Michael Forbes - newsman who took on Rob Muldoon | Canterbury News | Local News in Canterbury

It was the editor of The Star V the Prime Minister ? and a battle which changed New Zealand journalism.

The death on Saturday in Auckland of former Star editor Michael Forbes revived memories of one of New Zealand's great newspaper controversies.

In 1978 Forbes took on pugnacious Prime Minister Rob Muldoon.

"Sack Muldoon," he urged in an editorial in March 1978. "Mr Muldoon has to go ? and the sooner the better for New Zealand's future well being."

Confrontation like this between the media and a political leader had been unthinkable until then.

Forbes' call for the National party to get rid of the PM echoed around the country and Parliament.

Adding fuel to the flames for National supporters was Forbes' alternative for leader ? maverick Hamilton MP Mike Minogue.

Muldoon said the editorials were "defamatory" but took no legal action.

Forbes resigned later in the year, but Star staff, convinced that the board of their then-owner New Zealand News had been pressured by the famously vindictive PM, took action to change that.

Four hundred staff ? everyone except the manager, his secretary, and the telephonist who was in tears because she couldn't go ? met to discuss it on July 14. They asked the board to ask Forbes to reconsider and withdraw his resignation.

The resignation was also questioned in Parliament. In the end Forbes, who had been appointed editor the same year Muldoon took over as leader of the National party, 1974, stayed on.

He was editor until 1981 then moved to Auckland for another NZ News appointment. Muldoon's career as PM lasted three years longer.

In nearly 50 years in newspapers, Forbes also launched the ill-fated Auckland Sun and edited the Sunday Star-Times. It's Star legend that Forbes got fired up to take on the PM after going to the movie Star Wars with his son.

His own Star war with Muldoon changed the relationship between politicians and a now much less fawning media for ever.

# Forbes, who was 73, had been in ill health for some years.