Mega telco Telstra revealed the following staggering news on its corporate blog today: Alcatel, the key supplier that stands to earn billions from building Telstra's Australian fibre-to-the-node network has come out in support of Telstra and against its competitors.

Where would journalism in this country be without Telstra in the fray, breaking this kind of earth-shattering news.

Meanwhile, Telstra PR man Rod Bruem has a deep distrust of journalists, writing to me in a recent online comment, "Dan, when you've been in the media game as long as I have you may have a different view as to whether or not journos are influenced by their masters."

I wonder if the same applies to vendors saying gushingly supportive things about their clients.