Embarrassing: Impudent youth are carrying out the best journalism of the election

One elderly journalist pleads with the youth to stop making him and his peers look bad.

The story thudded down like a redundancy notice in The Spinoff’s politics Slack channel. “National candidate says 'gang leader' told him: 'I need you to get in',” The Post’s headline read. So far, so standard. For the last fortnight, our news organisations have been piecing together an exhaustive history of every interaction anyone loosely involved in politics has had with a gang member, and this time it was National’s Tāmaki candidate Mahesh Muralidhar’s turn. But in the third sentence, the dreaded, familiar revelation. “The comments were first made on youth podcast Sixteen & Speaking, in which teenage host Rais Teuboh sits down with public figures.”

Not again! Teuboh’s effort is just the latest in a long line of important scoops and illuminating interviews produced by university students, teenagers or literal children this election campaign. Kea Kids News kicked off the cavalcade of newsmaking in early October when interviewer Patrick Hammond asked Opportunity’s deputy leader Daniel Eb who he’d vote for if he couldn’t cast a ballot for his own party. “That is a really tricky question,” Eb replied, before making a noise that would loosely transcribe as “ooaaarrrg” and conceding “maybe the National Party”.

The comments received mainstream news coverage, prompting Opportunity to carry out some damage control. At least Eb could console himself with the fact he wasn’t alone in being bamboozled by a youth. Act candidate Paul Henry was in the midst of a successful nationwide town hall tour and may have been feeling uncharacteristically cocky heading into his interview with Otago University’s Vote 2026 team in mid-October. But he’d soon learn this conversation would be slightly tougher than the ones he’d been having with enraptured elderly audiences.

Interviewer Sophie Bowmar challenged Henry on Act’s promise to remove mandatory student services fees, saying that would threaten support for victims of sexual violence or people experiencing financial hardship. She asked how those people could be expected to pay for the services they needed. “Well, there’s access to money, isn’t there,” replied Henry enigmatically. 

No, there quite literally isn’t, his interviewers replied. 

No politician, no matter how senior, has been able to escape the journalistic heat. Prime minister Chris Luxon found that out the hard way when he turned up to face the Vote 2026 team in late October. Interviewer Nīkau Edmond-Smaill raised the government’s move-on orders, asking why someone rough sleeping on the side of the road should be subject to police action.

“I’d just encourage you to get into the detail of what the policy proposed,” Luxon replied, before reverting to some of the patented lingo he perfected in his time as chief executive of Air New Zealand. “With all respect, in that deal, what we’re trying to solve for there is something called unreasonable begging, and it’s actually about disorderly, disturbing, intimidating behaviour.”

A lesser journalist might have, argh, kill me, moved on. But Edmond-Smaill came armed with receipts, pointing out that the language “unreasonable begging” was added at select committee. “Great,” said Luxon, a little too soon. “The National Party opposed that change at select committee,” said Edmond-Smaill. “Paul Goldsmith opposed that change at select committee.”

This is undoubtedly great for the country. Though our politicians sometimes deride them as a politically disengaged, disorganised bunch of dropkicks and little shits, young people are doing a better job of holding MPs to account than just about any other group in the country right now.

But it’s terrible news for people like me. Reporters are already widely despised, ranking below politicians and marginally above serial killers in our lists of most trusted professions. Now we’re oscillating between being embarrassed by students whose brains have been poisoned by supermarket ramen and the black mould growing in their flat bathroom, and being eclipsed by high schoolers who are mainly just doing journalism as a break from their year nine homework.

Why is this happening to us? And is it possible to ban it? Many of the scoop artists in our schools were relatively encouraging about the situation. Kea Kids News executive producer Luke Nola said young people are often able to extract quotes from politicians that elderly journalists like me struggle to get because they’re approaching interviews with less baggage. “If I was talking to Winston Peters, I’d be nervous. But having no prior knowledge of someone actually gives you freedom to be in the moment and talk to them as a person,” he said. “It gives kids a chance to treat these people as human beings rather than politicians or figureheads.” 

It also helps that most politicians feel a sliver of shame about engaging in their usual verbal slippery when they’re speaking to a child. “You can’t lie to an eight-year-old,” Nola said.

Vote 2026 co-producer Sophie Bowmar offered another explanation for her outfit’s success. “I think a lot of it is probably that we are quite often underestimated." Politicians tend to come into their interviews expecting an easy ride, only to find that not only are the interviewers politically engaged but well prepared, she said. It also helps that Vote 2026’s interviewers are fuelled by a sliver of rage. “I would say there's a degree of frustration among young people about being left out of conversations that directly affect us, so we’re not particularly worried about challenging politicians or pushing for an actual answer when we don’t feel we’ve got one.”

Despite their comparative failures, Bowmar was willing to offer a message of hope and consolation for scoop-challenged working journalists. “Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?!” she said. “We have enormous respect for professional journalists and so have every confidence that with a bit of practice they’ll be able to produce some good journalism too.”

A better journalist might have sensed a degree of disingenuousness in that pick-me-up. Perhaps they would have asked a follow-up question. But I decided to leave things there.