TVNZ political editor Maiki Sherman’s suspension from parliament has seen her dropped from a major international trip. Is it a problem that a journalist has herself become a story, asks Catherine McGregor in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.
To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.
Food for fuel
The prime minister left on Sunday for Singapore, accompanied by a delegation including finance minister Nicola Willis and trade minister Todd McClay, for a two-day ‘Singapore–New Zealand Leadership Dialogue’ centred on the formal signing of the Agreement on Trade in Essential Supplies (AOTES). As Jenna Lynch explains in Stuff, the food-for-fuel deal ensures neither country enforces export restrictions on essential goods during a crisis: Singapore supplies fuel, New Zealand supplies food.
The delegation will also meet fuel sector leaders not currently exporting here, to understand what might attract them to the New Zealand market. The trip carries a broader strategic dimension, too: New Zealand is moving toward closer alliances with South East Asian nations not just on trade but security, against the backdrop of a global order shaken by US strikes on Iran.
One notable absentee
As the delegation departed, one expected member of the travelling press pack was not on the plane. TVNZ political editor Maiki Sherman, who had originally planned to be on the trip, withdrew following her suspension from parliament – “a call that wasn’t made by Christopher Luxon’s office”, reports Stewart Sowman-Lund in his new media column for the Sunday Star-Times (paywalled).
Sherman’s absence follows a week in which she found herself at the centre of two separate controversies. The first: allegations that she and a colleague followed National whip Stuart Smith into a parliamentary corridor on the day of Luxon’s caucus confidence vote and “aggressively” banged on his door. Speaker Gerry Brownlee investigated a complaint from National’s Simeon Brown and handed Sherman a five-day ban from parliament – a rare punishment. The second, older allegation: that Sherman used a homophobic slur against Stuff’s Lloyd Burr at pre-Budget drinks in finance minister Nicola Willis’ office in May last year. Willis confirmed an incident took place, saying she “returned to hear offensive language being used” and shut the event down.
The timing question
The way the slur story emerged is raising the political antennas of many commentators. As Andrea Vance writes for the Sunday Star-Times (paywalled), the story surfaced from what she describes as a “known ecosystem of political information flows”, specifically a right-wing commentator with ties to the National party. Experienced senior journalists had investigated the allegation last year and chosen not to run it, partly because of legal pressure: as Poppy Clark reports for Stuff, Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking revealed his team received “a wide-ranging legal letter” from TVNZ when they pursued the story.
The allegation had been circulating before Christmas, Vance notes – the last time pressure on Luxon’s leadership was as intense as it is now. “Political stories do not typically gain new life without new incentives,” she writes. “And when a story that has been circulating for months suddenly becomes active at a sensitive moment, it is reasonable to ask what changed.” Both Willis and Brown deny playing any part in its publication. Vance argues that journalists’ role in the wider political ecosystem makes this a legitimate news story. Still, questions remain: “Two things can be true at once: a story can be in the public interest, and the way it emerges can still be shaped by dirty politics.”
TVNZ in a bind
That leaves TVNZ with no easy options. Heather du Plessis-Allan argues in the Herald on Sunday (paywalled) that Sherman can’t easily retain her position without damaging the broadcaster’s credibility: “[She] won’t be able to demand accountability from misbehaving MPs if she manages to dodge accountability for repeat transgressions herself.” But replacing a political editor six months from an election, when there’s no obvious successor, is equally fraught. Former TVNZ political editor Richard Harman – speaking to Sowman-Lund, this time writing in The Post – has defended Sherman: “I rate [her] as a political reporter, and I do wonder whether [the scrutiny] would be as intense as it is if she were a white male.”
Former colleague Mark Sainsbury raises the question of why the story took so long to become public: “There’s so many different agendas going on. Did someone decide to leak that because [they] thought it was outrageous, or they were pissed off with Maiki? You’ve got to look at the ‘why’ with all of this.”
