Out of the way Christopher Pearson, heavyweight David Flint is on hand in The Australian, and all's well ...

British Deputy PM Ed Milibrand welcomes Brooks' resignation, said the chyron on the alleged ABC 24 news channel, and all at once, the pond knew that civilisation was doomed, driven mad by the ambitions of the clap happy Mark Scott, who offered a channel without resources, and so the very worst of Fox News practices have migrated to a once noble and accurate public broadcaster (oh how we marvelled at the in-house style guide back in the day when someone cared how to say Goonoo Goonoo).

The pond offers it to Media Watch, without further comment, the sight of a noble corporation driven mad too much to bear.

Here's how Fox does it:

Hint: one of these things is just like the other (thank you cookie monster), and Egypt seems to have gone on an epic journey.

As for the resignation of Brooks, on the one hand, thanks to Channel 24, it will be a long term memory, like the day Kennedy was shot or men walked on the moon making giant strides for me.

On the other, maybe not, maybe meh, bring on the big one, since Rupert Murdoch has long operated as a control freak, without succession planning, and without any notion of skilling up his long suffering family to the obligations involved in running a private media empire, and in the process he's treated his carefully structured ownership as a kind of privileged satrap.

How's that working out for you, disempowered shareholders? Looking forward to the decline and fall? Or getting agitated like Stephen Mayne in It's time for Rupert Murdoch to go?

Hey ho, and on we go, and normally we'd spend Saturday morning dallying with the pompous prognostications of the pandering Christopher Pearson, but sad to say, today Pearson in The beginning of Labor's end is utterly predictable. It's like listening to an old 78, watching in fascination as the needle grinds a hole in the cracked record by ceaseless repetition of a few notes. Here's one as a sampler, as the predictable Pearson rises to the bait of 'don't write crap', and swallows it like the fish farm trout he is:

My guess is that in time historians will find she and her government were the beneficiaries of more hysterical rubbish from the press gallery on the subject of anthropogenic global warming than any leader of a major party in recent years. Yet there she was, reproaching them for insufficient commitment to groupthink.

Pearson, of course, has no interest in groupthink, except when it comes to groupthinking with Tony Abbott. Why they're on such close terms, Pearson sometimes teases Abbott. I've never been worried about Dr. No's health before, but the thought of being teased by Pearson suddenly filled the pond with an enormous flood of tears and sympathy.

Not to worry, we must leave Pearson predicting doom and gloom - as he's done, Ancient Mariner style since the result of the last Federal election - because he's sent to the minor placings by the arrival of a true heavyweight, pompous monarchist David Flint, wheeling around dreadnought style, and bringing all blazing guns to bear in Anti-Murdochs can't stand the heat.

What this header means - in the context of Rupert Murdoch making an apology to the family of a dead girl for tapping her phone and deleting messages - must remain a mystery. Who are these anti-Murdochians, and why can't they take the heat of having their phones tapped?

Dear sweet lord, then it came like a thunderclap, a startling thought: the empire under attack from the fuzzy wuzzies and the best they can do is wheel out a Victorian? Or is he an Edwardian? Or perhaps a George-ian (the third)?

No, no, he's definitely Elizabethan, but sadly of the first term, just after the medieval period.

Anyhoo, we don't want to provide too many spoilers, and ruin the fun, though the piece does answer a correspondent's question as to Would you risk your reputation by telling News Corp.'s side of the story.

The good Flint strikes the tinder and the hay and sets things ablaze with his opening sentence:

I am no toady of the Murdoch empire. Its newspapers were tough on me in the years leading up to the republican referendum.

As any kind of scribe knows, this kind of disclaimer is always needed, especially if you intend to go on and be a toady for the Murdoch empire.

The kindly reader will have to endure much irrelevant brooding from the irrelevant Flint as he relives his glory days dealing with the media, and The Australian's inexplicable support of former chairman Rudd. And naturally he huddles down and has a groupthink with Christopher Pearson:

More recently, I think The Australian's support of the carbon dioxide tax on the basis of the so-called precautionary principle and on the primacy of market solutions misses the point. This is not a real market but an artificial construct concocted by bureaucrats and academics to be rorted by merchant bankers.

Yes, the socialist Flint is extremely hostile to merchant bankers (damn you big Mal, damn you for all eternity) and the capitalist system and the primacy of market solutions, when it's so much simpler to hand over the cash in the gentlemen's clubs.

