Barry Soper says he almost quit after Duncan Garner’s ‘aggressive’ behaviour towards him on PM’s Afghanistan trip; Garner, Guyon Espiner respond - Media Insider

He details how Garner “lost his rag” with him during one incident after he asked Garner to move out of earshot while he was shooting a story with a shared cameraman.

“It was classic bullying, really aggressive behaviour, and it affected me badly.”

But both Garner and Espiner say they are surprised by Soper’s claims.

“I have always liked Barry, and we’ve had a pile of fun on many trips,” Garner told Media Insider yesterday. “Barry was as abrasive as the next guy and wasn’t scared of putting people in their place, and as someone very much his junior, I quite admired that. And I’m not sure Barry could be bullied.”

Espiner told Media Insider that Soper was a “tough operator”. “The idea that I would be bullying Barry Soper would probably be a joke to most people. That’s certainly not my code of behaviour, and I’ve not engaged in that.”

Soper recounts in his book, One Last Question, Prime Minister, how he, Garner, and Espiner travelled to Afghanistan in 2010, covering Key’s visit.

Soper, the then Newstalk ZB political editor, was also there for Prime News - Sky TV’s free-to-air news show at the time.

Garner, for TV3, Espiner, for TVNZ, and Soper had an agreement that the three of them would share one camera operator.

“We worked out of a shipping container that had been set up in a military camp,” Soper writes in the book.

“It was pretty clear from the start that those two saw me as the old dinosaur on the trip, and they started taking the piss out of me.

“I had an electric toothbrush, which they seemed to find hilarious. I just wrote it off as harmless banter and didn’t think it was terribly serious, even if they seemed to carry the joke on way past breaking point.”

He said that things turned nasty when it came to doing their jobs, and sharing the camera operator.

At one stage, Soper said he asked Garner to move out of earshot as he was filming his piece.

“I didn’t want him to be privy to my story, just as I had no intention of eavesdropping on him or Espiner when they filed their stories.

“Well, with that, Garner completely lost his rag at me. The invective was almost violent, the worst I had ever encountered during my career.

“He told me where I could stick the sharing of the camera and informed me I would be getting no help from them for the rest of the trip.

“It was classic bullying, really aggressive behaviour, and it affected me badly.”

Garner recalled a different incident yesterday.

“Of course it’s stressful in trying circumstances, and I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know if Barry mentions it, but I had a passing flick at him for not helping cart the gear around the place, which is bloody heavy, and he was relying on us to do so despite all of us sharing it,” Garner told Media Insider.

“It was over as quickly as it had begun, I am surprised it’s even made the cut to be honest ... in the heat of battle this sort of stuff happens regularly, and there were a number of times Barry got into situations where I either backed him or offered to help.”

But Soper writes that when he returned from the Afghanistan trip, he was so despondent about the state of journalism that he told his wife, Heather du Plessis-Allan, that he wanted out of the profession.

“I told her about how I felt I was a joke to Garner and Espiner and replayed the particular incident with Garner and how he let me know that I was an old has-been who’d had his day.”

Soper said he told du Plessis-Allan: “You know, maybe he has a point. Maybe I should move on.”

He said he ultimately decided he had plenty to offer, and it was “ridiculous” that he should “feel compelled to leave the industry I loved because of the pettiness of two men”.

He noted that Garner - who now has his own MediaWorks-aligned podcast and is a columnist for The Listener - had moved on from fulltime political journalism.

“It was no great loss to parliamentary life if you ask me.”

Garner said he did not want to get into an “undignified tit for tat”.

“Sixteen years ago [since the Afghanistan trip] is a long time, and I saw Barry many, many times after that in work and social settings and even at his house, and there was no indication at all [that] it was an issue.

“I enjoyed his company always; he was always generous, and I’m a bit baffled as to why now it’s even an issue.

“Working in close-knit quarters in the press gallery and on these trips is always full on and stressful, and to be honest, Barry gave as good as he got, and I enjoyed the banter.”

Soper also recounts in his book another story involving Garner in Wellington.

During a press conference, Garner asked Key questions in relation to a TV3 political poll that would feature on the channel’s 6pm news that evening.

Soper said he used information gleaned from those questions for a radio story - essentially beating Garner and TV3 to their own poll results.

“I’m a journalist, and it was the most interesting part of the press conference, so I’m not sure what Garner knew we were there for,” Soper writes in his book.

Garner, he said, stormed into Soper’s press gallery office, “slamming his fist on my desk and calling me a cheat”.

According to Soper, Garner told him to pay for his own poll.

“I explained to him that the best course to take when you have opinion polls is not to make the results known before they are made public and that if he didn’t leave my office, I’d call security.”

Soper said it was fair to say his opinion of Garner “was not a particularly high one, particularly after that trip to Afghanistan”.

“Although he later apologised for his outburst, he did a lot of damage to me and the way I felt about not only myself but journalism as well.”

