Guardian?
Sadly the Guardian appears to be nowhere on any of these issues - I'm told the relevant journalist at the Guardian is a mate of SW's but I've seen no evidence of that, but in any case its coverage of at least this broad area of health lets down the expectations of what we can usually rely on from the Guardian.
I agree with your analysis, Mark. As for The Guardian, Martin J. Walker is worth a read.
http://www.slingshotpublications.com/dwarfs.html
http://www.slingshotpublications.com/guardian1.html
Walker also wrote Skewed: Psychiatric hegemony and the manufacture of mental illness in Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Gulf War Syndrome, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
http://www.slingshotpublications.com/skewed.html
Some have called it the British Osler's Web, although its remit is much wider.
He says the Guardian was left-wing under Thatcher but it's been taken over by the corporate science lobby since 2003.
Dr Ben Goldacre has written the Guardian's Bad Science column every week since then. He is a psychiatrist doing research at the Instute of Psychiatry. His supervisor is Simon Wessely.
Proving Walker's point, The Guardian did not report the WPI/Science study in October, although it was mentioned in yet another anti-ME rant in the Guardian's Dr Crippen blog.
But in January they did report the Plos One study as a clear refutation of the original study.
I've been waiting for Goldacre to devote his column to XMRV. I guess he saw the way the wind was blowing in the reader comments at Plos One and decided against.
Then, yesterday he featured another Plos One paper. The quality of the science is about as good as McClure/Wessely. It's supposed to be about how well animal research is reported, but Goldacre used it as a peg to attack animal rights activists.