Yesterday’s presidential pardon for convicted media mogul, Conrad Black, predictably drew polarised commentary along sharply divided political lines. “Powerful friends of Trump”, “That is what you get for writing a flattering book about the President”, and “It is Trump’s way of getting his own back on Comey and his bad cop friends”.

Yet there was little or zero factual commentary about the validity of the pardon.

When we screw the facts of every issue into an editorial or political agenda, we defraud political discourse and our own learning. The irony in that statement is that fraud charges are where the whole Conrad Black case started.