It seems Sky News is also disturbingly socialist:

In the meantime Sky News Australia, unlike the US Fox News which is screamingly right wing, is to the left even of the ABC. A typical example: on July 15, who did it choose to comment on the carbon tax? Two well-known supporters of the tax, John Hewson and Graham Richardson, with a sympathetic interviewer. And although The Daily Telegraph is doing a sterling job in exposing politicians of all sides, its prominent photo column Street Talk seems to meet mainly left-wing people.

Uh huh, Gra Gra and John Hewson as lefties, and Street Talk featuring snaps of lefties, and perhaps not style setter David Flint.

Yep, right now we're off in la la land with the pixies, and you know what, I smell a rat or two. But first let us pause to praise St. Rupert:

The point is News Limited is not a monolith with opinions settled centrally by Rupert Murdoch as a latter-day Lenin. It is richly diverse, more so than the ABC or Fairfax Media. And while Murdoch is no saint, he has done great things for the media. His move to Wapping saved the British press from the slow death to which the print union bosses had sentenced it. His creation of a national Australian newspaper was visionary.

Yes, yes, and with the help of the iPad, he's going to save newspapers from the evil intertubes, and not for reasons of power and influence with politicians, but simply because he's a caring soul who doesn't give a damn for profits (and my how his rags are loss leaders in their fields).

But back to those rats, and as usual we need a disclaimer, before we dot the 'i' on those conspiracy theories:

But with the emergence of the latest anti-Murdoch bandwagon I smell not one rat but two.

Let me say the phone hacking indulged in by the News of the World and possibly other British newspapers is reprehensible.

Okay, disclaimer done and dusted. Utterly, shocking reprehensible. Time for that conspiracy:

But why were the latest revelations withheld until News International's bid to take over BSkyB was almost put to bed? Why were they leaked to a left-wing opposition newspaper?

Ah yes, it's a conspiracy. Wrong doing was leaked to a left-wing opposition newspaper. What a caddish, wretched thing to do, and now before you know it, gutless politicians are out to beard the handsome dragon:

This inspired some weak British politicians suddenly to find sufficient courage to challenge the bid. Now some Australian politicians who've been subject to perfectly legitimate attention in the Murdoch media are jumping on the News of the World bandwagon with demands that Murdoch be investigated here and possibly curtailed or even punished.

Then it's back more blather about the noble deeds of Chairman Flint in the matter of media matters - we commend them to you for attentive study - as Flint provides the entire News Corp organisation in the antipodes a clean bill of health (and never mind the Melbourne Storm matter, that's a football club, and so entirely different, as John Hartigan soothingly assured us).

It turns out, naturally, that the last thing we need is any limitation on the right of shock jocks to be abusive, or News Corp to run feral and out of control, and then comes this:

When I was at the Press Council I did oppose a proposal that we support the establishment of a special press takeovers tribunal to stop Murdoch's takeover of the Herald and Weekly Times. This was not to favour Murdoch; my argument was this was a matter for the general competition law and there shouldn't be a special competition law or government tribunal for newspapers. The last thing we should ever do is give politicians any greater control over speech than they have, for it will be used only to restrict it.

Yes indeedy, it even makes you wonder why we needed a Press Council, when it was run by the likes of Flint.

Oh dear, as we're down memory lane, perhaps it's time to drag that letter out of the closet, as featured on Media Watch, and remind ourselves of Flint's splendid work at the ABA, as he reveals he's a big fan of Alan Jones and pens a herogram to him (The professor and the presenter, David Flint's fresh stream, Brave and true farewell to Flint).

And there are plenty more greatest hits and memories if you google Flint's name, but for now we must cut to the chase, which it turns out isn't about Murdoch or the News of the World debacle, but just another bit of groupthink about government and the need for a lack of regulation, a lack of laws and a complete lack of interest in the cavortings of News Corp:

The last thing we need are more laws or inquiries. What we need is good limited government and, if they can't give us that, an early election.

Uh huh. Actually the last thing we need is Flint babbling on in a group think way.

What we need is good reporting, and if they can't give us that, why then bring on the paywall, and the sooner the better, so the foolish sheep have to pay for the thoughts of Flint, Pearson, Albrechtsen, et al ...

In the meantime, fear for your place Christopher Pearson. With Flint on the prowl, why even playful teasing of Tony Abbott, or sweet whisperings in his ear, doesn't promise you a place in the pantheon of Murdochian toadies ...

(Below: hits and memories from the golden days).