Our sympathies, of course, are with the cat

From The Outer Hoard comes (slightly belated) notice that Media Watch, the Australian Broad- casting Corp.'s weekly program of media commentary and criticism, has been honored on its 20th anniversary. If you are annoyed at your news media, or if you've been having fun rereading A.J. Liebling of late, or if you think it's actually cool that a public-service broadcaster throws an elbow at the Murdoch apparat every now and then, you will want to surf around this wonderful buffet for a while.

You will note that the anniversary program itself, "20 Years: Stuff Ups, Beat Ups and Barneys," is rated "M" for "coarse language." That's not out of line; in Australia, media criticism seems to be a contact sport. The state of the American press might be substantially better if it became a contact sport here too.

Some of you real old-timers might see something familiar in the photo. True is is that the dreaded Dead Fish On Newspaper waved like the Jolly Roger in Chapel Hill rec-league softball in the early 1980s. But we only had it on a T-shirt; this guy did his year-end roundup with a dead fish on his desk. We have much to learn from these folks.