The way the media ignored it was a disgrace. The fact that the story was broken by Ani O’Brien on Substack demonstrates the power of citizen journalists. The fact that Mainstream Media hopped onto the bandwagon and started reporting the story demonstrates how easily they can be left in the dust and how they struggle to catch up. It is an example of why there is still a large absence of trust in MSM.
To add to the mix when the events surrounding the O’Brien story first were considered for publication, lawyers’ letters threatening dire consequences were sent. Interestingly enough, Ani herself has received such a letter from Stuff’s lawyers although it is difficult to determine whether in fact Stuff has been defamed.
But lawyers’ letters are a sideshow.
One of the problems suffered by MSM is that there is an absence of authority. TV journalism is perhaps the most visible example of this. News stories seem to be….light. The coverage is light. The story telling is light. The reporters inject their own personalities, anxious to be the story.
What is lacking is a quality recognized by Romans of the pre-Augustan Republic – gravitas.
In this article I consider the nature of gravitas and how it has been manifested by a selection of leading international journalists. I then focus upon a selection of New Zealand journalists who were known for their gravitas before making some observations on the presence (or absence) of gravitas in the current crop of TVNZ political journalists before concluding with some general observations about TVNZ’s political journalism.
In this article I name names. I concede freely I have not asked any of the subjects – those who are alive at least – for comment. It will be interesting to see if any lawyers’ letters arrive in my inbox.
What is “Gravitas”?
The word gravitas comes from the Latin for “weight” or “seriousness.” In the context of public life and journalism, it refers to a quality of substance, dignity, and intellectual authority — the sense that a person possesses deep knowledge, measured judgement, and a commanding presence that earns respect.
A person with gravitas does not need to shout to be heard. They carry authority through the weight of what they say, how they say it, and how composed they remain under pressure.
Gravitas combines several elements: intellectual depth and command of subject matter; the ability to ask probing questions without losing composure; a calm, unhurried manner that signals confidence; and an ethical seriousness about the role being performed.
It is not about being solemn or dull — Paul Holmes (more on him later) had gravitas and was entertainingly combative. It is about the audience sensing that the journalist takes their democratic responsibility seriously and has done the work to justify it.
Should Journalists – especially political commentators – possess gravitas?
The answer must be in the affirmative and emphatically so for political journalists. Political journalism is one of the most consequential forms of public communication in a democracy. Politicians control spending, legislation, rights, and the direction of society. The journalist’s job is to hold them to account on behalf of citizens who cannot interrogate power themselves. This requires gravitas for several reasons.
Without intellectual depth, an interviewer can be deflected by a politician who simply talks over or around the questions. Without authority and composure, the interview degenerates into theatre — either into a shouting match or a fawning conversation.
Without gravitas, the journalist becomes the story rather than the subject. And without ethical seriousness, there is a risk of bias, personal vendettas, or becoming too close to the subjects being covered.
A political journalist without gravitas may still generate clips and social media moments, but they will rarely produce the kind of sustained accountability journalism that changes public understanding or forces governments to alter course.
Journalists Who Defined Gravitas
In the modern age there have been a number of journalists who had an enormous reputation for reliability and credibility along with a more than generous helping of gravitas.
Edward R. Murrow (USA 19430s – 1960s) is the archetype against whom all broadcast journalism gravitas is measured. As CBS’s war correspondent broadcasting live from London during the Blitz, his opening words “This... is London” became some of the most famous in broadcasting history. His calm, deliberate delivery conveyed both the horror and the weight of what he was witnessing without sensationalism.
But it was his 1954 television investigation of Senator Joseph McCarthy — at the height of McCarthyism when most of the media establishment was too frightened to confront him — that defined what gravitas in journalism actually means in practice. He ended that broadcast with words that still resonate – “Goodnight and Good Luck.” McCarthy never recovered.
Murrow demonstrated that gravitas is not just a manner — it is a willingness to use your authority in service of truth at personal cost.
Walter Cronkite (USA 1960s – 1980’s) is a journalist whose broadcasts I personally experienced when I was in the USA from 1964 – 65. He was for two decades the most trusted man in America, according to polling.
His gravitas was of a different kind from Murrow’s — less combative, more reassuring — but no less powerful. When he removed his glasses, paused, and announced John F. Kennedy’s death in 1963, the nation stopped.
When he editorialised in 1968, after returning from Vietnam, that the war was a stalemate and could not be won, President Lyndon Johnson reportedly said “if I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America” — and shortly afterwards announced he would not seek re-election.
That is the ultimate measure of gravitas in broadcast journalism: the capacity to shift the course of public events not through partisanship or noise, but through the accumulated weight of perceived integrity. Cronkite signed off each broadcast with “And that’s the way it is” - a phrase that only worked because audiences believed him.
David Dimbleby (UK 1970’s – 2018) represented the finest tradition of BBC public service gravitas. For over forty years he anchored the BBC’s coverage of elections, state occasions, and major national events with an authority that seemed almost constitutional.
His skill was an ability to hold enormous complexity — multiple results coming in, competing commentators, live declarations — with absolute composure, and to ask the questions that cut through the noise at precisely the right moment.
His 1997 election night, watching the scale of Tony Blair’s Labour landslide unfold, remains a masterclass in anchoring.
He interviewed every prime minister from Harold Wilson to Theresa May on his Question Time programme, and brought a forensic quality to those encounters that was never flashy but was relentlessly substantive.
His gravitas was of the patrician, deeply knowledgeable kind — and it worked because it was genuine, not performed.
Robin Day (UK 1950’s – 1980s) essentially invented the adversarial political interview on British television. Before Day, politicians were handled with deference. He introduced the idea that an interviewer’s job was to challenge, probe and, if necessary, embarrass a politician into clarity.
His bow-tie became as recognisable as his manner — which combined intellectual aggression with a certain theatrical delight that somehow never tipped into unfairness.
He famously told a general during the Falklands War that “most of your soldiers are hired mercenaries” — a provocation designed to expose a real argument.
He had gravitas not despite his combativeness but because of the obvious intellectual substance behind it. Politicians were genuinely apprehensive about appearing before him, which is the clearest possible sign that a political interviewer has achieved what the role demands.
Jeremy Paxman (UK 1989 – 2014) is the inheritor of the Day tradition, taken to its most extreme expression. His most famous moment — asking Home Secretary Michael Howard the same question twelve times in a row during a 1997 Newsnight interview, never accepting a non-answer — became both a meme and a genuine landmark in accountability journalism.
What Paxman had was a form of gravitas rooted in contempt for evasion. He made politicians visibly uncomfortable not by shouting but by refusing to pretend that a non-answer was an answer. The pause, the raised eyebrow, the quiet repetition of the question — these were weapons of genuine journalistic authority.
He could also be wrong, unfair, and occasionally self-indulgent, but his best work demonstrated that persistence in the face of political evasion is itself a form of public service.
John Simpson (UK 1980s – present) as BBC World Affairs Editor represents a different dimension of gravitas — the authority of someone who has personally witnessed more of the world’s defining events than almost any other living journalist.
He was in Tiananmen Square in 1989, in Kabul when the Taliban fell, in Baghdad as American forces entered. His dispatches have always been marked by a quality rare in television journalism: genuine humility in the face of complexity.
He has never pretended that difficult situations are simple, and that intellectual honesty — which sometimes meant telling audiences things they did not want to hear — is the bedrock of his authority.
He has also been willing to criticise his own organisation and his own government, which is the acid test of editorial independence.
