Mike McRoberts: ‘You don't realise how much it takes out of you’

Sunday, 3 March 2024

As many as 300 people could lose their jobs with the closure of Newshub at the end of June.

Ex TV3 reporter, now_ Stuff journalist Paula Penfold, was especially interested in one staff member’s reaction. She asked her ex-husband, 6 o’clock newsreader Mike McRoberts, if he would sit down with her for an interview._

He tells her about how telling stories is like a drug; how, with fame, you can become lost; and how even amongst the sadness of the Newshub shutdown, he feels liberated.

*Lightly edited for length and clarity.

PP: You know how in journalism school they tell you to never ask someone how they're feeling?

MM: Yeah.

PP: But I do want to know. How are you feeling?

MM: I'm sad. I'm really sad. I'm not worried. I think, you know, I'll find something. I'm kind of looking forward to the freedom of those next steps, whatever they are. But sad for my mates. Sad for the legacy of this newsroom. I'd always thought that one day I would leave, but that the newsroom would continue. And when you have invested decades into an organisation, to not have it exist, it's horrible. Where do those thousands of stories go? What happens to them? That's been a real emptiness I've been feeling.

PP: It is decades. I mean, you were 17 when you started in radio.

MM: Yeah. I had time to think last year. I did full immersion te reo Māori and learned a lot about te ao Māori and tikanga Māori. And it was during this time I looked [at the fact that] for pretty much all of my adult life, I've been in a high profile media position. This is my 20th year reading the 6 o’clock news. You don't realise how much it takes out of you, how much you have to give of yourself. And you can become lost. And going through my whakapapa, learning about te ao Māori, that journey for me has been a way of finding myself again. And the real shame is, this year, I felt so energised to tell stories, to talk about kaupapa Māori. I had the privilege of covering the hui-ā-motu, Kīngi Tuheitia’s hui, and being at Waitangi, covering that at a really important time for our nation. And I'm not going to be able to do that again, for Newshub. It's still a kaupapa I want to pursue, but, uh, that sort of stuff is hard.

PP: What do you mean by you can become lost?

MM: I haven't looked at any of the terrible comments on social media. My mum was telling me [about them]. ‘Oh, he's only an autocue reader’. I haven't been on social media for years because of that stuff. It's just ill-informed, ignorant, hateful, sometimes terrible. And they don't realise the cost. And look, yes, I get paid well, but I don't think anyone, probably even some of my workmates, realise what it takes out of you. You're constantly on, 24/7. I remember when [former CEO] Mark Weldon was here in 2016, turning the company inside out. I had a meeting with a human resources person, and I basically worked out within about two minutes that it was a time and motion study. How much time did I actually spend in the studio? And I said, well, you tell me, when am I not Mike McRoberts from 3News? It never goes away. And most of the time it's…it's nice, it's affirming. And people are friendly, they feel like they know you and that means you're doing your job well, I suppose. But it's just, you're constantly watched and judged. And I know that's going to happen even after we close the doors here. But I'm now me. I'm not representing Newshub, or Warner Brothers Discovery, or whoever.

PP: It sounds quite liberating.

MM: It is. It is. I've taken a lot of solace in thinking about that in the last couple of days.

PP: I suppose I know better than most people what it might mean when you say you're ‘always on’. Do you remember a time when we were in Ponsonby Central and some guy came up and started yelling at you? Do you remember what that was about?

MM: I think I'd recently been to Gaza. He was ranting. We were heading out for a lovely dinner and then had to leave, and thank goodness the kids weren't there. Particularly in the last few years there's been a real menace to some of that stuff, especially online, as you well know. And that's the level of access — I'm talking about social media here — that people don't need to have with me. That was my decision not to do that [social media]. I don't want to be any more famous. I don’t want to boost my profile.

When I started as a 17-year-old, I never, ever thought I'd be reading the 6 o’clock news. It just wasn't in my thought process. I wanted to tell stories, and luckily I've been able to do that. I have cherished the years I've worked here, it’s why I've stayed so long. I've had the opportunity to travel the world and tell some of the biggest stories. And there's no better feeling than telling a great yarn. It's just so good, you know? It's almost addictive, it’s like a drug.

