If debate around the possible axing of TV3's primetime current affairs show Campbell Live were just about television ratings or even the place of investigative journalism as infotainment, it would not be quite the cause celebre it is fast becoming.
But connect all the dots and it appears to be a direct attack on free speech and the freedom of the media at large - for political advantage.
While Prime Minister John Key may be haughtily dismissive of the very idea the programme could have got under the Government's skin, the campaigning nature of the show across a wide range of social issues clearly rankles National and its supporters.
On issues like the Christchurch rebuild and insurance delays, child poverty and school lunches, the GCSB/Kim Dotcom fiasco and the current push against zero-hours contracts, Campbell Live has proved itself a constant irritant to government policy.
A very effective one too; inside two weeks it has caused most major fast-food chains to stop using the immensely disempowering zero-hours contracts, where workers are "hired" but given no guarantee of work in any given week.
That National promoted this change in employment law as some sort of silver bullet to help grow the economy - without empathy for the plight of those caught in the bind of being "employed" but not actually earning - says everything you need to know about the blinkered fascism of the neoliberal agenda.
It's an abhorrent law that should be struck out immediately. Little wonder if Campbell Live's campaign is showing this up.
Little wonder too if, as has been alleged, Key told friend Mark Weldon, now chief executive of TV3's owner MediaWorks, he wanted "that left-wing bastard gone".
And lo, nek minnit there's a review of news and current affairs launched, complete with the intensely humiliating idea that John and Co get replaced by a soap opera.
Of course, publicly it's all about the ratings, which commercial television lives or dies by because they directly impact on what advertisers are willing to pay for slots around each programme.
Yes, TV3's viewer numbers have been dropping, but if you track viewers of 3 News and Campbell's show, one total closely follows the other.
As do the figures for TVNZ's One News followed by Seven Sharp, proving the news hour "leads in" the audience for the current affairs shows.
The difference is that, while there is considerable drop-off in viewers from One News to Seven Sharp, there is very little from 3 News to Campbell Live. Indeed, TV3's overall share of viewers increases about 4 per cent when Campbell Live comes on.
In other words, the programme is actually beating the competition in doing its job.
There's nothing sharp about Mike Hosking's trivial posturing, nor sustaining about Paul Henry's obnoxious ramblings on Breakfast. But these two Key-hugging apologists declaim their skewed views on public television without any official murmur.
Funny thing is, John Campbell may well vote National too. He's hinted at it in the past. But he is, first and foremost, a professional investigative journalist; he reports the stories that matter wherever he finds them, without fear or favour.
Can't have that, can we? Don't want people actually thinking about what Government and its friends are doing. In short, there's a suitcase full of circumstantial but still alarming evidence to suggest this pogrom is all to do with politics and not ratings.
That the show itself has avoided commenting demonstrates the integrity they maintain. Their detractors could learn a valuable lesson from that - if they weren't blinded by their own righteousness.
That's the right of it.
*Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.