Tim Russert (USA 1991 – 2008) as host of NBC’s Meet the Press became the gold standard of American political interviewing in the modern era.
His method was forensic and meticulously prepared — he would confront guests with their own past statements, often displayed on screen, and ask them to reconcile contradictions.
Politicians across the spectrum were wary of appearing before him because he had done the homework.
He was neither aggressive nor particularly theatrical, but his preparation was so thorough that evasion was almost impossible.
When Russert died suddenly in 2008, the tributes from politicians who had appeared before him — including from those he had pressed hardest — spoke to a journalist who was feared and respected in equal measure, which is the right combination.
Christiane Amanpour (International 1990’s to present) brings a distinctive form of gravitas forged in war reporting — Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf War — and carried it into studio interviews with heads of state.
What distinguished her was a refusal to apply false balance to situations where the facts did not support equivalence. She argued famously that good journalism was not neutral, but impartial — a subtle but important distinction. Interviewing tyrants and war criminals, she maintained a composure that was itself a form of moral statement. Her authority comes from having been there — from a physical and moral courage that lends credibility to everything else she does.
Andrew Neil (UK 1990’s – 2021) is a more recent example whose gravitas was built on extraordinary preparation.
As presenter of the BBC’s This Week and election programmes, and particularly in his demolition job on Boris Johnson’s 2019 election campaign — an empty-chair interview after Johnson refused to appear — he demonstrated that gravitas can be accumulated in the absence of the subject.
His interview with Nigel Farage, pressing on the cost assumptions of Brexit, and his questioning of Jeremy Corbyn’s economic figures, showed a journalist who had done more homework than the politician had — which is where real authority comes from. Politicians of all persuasions found him genuinely uncomfortable to face.
Kate Adie (UK 1979 – 2003) joined the BBC national news team in 1979. She had worked in a number of aspects of radio and built her journalism from the foundations up rather than arriving at prominence quickly.
Her defining moment as a journalist came in April 1980 when she covered the dramatic ending of the six-day Iranian Embassy siege in London, when special forces stormed the building and released terrified hostages. The BBC interrupted sports coverage, and Adie reported live and unscripted while crouching behind a car door.
What distinguished that broadcast was not just the physical courage involved, but the quality of the reporting itself. She was calm, precise, and authoritative — conveying the chaos and danger without losing her composure or abandoning accuracy.
She shot to fame as a national reporter, and in doing so made women believe that anything was possible in terms of their careers. At a time when war zones and crisis reporting were almost exclusively male territory, she simply got on with the job and did it better than most of her male counterparts.
What followed that breakthrough was twenty-plus years of going to the most dangerous and significant places on earth. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s she reported from The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Gulf Wars, the Balkan Wars, the Rwandan genocide, and Tiananmen Square — consistently dedicated not only to reporting facts but to highlighting the human stories behind global events.
What makes Adie especially worth studying is that her gravitas was earned entirely through action rather than manner. She did not have the patrician authority of a David Dimbleby, the theatrical intelligence of a Robin Day, or the forensic preparation of a Tim Russert. What she had was something more fundamental. She went to places other people would not go, reported what she saw without distortion or embellishment, refused to be used by governments on either side, and did all of this for over two decades with remarkable consistency.
For New Zealand political journalists — who work in a small, comfortable, entirely safe environment — she is a useful corrective to the tendency to confuse combativeness with courage, or on-screen manner with genuine authority. Adie earned her gravitas the hard way, and it showed in every broadcast she made.
Common Threads
From these examples several common threads emerge. In every case, the gravitas was underpinned by having done more work than the subject expected. Russert’s archive, Neil’s figures, Paxman’s refusal to accept the first deflection — all rooted in preparation.
There was a willingness to use authority at a personal cost. Murrow taking on McCarthy, Cronkite calling Vietnam a failure, Amanpour refusing false balance in the Bosnian war — all involved professional risk. Gravitas without courage is merely manner.
They were all composed, despite the pressure. None of these journalists raised their voice unnecessarily. The authority came from stillness and persistence, not noise.
Finally there was an understanding of the democratic function of their role. Every one of these journalists appeared to believe — and communicated that belief — that what they were doing mattered to the health of democracy. That seriousness of purpose is what separates gravitas from mere performance.
What lessons for New Zealand political journalists? Well first there is an assumption that they want to learn but if that is the case the lesson is clear enough.
Gravitas is not primarily a matter of presentation or age or even experience. It is the product of preparation, intellectual honesty, editorial independence, and the courage to use authority in service of the public rather than in service of a career.
Examples of Gravitas in New Zealand Political Journalism
I have selected four figures who probably represent the golden age of New Zealand current affairs television, and together they make a fascinating study in different kinds of broadcast authority.
Brian Edwards began making his reputation in the late 1960s as one of the country’s toughest television interviewers. His path to that role was itself unusual — he was born in Cork, Ireland, educated in Belfast, completed a doctorate at Edinburgh University, and arrived in New Zealand in 1964 intending to lecture in German at Canterbury.
After three years he quit to embark on a media career. That academic background — a genuine PhD — was part of what gave him a different kind of intellectual substance from the typical broadcaster.
When Edwards brought a more confrontational style to current affairs show Gallery in 1969, it helped make his name. There were controversial discussions with SIS head William Gilbert, who attempted to stop his interview from being broadcast.
The willingness to interview the head of the Security Intelligence Service — and to resist political pressure to suppress it — was exactly the kind of editorial courage that signals genuine gravitas rather than mere combativeness.
His most remarkable single moment came in 1971. Interviewing the Postmaster General and a representative from the Post Office union on Gallery during a go-slow industrial dispute, Edwards forced an agreement between the two men to stop union action and return to mediation.
That is an extraordinary achievement for a television journalist — using the weight of his authority on live television to actually resolve a national industrial dispute. No New Zealand broadcaster before or since has had quite that kind of impact in real time.
Edwards possessed gravitas of a formidable kind. His Irish-educated intellectual confidence, his doctoral training in rigorous argument, his willingness to confront powerful institutions, and his ability to command a room — all combined into a broadcaster who made politicians genuinely uncomfortable in the way that Robin Day did in Britain.
His one limitation, in gravitas terms, was that he eventually became so embedded in political advisory work — coaching the very politicians he once interrogated — that his editorial independence became somewhat compromised.
He stood unsuccessfully for Labour in 1972, and his long relationship with Helen Clark as a client rather than a subject blurred the line between journalist and insider that gravitas ultimately requires.
Ian Fraser was a consummate broadcaster. He came to journalism via a genuinely eclectic path — studying modern languages at Otago, pursuing an acting career at Downstage theatre in Wellington, working as an executive for the performing arts at the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council, before eventually taking a job anchoring Radio New Zealand’s Checkpoint, where he honed what he came to call his own particular style of “performance journalism.”
In 1974 Fraser began his first decade-long stint on television, initially as a reporter on current affairs show Nationwide, and later as a frontman and live interviewer across Seven Days, Sunday, Dateline Monday, and Newsmakers — the last of which quickly moved from a 5.30 Sunday slot to 9pm.
His television career quickly achieved national fame for his probing and incisive questioning of political leaders and many of the most prominent figures in arts, sport and letters from New Zealand and around the world.
The range of people he interviewed was remarkable — Ronald Reagan, the Shah of Iran, Indira Gandhi, Elton John, Billy Connolly, and Walter Cronkite among them. That international scope was unusual for a New Zealand broadcaster of his era and gave his work a breadth that most of his contemporaries lacked.
