Why the Maiki Sherman-Lloyd Burr incident is a matter of public interest

 A good and respected friend – like me, a former newspaper editor – takes the view that the furore over TVNZ political editor Maiki Sherman’s alleged verbal abuse of Stuff press gallery journalist Lloyd Burr is not news; that at best, it would warrant a mention in a gossip column.

Fair enough, but I differ. If the high-profile journalists who provide the public with political news and comment are bitchy, entitled, childish, over-stimulated and perhaps inclined to run off at the mouth after a few drinks at the end of a long day, I think we deserve to know. That knowledge is potentially very helpful in judging how much notice we should take of them, or indeed whether we should take any notice of them at all.

You can be sure that if MPs behaved in the same scandalous way and the media learned about it, they’d be all over the story. Ah, people might say; MPs are different. They’re public figures, elected and accountable – which is true. But high-profile journalists like Sherman wield more power than many politicians, and certainly a whole lot more than your anonymous, run-of-the-mill list MP.

They effectively set the political agenda. They present themselves as people the public can trust and whose opinions we should respect. That being the case, any character flaws that become apparent – such as might be evident from the hurling of vicious personal insults over drinks in a senior minister’s office – become a matter of legitimate public interest; the more so when the alleged antagonist is employed by a taxpayer-funded broadcasting organisation and therefore has a special obligation to behave in a mature and responsible way.

It’s true that we may not yet know the full facts of the incident. It’s the nature of these things that the complete truth often emerges bit by bit over time. While it doesn’t seem to be in dispute that Sherman used the word alleged (to wit, “faggot”), it’s been reported that she was responding to a racial provocation. Either way, the incident presents an unflattering picture of the country’s supposed journalism elite and won’t do anything to lift public trust in the media from its woeful level. Again, that makes it a matter of public interest (and by that I don’t necessarily mean something the public is interested in, because for all I know the public isn’t, and probably regards the affair as akin to a school playground squabble).

Just to complicate things, some commentators are questioning blogger Ani O’Brien’s motives in breaking the story. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I’m assuming they were honourable. I even sent her an email congratulating her for exposing what had happened while the mainstream media resolutely looked the other way. But O’Brien does run a political consultancy and it’s undeniable that politics has never been murkier than now, with political agendas and connections that are not always out in the open.  

Pushing the views that suit them

It’s verging on dishonesty for RNZ to describe political commentator Janet Wilson as a former National Party press secretary, as it did yesterday in an item about the reported unrest in the National caucus, as if her former status endows her opinion with special force or credibility.

For the record, Wilson described National as a “slow-slip political earthquake” and “a miasma of nothingness”. These were damning words. The unmistakeable implication was that if Wilson is dissing Christopher Luxon then the party must be in a truly dire predicament – because after all, isn’t she supposed to be on National’s side?

Wilson is often critical of National and appeals to the media for exactly that reason. The subliminal message is that the party has been abandoned even by its own supporters.

Stuff plays the same game, routinely introducing Wilson’s political columns by mentioning she has worked for National. It’s a useful, if slightly deceitful, way of trying to prove to readers that Stuff is politically even-handed, contrary to what its critics keep saying. (Stuff does the same with another political columnist, Ben Thomas, who was Chris Finlayson's press secretary so long ago that it's scarcely relevant.)

But the fact Wilson once worked for National tells you nothing about her political sympathies. She was just one of the many hired guns – sorry, I mean communications advisers – who ply their trade around the Beltway. She provided media training to John Key and was later employed on a relatively brief fixed-term contract as press secretary to the National leader (two, in fact – the hapless Todd Muller and then Judith Collins) during a chaotic period in 2020 when the party was in abject disarray.

Interestingly enough, her LinkedIn profile doesn’t mention that time. Perhaps she was burned by the experience and doesn’t want to remind anyone of it. Certainly she saw the Nats at their worst, which may explain why she so often seems hostile to the party and happy to undermine its leader.

