The continuing media frenzy over the Tony Veitch affair has left me uneasy, even faintly nauseated. When journalists turn on one of their own with the ferocity of jackals tearing at the throat of a wounded pack member, I'm glad I'm out of the game full-time.

Day after day I cringe as I read the results of reporters racking their brains to find new people to spout more opinions to try to give the story additional legs.

Every woman and her dog from the Prime Minister to the woman in the street has been invited to have a say - and even a few men, too.

Much of what they have had to say is hypocritical hogwash and politically correct piffle.

What I can't understand is why such a huge fuss is being made over this incident, which happened two years ago, except that it must have something to do with the fact that Veitch is a talking head on TV, a voice on radio and, apparently, an after-dinner speaker.

But even the fact that he's a public figure doesn't explain the hysteria that revelations of his contretemps with his former partner have created.

So far, the only sensible reactions I've seen in the hundreds of column centimetres published are a couple of Rod Emmerson cartoons in this newspaper, and Finlay Macdonald's comments in the Sunday Star-Times.

Which were in marked contrast to the outlandish statement by that paper's editor, who proclaimed that "media bosses at state-owned broadcaster Television New Zealand and the Radio Network have set the campaign against domestic violence back years".

Cate Brett concluded: "By colluding with Veitch in keeping this matter 'in the family', these men [note the gender] have reinforced the pernicious belief that violence inside relationships is nobody else's business."

I've seen some long bows drawn in my time, but that one's so far out as to have a broken string, for there is no evidence that Veitch's employers knew the full details of the incident until now.

And as for this brouhaha setting back the anti-violence campaign, men who hit women will continue to do so and men who don't won't, no matter how many ads there are on TV. Domestic violence isn't a superficial problem to be dealt with by cryptic catch-cries; it goes far deeper than that.

So far, to her credit, the victim has remained aloof from the media scrum, and no one has been able, or even bothered, to try to find the answers to a few rather critical questions.