He also won critical praise for anchoring six straight hours of live coverage of the 1993 general election. Six hours of live political broadcasting, without a script, requires a very particular combination of knowledge, composure, and authority.
Fraser’s gravitas differed from that of Edwards. It was perhaps the most elegant of his generation. A Herald profile described him as having
“that rare gift of making you feel like you’re the only person in the room”
This quality is the foundation of great interviewing, because it makes subjects open up. He was also, by one Herald writer’s account, “arguably the best interviewer in the country” at his peak.
His gravitas was less combative than Edwards’s — more the authority of a deeply cultured, widely read man who happened also to be a gifted performer.
His later career is more complex. He became Chief Executive of TVNZ from 2002 until 2005, resigning following a dispute with the board over salary negotiations for senior staff. His gravitas as a broadcaster was real; his transition to management diluted rather than enhanced it.
Lindsay Perigo is intriguing because his career arc is unlike any other in New Zealand broadcasting — a man of genuine distinction who eventually made himself, in the conventional sense, unemployable.
By 1979 he was anchoring Radio New Zealand’s flagship Morning Report, with his producer describing him as “a journalist of extraordinary ability.” The following year he won a Mobil Radio Award for Best Newscaster and the Bill Toft Trophy for Broadcaster of the Year.
In 1984 he shifted to television, anchoring and interviewing on a run of high-profile TVNZ current affairs shows — Sunday, Eyewitness News, Frontline, News at 10.
By 1990 he had a show named after him, interviewing key figures of the day during a tumultuous era in New Zealand politics, as successive Labour governments and then National upended political and economic orthodoxy.
His distinctive interview style was described by a psychologist as “soft-confronting” — a neutral disposition that aimed to probe ideas rather than personalities. That distinction — probing ideas rather than personalities — is precisely what separates the highest form of political journalism from the tabloid kind, and it marks Perigo out as genuinely serious.
Metro magazine dubbed him “the doyen of political interviewers.” That was a well-earned title. His opera-lover’s sensitivity to language and meaning, combined with rigorous political knowledge, gave his interviews a quality that was quite different from Edwards’s intellectual aggression or Fraser’s polished elegance.
Then in 1993, he quit television work, famously denouncing TVNZ news and current affairs as “brain dead.” He subsequently reinvented himself as a libertarian political activist, founded the Libertarianz party, edited a libertarian magazine, and gradually moved further and further from the mainstream — in later years making comments that attracted significant controversy.
The man who was once the doyen of political interviewers became, in the eyes of many, a provocateur.
But at his peak his gravitas was undeniable and was perhaps the purest form of it in New Zealand broadcasting history, in that his authority derived entirely from intellectual substance rather than personality or combativeness.
But a journalist with gravitas must hold their views separately from their public role; Perigo eventually could not or would not do that. His quitting television in disgust was itself a kind of integrity — he genuinely believed the medium had become unworthy.
Paul Holmes was New Zealand’s best-known and most influential late twentieth-century broadcaster, straddling the line between serious current affairs presenter and entertainer. Up to 900,000 New Zealanders were tuning in nightly to Holmes by the mid-1990s — a staggering figure for a country of our size.
He had a form of gravitas rooted not in intellectual authority but in emotional authenticity and a fierce populist instinct for accountability. His producer recalled that he had “a way of connecting genuinely with people — genuinely able to talk to just anybody.”
His limitation was the same as his strength: he was so much a personality that the line between journalism and entertainment was always blurred, and his later career was marked by several incidents — most notably a racially offensive column — that seriously damaged his credibility.
Looking at Edwards, Fraser, Perigo and Holmes together, what strikes you is that all four were, in different ways, seriously educated men who brought genuine intellectual breadth to their work. Edwards had a doctorate. Fraser had acted professionally and run a symphony orchestra. Perigo had the musical and philosophical depth of a genuine autodidact. Holmes had the instincts of a great actor.
None of them were simply journalists who had come up through the ranks. That breadth of formation — of life lived outside the newsroom — gave all of them a quality that is very hard to manufacture, and very hard to find in the current generation of New Zealand political journalists.
And it is to those journalists that I shall now turn
The Quest for Gravitas in today’s TVNZ Political Journalism
TVNZ’s political journalism is currently centred on four main figures: Jack Tame (Q+A, weekend news), Maiki Sherman (political editor, parliamentary gallery), Benedict Collins (1News Senior Political Correspondent) and Tova O’Brien (Breakfast co-host, recently joined from Stuff).
Let us consider each of these individuals.
Jack Tame - despite a winning smile which he perhaps uses a little too often and a tone of voice that is perhaps a little light – is the strongest contender for gravitas at TVNZ.
Tame hosts TVNZ’s Q+A on Sunday mornings and is considered, arguably, the best TV interviewer in the country. This reputation is well-earned.
Over nearly two decades at TVNZ, he served as the network’s United States correspondent based in New York from 2012 to 2017, covering two presidential elections, Olympic Games, hurricanes, and the Sandy Hook mass shooting. That breadth of real-world experience — beyond New Zealand’s parliamentary bubble — gives him genuine depth.
What Tame demonstrates is the rarer form of gravitas. He is persistent and demanding without becoming aggressive or personal.
On Q+A he conducts longer-form interviews that require both parties to think seriously. He addressed the nation at the end of 2025 noting that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Foreign Minister Winston Peters, and Social Development Minister Louise Upston had all refused to be interviewed on Q+A that year, despite a standing invitation — arguing that “there is a vital democratic function in interviewing and challenging politicians of all stripes in a longer and more sustained format than the standard daily news cycle allows.”
That statement itself reflects gravitas: Tame framed the refusal not as a personal slight but as a democratic concern.
In a Metro interview, Tame reflected that the thing concerning him most about the future of media is the trajectory of declining journalism jobs — arguing this “serves the interests of powerful corporations and powerful people, but doesn’t serve the interests of broader democracy.” This kind of institutional thinking about journalism’s role marks him out as someone who takes the craft seriously.
Tame’s shortcomings are that he can be too methodical and careful — occasionally allowing politicians to escape without being pressed hard enough when the moment calls for it.
Some critics feel Q+A can be too polite in format for the combative era of New Zealand politics. His growing role as weekend news anchor may also dilute the focused political identity he has built.
Benedict Collins may be a capable reporter but with limited gravitas which means that he may not be taken as seriously as he might like.
Yet he has genuine investigative credentials, a clear beat he cares about, and has done work that genuinely mattered. But he is a bit light and off-hand which captures something real about his on-screen presence that has actually drawn public comment.
This shortcoming belies Collins’ proven ability. From his early days as a reporter he has had a strong interest in covering illicit drugs and enforcement — covering punitive drug-testing sanctions on beneficiaries, the battle to legalise pill-testing at festivals, the 2020 cannabis referendum, and in 2018 helping expose a meth-testing scandal that had government, landlords and homeowners wasting hundreds of millions of dollars.
That last story was genuinely significant investigative journalism — the kind that has real-world consequences and requires sustained, methodical work over time.
His book Mad on Meth: How New Zealand Got Hooked on P, examined New Zealand’s history with methamphetamine and successive governments’ failed attempts to contain it. Writing a serious non-fiction book on a complex social and policy issue suggests more intellectual engagement than the typical gallery reporter manages. That is the kind of thing that ought to be a foundation for gravitas.
The problem is that Collins’s on-screen persona does not always match the seriousness of his better work.
