Richard Harmon

The media's under huge scrutiny and pressure at the moment and the events of the last couple of weeks have not gone well for us.

What we've seen to be a social media lynch mob and Mikey Sherman is a casualty of that.

The question now is to what extent media as a whole are a casualty of this.

Yeah, I find Mikey's resignation puzzling.

Puzzling in a number of respects.

That this incident that we're talking about, which seems to have ultimately led to her resignation, was a year old.

It was seemingly resolved successfully.

The morning after, when Mikey apologised to Lloyd Burr and the Minister, and then we have a year later, it arises again, and after a week or so, Mikey resigns.

It doesn't really add up.

Now, you can say, OK, there was more to Mikey and her role as political editor, but the big thing most journalists are asking, I think, is...

Why hasn't Lloyd come out and said what it was that led to this homophobic slur, if you like?

He could resolve this pretty quickly.

I think it's disappointing from most journalists' point of view that he hasn't come out.

She did allude to it, and obviously he said something that was highly upsetting to her and led to this whole debacle.

So he could easily come out and resolve it.

And the fact that Stuff is kind of supporting him in this silence, if you like, doesn't sit that well with me, and I don't think it sits that well with a lot of journalists.

So...

There's that.

But then, of course, there is what I would call perhaps a lack of support from TVNZ.

If you look at it, Mikey said that she told her manager the day after.