Media getting the silent treatment from politicians

Christopher Luxon arrived at Newstalk ZB's Wellington studio last Thursday with some bad news for our traditional news outlets.

"People aren't watching the six o'clock news anymore," he declared. "I'm just of the view that you should use all the media channels, all the media outlets, to tell your story and what you're trying to do. Because that's the great thing - in New Zealand politicians should be pretty accessible."

(Host Nick Mills - who hailed the PM as a 'TikTok sensation' - went on to ask Luxon whether a new dunny had been lined up in the Premier House refurb).

But while that dismissal of the 6pm news raised eyebrows elsewhere in the media, so would Luxon's claim he is accessible.

TVNZ's Jack Tame begged to differ on last weekend's Q+A.

"It's been more than a year since Christopher Luxon was last on this show. He's actually never been on Q+A as prime minister. We've requested him many times. We've asked his team which dates would suit. We've tried to work in with what is understandably a busy schedule. But so far he hasn't appeared," he said.

He said the last two National prime ministers - Bill English and John Key - had appeared on the show four times a year, while Jacinda Ardern agreed to A his Qs two times a year.

Luxon's spokesperson subsequently told The New Zealand Herald he would be on the show before the end of the year.

Giving media a swerve

If Tame is unhappy about his access to Luxon, he should get in line. News outlets have repeatedly raised concerns about diminishing opportunities to interrogate the PM over the last few months.

In June, he stopped regularly holding post-Cabinet press conferences in the weeks Parliament isn't sitting.

Newsroom political reporter Marc Daalder calculated that could mean he ends up holding 25 percent fewer press conferences than his Labour predecessors.

Around the same time, Luxon ditched a five-minute 'bridge run' stand-up inside Parliament before sittings on Tuesdays. That mini-press conference has been a long-standing tradition for PMs, and Luxon faced some tough questions over his decision.

But no one's taken rejection harder than The Platform's Sean Plunket.

In July, he read out an open letter expressing his bafflement at Luxon's refusal to sit down for an interview.

"It is of course possible that some woke millennial members of your media team simply do not pass on our interview requests. If so, the publication of this letter should get round any attempt to keep you in the dark," he said.

But Luxon is not alone in picking and choosing his media slots. His future deputy David Seymour - and his fellow ACT MPs - have boycotted RNZ's Morning Report since 2020.

Seymour told the Herald's media insider Shayne Currie it was a response to what he saw as rude and unfair treatment.

But he appears to have found a clever workaround, sometimes appearing on Morning Report via pre-recorded interviews like this one with RNZ political gallery journalists who do not work solely for Morning Report.

But of course, the current government is not the first to be choosy. Key was also famously difficult to pin down for interviews on Morning Report when he was PM.

When police searched the newsroom for information on the so-called 'Teapot Tapes' in 2012, satirist David Slack joked that officers found no sign of Key's voice on 4000 hours of seized Morning Report recordings.

Ardern also generated media outrage when she opted out of weekly slots on the Mike Hosking Breakfast on Newstalk ZB in 2021. Hosking's colleague Heather du Plessis-Allan was particularly ropeable.

"A lot of prime ministers were prepared to front up and be held accountable. It's a long line of democratic history that Jacinda Ardern has ended," she said.

Du Plessis-Allan appeared to have mellowed by the time Luxon ditched his Tuesday 'bridge run' in June this year.

"What is it that the press gallery want to ask on a Tuesday afternoon that they couldn't have asked on a Tuesday morning or couldn't wait to ask on a Wednesday afternoon?" she asked listeners.

Ardern ended up doing roughly the same number of interviews after 2021, though some were in less challenging environments, like music radio.

Luxon could also claim to be hard done by. The X account Charted Daily tallied up his press conference appearances to date in 2024, and found they were not significantly out of whack with previous years.

And for what it's worth, the word count in Luxon's press conferences was also in the same ballpark - but while a lot of talking took place, it is unclear how much of that was devoted to answering.

Just like his predecessors, Luxon is also obliging less hostile media environments.

He has done an hour of talkback with Newstalk ZB's Kerre Woodham three times in the past six months.

"Chris Hipkins, this time last week, was talking about taxing more and borrowing more. I said to him, you cannot be serious..." Kerre Woodham began in Luxon's session last week.

Gotchas, slip-up and scalps

Politicians who speak frankly, go 'off message' in interviews, or even just change their minds are often lambasted in the media for flip-flops, u-turns, and flubs.

Associate housing minister Tama Potaka was challenged back in August over the fate of 200 of the 1000 children who have left emergency accommodation this term.

"Have all of those children moved into housing? Are you worried that some are now homeless?" Stuff's Glenn McConnell asked him.

"No, I'm not worried that some are now homeless," Potaka began.

McConnell's searching question was one the media should have put to the minister two weeks earlier when they first reported his announcement that the number in emergency housing had come down by 1000.

You can guess the resulting angle: "Minister not worried about kids being homeless."

But that did not really convey what Potaka meant. He went on to say he did not think the kids were homeless at all, and that they had just moved off government support and into other accommodation.

That may or may not be true, but when RNZ's The House covered the saga, it said Potaka had learned a valuable lesson about "not answering a question".

Stuff subsequently amended its headline to 'Minister not seeking answers over where kids went after emergency motels'.

This week the PM also made headlines with a single soundbite, when he pushed back against the implication the government had conveniently reduced the numbers on the police gang register.

His rebuttal was backed up by Police Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming at the same press conference - but media seized on Luxon using a sanitised swear word in frustration.

"It's not about the frickin' targets. It's about the outcomes," Luxon told reporters.

He was then described as "fired up" on TVNZ's 1News that night, and on RNZ's Morning Report the next day.

But - that f-bomb aside - Luxon was relatively measured in his answers to reporters in that media conference.

"Luxon's startling declaration... book-ended a week which was very much about the frickin' targets," political editor Clare Trevett said in the Weekend Herald.

She pointed out that the government had been making law and order announcements all week, and it was those that needed scrutiny rather than the PM's exasperated pushback to reporters in one single stand-up.

Do media have themselves to blame?

The most nimble, clued up, or just bullish political operators can usually negotiate those pratfalls. But is it any wonder that some supposedly 'gaffe-prone' colleagues limit their exposure?

When Hipkins turned up for his prime ministerial interview on Q+A last year, he faced a minute-long laundry list of Labour's failures in office.

Luxon has faced a few of these blasts himself.

After he had declined interview invitations from Stuff's Tova O'Brien, she bailed him up among the hay bales at Fieldays earlier this year. That concluded with a 50-second-long enquiry juxtaposing National's apparent generosity to the well-off and its cuts affecting lower income families and children - and an "insulting" pay offer to police.

When 'empty-chairing' the PM on Q+A last weekend, Tame said there is democratic value in politicians facing questions. No arguments there.

But you can also understand why politicians fear fronting up if they feel there is a good chance of being taken down, and that even a single slip could be taken out of context - or blown out of proportion.

A spiral can develop in which confrontational coverage begets less access, which in turn begets tougher coverage - and so on.

Politicians should be brave. They are well-paid and powerful. And they owe it to the people they are meant to serve to answer questions from media.

But dialling back the gaffe detector, and cranking up the benefit-of-the-doubt machine just a smidgen might mean more of them are willing to face the media music in future.