ACT leader David Seymour publicly singled him out, saying he had seen Collins “grinning down the camera” about Prime Minister Luxon’s accommodation allowance costs — using this as evidence that political reporters celebrated politicians’ slip-ups rather than serving the public interest.
Seymour is a self-interested critic, and TVNZ defended Collins robustly, but the specific image of a reporter grinning on camera while reporting a political embarrassment is not an unfair characterisation of a style tic that recurs.
Gravitas does not require solemnity, but it does require a journalist to look like they take the subject seriously — and Collins can occasionally look like he is enjoying the gotcha moment more than he is illuminating the issue.
A satirical piece on Scoop from 2023 — admittedly written with heavy irony — pointed to what many viewers notice about his delivery.
The piece described Collins heading to “grill the blokiest, matiest ute seller in Auckland town — a blokey, matey dude just like Benedict.” Satire exaggerates, but it only lands when it contains a kernel of observable truth.
The “blokey, matey” quality — a breezy, slightly laddish register in his on-air delivery and his inability to know what to do with his hands— is something that multiple observers have picked up on, and it is genuinely at odds with the weight that serious political reporting requires.
The tension in Collins is this. His work sometimes has real substance, but his presentation undermines it. Gravitas requires a coherent on-screen authority — the audience needs to feel, watching someone, that this person is the right person to be holding politicians to account on their behalf.
Collins’s more relaxed, casual persona can make him seem like a reporter who has stumbled across a good story rather than a journalist who has the intellectual and moral authority to demand answers.
This is not entirely his fault. The 6pm bulletin format pushes reporters toward punchy, accessible packages with a clear narrative arc. Political stories that fit neatly into 90 seconds of television often become about personalities and stumbles rather than policy and consequences. Collins works within those constraints, and when he has been given space — in longer-form work, in his book — a more substantial journalist emerges.
Collins sits in a different category from Jack Tame, who has built genuine broadcast gravitas over time. He is generally a competent, sometimes genuinely good political journalist whose on-screen manner — casual, occasionally smirky, too comfortable with the matey register — prevents him from projecting the gravitas the role merits.
He has the intellectual raw material for it; he has not yet assembled it into a consistent public presence.
Whether that is a character trait, a format problem, or simply a stage in his development is hard to say definitively — but as a senior political correspondent at the country’s most-watched news service, he should carry more weight than he currently does.
Tova O’Brien has high energy, is sharp but her gravitas is still developing. She is a journalist of genuine ability and courage.
She won Political Journalist of the Year in 2019, with the citation describing her as “courageous, tenacious” and noting she “wielded considerable influence on the 2018 political scene with her scoops.”
Her track record includes some memorable moments — her searing 2020 interview with former MP Jami-Lee Ross went viral around the world, and her “exhilarating, absurdist, dark comedy” report on a shambolic National Party became legendary.
However, O’Brien’s brand of journalism tilts more towards tenacity and combativeness than classical gravitas.
On her Breakfast debut she did not let Luxon get away with diversionary talking points, repeatedly returning to questions on road user charges and sending troops to the Middle East — but she also used language such as “piss off” in an interview with former Prime Minister Helen Clark.
That kind of edge entertains, and it reflects genuine fearlessness, but it risks undermining the measured authority that gravitas requires.
The Luxon situation is instructive. Some viewers found her “unnecessarily argumentative and aggressive,” while journalist Carmen Parahi noted Luxon “gets all red and flustered” and questioned whether he simply couldn’t answer her questions.
The truth likely lies between those poles — O’Brien is doing her job, but her style generates controversy about her rather than about the subject being questioned. When an interviewer becomes the story, some gravitas is lost.
O’Brien’s combativeness can overshadow substance. The morning Breakfast format — with its entertainment segments, banter with co-hosts, and commercial pressures — is structurally hostile to gravitas regardless of the journalist.
Being sharp-elbowed in a fluffy morning show environment is not the same as commanding authority in a dedicated political forum. Her long-term reputation for gravitas will depend on whether she can channel that tenacity into sustained analytical depth rather than viral confrontations.
Maiki Sherman is an award-winning journalist with 17 years of experience, first joining the Parliamentary Press Gallery in 2012 and since working for Māori Television, Newshub, and now TVNZ as 1News political editor.
She has covered New Zealand politics across successive governments and is a fluent speaker of Te Reo Māori, bringing a distinctive perspective to political coverage.
Her knowledge of the parliamentary gallery and institutional relationships is a genuine asset. She has broken significant stories and produced solid reporting over many years.
Her style has a tendency to be a bit over-excited and at times shrill and her gravitas has been seriously compromised in the past week.
She is at the centre of an alleged incident in which she reportedly used a homophobic slur at a drinks event hosted by Finance Minister Nicola Willis in May 2025, directed at Stuff journalist Lloyd Burr — an incident that has now placed renewed scrutiny on TVNZ’s political editor.
Beyond that specific allegation, there is also the broader question of what it says about professional judgement that a political editor was at late-night drinks in the Finance Minister’s office..
Proximity to power is the occupational hazard most destructive to a political journalist’s gravitas. The perception - or reality - of socialising intimately with those you are meant to scrutinise fundamentally undermines the authority and independence that gravitas requires.
Broader Issues Surrounding TVNZ Political Journalism
There are a number of systemic issues that limit gravitas across TVNZ’s political coverage.
The most obvious ones are commercial and format pressures. TVNZ is fully commercially funded, and Breakfast in particular is a ratings-driven entertainment-news hybrid. The structural demands of that format — pace, lightness, viral moments — work against the sustained, measured interrogation that produces real political accountability.
Another issue is access journalism. The revelation that the then TVNZ political editor Jessica Mutch-McKay suggested the opposition leader do “photo opportunities” so “people need to get to know him” prompted accusations that TVNZ was helping politicians manage their media rather than holding them to account. When political journalists become too close to the politicians they cover, neutrality and authority are both compromised.
There is a choice between depth or confrontation that characterizes TVNZ’s approach.
Several of TVNZ’s most prominent political moments in recent years have been about confrontational exchanges rather than revelatory policy analysis.
Gravitas is not about being aggressive. It is about being right, well-prepared, and formidably knowledgeable.
A politician who is underprepared or makes a gaffe will look bad regardless of the journalist’s style. The real test of political journalism is whether it illuminates issues of genuine public importance — and on that measure, TVNZ’s output is uneven.
An absence of experience is the final issue. The closure of Newshub and significant cuts across the sector have depleted the pool of experienced political journalists in New Zealand generally.
TVNZ itself has not been immune to cost-cutting. Gravitas is partly a function of accumulated experience, and that is a finite resource being steadily eroded.
Addendum: After this post was scheduled it came to my attention that the Speaker has stepped into a stand-off between the National Party and TVNZ over the way two of its journalists - including political editor Maiki Sherman - tried to interview National whip Stuart Smith in a Parliament corridor late on Tuesday night last week.
Sherman and at least one other colleague could face a temporary ban from covering politics at Parliament if the Speaker has found TVNZ breached longstanding press gallery rules.
The outcome of this matter could cause additional damage to what gravitas Sherman might have remaining.
Conclusion
Of TVNZ’s current political journalists, Jack Tame comes closest to possessing genuine gravitas — the combination of intellectual depth, institutional seriousness, and measured authority that the role demands.
Tova O’Brien has the raw ingredients — courage, sharpness, tenacity — but her style and format currently work against the cultivation of gravitas.
Maiki Sherman has the experience and knowledge but is currently facing questions about professional judgement that go to the heart of what gravitas requires: independence, credibility, and the perception of integrity.
