David Cohen: Journalist and Author of the unauthorised biography of Jacinda Ardern, 'Jacinda: The Untold Stories'

One of New Zealand's most polarising leaders, the debate around former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern continues to rage two years after her resignation. 

She led the country between 2017 and 2023, both the Christchurch Mosque shooting and the Covid-19 pandemic falling in her tenure. 

Although Arden’s popularity was immense at the time, the tides have shifted within New Zealand, many questioning the actions she took and the impact they had.  

"Jacinda: The Untold Stories’ is an unauthorised biography written by journalist David Cohen, drawing on more than 100 interviews and extensive research into Ardern’s time as Prime Minister.  

“The ancient Greeks said, ‘count no man lest he be dead’. Jacinda Ardern isn’t dead of course, but her political career in New Zealand, not internally, is over,” Cohen told Mike Hosking. 

“So we can start to assess what went wrong and what went right.” 

He entered into this project with the intention of creating a balanced account, starting not as a fan of Ardern's nor as an adversary.  

“I think one of the great tragedies of recent years is that we live in, in an era of the politics of emotion,” Cohen said.  

“You either love someone or you hate them, and Jacinda played into that with her politics of kindness to some degree.” 

He describes himself as an “old fashioned journalist”, with 25 years of experience in the field, and balance is a key tenet. 

“One of our guiding ideas, injunctions, was to tell the other side, so it’s actually not a matter of whether I like her or I don’t.” 

“I could say yes to both questions and no to both questions – journalistically, it was important to do this.”  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, the long and waited book on your Cindra Doing
by David Cohen is about to be available, a lot
of interviews, a lot of insight, and perhaps of you
that isn't quite as tarnished as the various efforts that
have been produced so far. Anyway, author David Cohen is
with us. Very good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Okay, Mike, how are you very well?

Speaker 1 (00:16):
As an exercise, did you enjoy it?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
No? I didn't. I was trepidacious. It was a difficult subject.
I'm familiar with doing cookbooks or books about music. This
is the sort of area where you one tends to
get very good notices. People like what you do. Politics

(00:43):
is the mine field. So when I say I didn't
enjoy it, what I meant to say, obviously is that
this was more challenging.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
The seed of an idea came from where why tackle it?

Speaker 2 (00:59):
It came about fourteen years ago. That was the first
time I met, in fact, the last time I met,
Just Cinder. We shared a stage at the Auckland War
Memorial Museum and we went back and forth. That was
with my old sparring part Russell Brown. We bickered about

(01:20):
things her a little to the left me a little
to the other side, and I came away intrigued by
this young politician. She was thirty or thirty one at
the time, and so I began tracking her movements, and then,
of course about five million of us followed suit. In

(01:45):
terms of the writing an actual book. Probably about two
years ago, I thought, you have to the ancient Greek said,
count no man lest to be dead. Just cinder our
journe isn't dead, of course, but political career in New Zealand,
not internationally, is over. So we can start to assess

(02:07):
what went wrong and what went right?

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Have you assessed in your mind, hand on heart fairly
or did you enter this project a fan or an adversary.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
I entered the project as someone who was Can we
use the term non binary? And I mean that politically.
I think one of the great tragedies of recent years
is that we live in an era of the politics
of emotion. You either love someone or you hate them,

(02:45):
and Jacinta played into that with her politics of kindness.
To some degree. I'm an old fashioned journalist. I started
out in this trade when back when dinosaurs were in
the earth. One of our guiding ideas and junctions was

(03:05):
to tell the other side. So it's actually not a
matter of whether I like her or I don't. But
the truth is I could say yes to both questions
and no to both questions. Journalistically, it was important to
do this.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
The one hundred interviews just before women clarity Sake, I
took part, including you. Yes, I took part. And so
what interested me is I set aside forty five minutes.
I stuck to my forty five minutes, and she was keen.
Your researcher, Rebecca Keeler, was king to go longer. So
by the time you do me a hundred times over,
raud knows how much material you had. How'd you edit it?

Speaker 2 (03:46):
We had about four hundred thousand words worth of transcripts,
So that's the Bible a number of times over. I imagine.
I looked for broad themes. One of the important things
was balance. There's a very intelligent review in the latest Listener.

