Patrick Gower, or Paddy as he is known, was one of my first and favourite New Zealand news discoveries. Not that I discovered him in the sense of a talent scout. As you’ll hear in the podcast, Paddy moved years ago from print to broadcast, where he established himself as one of the most well-known and loved NZ TV personalities.
Listen to the interview on the Crawford Media Substack.
What fascinates me about Paddy is that his on-screen persona is so close to the off-screen reality. Also that he has no discernible “TV voice”, is a master analyst and communicator, and seems to love the constant attention that comes his way. For all his comfort in the limelight, however, Paddy is a sensitive guy and regularly goes through torture, often self-inflicted, in the course of his profession.
A great example is Paddy’s public self-examination over a poor interview he conducted in 2018 with far-right commentators Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern. I was standing by as he conducted that interview, and I can verify it was not good. Most journalists would have buried it: Paddy made it a key element in his riveting documentary Patrick Gower: On Hate.