Independently analysing Australia’s long history of crony capitalism around media moguls is about as core to the Crikey mission as you get.

And aren’t we lucky to have Channel Nine veteran Glenn Dyer and Bernard Keane, formerly of the federal communications department, to carve up the spin in this latest imbroglio around television licence fee rebates.

Keane has much more influence giving frank and fearless advice through Crikey than he ever did trying to get politicians to implement policies that didn’t shamelessly pander to the media moguls. Combine that with Tony Abbott’s reckless “bribe” comments and a visit from Rupert  Murdoch and this looks even better than the various Murdoch versus Packer pay-TV wars over the years.

774 ABC Melbourne’s Jon Faine had a cracking opening half-hour on the topic this morning in which Stephen Conroy’s defence included that he’s constantly being taken to dinner and lunch by journalists.

At one point, Conroy pointed out that he’d had wide-ranging discussion at private lunches with Faine, to which the bearded one responded: “And you’ve also sued me for defamation.”

Nice.

At this point it should be disclosed that in March 2003, Senator Conroy was a guest  on the Crikey-funded table at the Melbourne Press Club’s Quill awards, along with some other characters such as Julian Burnside, John Blackman and our pro-bono defamation lawyer Nicholas Pullen.

Conroy’s wife, Paula, also came along, which was interesting given she’d just departed from a PR gig at RMIT, which was in the middle of a sustained shellacking on Crikey about its botched IT system.

Perhaps Conroy ought to now send Crikey the $200 this night cost us, lest it be perceived that we were attempting to influence the future communications minister.

One of Crikey’s roles now is to focus on the individual journalists who get involved in the heavy reporting of this battle and question whether they are being fair.

For instance, these lines from Keane yesterday looks like a pretty blatant example of Labor getting an early return on its $250 million investment:

Out went the Prime Minister to the press gallery yesterday, under pretence of announcing $10 million — $10 million — for homelessness, to suggest that Abbott was claiming Laurie Oakes, Mark Riley and Paul Bongiorno could all be bought. The FTA response was savage. Abbott copped an absolute bollocking last night on the three news programs that count with voters — the Seven, Nine and 10 news. The Nine coverage was devastating, with Oakes telling Abbott he couldn’t be bought and Abbott looking like he was trying to evade questioning.

Did Oakes, Riley and Bongiorno all really think this political posturing was worthy of such a big run when they’ve barely covered the policy issues around the $250 million handout?

Another journalist in the spotlight is Sunday Herald Sun chief reporter Ellen Whinnett, who broke the story about the Conroy-Stokes catch-up in Colorado on the very morning Rupert Murdoch was having breakfast with Tony Abbott in Sydney.

Conroy now says it was Stokes’ idea to catch up and the handout decision had already been made before the rendezvous in the snow.

The Murdoch tabloids really took the mix-master to the yarn, which was particularly interesting given that Whinnett is the de facto partner of Tim Holding, the senior Victorian Minister who got lost in icey conditions on Mount Feathertop and wants to replace John Brumby as Premier (see Crikey tips yesterday).

Whinnett’s story did a lot of damage to Conroy, who has been intimately involved in the messy factional war dividing the Victorian Labor Right.

Conroy and his allies Bill Shorten and Theo Theophanous have been rumbling with Tim Holding, who is aligned with David Feeney, the NUW and the SDA.

Holding’s group appeared to have gained the ascendancy last year, prompting the Short-Cons to go outside the tent and make a “stability pact” with Kim Carr and the Socialist Left, essentially to lock out Holding.

While a relative calm has descended of late, did Holding hear about the Colorado trip and use it to damage Conroy through his de facto? Or did Ellen Whinnett simply continue her long record of cracking good political stories?

It’s just one of many fascinating wheels within wheels in the great media-political power struggle of 2010.