As a journalist, it’s a strange thing to say, but I’m puzzled by the media. When, after years of resistance by supermarkets to GM, four of the nation’s leading grocery retailers (Tesco, Sainsbury’s, M&S and The Co-op) announced, within hours of one another, they were waving the white flag on GM feed for poultry, you might have expected the media to kick off a frenzied rerun of the ‘Frankenfoods’ debate. But barely a word has been uttered. And a GM study into cancerous rats last autumn was also ignored. GM, it seems, is now a runaway train, with the media accepting that its time has come, almost by default, as it has inveigled itself into the system through lax (and possibly crooked) supply chains.

I’m also puzzled by the media’s lacklustre response to alcohol legislation. After abandoning minimum unit alcohol pricing last month (barely mentioned by the media), it’s surely inevitable David Cameron will attempt to tackle the issue via another route, and in Spin the Bottle we examine the PM’s options. But while the media has slowly woken up to the repeated above-inflation tax hikes on alcohol, no-one appears to have picked up on the very considerable decline in off-trade beer sales.

As we reported in March, alcohol consumption per head has fallen 16% from its 2004 peak and is now at its lowest level since 1998. But the decline has been obscured in a ‘them and us’ battle between the pub trade and supermarkets, with accusations flying about below-cost and subsidised pricing by supermarkets, on the one hand, and happy hour promotions on the other. With BBPA annual figures now showing off-trade beer volumes at their lowest level in 10 years, why is the media not challenging governments more vociferously?

The only issue on which the media seems to have a bee in its bonnet, in fact, is the plight of the bumblebee, as the EU overruled Defra-led objections to ban neonicotinoids. Considering the British Beekeepers Association is opposed, it’s been an incredibly one-sided media debate. And if farmers don’t use ‘neonicks’, are the alternatives better?