This is not to say Wilson doesn’t have a valid perspective, but when all is said and done she’s just one opinionated commentator among many (in fact rather too many, you might say, considering the 28 comment pieces about Luxon’s leadership that political scientist Bryce Edwards included in his daily roundup this morning).

Moreover, like most commentators she’s fallible, as she proved when she rather rashly wrote National off after the 2020 election. Readers may recall the party made an emphatic comeback three years later. But Wilson remains a favoured commentator largely because her past association with National is seen as giving her opinions a special patina of authority.

The question is, would RNZ have been remotely interested in her view on National’s leadership imbroglio if she had said Luxon was secure and deserved to lead the party into this year’s election? Somehow I don’t think so.

(For the avoidance of doubt, I am not and never have been a supporter of National or Luxon and believe the party probably deserves whatever happens to it. I just wish the media weren’t so damned predictable in the unsubtle way they push opinions that suit them.)

Luxon still hasn’t got the hang of politics

“I’m not going to play that game,” Christopher Luxon said – rather lamely – when Tova O’Brien asked him how many Maori National MPs were in his cabinet.

“It’s not a game,” countered O’Brien, doubtless trying hard to conceal her glee at having so easily caught the prime minister out.

Oh, but it is a game. The game is called scalp-hunting and it’s commonly practised by journalists and broadcasters who mistakenly think their role is to make politicians squirm.

The funny thing is, no one can recall the game being played when Jacinda Ardern was PM. Ardern appeared to be surrounded by an invisible but impenetrable shield that protected her against awkward questions.

It wasn’t so much that such questions harmlessly bounced off her. They just weren’t asked. And if they were, as happened sometimes on Mike Hosking’s breakfast programme, her response was to stop going on his show.

O’Brien would have been thrilled at causing Luxon to stumble yesterday when he couldn’t answer her question. It was the equivalent of a bowler stumping the opposing team’s opening batsman with the first ball. You could almost see the thought bubble above her head: “Howzat!”

Luxon should have seen it coming. O’Brien has built her reputation on hatchet jobs and would have been eager to make an impact in her new role as presenter of TVNZ’s breakfast show. The hapless PM obliged by walking straight into her trap.

Then he compounded his mistake by saying that the newly promoted James Meager, who is of Ngai Tahu descent, is a cabinet member when he’s actually a minister outside cabinet. O’Brien pounced again and left Luxon looking like a possum in the headlights.

It was depressing evidence that even after four and a half years as leader of the National Party and two and a half as prime minister, Luxon still hasn’t got the hang of politics.

His rise to the top of the corporate ladder was no preparation for the shark tank he now swims in. He still exhibits two fatal frailties: he lacks a killer instinct and he’s far too keen to be liked. Those are dangerous political weaknesses that leave him vulnerable and make him an easy target for aggressive broadcasters and journalists, to say nothing of his political opponents.

Far from developing the agile - and sometimes necessarily forceful - verbal and mental responses essential in his position, he appears to rely on stilted, formulaic talking points supplied to him by his communications advisers. Not only do these not resonate with the public, but rigid adherence to them leaves him exposed and floundering when an unexpected question lands.

A more street-smart politician would have known how to deal with O’Brien’s mischievous query (and it was mischievous, since its clear purpose was not to enlighten viewers so much as to catch Luxon out).

Yes, it might be argued that Luxon should know how many Maori National MPs are in his cabinet. But his response should have been that the ethnicity of cabinet ministers is irrelevant. It's competence that matters.

He said he wasn’t going to play O’Brien’s game, but he did. Rather than feebly protesting at her question, he should have gone on the front foot and challenged her attempt to reduce cabinet appointments to a matter of identity politics. Luxon and his ministers need to constantly remind themselves that one of the reasons New Zealanders so emphatically rejected Labour at the last election was that they were desperate to be extricated from that ideological morass.

For all his faults (and God knows, there are plenty), Winston Peters wouldn’t have given O’Brien the satisfaction of claiming his scalp. That’s the difference between the two coalition party leaders, right there: Peters is a born politician whereas Luxon is still on trainer wheels.