In this excerpt from Paddy Gower’s book, This Is The F#$%ing News: My Story, it’s 2011 and Gower has just taken over from Duncan Garner as political editor at 3News, making him the target of the prime minister’s distraction tactics.
Finally, I was running the show. I started with a purge to cleanse Duncan Garner from the office. I emptied out his desk. There was a curtain next to where he sat, and behind it on the windowsill was a stack of dinner plates, each with a fork and a bit of tomato sauce — a pile he’d been building there for God knows how long. There was a red high-heel shoe under the desk, among all sorts of shit. I wanted it all gone.
On my first day at the wheel, I called a team meeting at the Ministry of Food Cafe near Parliament. We were a relatively inexperienced team: Brook Sabin, who was a young gun, real smart; and Tova O’Brien. From the get-go, Tova had so much talent and drive, and I knew early on she’d go all the way and be one of the best political journalists ever. Tova had a gift: it was almost like she had X-ray vision capable of seeing straight through politicians’ bullshit.
I told Brook and Tova: “It’s about to get real now – everyone is going to be watching us.” I was conscious that I was nowhere near Duncan’s level yet. People were waiting for me to make mistakes, for our team to fail. Both Tova and Brook just nodded. They were fucking ready. We became the best team; they really had my back when I needed it most, and I’ll always be thankful for that.
Quickly, I was into the grind of being Pol Ed. You had to have eyes in the back of your head and be super-alert to every movement of the politicians and your opponents. There were set pieces like Cabinet on a Monday, caucus on a Tuesday, and the “bridge runs” – where government MPs on their way to the House came across the bridge that links the Beehive to Parliament. Reporters would talk to them on the black and white tiles. It was an opportunity to ask questions, and listen to what everyone else was up to. If you had a story you didn’t want anyone else to know about, you snuck across to the other side of the bridge, to what we called the “secret spot”. If you saw TVNZ there, it would put a huge fright up you. Were you about to be scooped? At any time of the day or night, things could break or you’d get a tip-off. I always answered my phone, no matter the time. It was 10 o’clock on a Monday night and my phone was ringing? There was no “nah, I’m finished for the day”. I answered it.
As political editor, people often wanted my ear. Even the prime minister. About ten to six, I’d be in position waiting to do a live cross at the top of the six o’clock bulletin, going through my final preparations. Quite often the phone rang right then — and it was John Key. I was busy and I didn’t want to answer, but I couldn’t afford not to because it was the prime minister. What if he wanted to give me an update? What if he had a little nugget of info? More often than not, though, he’d just be wanting to put in his two cents’ worth, a last-minute bit of spin on the big story of the day before I went live. He did the same thing to Corin Dann, who had taken over as political editor at TVNZ.
Key pulled the same trick before set-piece interviews, too. You’d be about to start, getting your head in order, thinking through what questions to ask, and he’d sit down and start yapping away and distracting you with a bit of a gossip. It was hard to resist, because you didn’t want to miss out, but I reckon it was actually a tactic to try to stop you from zoning in.
Political editors really became the focus of the politicians’ attention any time you had a poll out. They were dying to know what was in it, to get ready to dissect it. After one poll, I was listening to Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB because he was due to interview Key. It was the early days of streaming radio and I had tuned in via my office computer. They were on an ad break, and I suddenly realised I could hear Key and Hosking talking during the break – and they were talking about the poll and my coverage. Holy shit! Hosking was saying I was a bit of a character; he was being quite nice. But Key said, “He’s out to get me.” Did he just say that? Of course I wasn’t out to get him. Like any other politician, he’d face strong reporting, but I wasn’t out to get people for no reason. I scrambled, trying to figure out how I could rewind what I’d just heard and record it because I was thinking, Fuck! This is extraordinary – the PM thinks I’m out to get him.
All of a sudden, I looked up and there was Michael Fox, Key’s press secretary, in the doorway. He’d sprinted down from the ninth floor of the Beehive to the 3News office. Fox looked at me, I looked at him; no words were exchanged but he knew I’d heard it. I wasn’t able to record it, and Fox got onto ZB and found there were only a handful of people streaming at the time, but yep, one of them was me. Key was soon on the blower to apologise, which was no doubt more of a clarification than an apology, and of course I accepted his word. I also told him I wasn’t out to get him, and asked if he’d stop telling people I was. I wasn’t too worried – it was just another morning’s work in the bubble, this bizarre world.
This Is The F#$%ing News: My Story by Paddy Gower ($38, Allen & Unwin) is available to purchase from Unity Books.