OK, it's the silly season, but could we be sensible for a moment?

The recent fracas over environment minister Michael Meacher's attendance or non-attendance at the forthcoming earth summit in Johannesburg did not fall into the silly season category – his appearance in South Africa may not save the planet, but the story provided an insight into the workings of government and its sensitivity to the charge of junketing.

The same cannot be said of the coverage which followed, much of it based on Meacher's interview with the Sunday Times. There, the minister was said to have attacked the government's environmental record, including plans to build thousands of homes in the South-east.

Deputy prime minister John Prescott has since hit back, reproducing the transcript of the Meacher interview (you can see it at www.odpm.gov.uk), but a straight read certainly did not leave me with the impression of a minister intent on trashing his own record. After all, he has been the minister since Labour came to office.

Of course, as journalists we look for a top line, for the most interesting angle. And we can and should interpret, not least when politicians say one thing and mean another, or when they send out guarded messages designed to highlight a hidden truth. They do not always say what they mean or mean what they say.

But did Michael Meacher suggest that government plans to build in the South-east were flawed, as some reports suggested? You be the judge: "We have got into the situation where demand is excessive, there is clearly a need for affordable housing on a much bigger scale in the South-east, not building executive houses but building affordable houses ... and I think we have no alternative in the short run but to try and meet that.

"However, at the same time we have to do more to prevent this continued build-up of demand in the South-east."

He also indicated that the government needed to do more to stimulate industrial development in other areas – there was at least an implied criticism here.

Interviewer: "What could you do to persuade the Treasury ministers that more needs to be done to encourage development in other regions to counter this problem?"

We feign shock that there are disagreements within government yet we know perfectly well that no administration in history has been without them

Meacher: "What can I do? Obviously it goes a great, great deal wider than me; there is industrial policy."

So what does this episode tell us about environmental policy, about government and the media? Perhaps we journalists need to acknowledge that differences within government are natural and that it is ludicrous to expect ministers to agree on everything, including every nuance of policy.

Too often we are on constant watch for splits, based on little more than a difference of emphasis. We feign shock that there are disagreements within government yet we know perfectly well that no administration in history has been without them. And we fail to differentiate between arguments that are wired into the system and those that are based on differences of personality or ideology.

Ministers are given a brief – their job is to argue for that brief – if we had an environment minister who failed to campaign for the environment within government, he or she would not be up to much.

So should we be surprised that Meacher is concerned about airport expansion? Or that he is worried about the potential impact of building another London airport on the Kent marshes? Not really.

Behind much of this lies the difficulty of reconciling collective ministerial responsibility in an age of instant news and constant media scrutiny and the difficulty of presenting complex arguments in digestible formats. By being a little more frank than some, Meacher has been made out to be fundamentally hostile to government policy, which is to overstate his position.