Paul Holmes Needs to Go.


When there are so few televised interviews where the movers and shakers of this country are questioned at length, in exchanges longer than a 30sec, why have do we have to suffer Paul Holmes as the interviewer?

The job of a good interviewer is draw information from the interviewee and provide the viewer with new insights into their opinions, knowledge and character. Shane Taurima understands this but Holmes continues to treat Q&A as a vehicle to push his own opinions and shape interviews around his personal thinking.

This morning he interviewed Russel Norman and Winston Peters regarding their views on the economic management of the country.  For anyone who genuinely wanted to hear how the Greens and New Zealand First would manage the country's purse strings, they wouldn't have been enlightened. Russel Norman has continually impressed with grasp of economics and presenting alternative strategies and Winston has had past experience as the Government Treasurer, yet neither had the opportunity to demonstrate the depth of their understanding or respective visions.

We had a series of quick fire questions where Holmes cut answers short to state his own opinion or, in Russel's case, stopped an interesting response with the promise he would allow time to elaborate on this later, but not doing so. Even though National's whole economic strategy is based on guestimates Holmes dismisses the Greens' revenue source as "fairyland" money and blocked Russel's attempt to show how Green policies would be funded. Rather than allowing the viewers to decide for themselves what they thought of Russel's policies, Holmes took it on himself to continually provide his own judgements both verbally or with his body language.

Russel and Winston were put in the situation that they had to continually battle to put forward their respective economic visions as Holmes continually yapped around them, interjecting and harrying them for no discernible reason other than maintaining his own presence.

We need a programme like BBC's Hard Talk where John Key's ignorance of science was revealed and his discomfort from truly probing questions. If only we could have the likes of Shane Taurima to prod, encourage and challenge an interviewee for at least half an hour. The viewer may then be able to appreciate what the Greens mean by green technologies and how we could use our SOE's to kick start businesses in the private sector. The viewers could then find out how Winston would reward "winners" and what sort of things could add value to our timber exports.

Comments

JayWontdart said…
Mediawatch is a show coming out each Sunday around midday, the second last show (new episode out today!) featured a lot of talk about John Banks, in particular, how close "Banksy" and "Holmsey" are with one another. Holmes gave Banks a phone call before the election results were fully counted, saying "looks like you've got this one Banksy" etc.


http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2517850/mediawatch-for-6-may-2012


Of course media personalities are allowed to have their own vote, their own preferences for political candidates, but it seems rather like Holmes is a) very "this is MY show, about me", and presumably very anti the two politicians he just interviewed! :-)
Dave Kennedy said…
Holmes is a professional celebrity rather than a true journalist (Banks is a celebrity politician) and I do wonder if he was at the infamous Dot Com birthday party too. :-)
Brett said…
They should get Kim Hill should replace him, she's a lady with balls :)
Dave Kennedy said…
Brett, I think we have many capable journalists who could replace Holmes, Shane is doing a good job and National Radio's Kathryn Ryan and Mary Wilson are very capable too.
robertguyton said…
They could replace Holmes with a dish-mop and Q&A would be vastly improved. His bias is so pronounced, the cameraman has to constanly correct for Holmes' severe lean to the right. Don't sweat it too much though, bsprout. Russel still managed to look and sound authorative and as though he was patiently tolerating the small clown that kept leaping up and down self-importantly. The panel could see it and even the Tory harridan was clearly impressed.
Holmes, phone home.
Anonymous said…
Holmes has always been overrated. His own show on TV1 "Holmes" was only ever infotainment, not serious news. Sunday was appalling, and Norman looked better as a result. Shane Taurima is excellent, his poor showing with Paula Bennett his only black mark on Q&A so far. Kim Hill was outstanding on radio but her brief stint as a TV interviewer was not a success. Taurima, if he sticks to his very good penetrative interviewing style, whilst maintaining neutrality, will continue to be the best we have had on Q&A.
Holmes is awful.
Dave Kennedy said…
I agree, Anonymous, Shane will improve with experience, but Holmes' opinionated arrogance will only get worse.
Anonymous said…
I absolutely agree...Shame good journalism is void from our screens.

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