Is it open season on News Ltd sporting columnist, Rebecca Wilson?

This
item about a journalism competition in Darwin, in which
Ms Wilson was a judge, appeared in yesterday’s gossip column in the Media
section of The Australian:

“Just over a week before the award night, Wilson remained the
only judge who hadn’t sent in her adjudication. After repeated attempts
by organisers to get in touch with her, she said she didn’t have the
equipment to judge the entries at home but would look at them the next
day in the office. But the organisers did not hear from her in time,
and were forced to rely on just two judges for one of the categories.”

Stories that mention News Ltd management or employees, or the business
interests of the company generally do not appear in the company’s key
papers unless they are cleared by the higher-ups.

Last Sunday in her Sunday Telegraph column,
Wilson published an apology to Malcolm Noad for something she wrote in
May. Noad is a former News executive and resigned to run the Canterbury
football club early last year. Relations between him and Wilson have
been frosty, to say the least.

So what does News Ltd’s executive
chairman John Hartigan think of the sledge against Wilson in the Media
column of Amanda Meade, and the Noad apology?