(04:09):
It's not entirely complementary, but it's not condemnatory either, bemoaning
the absence of a number of left of center voices
in people. But God knows, we tried.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Right, and so what was the problem there? They didn't
want to say anything, or they the anonymity or what
was it.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Some of them had works in progress, like Grant Robertson,
So there was that there were probably a number who
were not sold on the idea of a project that
could be anything less than glittering in its estimation of
the subject. And then there were I suppose labor party

(05:00):
comrades can we still use that word, who just were
a little tremulous when it went going there that said,
it's not as if the exercise lacks for such.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Pot for no, indeed not. But could I also sueduce
part of it might be that a lot of people
woke up, a lot of people who were, to put
it bluntly, and you know my view as part of
the book, a lot of people who bluntly got sucked
in at the time have worked out the cold, hard reality.
So what they might have once said, they no longer say,
and therefore don't want to deal with the embarrassment of
it all.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
I suppose there could be something in that. I haven't
really thought that one through sufficiently, But yeah, it's extraordinarily
difficult for any of us to admit that we got
something so fundamentally wrong. We'd be like an epidemiologists jumping
up today and saying, you know, all the stuff about

(05:56):
COVID from surfaces, we completely blew that one.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah, well, maybe that's the next book actually does what
you can explain, because you already suggested you're the old
style journalist, you're a journalist of many years standing. Explain
to me in the best way you can what happened
to the media during the Don years, the AI thing
on stuff, stories, the favorability, the coverage, et cetera. Explain
how so many people got so sucked.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
In I think the industry. There were honorable exceptions, but
if they were to use a cliche, it was following
the money at that point. It was government largess, which
I think was called for. You and I probably would
disagree on that, but possibly we would agree on the

(06:48):
fact that a lot of that support the Journalism Fund
Public Interests Journalism Fund was predicated on signing off on
in favor of an extraordinarily controversial government policy, and that

(07:09):
the seeds of undoing were embedded in that it did
not serve the industry, well, it didn't serve journalism. Well,
it certainly didn't serve the consumers of journalism.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
Well, and I would argue that the media, and this
is also global, not there's got anything to do with
yindrod In specifically, but I would also argue the media
has never recovered in terms of credibility in the eyes
of the public. Would that be fair?

Speaker 2 (07:35):
According to the Massi University Worlds of Journalism survey, the
latest one, the fall in New Zealand is more has
been more precipitous than most other comparable countries. So something
in addition to technology, social media and all the rest

(07:57):
of it has taking place here. Think that it was
the the the the bad fit, the corrosive effect of
what ostensibly was a good idea, but it was terribly
administered or artfully administered, and it did our business.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Note so here's here's the key, Here's here's the question.
I came to a conclusion eventually, but for a lot
of the period I would ask myself and I asked
it on here a number of times. I can't work
out couldn't work out whether Adourn was naive and a
lot of this stuff was just her being elevated beyond
to capability and she was trying desperately to work out

(08:37):
what was going on, or it was Macavellian and she
I concluded eventually it was there was. She was Macavelian,
She had a plan, she was deliberate, she was overt
pulpit of truth, et cetera. And that's who she is.
Is that unfair or not?

Speaker 2 (08:52):
Uh? That's one of as hopefully many of your listeners
will discover when they go into the shop and buy
a copy this week. That's one of the great watt
ifs about her, isn't it? Uh? What was she carried
along on a tide? Was she simply adjacent to to

(09:13):
to to something or was she did she, for lack
of a better word, engineer it herself? You see? I
come more on the adjacent side of that. I think
she was someone with missionary zeal that was not entirely
to do with politics. It was to do with her

(09:33):
formative principles and experience. And you know, in the ethnic
affairs area, for instance, she had a very significant Mary
caucus that certainly knew where it wanted to go. That
that is an example of that. That was an example

(09:57):
of engineering or pushing the country in a certain direction.
I don't think your heart was as entirely interpared.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
Interesting, Dad, I've enjoyed reading it, and I appreciate the
time one hundred plus interviews involved in the book. In anyone,
who's anyone, seemingly is in there the untold stories, just
into the untold stories. It's out now. David Pohen is
the author.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
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