How amazing. In all Australian television in the past year, only one presenter is so evil that they must be hounded off air.

Well, two actually, but more about me later.

I'm talking, of course, about Yumi Stynes - now the target of a hate campaign by fat-bottomed moralists who offend me even more than she did.

Until Tuesday last week, most Australians did not even know Stynes existed, let alone that she was a host of the Channel 10 morning chat show, The Circle.

But on that fateful day Stynes made a mistake that comes from not knowing much but having much time to fill with babbling.

Her subject was VC winner Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith, the astonishingly brave soldier who had featured in a Channel 7 documentary two days earlier.

I would bet she hadn't seen the documentary and had no idea Roberts-Smith had movingly revealed the struggle he and his wife had to conceive a child.

All that she apparently had was a picture of this gigantic soldier's muscled body as he exercised in a pool, at which point something in her brain went ping and she said: "He's going to dive down to the bottom of the pool to see if his brain is there."

It got worse. With her was ageing reporter George Negus - also under-researched - who entertained himself with the observation that people like poor old Ben might not be up to it in the sack. A dud root, another host wondered.

I'll be frank. I may be employed by Channel 10 but I was appalled. What dills.

And their fumbling apologies, of the conditional if-I've-offended-anyone kind, were too weak to work.

But I've seen worse rudeness on television lately - worse because it was deliberate. Worse because the targets of the abuse were there for the humiliation, with thousands of Australians clapping their hairy paws in delight.

I watched, shocked, as Channel 9 proudly advertised its Excess Baggage weight loss show by showing a fat man riding an exhausted fat woman as a horse, whipping her along with his hand.

I heard co-host Sonia Kruger telling Dancing With The Stars contestant Brynne Edelsten "I think it's nice you get on so well with your dad" - a deliberate sneer at her much older husband.

I've seen TV show judges vie to be the meanest of all to the trembling talent in front of them: "You're fat, you're hopeless, get out."

Yet it's Stynes out of all of them that has been singled out for career extermination.

Have you waded into the sewer of hate in which she's now drowning? Once again the internet - impulsive, anonymous, effortless - has licensed the cruel.

The normal reaction of the normal person at seeing something bad on television is to just switch it off.

But the internet mob has instead hit the send button on Facebook, websites and Twitter to call Stynes obscene names, threaten her and taunt her with sexist and racist insults.

What is written about Stynes is often more gross than anything she said.

More sinister, the witch-hunters have threatened The Circle's advertisers - and Mirvac Hotels & Resorts, Big4 Holiday Parks, Swisse Vitamins and the Foodco Group have pulled out.

That's sinister, because internet campaigns are notoriously easy to organise, and the complaints they incite tend to be wildly unrepresentative - either of the public or the outrage actually caused.

In fact, I suspect The Circle's sponsors actually didn't face a consumer boycott, not least because people who wouldn't watch the show in protest wouldn't see the ads anyway.

All they've done is set a dangerous precedent, You see, I've had leftist agitators try the same tactic against me last year, when I first started to host The Bolt Report for Channel 10.

A Facebook mob peppered advertisers with demands to stop supporting the only TV current affairs show on television hosted by a known conservative, and for a while it seemed a few might buckle.

The campaign failed for lack of serious intent, but far more ominous was the internet campaign to censor more than a single TV show.

The Gillard government's media inquiry says it received submissions from an impressive number of people, almost all claiming the media needed more controls.

In fact, about 9600 of these 11,000 submissions came from just two far-left online groups - Aavaz and NewsStand - both connected to the pro-Labor GetUp!

These were campaigns where lazy activists in their underpants in Sydney, Melbourne or New York could simply click a mouse to influence an inquiry to recommend laws to limit what you and I can say, read or watch. Take away these couch-potato revolutionaries and their pro-forma manifestos and you had just 41 people who cared enough to turn up to the inquiry in person to give evidence.

Get the message?

The internet bombardments, whether against Stynes or a media inquiry, give power to the lazy, punitive, vicious and unrepresentative.

And when advertisers cave in, even to help remove little Yumi Stynes, they're feeding a feral dog that actually needs putting down.

Craven, Faceless Bullies Spread Their Net Of Fear

thanks Andrew .... for those feeling a little teary for poor Yumi (or even Andrew), spare a thought for UK temporary celebrity, Stacey Solomon ....

It is now almost five days since lovable erstwhile I'm A Celeb winner Stacey Solomon was snapped smoking a cigarette while seven months pregnant - and who could fail to rule that the public outcry has fallen immeasurably short of what is required?

Admittedly, Stacey has taken such an onslaught of abuse that she had to call in to Loose Women and insist miserably that there was no defence for what she had done. Admittedly, Stacey was then forced to do the same in person on the This Morning sofa, sobbing: "I don't want people to think it's OK or that I think it's OK."

