There is a well-worn pattern to Winnie on the warpath

I fully expect New Zealand First leader Winston Peters to gaslight more journalists and make more chilling threats against news organisations over the coming months. He acts like he is gearing up early for a general election.

His fractious exchange with Corin Dann – who he labelled an “arrogant wokester loser” via social media –  on Morning Report last Wednesday was far from novel. It was classic piece of political gamesmanship that drew on a very, very long tradition of shooting the messenger. Nor was Peters’ veiled threat against RNZ’s finances particularly novel.

As far back as the eighteenth century journalists were being targeted. Edmund Burke is reputed to have given us the title the Fourth Estate but is also (less reliably) credited with the following: “Political journalists defy the laws of nature: They are both scum and dregs.” American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson said he would prefer newspapers without government to government without newspapers. However, he also compared journalists to carrion crow feeding off “the agonies of their victims, as wolves do on the blood of lambs”.

Patrick Day, in The Making of the New Zealand Press, stated that initially journalism in this country was held in higher regard than in Britain – in spite of the fact that the press here was based on English traditions. A century later, however, things had changed. Keith Holyoake used off-camera intimidation to try to cow interviewers but it was one of his successors who began the unhappy tradition of denigrating (on-air) reporters who ask awkward questions. It became a set piece for that extraordinarily complex character, Robert Muldoon.

Muldoon’s 1976 altercation with television reporter Simon Walker on Tonight looks like the template that Peters all-too-regularly uses to derail awkward interviewers. The interview involved presenting the then Prime Minister with a series of awkward facts that called into question his recent “The Russians Are Coming” warning on Soviet ship movements (which followed the Dancing Cossacks commercial that helped to get him elected in 1975). Muldoon questioned the right to put the questions and lambasted the “smart alec interviewer”. You can view that interview here. It has a familiar ring that belies the fact it is almost fifty years old.

Muldoon targeted individuals. His ejection of Listener columnist Tom Scott from a Beehive press conference still stands as a black mark on our democracy, and which has a modern-day replay in the White House. He also banned Scott from an official visit to China and tried to do the same on a visit to India. He is reputed to have written to the magazine’s editor several times calling from Scott’s dismissal.

Dr Brian Edwards, in his book The Public Eye, described Muldoon as a professional belligerent “in that his contentious outbursts, his provocative stance, his pugnacity are not matters of the moment, not spontaneous or naïve, but calculated to achieve an effect”. Fifty four years since that autobiographical work was published, the description could have been written about Winston Peters. Nothing Peters does is spontaneous. He is too much the politician, too much the well honed foreign minister for that to be the case.

The acting Prime Minister knew exactly what he was doing when he derailed what could have been a challenging interview with Coran Dann on a contentious move to have ‘females’ defined in New Zealand law. Peters employed the same tactic in 2023 against both Jack Tame on Q&A and Rebecca Wright on TV3’s then Newshub Nation as a defence (perhaps that should be attack) weapon when faced with questions over policy costs. He was free with the personal insults, calling Tame “a dirt merchant” and “corrupt” and Wright “arrogant”, “ageist” and “lazy”.

The choice of words may be spontaneous but the strategy going into such interviews and any contingency tactics will have been played out in the politician’s head in advance.

There have been instances where political reaction has been off-the-cuff, or perhaps off-the-handle. The most memorable example was Helen Clark in what became known as “Corngate”. Believing she had been blind-sided on the issue of genetically modified corn, she called the interview “an ambush” and later described interviewer John Campbell as a “sanctimonious little creep”.

Too often, however, the use of the emergency brake to stop an interview that is headed into politically challenging territory is a preferred alternative to answering questions that could reveal policy shortcomings or political mistakes.

Journalists become inured to personal insults. They see them every day on social media and the vast majority know that, if you criticise others, you must be prepared to take it yourself. When the responses amount to no more that impotent personal insults, they simply present the thickest part of their hides for it to bounce off or dine out on it. John Campbell doubtless wore the title “sanctimonious little creep” with pride, as a reward for doing his job.

The insults can be brushed aside and the devices to avoid scrutiny put down to modern-day politics, but what cannot be so lightly dismissed are threats to use the power of the public purse against journalists.

Winston Peters reminded Corin Dann that the journalist was paid by the taxpayer. “Sooner or later, we’re going to cut that water off too, because you’re an abuse on the taxpayer.”

It is not the first time politicians have threatened funding, in the hope that it will have a chilling effect on robust reporting on Government. Usually, however, it is done behind the scenes – along with threats of restructuring and new board appointments – and seen as yet more storms to be weathered (and forgotten).

It is usual, given the legislative prohibition against politicians not interfering in the editorial decisions of state-owned media, for our elected representatives to watch their public P’s and Q’s. Labour leader Chris Hipkins believes his New Zealand First counterpart has crossed the line. Personally, I think Peters is too wily for that, and he would argue that his statement was a comment on Dann’s ability to remain employed given the professional ‘shortcomings’ that the Acting Prime Minister felt he had revealed.

Nonetheless, at face value, most people would interpret the statement as a warning that RNZ funding would be cut. He can dance of the head of a pin if he wishes, but it is unacceptable for a serving politician, let alone a party leader with disproportionate influence (thanks to MMP), to make such a statement – particularly in the course of an interview that was not going his way. It is even less acceptable while he is in the role of Acting Prime Minister.

Again, however, I think Peters was boxing clever.

First, he rightly gauged there would be no repercussions. He did not receive even the mildest of rebukes from Prime Minister Christopher Luxon who, although in Europe, was well aware of what had transpired.

“I just don’t think it would be any surprise … he has a rather Winston way of communicating with media where he’s going to push back on journalists, as is his right to do so,” Luxon told RNZ.

I think Peters was well aware that Luxon would be on dangerous ground openly criticising him from the other side of the world, with its disadvantageous time zones. Recent polling says National will need New Zealand First.

Second, even given that element of plausible deniability, a vague reference to funding would create obvious inferences less than a month out from Budget Day. Peters later stated he had had no discussions with his Cabinet colleagues over RNZ funding. However, if the state-owned broadcaster is among the entities subject to cuts in an austerity Budget, his supporters will chalk one up for Winnie – whether he had anything to do with it or not.

Call it politics if you like, but there are worrying implications from Winston Peters’ manipulative media strategies, whether they are well-worn or not. Not only is he validating bellicose tactics to close down legitimate attempts to satisfy the public’s right to know, but he is also helping to normalise the concept of Government being able to turn the tap either way on funding of state-owned media to influence their journalism.

At the end of the day, journalists are merely pawns in the wider game he is playing. Media bashing appeals to a certain segment of the electorate. With New Zealand First at its highest poll level in almost eight years (seven per cent), its leader will be determined to raise that number ahead of an election. And vilified journalists are just part of the builder’s mix.