Richard Harmon

My reaction at a personal level is that Maiki, who I know well and who I have respect for, I think it's a personal tragedy for her.

She's lost her job.

And to do that in the face of what appears to be really a social media lynch mob must be very, very difficult for her.

As to how the whole thing has played out, I've never seen anything like this.

This has become a total obsession, not just of social media.

I think the New Zealand Herald last week ran a huge amount on this, more than it ran on virtually any other political story.

I think there's two sort of unfortunate coinciding forces.

There is a case to be made against the media at the moment.

There's no doubt about that.

We see that in the trust surveys and we know that the media is not really serving its audiences all that well across the board.

The other thing that we've got now is social media, which enables people anonymously to carry out witch hunts.

And that's what's happened here.

This has gone way beyond any reasonable discussion about the failings of the media and has turned into a personal witch hunt.

It was different because there was no social media when I was political editor.

But that doesn't mean to say that we weren't the subject of continual and ongoing criticism and challenges from politicians.

Jim Bolger was notorious for doing it.

And of course, I spent one year when Muldoon was prime minister

And he had to go left, right and centre.

What has changed is not the politicians.

The politicians are always going to let you know when they're unhappy.