New Zealand political journalism would be better served by less viral confrontation and more of the sustained, deeply informed accountability journalism that — as Jack Tame himself has argued — democracy genuinely needs.
David Harvey is a former District Court Judge and Mastermind champion, as well as an award winning writer who blogs at the substack site A Halflings View - Where this article was sourced
But lawyers’ letters are a sideshow.
One of the problems suffered by MSM is that there is an absence of authority. TV journalism is perhaps the most visible example of this. News stories seem to be….light. The coverage is light. The story telling is light. The reporters inject their own personalities, anxious to be the story.
What is lacking is a quality recognized by Romans of the pre-Augustan Republic – gravitas.
In this article I consider the nature of gravitas and how it has been manifested by a selection of leading international journalists. I then focus upon a selection of New Zealand journalists who were known for their gravitas before making some observations on the presence (or absence) of gravitas in the current crop of TVNZ political journalists before concluding with some general observations about TVNZ’s political journalism.
In this article I name names. I concede freely I have not asked any of the subjects – those who are alive at least – for comment. It will be interesting to see if any lawyers’ letters arrive in my inbox.
What is “Gravitas”?
The word gravitas comes from the Latin for “weight” or “seriousness.” In the context of public life and journalism, it refers to a quality of substance, dignity, and intellectual authority — the sense that a person possesses deep knowledge, measured judgement, and a commanding presence that earns respect.
A person with gravitas does not need to shout to be heard. They carry authority through the weight of what they say, how they say it, and how composed they remain under pressure.
Gravitas combines several elements: intellectual depth and command of subject matter; the ability to ask probing questions without losing composure; a calm, unhurried manner that signals confidence; and an ethical seriousness about the role being performed.
It is not about being solemn or dull — Paul Holmes (more on him later) had gravitas and was entertainingly combative. It is about the audience sensing that the journalist takes their democratic responsibility seriously and has done the work to justify it.
Should Journalists – especially political commentators – possess gravitas?
The answer must be in the affirmative and emphatically so for political journalists. Political journalism is one of the most consequential forms of public communication in a democracy. Politicians control spending, legislation, rights, and the direction of society. The journalist’s job is to hold them to account on behalf of citizens who cannot interrogate power themselves. This requires gravitas for several reasons.
Without intellectual depth, an interviewer can be deflected by a politician who simply talks over or around the questions. Without authority and composure, the interview degenerates into theatre — either into a shouting match or a fawning conversation.
Without gravitas, the journalist becomes the story rather than the subject. And without ethical seriousness, there is a risk of bias, personal vendettas, or becoming too close to the subjects being covered.
A political journalist without gravitas may still generate clips and social media moments, but they will rarely produce the kind of sustained accountability journalism that changes public understanding or forces governments to alter course.
Journalists Who Defined Gravitas
In the modern age there have been a number of journalists who had an enormous reputation for reliability and credibility along with a more than generous helping of gravitas.
Edward R. Murrow (USA 19430s – 1960s) is the archetype against whom all broadcast journalism gravitas is measured. As CBS’s war correspondent broadcasting live from London during the Blitz, his opening words “This... is London” became some of the most famous in broadcasting history. His calm, deliberate delivery conveyed both the horror and the weight of what he was witnessing without sensationalism.
But it was his 1954 television investigation of Senator Joseph McCarthy — at the height of McCarthyism when most of the media establishment was too frightened to confront him — that defined what gravitas in journalism actually means in practice. He ended that broadcast with words that still resonate – “Goodnight and Good Luck.” McCarthy never recovered.
Murrow demonstrated that gravitas is not just a manner — it is a willingness to use your authority in service of truth at personal cost.
Walter Cronkite (USA 1960s – 1980’s) is a journalist whose broadcasts I personally experienced when I was in the USA from 1964 – 65. He was for two decades the most trusted man in America, according to polling.
His gravitas was of a different kind from Murrow’s — less combative, more reassuring — but no less powerful. When he removed his glasses, paused, and announced John F. Kennedy’s death in 1963, the nation stopped.
When he editorialised in 1968, after returning from Vietnam, that the war was a stalemate and could not be won, President Lyndon Johnson reportedly said “if I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America” — and shortly afterwards announced he would not seek re-election.
That is the ultimate measure of gravitas in broadcast journalism: the capacity to shift the course of public events not through partisanship or noise, but through the accumulated weight of perceived integrity. Cronkite signed off each broadcast with “And that’s the way it is” - a phrase that only worked because audiences believed him.
David Dimbleby (UK 1970’s – 2018) represented the finest tradition of BBC public service gravitas. For over forty years he anchored the BBC’s coverage of elections, state occasions, and major national events with an authority that seemed almost constitutional.
His skill was an ability to hold enormous complexity — multiple results coming in, competing commentators, live declarations — with absolute composure, and to ask the questions that cut through the noise at precisely the right moment.
His 1997 election night, watching the scale of Tony Blair’s Labour landslide unfold, remains a masterclass in anchoring.
He interviewed every prime minister from Harold Wilson to Theresa May on his Question Time programme, and brought a forensic quality to those encounters that was never flashy but was relentlessly substantive.
His gravitas was of the patrician, deeply knowledgeable kind — and it worked because it was genuine, not performed.
Robin Day (UK 1950’s – 1980s) essentially invented the adversarial political interview on British television. Before Day, politicians were handled with deference. He introduced the idea that an interviewer’s job was to challenge, probe and, if necessary, embarrass a politician into clarity.
His bow-tie became as recognisable as his manner — which combined intellectual aggression with a certain theatrical delight that somehow never tipped into unfairness.
He famously told a general during the Falklands War that “most of your soldiers are hired mercenaries” — a provocation designed to expose a real argument.
He had gravitas not despite his combativeness but because of the obvious intellectual substance behind it. Politicians were genuinely apprehensive about appearing before him, which is the clearest possible sign that a political interviewer has achieved what the role demands.
Jeremy Paxman (UK 1989 – 2014) is the inheritor of the Day tradition, taken to its most extreme expression. His most famous moment — asking Home Secretary Michael Howard the same question twelve times in a row during a 1997 Newsnight interview, never accepting a non-answer — became both a meme and a genuine landmark in accountability journalism.
What Paxman had was a form of gravitas rooted in contempt for evasion. He made politicians visibly uncomfortable not by shouting but by refusing to pretend that a non-answer was an answer. The pause, the raised eyebrow, the quiet repetition of the question — these were weapons of genuine journalistic authority.
He could also be wrong, unfair, and occasionally self-indulgent, but his best work demonstrated that persistence in the face of political evasion is itself a form of public service.
John Simpson (UK 1980s – present) as BBC World Affairs Editor represents a different dimension of gravitas — the authority of someone who has personally witnessed more of the world’s defining events than almost any other living journalist.
He was in Tiananmen Square in 1989, in Kabul when the Taliban fell, in Baghdad as American forces entered. His dispatches have always been marked by a quality rare in television journalism: genuine humility in the face of complexity.
He has never pretended that difficult situations are simple, and that intellectual honesty — which sometimes meant telling audiences things they did not want to hear — is the bedrock of his authority.
He has also been willing to criticise his own organisation and his own government, which is the acid test of editorial independence.
Tim Russert (USA 1991 – 2008) as host of NBC’s Meet the Press became the gold standard of American political interviewing in the modern era.
His method was forensic and meticulously prepared — he would confront guests with their own past statements, often displayed on screen, and ask them to reconcile contradictions.
Politicians across the spectrum were wary of appearing before him because he had done the homework.
