Do we like Hilary Barry?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record and some good on the page, but the coverage is thin on LGBTQ+ issues and on her charity work, so we stop short of the top end.
Hilary Barry is one of New Zealand's most familiar TV faces. She has co-hosted TVNZ's Seven Sharp with Jeremy Wells since 2018, and the pair marked their 1000th episode in 2022. Asked about the partnership, she said she had a hunch Wells would be good to work with and that it has been “absolutely been proven”.
The nearest thing to a stoush was in 2021. On air, she suggested people who didn't want the Covid vaccine could take a ferry to the Auckland Islands for a few years. A viewer complained to the Broadcasting Standards Authority that she was denigrating people with a different view. The regulator did not uphold the complaint and found no standards breached.
Barry's reaction was pure Barry. She said she thought it was fair enough, then invited more complaints with “Look, please do.” Later that year, anti-vaccine critics started a petition to take her off air and accused her of bullying for sharing public health advice. She replied with “Nice own goal darlings”, mocking the misspelling of her name in it.
On the harm check, we found nothing against her. No remarks about trans or LGBTQ+ people, no climate denial and no dodgy co-stars or studios turned up. Her loudest public stand was backing vaccination during the pandemic. That's a thin file on LGBTQ+ issues specifically, so it's a clean sheet rather than a rainbow flag.
On women, she has been willing to speak up. In a 2020 interview she said she isn't a political person, but she called the shaming of women's bodies something that “really annoys the hell out of me”. She also talked about using her profile as a role model for young women.
We found no court cases, lawsuits or credible allegations about how she treats colleagues, and nothing recent turned up either. That's honestly the whole list. Viewers clearly like her, and her on-air rapport with Wells is a big part of why the show works.