Their good work is ignored by the media - yet they are at the receiving end when the tabloids, or even serious newspapers, wrongly blame them with their far-fetched fantasies.

Sound familiar? But this time I'm not talking about MEPs - but about Britain's Food Standards Agency. This month's Prospect magazine contains an interview with John Krebs, the scientist who headed the Agency for the last five years. He too knows what it is like to be rubbished by second rate journalists.

His explanation? That media is more geared to "villans and heroes than of providing equal weight to all sides":

A good media story, like a good film or a good play, works best with villains and heroes… People like conspiracies too and I think you have to accept that is the way the world works.

No doubt. But if you combine that liking with a deliberate agenda on the part of a substantial proportion of the media to go out and get you, then you have an uphill struggle to get any sympathy - whatever the facts.