WE CLING TO the legitimate expectation that the noble exchange of information between elected representatives and the nation’s media helps form a true view of our nation and the world. If only it was true.

In the gap between knowing and suspecting, reporting and speculating is a range of tactics that governments and political parties use to translate, defend and attack, according to the political moment. The noise you hear in the background is the whirr of interpretations being spun by the nimble fingers of the men and women who, like all good doctors, tell us that this is actually doing us good.