For an industry given to the pursuit of others, the media are often strangely reticent about their own affairs.
It's not that media dog doesn't eat dog; just that they sometimes try not to bark about it in the street, for fear of attracting the attention of politicians and public.
Now, though, some recent events and imminent reports should ensure that we're in for a spate of discussion which may make up for the long silence. We've already had the opening rounds in Sile de Valera's game of blind-man's-buff with RTE in which the station's role in Digico, the company intended to transmit digital television services, is at stake.
A private member's motion in the name of Enda Kenny of Fine Gael may help shed some light on the Minister's intentions and related issues in the Dail next week.
The sale of the Belfast Telegraph to Dr A.J.F. O'Reilly's Independent News and Media attracted headlines last weekend, largely because complaints about it were raised by the Ulster Unionist Party's deputy leader, John Taylor.
Taylor's complaints were not confined, as were those of some fellow unionists, to the claimed political consequences of a Dublin group's incursion into unionist territory. He raised an issue more pertinent to the newspaper industry (in which he is a proprietor) - the impact of the sale of the Belfast Telegraph on competition in the market.
Mary Harney told Pat Rabbitte in the Dail on Thursday that she planned to publish a 300-page report covering competition and other matters of concern to the media in the next fortnight.
The report is by the Competition and Mergers Review Group, which has been examining a report completed by the Government-appointed Commission on the Newspaper Industry in June 1996.
THE review group has made recommendations on regulating changes of ownership and on amending the legislation governing mergers. Issues arising from concentration of ownership are considered, as is the question of cross-ownership between the newspaper sector and broadcasting.
This, the Tanaiste said, was extremely important, particularly in an electronic and digital environment. Which brings us back to the issue with which we began - Sile de Valera's sudden announcement, outside the Oireachtas, where the Broadcasting Bill was being debated, that it had become necessary to change proposals for transmission management and control.
It sounds like a technical complication which might quickly be set right. It's not. Control of transmission is the key to broadcasting. Whoever holds it has a powerful influence on content.
Digital is the system for which Digico is the operator proposed by the Government. RTE was to have had a 40 per cent share in it - until that announcement by the Minister. One consequence is clear: instead of a 40 per cent holding, RTE will have none. Neither the identities of the other shareholders nor of the company to replace RTE has been announced.
The director of telecommunications regulation, Etain Doyle, who believes a digital service is the best way to provide universal coverage of the State, argues that it should to be established as soon as possible. She would make it a condition of the licensee of Digico that the service must provide 98 per cent coverage.
There's no doubt that the main financial beneficiaries of the digital age will be the operators whose systems, as Enda Kenny has pointed out, are capable of carrying more than television services.
Kenny's motion invites the Dail to condemn the Minister for "the uncertainty she has created", especially in RTE and TG4, where neither management nor staff were informed of any intention "to alter the proposed and accepted format of transmission management". A list follows of complaints against her, from lack of clarity to the omission of digital radio from the Broadcasting Bill and inaction over licence fee increases.
KENNY proposes retaining a substantial public shareholding in the transmission system "with appropriate guarantees", the indexation of licence fees and the withdrawal of the Broadcasting Bill, now in a state of confusion.
A Dail debate about broadcasting which was not, first and last, about money or partisan manoeuvring would help to clear the air (if you'll forgive the expression) at a moment of profound change.
If Harney is as enthusiastic as she sounds, she'll have her work cut out for her dealing with competition, concentration of ownership and cross-ownership between the news paper and broadcasting sectors. Indeed, fitting the jigsaw of ownership, operation and market together may occupy her hard-working inspectors for months if not years.
In the business of TV transmission, the cable/MMDS system is in the hands of both Irish and foreign operators.
The Irish operator, which has invested £50 million, is Prince's Holdings, which is 50 per cent owned by Independent Newspapers.
If the company felt tempted to seek a share in Digico, for instance, it would risk being blocked on the grounds that it could not operate a second system. When Independent News and Media bought the Telegraph, most of the headlines were about the unionists' discomfiture and how they'd have to take an all-Ireland view if they were to claim, as Taylor did, that this was "a blow to competition".
No one seemed to find it worth observing that, if the sale is cleared, you'll be able to travel from Ballycastle to Rosslare without leaving O'Reilly territory - ground covered by the group's daily and weekly papers, not to mention its cable TV.
Taylor's case was that the sale gave the group 100 per cent ownership of Sunday newspapers in the North, ownership of its only sporting paper, of one-third of its farming press, of the largest daily newspapers, North and South, and of the largest evening paper in Dublin.
Much has been made of the shrewd decision to include its Northern acquisitions in the group's UK sector. Old hands at the Telegraph may recall how, under Roy Thomson's ownership, their thriving pa per supported an ailing (London) Times - just as now it supports the (London) Independent. "In truth," wrote a commentator in the Guardian, "this purchase is not about politics but economics.
"If a newspaper business with the same characteristics had turned up in Wagga Wagga or Windhoek, anywhere in the world, O'Reilly's team would have been interested."
It's the thought that lay behind that memorable frontpage leading article before the 1997 general election, not in Wagga Wagga but in Ireland: "It's payback time."
dwalsh@irish-times.ie