Is an inquiry into the media a good idea?

You bet it is. It should be big and broad with lots of powers to subpoena any material it needs and to lock up people who fail to answer questions honestly. Ideally it should be run by a panel of three feisty individuals and only one of them need be a retired judge.

It should sit for a couple of years and all proceedings should be in public. No doubt there will be a voluminous report, much of which will be ignored, but the important work of this inquiry will be in exposing rorts and wrongdoing throughout the period of its investigation. The aim is a long-running parade of shock and awe.

The climate is right for this. The major media organisations are all members of a campaign called ''Australia's Right to Know''. What could be more important than allowing Australians to know how the Right to Know merchants function?

Oddly, one of the major drivers of the Right to Know, John Hartigan of News Ltd, seems hesitant. He said he found it ''disturbing'' that the Greens leader Bob Brown might want to delve into editorial content. Of course, ''News Ltd will co-operate with any inquiry into media in Australia''.

Bob Brown doesn't get it. He is supposed to keep absolutely motionless with his hands behind his back while the media chucks punches at him.

There is another consideration that relates to how deeply committed the Right to Knowers are about their own interests, as opposed to your interests. This came into stark relief in a Guardian story on Wednesday about Robert Emmel, a former employee of a News Corp subsidiary in the US, who blew the whistle on the company and gave evidence in three lawsuits, which News subsequently settled for an astonishing total of $US655 million ($623 million). He alleged News America was engaged in ''criminal conduct against competitors''. This has been denied by the company.

News went after Emmel, bringing a case against him with more than 300 pleadings relating to the disclosure of confidential documents. In all, the company had 29 lawyers on the tail of this whistleblower, ringing up more than $2 million in legal costs. Needless to say, Emmel went broke and is now subject to a court-imposed no-talk order.

Whistleblowing is all very well. It just depends which way the whistle is blowing. In fact, the Murdoch estate is keen on inquiries. It has them going here, in Britain and the US, all internal and all designed to give comfort to the assurance that everything is clean or at least being cleaned up.

There's an independent ''management and standards committee'' appointed by Rupert Murdoch, conducting an internal investigation at News Corp in the US. Its chairman is Lord (Tony) Grabiner, a London barrister, and he reports to Joel Klein, who is on the News Corp board and this year expects to be paid $US4.5 million by the company for his services. In turn, he reports to Viet Dinh, a Bush era lawyer and architect of the Patriot Act, who is also on the board. That's how independent it gets.

In Australia, News Ltd is to audit the payments of the group to third parties over six years (originally three years). The in-house review is being ''independently assessed'' by two retired Victorian judges who have to keep an eye on ''the methods'' used as part of the process. One of the judges, Bernard Teague, would be intimately familiar with the business as he was the lawyer for the Herald and Weekly Times Ltd for 20 years, right up to the time it became part of the News Ltd group.

Indeed, one area of close examination should be payments to outside law firms acting for News in litigation and any payments they might make to private investigators gathering evidence for the client.

But why lawyers have been chosen to ''independently assess'' an audit is a mystery. Why not qualified people like independent auditors or forensic accountants?

No doubt this inquiry will turn up bits and pieces, which ideally should be forwarded to a public inquiry for the application of large amounts of sunshine.

Sunshine might also fall on journalistic practices, such as whether sources are threatened with retribution by reporters if they give stories to the opposition, the fakery and payola that is part and parcel of much of commercial TV ''current affairs'', complaints about the manufacturing of quotes, and rewriting by editors to change the meaning of news stories.

Importantly, it might explore the way in which quality new media could be expanded so as to offset the concentration of print ownership. There must be other ways of attracting capital for new media projects, beyond the largesse of noble millionaires with an interest in public interest journalism.

We're at the cusp of something big and all we've had in response to some general flirtation with an inquiry is self-interest. Three good reasons why there shouldn't be one?

PM Flag Inquiry Into The Media