Admittedly, whole armies of commenters continue to flock to internet sites to unleash waves of radioactive sanctimony and accusations of foeticide. And admittedly, Stacey has been publicly stripped of her Celebrity Mum of the Year title (and yes, we shall be dealing with this aspect of the tale more fully shortly).

But does such an edifying reaction even scratch the surface of punishing Stacey for the three-a-day cigarette habit of which she is bitterly ashamed? Should not a scarlet letter be pinned to this young mother's front for all eternity, the better to allow civilised society to showcase her sin? Once the mite is born, she may seek to obscure the mark by clasping it to her chest but, as Nathaniel Hawthorne so rightly observed: "One token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another."

And yet, and yet ... Lost in Showbiz can't help but think at least some of the outrage might be apportioned differently - a bit like when pictures of Kerry Katona doing coke in her bathroom were published in the News of the World, and people were very intent on getting her sacked as the face of Iceland and not on wondering what a newspaper camera was doing in her own bathroom.

So, what of the paparazzo who opted to spend his day stalking a pregnant woman with a long lens and waiting for her to make a mistake? (I assume he is so embarrassed about the way he earns a living that he tells his parents he works in animal porn.) What of the cortisol-pushers in the news media, who have decreed that the only bit of foetal science to which you need to pay any attention is the bit that says Stacey's a monster, as opposed to questioning whether it's seemly to send up the stress hormone levels of a seven-months-pregnant woman in the interests of filling their schedules or baiting their commenters?

What indeed of that unofficial parental police force: "No darling, Mummy can't play with you because she needs three hours of her special computer time to post sub-amoebic comments beneath paparazzi pictures of celebrities with their children explaining what crap parents they are." (Why don't those spoilt Beckham brats smile for the paparazzi following them from school? Why does Amanda Holden think she can dare do four days' light work after having a baby and not be called a witch? WHY HASN'T SURI CRUISE GOT A COAT ON?)

For Stacey, alas, the bloodsport has been less enjoyable. Monday's public shaming saw Foxy Bingo publicly strip her of the Celebrity Mum of the Year title it had bestowed upon her - and Stacey meekly accept her punishment. "I feel that they have to set a good example," she said. "So it's absolutely their decision and I have to accept it because at the end of the day they can't be seen to support that."

Mm. It does seem time to hear a little more from these moral arbiters - but unsurprisingly, Foxy Bingo's press officer was too busy to come to the phone. Perhaps he was at prayer or tending to the sick. You see, when Lost in Showbiz heard Stacey had been defrocked, I assumed Foxy Bingo was some saintly body along the lines of Mother Teresa's sisterhood or the Red Cross. Imagine how silly I felt to discover it is a gambling website, and was thus obviously being brilliantly self-parodic to judge Stacey on moral grounds.

Had the PR not been tied up all day, he might have talked me through the nominations process for the mum of the year contest - whether it involves international elections monitors and so on. You see, to the untrained eye, it looks like Foxy Bingo accepts nominations for yummy mummies such as Sam Cam and Louise Mensch and Holly Willoughby, then for good measure a few of them sit round the office picking out some working-class ones, going: "Ooh, she's a shit mother, let's put her in." Or, as tabloid anti-darling - and mysterious nominee - Natasha Giggs inquired of her Twitter abusers this week: "can u not see I was nominated to get u all talkin about it?"

So on the whole, I think we really must salute Foxy Bingo for promoting its gambling website by encouraging others to vilify strangers' perceived parenting skills. In fact, in order to extract the maximum amount of publicity from this charming stunt, perhaps it could introduce a second official annual ceremony, for the inevitable moment the Mum of the Year is formally stripped of her title.

But of course, I know what you're thinking. Is there a sentient being over the age of seven - or perhaps a particularly unintelligent species of plant - who takes the remotest notice of such fatuous marketing ploys, let alone a single living organism that would actually modify their consumer behaviour in judgment of whoever could be found to turn up to a photoshoot and receive their sponsorship cheque?

Yes. Yes there is, and its botanical name is Janet Street-Porter.

"Sick Joke," opined Janet shortly before John Terry was stripped of the England football captaincy (not this time - the time before). "John Terry was chosen as 'Dad of the Year' by Daddies Sauce. That's a product I won't be buying any more."

And looking back with the perspective that only the passage of time can afford, I now wonder which was more historically awful: John Terry's sinful failure to realise that bros come before hos, or the depletion - perhaps even decimation - of the Street-Porter condiment cupboard. Something for the Stacey-haters to ponder, certainly.

How Stacey Solomon Went From Mum Of The Year To Subject Of Scorn