He was neither aggressive nor particularly theatrical, but his preparation was so thorough that evasion was almost impossible.
When Russert died suddenly in 2008, the tributes from politicians who had appeared before him — including from those he had pressed hardest — spoke to a journalist who was feared and respected in equal measure, which is the right combination.
Christiane Amanpour (International 1990’s to present) brings a distinctive form of gravitas forged in war reporting — Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf War — and carried it into studio interviews with heads of state.
What distinguished her was a refusal to apply false balance to situations where the facts did not support equivalence. She argued famously that good journalism was not neutral, but impartial — a subtle but important distinction. Interviewing tyrants and war criminals, she maintained a composure that was itself a form of moral statement. Her authority comes from having been there — from a physical and moral courage that lends credibility to everything else she does.
Andrew Neil (UK 1990’s – 2021) is a more recent example whose gravitas was built on extraordinary preparation.
As presenter of the BBC’s This Week and election programmes, and particularly in his demolition job on Boris Johnson’s 2019 election campaign — an empty-chair interview after Johnson refused to appear — he demonstrated that gravitas can be accumulated in the absence of the subject.
His interview with Nigel Farage, pressing on the cost assumptions of Brexit, and his questioning of Jeremy Corbyn’s economic figures, showed a journalist who had done more homework than the politician had — which is where real authority comes from. Politicians of all persuasions found him genuinely uncomfortable to face.
Kate Adie (UK 1979 – 2003) joined the BBC national news team in 1979. She had worked in a number of aspects of radio and built her journalism from the foundations up rather than arriving at prominence quickly.
Her defining moment as a journalist came in April 1980 when she covered the dramatic ending of the six-day Iranian Embassy siege in London, when special forces stormed the building and released terrified hostages. The BBC interrupted sports coverage, and Adie reported live and unscripted while crouching behind a car door.
What distinguished that broadcast was not just the physical courage involved, but the quality of the reporting itself. She was calm, precise, and authoritative — conveying the chaos and danger without losing her composure or abandoning accuracy.
She shot to fame as a national reporter, and in doing so made women believe that anything was possible in terms of their careers. At a time when war zones and crisis reporting were almost exclusively male territory, she simply got on with the job and did it better than most of her male counterparts.
What followed that breakthrough was twenty-plus years of going to the most dangerous and significant places on earth. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s she reported from The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Gulf Wars, the Balkan Wars, the Rwandan genocide, and Tiananmen Square — consistently dedicated not only to reporting facts but to highlighting the human stories behind global events.
What makes Adie especially worth studying is that her gravitas was earned entirely through action rather than manner. She did not have the patrician authority of a David Dimbleby, the theatrical intelligence of a Robin Day, or the forensic preparation of a Tim Russert. What she had was something more fundamental. She went to places other people would not go, reported what she saw without distortion or embellishment, refused to be used by governments on either side, and did all of this for over two decades with remarkable consistency.
For New Zealand political journalists — who work in a small, comfortable, entirely safe environment — she is a useful corrective to the tendency to confuse combativeness with courage, or on-screen manner with genuine authority. Adie earned her gravitas the hard way, and it showed in every broadcast she made.
Common Threads
From these examples several common threads emerge. In every case, the gravitas was underpinned by having done more work than the subject expected. Russert’s archive, Neil’s figures, Paxman’s refusal to accept the first deflection — all rooted in preparation.
There was a willingness to use authority at a personal cost. Murrow taking on McCarthy, Cronkite calling Vietnam a failure, Amanpour refusing false balance in the Bosnian war — all involved professional risk. Gravitas without courage is merely manner.
They were all composed, despite the pressure. None of these journalists raised their voice unnecessarily. The authority came from stillness and persistence, not noise.
Finally there was an understanding of the democratic function of their role. Every one of these journalists appeared to believe — and communicated that belief — that what they were doing mattered to the health of democracy. That seriousness of purpose is what separates gravitas from mere performance.
What lessons for New Zealand political journalists? Well first there is an assumption that they want to learn but if that is the case the lesson is clear enough.
Gravitas is not primarily a matter of presentation or age or even experience. It is the product of preparation, intellectual honesty, editorial independence, and the courage to use authority in service of the public rather than in service of a career.
Examples of Gravitas in New Zealand Political Journalism
I have selected four figures who probably represent the golden age of New Zealand current affairs television, and together they make a fascinating study in different kinds of broadcast authority.
Brian Edwards began making his reputation in the late 1960s as one of the country’s toughest television interviewers. His path to that role was itself unusual — he was born in Cork, Ireland, educated in Belfast, completed a doctorate at Edinburgh University, and arrived in New Zealand in 1964 intending to lecture in German at Canterbury.
After three years he quit to embark on a media career. That academic background — a genuine PhD — was part of what gave him a different kind of intellectual substance from the typical broadcaster.
When Edwards brought a more confrontational style to current affairs show Gallery in 1969, it helped make his name. There were controversial discussions with SIS head William Gilbert, who attempted to stop his interview from being broadcast.
The willingness to interview the head of the Security Intelligence Service — and to resist political pressure to suppress it — was exactly the kind of editorial courage that signals genuine gravitas rather than mere combativeness.
His most remarkable single moment came in 1971. Interviewing the Postmaster General and a representative from the Post Office union on Gallery during a go-slow industrial dispute, Edwards forced an agreement between the two men to stop union action and return to mediation.
That is an extraordinary achievement for a television journalist — using the weight of his authority on live television to actually resolve a national industrial dispute. No New Zealand broadcaster before or since has had quite that kind of impact in real time.
Edwards possessed gravitas of a formidable kind. His Irish-educated intellectual confidence, his doctoral training in rigorous argument, his willingness to confront powerful institutions, and his ability to command a room — all combined into a broadcaster who made politicians genuinely uncomfortable in the way that Robin Day did in Britain.
His one limitation, in gravitas terms, was that he eventually became so embedded in political advisory work — coaching the very politicians he once interrogated — that his editorial independence became somewhat compromised.
He stood unsuccessfully for Labour in 1972, and his long relationship with Helen Clark as a client rather than a subject blurred the line between journalist and insider that gravitas ultimately requires.
Ian Fraser was a consummate broadcaster. He came to journalism via a genuinely eclectic path — studying modern languages at Otago, pursuing an acting career at Downstage theatre in Wellington, working as an executive for the performing arts at the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council, before eventually taking a job anchoring Radio New Zealand’s Checkpoint, where he honed what he came to call his own particular style of “performance journalism.”
In 1974 Fraser began his first decade-long stint on television, initially as a reporter on current affairs show Nationwide, and later as a frontman and live interviewer across Seven Days, Sunday, Dateline Monday, and Newsmakers — the last of which quickly moved from a 5.30 Sunday slot to 9pm.
His television career quickly achieved national fame for his probing and incisive questioning of political leaders and many of the most prominent figures in arts, sport and letters from New Zealand and around the world.
The range of people he interviewed was remarkable — Ronald Reagan, the Shah of Iran, Indira Gandhi, Elton John, Billy Connolly, and Walter Cronkite among them. That international scope was unusual for a New Zealand broadcaster of his era and gave his work a breadth that most of his contemporaries lacked.
He also won critical praise for anchoring six straight hours of live coverage of the 1993 general election. Six hours of live political broadcasting, without a script, requires a very particular combination of knowledge, composure, and authority.
