Thomson, editor of its commonly owned Smart Company online magazine, asserted that News, the owner of Storm, should have known that salary caps were being breached. "The buck stops at the top," he writes. That is true in terms of dealing with the mess. But does Thomson or Crikey seriously suggest that senior News management should have been able to read the minds of people who swore compliance on a stack of bibles and know of or condone the activity that has all but destroyed the club?

Ouch. You see, the buck stops at dealing with the mess, and picking up the broken eggs, but not with buying the eggs, and stopping them from breaking. Follow that logic? If not, get yourself a compliant philosopher ...

Yet I must say I was tickled pink to see the Sunday Herald poster dangling outside the newsagent, promoting itself as the only source of "independent news" when it came to the matter of the Melbourne Storm. Why heck, that's almost defamatory. Surely Chairman Rupert's empire is full of independent news ...

Actually, you know, when you wholly own a company, the fight against fraud, even if perpetrated by people who swore they were being compliant on a stack of bibles, is ongoing, and part of the responsibility belongs with the owners. A company isn't just a wind up toy, and once you've got the mainspring tightly wound, you just let the toy loose and watch it unwind.

There's a thing called due diligence, which is what boards and directors, acting for the owners, are supposed to do, and there's nothing to stop the owner sending in the thought police at regular intervals to make sure everything is ship shape and running like clockwork, as opposed to taking your eye off the ball, spilling the pill, dropping the pass, or copping a coathanger, but of course no one in the game actually wants to get News Ltd too riled, because if they pack up their toy, or refuse to wind it up any more, the game would collapse down south. Or at least the club would. And so the game, and Victorians could return to the glories of the AFL, played by themselves, a few South Australians, and in its genuine form, by the Irish ...

It is, at least to those who don't care that much about the fate of rugby league, or the Melbourne Storm, a delicious irony, and Day's squawking suggests just how the poor hapless empire is suffering as it becomes the job of its journalists to dig deep and skewer the Storm, thereby revealing and confirming an inconsistency, an incoherence which has been around since the days of the Super League.

If newspapers and newspaper companies get into the business of owning sporting clubs, and then have to report on the doings and misdoings of said sporting club, and if they can't see the inherent conflict of interest ... may they be confronted with an Augean stables for eternity ...

That is another defamatory flight of Crikey's fantasy; the product of an obsession with and a hatred for a highly successful worldwide organisation that actually digs for and finds news, then publishes it fearlessly, while all Crikey can manage is to cast its jaundiced eye over and comment on the crumbs.

But where does this leave Day? Casting his jaundiced eye over and commenting on the crumb commentator commenting on the crumbs? Does that make him a ferreter amongst the crumbs of a crumb?

Well I guess it means that I'm by definition the crumb of a crumb of a crumb, since I'm commenting on the crumb commenting on the crumb ferreting amongst the crumbs, but by the time you've got to this point, you realise that the ducks of loon pond are well fed by all the crumbs being flung about.

But there's one thing to say. When Day gets to talking about News Ltd as if it's the saviour of the news of the world, without mentioning the gutter press, yellow journalism, and unsavoury example of Fox News within its horse farm, it's clear he's not up to the job of tackling the Augean stables.

Come to think of it, not even Hercules could clean up the mess of News Ltd cultivated by Chairman Rupert in his unseemly headlong rush for power and profits. (And for locals in Sydney, why not take a read of How we lost our Voice to see how Chairman Rupert's tentacles reach into even the local rags flung over your fence).

Yep, it's a funny old world, and instead of trying to cop $30 million to exit the game, News Ltd is now stuck with keeping on funding the Storm at a likely cost of $13 million a year, the way sponsors are dropping like flies. (And having dropped $65.9 million over the past few years, helped by a socialistic $1.2 million in government grants - always the paw out for the government penny - see News Limited are in for the long haul at Melbourne Storm).

Delicious. No wonder there's agitation and a fight for the crumbs on the pond.

(Below: a scene from Underbelly, which features now dead criminal underlord Carl Williams, and which shocked the Herald Sun with its raunchiness and excessive pornography. Underbelly 'pornography' with bare breasts and sex scenes. Oh heck, you've got me. This is just a gratuitous picture for gentleman readers with only the most tangential discursive link to the piece above. Hey, how am I doing? Surely this means I'm ready for a gig in Chairman Murdoch's empire? Meanwhile, just remember money makes the world go round, forget about the white bra, focus on the money! It'll surely whip up a storm every time.)