Garner said he couldn’t recall the poll incident.

“I remember having a huge scrap with Guyon once over leaked polling data … but I can’t recall being pissed off with Baz.

“Over 17 years in the gallery, I had run-ins with MPs, ministers, journos, security, I got banned from Parliament twice for breaking the rules ... and I broke other rules that I got away with and honestly, I’ve lost count of how many dust-ups and incidents went down.

“I’m just glad social media wasn’t around, in the 90s the parties were legendary … I should write my own book."

He said Soper had often offered him advice.

“Barry was a fierce competitor, as were the other 40-odd journos housed in the gallery, and to this day I still really like the guy, he’s had an amazing career.

“He was really supportive and caring when my Dad died not long after we returned from Afghanistan, and I guess he has a book to sell, but I’m not going to say nasty things about Barry because I honestly like him and wish him nothing but good health and every success with the book sales.”

Barry Soper also writes in his book that he found it “extraordinary” that Garner and Espiner talked with each other about the pieces they were filing for back home, while on the Afghanistan trip.

“These two journalists, ostensibly competitors, were telling each other exactly what their story was and how it was going to look.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and later sought out respected NZ Herald political journalist John Armstrong to talk about it - I needed to know if it was me who was out of touch with reality.

“Armstrong said that he had no idea how they got away with it, because they were essentially telling the same story to New Zealand night after night. If you were watching TV3, you were effectively watching TVNZ’s coverage of that trip and vice versa.”

But both Garner and Espiner say that they had been sharing a cameraman on the trip, which meant a degree of collaboration was needed.

Espiner says he and Garner competed “like bastards” as political editors.

“I utterly, totally, and demonstrably reject any assertion that we somehow collaborated as political editors. We competed really, really strongly.”

Espiner says he remembers the Afghanistan trip well, including the tight security and planning that went into it.

“It was arranged and decided that we [he and Garner] could both go if we took one camera operator,” Espiner told Media Insider.

“He was shooting and editing for both of us. That might explain to Barry why there was a degree of collaboration on that.

“You can’t really shoot and edit someone’s story and not know what’s going on. So yes, on that trip, there was a degree of collaboration ...”

Espiner said he filed two stories from the trip. “To extrapolate that point out from Barry to some sort of cartel-like behaviour is ridiculous.

“We competed like bastards all the time we were at TV1 and TV3. We competed really, really hard.

“Duncan and I were close mates at that point, too, but we were incredibly strong competitors on the field.

“You could talk to anyone else in the gallery - the competition was incredibly intense. And as a journalist myself, I look back on those years and think the competition was a lot stronger then than it is now.

“He [Garner] would scoop me often, and I got the odd one in against him. He was an incredible operator, Duncan Garner at the gallery.”

Garner said: “If Barry had gone to the trouble of actually comparing the stories aired, he would likely not have included such a flaky claim, which is driven by emotion but sadly not fact.

“Guyon and I, over the better part of 15 years, were fiercely competitive and jealously guarded our work. We were so competitive that it almost broke both of us.

“I’m not sure about Guyon, but I think I’m still recovering years later. Barry knows how competitive it is between journos in the gallery, and Barry was one of the most competitive - we all thrived on it.”

Espiner, meanwhile, said Soper was a tough operator in the gallery.

“There was certainly banter on those trips with a number of gallery staff, and I do remember a few tense moments - I can’t say over Barry’s toothbrush, but you know, that might not stand out when you’re going into Afghanistan.

“It might not be one of the memories you come away with, but I’ll take his word for it.”

He said he could not recall anything that he did or said to Soper “that would have left a scar, what ... 15, 16 years on”.

“I’m a bit surprised to hear that he was hurt by that. If he was, I’m happy to say sorry.

“I do remember banter jokes ... the gallery was a tougher environment back then.

“You would have your stoushes and your set-tos, but Barry was a pretty belligerent and forceful character. I’m sure he gave as good as he got, and I certainly haven’t lost an iota of sleep about the way I ever behaved towards Barry Soper. I’m pretty surprised all these years on that that has stuck in his mind.”

Soper’s book recounts numerous other stories from his time in the press gallery as a political reporter, editor and senior correspondent, covering 12 prime ministers from Sir Robert Muldoon to Christopher Luxon.

As the Herald’s Audrey Young wrote on Saturday, “it is a job that took him to the fall of the Berlin Wall with Mike Moore, to the Dakota Hotel in New York with David Lange to meet Yoko Ono, and to the Great Wall of China with Jim Bolger.

“Along the way, Soper has been a witness to history and made his own contributions, coining such terms as “Rogernomics” and “Crusher Collins” and getting former US Secretary of State Colin Powell to describe New Zealand as “very, very, very good friends” of the US.

“The book is a mix of known and previously unknown stories, peppered with a heavy dose of commentary on the qualities and failings of each of the Prime Ministers.”

Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME, including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.