Possible explanations for The Australian's mental disturbance sought

Wow, just wow.

The Australian has deployed five six writers today to attack Media Watch for calling them wrong on their front page beat up last week about the alleged effect of tobacco plain packaging.

Merritt (Legal Affairs editor!), Ergas, Klan, Kerr, Creighton and Davidson.

They even re-print the latter's post from Catallaxy yesterday, including its criticism of Media Watch "cherry picking" which involves its own cherry picked quote to claim MW made a mistake with its use of 1.4% twice, as I pointed out yesterday.   (Amusingly, in the thread, my main Western Australian female fan, Philippa, mistakenly thinking that I was participating in the thread, actually linked to my post.  Yet no one from Catallaxy who read it noted back on the thread that I had identified a mistake.)

But the bigger point is this - there's something just clearly nuttily paranoid about how this paper conducts itself now, and wouldn't it be good to know where that is coming from?   If this newspaper was a friend, you'd be recommending it seek professional help; there's something clearly wrong going on in its head. 

It would also be good to know why it has decided to die in the ditch for Big Tobacco.