Glenn Milne should have been sacked for his grossly unprofessional act on the stage at the Walkley Awards last month when he drunkenly assaulted Crikey founder Stephen Mayne in front of a national TV audience. If Milne had attacked almost any other senior journalist he would no longer have a job, but such is the value system within News Limited that he remains employed because his assault victim was Mayne – indeed, many of his Murdoch colleagues praised Milne for his ethics in physically attacking this particular journalist in public. In keeping with the professionalism of his performance, it turned out that Milne had actually assaulted the wrong Crikey journalist anyway. Old media has never looked as tarnished as it did on the evening that a drunk hack stumbled onto the stage and wildly swung punches at a representative of the new media that is changing the communications landscape. Milne, not Mayne, was the disgrace.

*New award