'Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes' or, who guards the guardians?

That said, what is the solution - if there is one?

Broadly speaking, there are two options. I'll discuss these in turn. Littlemore QC proposes the extension of the "toothy" bit of Australian competition and consumer law to the media. He thinks the press should be exposed to the "misleading and deceptive conduct" provisions in legislation.

At present, the media in its role as "information provider" is exempt from s 52 of the Trade Practices Act. This wasn't always the case: s 65A, which confines s 52's operation, was only introduced after a period of concerted lobbying by media organisations. The lobbying was in response to several Federal Court decisions - notably Australian Ocean Line Pty Ltd v West Australian Newspapers Ltd and Global Sportsman Pty Ltd v Mirror Newspapers Ltd. In those cases, the Federal Court held that the publication of statements in newspapers in the course of reporting the news were capable of breaching s 52 if the statements were misleading or deceptive.

In response to the lobbying, the government "was persuaded that it was not appropriate to permit use to be made of s 52 in that way" - in the words of Russell Miller, Australia's competition and consumer law guru.

The other option is one proposed by Queensland Premier Peter Beattie in his A.N.Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism. In brief, this involves constructing the media as an arm of government ("the fourth estate") and exposing it to administrative law mechanisms such as Freedom of Information and Judicial Review. Both proposals have their strengths and weaknesses.

Like the tort of defamation, action under s 52 is expensive, and wouldn't assist people like the Paxtons or Benny Mendoza (the tv repairman who suicided). The gutter journalism characteristic of much of the media would probably go unhindered, although the Federal Court's (relatively) more liberal rules with respect to class actions (called "group proceedings") may help, as would the ACCC's capacity to initiate legal action in response to consumer complaints.

Administrative law, by comparison, is much cheaper for the citizen who has been traduced, but costly for the state. It requires tribunals, administration and legal officers. Using a Hayekian frame of reference, the only reason we now have so much administrative law in western countries is because of the expansion of government into so many aspects of our lives. Extending the reach of quasi-judicial administrative tribunals to the media represents an acceleration of this process.

How then, do we guard the guardians? Can they be made more accountable without burying us all in a morass of bureaucratic minutiae? Should we just accept that the press is there to turn a buck (like any other corporation) and yet continue to afford it protections no other corporation enjoys?

If either (or both) of these proposals are adopted, should we consider loosening the grip of defamation on all kinds of commentary - not just the media - on the grounds that it genuinely does impinge on freedom of speech (as well as allowing all sorts of other silly things, like Victoria's absurd religious vilification laws, to fly in under the radar)?

I strongly suspect that these questions (as Perlmutter suggests) will only be answered honestly and comprehensively in the blogosphere; with that in mind, then, over to you.