Fraser’s gravitas differed from that of Edwards. It was perhaps the most elegant of his generation. A Herald profile described him as having
“that rare gift of making you feel like you’re the only person in the room”
This quality is the foundation of great interviewing, because it makes subjects open up. He was also, by one Herald writer’s account, “arguably the best interviewer in the country” at his peak.
His gravitas was less combative than Edwards’s — more the authority of a deeply cultured, widely read man who happened also to be a gifted performer.
His later career is more complex. He became Chief Executive of TVNZ from 2002 until 2005, resigning following a dispute with the board over salary negotiations for senior staff. His gravitas as a broadcaster was real; his transition to management diluted rather than enhanced it.
Lindsay Perigo is intriguing because his career arc is unlike any other in New Zealand broadcasting — a man of genuine distinction who eventually made himself, in the conventional sense, unemployable.
By 1979 he was anchoring Radio New Zealand’s flagship Morning Report, with his producer describing him as “a journalist of extraordinary ability.” The following year he won a Mobil Radio Award for Best Newscaster and the Bill Toft Trophy for Broadcaster of the Year.
In 1984 he shifted to television, anchoring and interviewing on a run of high-profile TVNZ current affairs shows — Sunday, Eyewitness News, Frontline, News at 10.
By 1990 he had a show named after him, interviewing key figures of the day during a tumultuous era in New Zealand politics, as successive Labour governments and then National upended political and economic orthodoxy.
His distinctive interview style was described by a psychologist as “soft-confronting” — a neutral disposition that aimed to probe ideas rather than personalities. That distinction — probing ideas rather than personalities — is precisely what separates the highest form of political journalism from the tabloid kind, and it marks Perigo out as genuinely serious.
Metro magazine dubbed him “the doyen of political interviewers.” That was a well-earned title. His opera-lover’s sensitivity to language and meaning, combined with rigorous political knowledge, gave his interviews a quality that was quite different from Edwards’s intellectual aggression or Fraser’s polished elegance.
Then in 1993, he quit television work, famously denouncing TVNZ news and current affairs as “brain dead.” He subsequently reinvented himself as a libertarian political activist, founded the Libertarianz party, edited a libertarian magazine, and gradually moved further and further from the mainstream — in later years making comments that attracted significant controversy.
The man who was once the doyen of political interviewers became, in the eyes of many, a provocateur.
But at his peak his gravitas was undeniable and was perhaps the purest form of it in New Zealand broadcasting history, in that his authority derived entirely from intellectual substance rather than personality or combativeness.
But a journalist with gravitas must hold their views separately from their public role; Perigo eventually could not or would not do that. His quitting television in disgust was itself a kind of integrity — he genuinely believed the medium had become unworthy.
Paul Holmes was New Zealand’s best-known and most influential late twentieth-century broadcaster, straddling the line between serious current affairs presenter and entertainer. Up to 900,000 New Zealanders were tuning in nightly to Holmes by the mid-1990s — a staggering figure for a country of our size.
He had a form of gravitas rooted not in intellectual authority but in emotional authenticity and a fierce populist instinct for accountability. His producer recalled that he had “a way of connecting genuinely with people — genuinely able to talk to just anybody.”
His limitation was the same as his strength: he was so much a personality that the line between journalism and entertainment was always blurred, and his later career was marked by several incidents — most notably a racially offensive column — that seriously damaged his credibility.
Looking at Edwards, Fraser, Perigo and Holmes together, what strikes you is that all four were, in different ways, seriously educated men who brought genuine intellectual breadth to their work. Edwards had a doctorate. Fraser had acted professionally and run a symphony orchestra. Perigo had the musical and philosophical depth of a genuine autodidact. Holmes had the instincts of a great actor.
None of them were simply journalists who had come up through the ranks. That breadth of formation — of life lived outside the newsroom — gave all of them a quality that is very hard to manufacture, and very hard to find in the current generation of New Zealand political journalists.
And it is to those journalists that I shall now turn
The Quest for Gravitas in today’s TVNZ Political Journalism
TVNZ’s political journalism is currently centred on four main figures: Jack Tame (Q+A, weekend news), Maiki Sherman (political editor, parliamentary gallery), Benedict Collins (1News Senior Political Correspondent) and Tova O’Brien (Breakfast co-host, recently joined from Stuff).
Let us consider each of these individuals.
Jack Tame - despite a winning smile which he perhaps uses a little too often and a tone of voice that is perhaps a little light – is the strongest contender for gravitas at TVNZ.
Tame hosts TVNZ’s Q+A on Sunday mornings and is considered, arguably, the best TV interviewer in the country. This reputation is well-earned.
Over nearly two decades at TVNZ, he served as the network’s United States correspondent based in New York from 2012 to 2017, covering two presidential elections, Olympic Games, hurricanes, and the Sandy Hook mass shooting. That breadth of real-world experience — beyond New Zealand’s parliamentary bubble — gives him genuine depth.
What Tame demonstrates is the rarer form of gravitas. He is persistent and demanding without becoming aggressive or personal.
On Q+A he conducts longer-form interviews that require both parties to think seriously. He addressed the nation at the end of 2025 noting that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Foreign Minister Winston Peters, and Social Development Minister Louise Upston had all refused to be interviewed on Q+A that year, despite a standing invitation — arguing that “there is a vital democratic function in interviewing and challenging politicians of all stripes in a longer and more sustained format than the standard daily news cycle allows.”
That statement itself reflects gravitas: Tame framed the refusal not as a personal slight but as a democratic concern.
In a Metro interview, Tame reflected that the thing concerning him most about the future of media is the trajectory of declining journalism jobs — arguing this “serves the interests of powerful corporations and powerful people, but doesn’t serve the interests of broader democracy.” This kind of institutional thinking about journalism’s role marks him out as someone who takes the craft seriously.
Tame’s shortcomings are that he can be too methodical and careful — occasionally allowing politicians to escape without being pressed hard enough when the moment calls for it.
Some critics feel Q+A can be too polite in format for the combative era of New Zealand politics. His growing role as weekend news anchor may also dilute the focused political identity he has built.
Benedict Collins may be a capable reporter but with limited gravitas which means that he may not be taken as seriously as he might like.
Yet he has genuine investigative credentials, a clear beat he cares about, and has done work that genuinely mattered. But he is a bit light and off-hand which captures something real about his on-screen presence that has actually drawn public comment.
This shortcoming belies Collins’ proven ability. From his early days as a reporter he has had a strong interest in covering illicit drugs and enforcement — covering punitive drug-testing sanctions on beneficiaries, the battle to legalise pill-testing at festivals, the 2020 cannabis referendum, and in 2018 helping expose a meth-testing scandal that had government, landlords and homeowners wasting hundreds of millions of dollars.
That last story was genuinely significant investigative journalism — the kind that has real-world consequences and requires sustained, methodical work over time.
His book Mad on Meth: How New Zealand Got Hooked on P, examined New Zealand’s history with methamphetamine and successive governments’ failed attempts to contain it. Writing a serious non-fiction book on a complex social and policy issue suggests more intellectual engagement than the typical gallery reporter manages. That is the kind of thing that ought to be a foundation for gravitas.
The problem is that Collins’s on-screen persona does not always match the seriousness of his better work.
ACT leader David Seymour publicly singled him out, saying he had seen Collins “grinning down the camera” about Prime Minister Luxon’s accommodation allowance costs — using this as evidence that political reporters celebrated politicians’ slip-ups rather than serving the public interest.
Seymour is a self-interested critic, and TVNZ defended Collins robustly, but the specific image of a reporter grinning on camera while reporting a political embarrassment is not an unfair characterisation of a style tic that recurs.
