Television and radio journalist and presenter Jack Tame. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Seasoned journalist Jack Tame has conceded he “kind of missed the story” of Donald Trump’s rise to power while reporting from the US in the lead-up to the 2016 election.
But the host of TVNZ’s Q&A and Newstalk ZB’s Saturday Morning, who was working as 1NEWS’ US correspondent at the time, says being “humbled” by wrongly predicting the now-President’s downfall has ultimately made him a better journalist.
Tame’s candid admission came in an interview with re_covering, a Media Chaplaincy and RNZ podcast featuring New Zealand’s top journalists reflecting on their careers, released on Wednesday.
“I kind of missed the story, along with the biggest news outlets in the world,” he told re_covering host Frank Ritchie, admitting he had joined the throngs of media at Hillary Clinton’s election night party in anticipation of a victory for the Democrats.
“There were lots of parts of covering that story in which my reporting was really excellent. It reflected lots of views and I was really proud of it. But the experience of him winning and surprising so much of the world has made me think much more critically about the work I do now.
“That election result has really fundamentally changed something in me, in the way that I go about my work today.”
Tame told re_covering he had predicted the end of Trump’s presidential campaign on multiple occasions – in particular in July 2015, after Trump suggested US senator John McCain was only a war hero because he was captured, adding: “I like people that weren’t captured.”
McCain was held in a prisoner of war camp in Vietnam for six years, where he was repeatedly tortured. Trump’s remark was condemned by members of both the Republican and Democratic parties and his fitness for office became a point of public debate.
“I remember [Newstalk ZB host Mike] Hosking said to me, ‘What do you think will happen?’ And I said, ‘That’ll be the end of Trump, he’s not gonna survive.’ And then I remember covering the Access Hollywood tape and thinking, ‘Oh, this will be the end of Trump’.
“For all of the things I’d experienced, and all the fervour at Donald Trump rallies – and even though Trump had defied the odds in winning the nomination in the first place – I still thought on the balance of everything, surely this guy isn’t gonna get over the line. And he did.
“What I hadn’t appreciated, like all those other [media] institutions, was just how deep that vein of dissatisfaction and anger at the status quo had been …
“The worse it got with Trump and the stuff that he said, I think the more it appealed because I think people were looking for the grenade to throw into the system – and so the more volatile he looked, the bigger the grenade.”
While it was “humbling” to have been blindsided by Trump’s popularity, Tame is grateful for the experience, saying it has made him think more critically about his work and be “less absolutist” about his own positions.
“I’m really grateful for having been surprised because I think it makes me a much better journo today,” he told Ritchie.
“It made me realise that all of us are fallible, and, for all the information you might personally have, no one has a monopoly on good ideas and being right … Sometimes, being humbled makes you better at a job like journalism in the long run because you are more aware of the stuff you don’t know.”
And he credits the experience with helping him prepare for his weekly political interview show, Q&A, where he regularly grills politicians of all stripes.
“I really strive to try to think critically about issues. I see my job as being a public conscience of sorts, which I know sounds a bit grandiose, but also to try to play devil’s advocate, to try to think critically about issues,” Tame said.
“Flowing on from 2016, and, with everything that social media has done to our public and political discourse, I think the impulse for tribalism is so intense right now … [but] if all of these people or institutions are saying one thing, it doesn’t necessarily match the experience of someone who isn’t represented as well.
“I think of that [lesson] as being quite valuable for me, because it’s a humbling reminder to always try to go in and think as critically and independently as possible, and avoid whatever tribalistic urges you might have.”
While Tame has been “really distressed” by a shake-up of the media industry over recent years that has seen “many of my very good colleagues lose their jobs”, he has faith New Zealanders still have an appetite for hearing the stories of their fellow Kiwis and seeing the powerful held to account.
But he says the media needs to do a “much better job of scrutinising itself”.
“At some point, we’re heading towards a reckoning where our current economic model incentivises Meta and Google to make hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars a year, and send it off overseas with very limited tax paid.
“Maybe we actually need some sort of public policy response that … resets the balance a little bit for media.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Tame speaks about how his radio background has helped him excel on TV, the trauma of reporting on the Christchurch earthquake, and how he nabbed a chance interview with Sir David Attenborough in Antarctica.
Listen to the full re_covering episode with Jack Tame here.
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