OH DEAR, oh dear, oh dear! The biters have been bit – and they’re not happy! To watch Guyon Espiner squirming in his chair as his friend and colleague, Checkpoint host Lisa Owen, oh-so-gently questioned him about what THE DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER OF NEW ZEALAND had done to him – and of course to the whole splendid edifice of media freedom, including the untrammelled right of the “investigative journalist” to lay waste all things in the name of the sacred public interest.

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Known principally for his political commentaries in The Dominion Post, The ODT, The Press and the late, lamented Independent, and for "No Left Turn", his 2007 history of the Left/Right struggle in New...