Gravitas does not require solemnity, but it does require a journalist to look like they take the subject seriously — and Collins can occasionally look like he is enjoying the gotcha moment more than he is illuminating the issue.
A satirical piece on Scoop from 2023 — admittedly written with heavy irony — pointed to what many viewers notice about his delivery.
The piece described Collins heading to “grill the blokiest, matiest ute seller in Auckland town — a blokey, matey dude just like Benedict.” Satire exaggerates, but it only lands when it contains a kernel of observable truth.
The “blokey, matey” quality — a breezy, slightly laddish register in his on-air delivery and his inability to know what to do with his hands— is something that multiple observers have picked up on, and it is genuinely at odds with the weight that serious political reporting requires.
The tension in Collins is this. His work sometimes has real substance, but his presentation undermines it. Gravitas requires a coherent on-screen authority — the audience needs to feel, watching someone, that this person is the right person to be holding politicians to account on their behalf.
Collins’s more relaxed, casual persona can make him seem like a reporter who has stumbled across a good story rather than a journalist who has the intellectual and moral authority to demand answers.
This is not entirely his fault. The 6pm bulletin format pushes reporters toward punchy, accessible packages with a clear narrative arc. Political stories that fit neatly into 90 seconds of television often become about personalities and stumbles rather than policy and consequences. Collins works within those constraints, and when he has been given space — in longer-form work, in his book — a more substantial journalist emerges.
Collins sits in a different category from Jack Tame, who has built genuine broadcast gravitas over time. He is generally a competent, sometimes genuinely good political journalist whose on-screen manner — casual, occasionally smirky, too comfortable with the matey register — prevents him from projecting the gravitas the role merits.
He has the intellectual raw material for it; he has not yet assembled it into a consistent public presence.
Whether that is a character trait, a format problem, or simply a stage in his development is hard to say definitively — but as a senior political correspondent at the country’s most-watched news service, he should carry more weight than he currently does.
Tova O’Brien has high energy, is sharp but her gravitas is still developing. She is a journalist of genuine ability and courage.
She won Political Journalist of the Year in 2019, with the citation describing her as “courageous, tenacious” and noting she “wielded considerable influence on the 2018 political scene with her scoops.”
Her track record includes some memorable moments — her searing 2020 interview with former MP Jami-Lee Ross went viral around the world, and her “exhilarating, absurdist, dark comedy” report on a shambolic National Party became legendary.
However, O’Brien’s brand of journalism tilts more towards tenacity and combativeness than classical gravitas.
On her Breakfast debut she did not let Luxon get away with diversionary talking points, repeatedly returning to questions on road user charges and sending troops to the Middle East — but she also used language such as “piss off” in an interview with former Prime Minister Helen Clark.
That kind of edge entertains, and it reflects genuine fearlessness, but it risks undermining the measured authority that gravitas requires.
The Luxon situation is instructive. Some viewers found her “unnecessarily argumentative and aggressive,” while journalist Carmen Parahi noted Luxon “gets all red and flustered” and questioned whether he simply couldn’t answer her questions.
The truth likely lies between those poles — O’Brien is doing her job, but her style generates controversy about her rather than about the subject being questioned. When an interviewer becomes the story, some gravitas is lost.
O’Brien’s combativeness can overshadow substance. The morning Breakfast format — with its entertainment segments, banter with co-hosts, and commercial pressures — is structurally hostile to gravitas regardless of the journalist.
Being sharp-elbowed in a fluffy morning show environment is not the same as commanding authority in a dedicated political forum. Her long-term reputation for gravitas will depend on whether she can channel that tenacity into sustained analytical depth rather than viral confrontations.
Maiki Sherman is an award-winning journalist with 17 years of experience, first joining the Parliamentary Press Gallery in 2012 and since working for Māori Television, Newshub, and now TVNZ as 1News political editor.
She has covered New Zealand politics across successive governments and is a fluent speaker of Te Reo Māori, bringing a distinctive perspective to political coverage.
Her knowledge of the parliamentary gallery and institutional relationships is a genuine asset. She has broken significant stories and produced solid reporting over many years.
Her style has a tendency to be a bit over-excited and at times shrill and her gravitas has been seriously compromised in the past week.
She is at the centre of an alleged incident in which she reportedly used a homophobic slur at a drinks event hosted by Finance Minister Nicola Willis in May 2025, directed at Stuff journalist Lloyd Burr — an incident that has now placed renewed scrutiny on TVNZ’s political editor.
Beyond that specific allegation, there is also the broader question of what it says about professional judgement that a political editor was at late-night drinks in the Finance Minister’s office..
Proximity to power is the occupational hazard most destructive to a political journalist’s gravitas. The perception - or reality - of socialising intimately with those you are meant to scrutinise fundamentally undermines the authority and independence that gravitas requires.
Broader Issues Surrounding TVNZ Political Journalism
There are a number of systemic issues that limit gravitas across TVNZ’s political coverage.
The most obvious ones are commercial and format pressures. TVNZ is fully commercially funded, and Breakfast in particular is a ratings-driven entertainment-news hybrid. The structural demands of that format — pace, lightness, viral moments — work against the sustained, measured interrogation that produces real political accountability.
Another issue is access journalism. The revelation that the then TVNZ political editor Jessica Mutch-McKay suggested the opposition leader do “photo opportunities” so “people need to get to know him” prompted accusations that TVNZ was helping politicians manage their media rather than holding them to account. When political journalists become too close to the politicians they cover, neutrality and authority are both compromised.
There is a choice between depth or confrontation that characterizes TVNZ’s approach.
Several of TVNZ’s most prominent political moments in recent years have been about confrontational exchanges rather than revelatory policy analysis.
Gravitas is not about being aggressive. It is about being right, well-prepared, and formidably knowledgeable.
A politician who is underprepared or makes a gaffe will look bad regardless of the journalist’s style. The real test of political journalism is whether it illuminates issues of genuine public importance — and on that measure, TVNZ’s output is uneven.
An absence of experience is the final issue. The closure of Newshub and significant cuts across the sector have depleted the pool of experienced political journalists in New Zealand generally.
TVNZ itself has not been immune to cost-cutting. Gravitas is partly a function of accumulated experience, and that is a finite resource being steadily eroded.
Addendum: After this post was scheduled it came to my attention that the Speaker has stepped into a stand-off between the National Party and TVNZ over the way two of its journalists - including political editor Maiki Sherman - tried to interview National whip Stuart Smith in a Parliament corridor late on Tuesday night last week.
Sherman and at least one other colleague could face a temporary ban from covering politics at Parliament if the Speaker has found TVNZ breached longstanding press gallery rules.
The outcome of this matter could cause additional damage to what gravitas Sherman might have remaining.
Conclusion
Of TVNZ’s current political journalists, Jack Tame comes closest to possessing genuine gravitas — the combination of intellectual depth, institutional seriousness, and measured authority that the role demands.
Tova O’Brien has the raw ingredients — courage, sharpness, tenacity — but her style and format currently work against the cultivation of gravitas.
Maiki Sherman has the experience and knowledge but is currently facing questions about professional judgement that go to the heart of what gravitas requires: independence, credibility, and the perception of integrity.
New Zealand political journalism would be better served by less viral confrontation and more of the sustained, deeply informed accountability journalism that — as Jack Tame himself has argued — democracy genuinely needs.
David Harvey is a former District Court Judge and Mastermind champion, as well as an award winning writer who blogs at the substack site A Halflings View - Where this article was sourced
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