And that's what I fear for so many people here [at Newshub]. That vital-ness of telling a story, particularly in a major crisis or when something huge is breaking, giving your audience that information, explaining or analysing what's going on. It's something I love doing, I have such a passion for it, as does everyone here. And when that goes, I mean, there's a few of us here who might be lucky enough to carry on with that kaupapa, but for some in this newsroom who don't have such transferable skills, where do they go? Where do they find that vital-ness? They'll probably end up doing something that is vastly different.

I've spoken to a couple of mates here on Wednesday night..

PP: On Wednesday night. The day the axe fell.

MM: Yeah. I spoke to a couple of mates and I said, let's start a little ‘staring at the abyss club’. I said, ‘if you feel like you're about to fall into that abyss, ring us’. Because I do feel that will happen. You see it on a smaller scale after a big story, like the mosque shootings, and then two weeks later you’re doing a story about a guy in Whangārei who paints his letterbox funny colours. It can feel like it's not worthy enough or it's not big enough. But to actually go from telling stories to nothing, I think it's going to be really tough. And we are losing a really important chunk of our media at a time when New Zealand needs the media.

PP: Some of the response has been ‘go woke go broke, legacy media, lame-stream media’. How do you react to that?

MM: Oh, that doesn't bother me. People are going to have their own opinions. Um. They're wrong.

PP: Has enough been done? Has there been enough innovation? That's what the Prime Minister said needs to be done, more innovation. Has there been enough strategy?

MM: Hmm. I don't have a problem with our management. It's not like it was a few years ago when we could see that we were being led the wrong way. This time, it’s the circumstances in which we find ourselves. But those are circumstances that could have been addressed by governments years ago, and I'm talking obviously about Facebook and Google paying for our stories that they link to. And streaming companies not putting money into local production, all of those things could have been addressed years ago and it would have been a much different picture now, I believe. So if you're angry about this, I don't think it's the media bosses in New Zealand that you need to be angry at. I think it's go and turn off Google, delete your Facebook account.

PP: You're feeling a bit liberated, but you've had your 40 years. What do you feel for the young people entering this industry?

MM: I feel immensely sad for them. And we have such great young people here. It's not just that they haven't got a job, but they are losing that support base around them, which they've become familiar with. There aren't jobs to go to. So what do they do? There's not much that can be done, apart from writing some really shit-hot reference letters.

PP: It's maybe a little bit indulgent for me as a journalist to be interviewing a journalist about job losses, because job losses happen every day. But does it feel like your story, this collective story, is one that deserves to be told?

MM: Yeah, I think so. I think 35 years bringing the news to Aotearoa justifies that, and, yes, a meatworks closes or another company closes and people are made redundant. And we cover those stories. I think the difference with us is that we are entwined in the fabric of this society. We tell their stories. We're in their living rooms every night at 6 o’clock. And so, in a funny way, you become part of their whānau. That's how I get greeted sometimes when I'm out and about.

PP: How do they greet you?

MM: Oh, like they know me, like they've known me for years. Which is nice. Time-consuming!

PP: Do you sometimes think, actually, do I know you?

MM: Yes, all the time! It's terrible. And people see it as a glamorous job, but it's not really, and on big stories and when you're overseas or whatever, they’re massive hours, you're working in really tough conditions.

PP: You can be away from home for seven weeks at a time. When you've got little kids.

MM: Yeah.

PP: Your wife is looking after them. For instance.

MM: Absolutely. Yeah. It's hard. But if that's your passion, to tell stories, then you're driven by it, in many respects.

PP: Angus Gillies, brilliant producer, lovely man, was talking about this very thing. He said you and he were reminiscing about when you covered that horrific earthquake in Haiti. And people might remember coverage in which you were criticised.

MM: Yeah. For stepping in. For not being objective.

PP: I think it might have been a gossip columnist who was the most critical of you.

MM: Yeah. I basically picked up a 5-year-old girl and took her to the hospital because if she hadn't been operated on that day, she would have died.

PP: So you were criticised for not being an objective journalist. You should have just…

MM: …Left her there. That’s never going to happen.

PP: And as Angus was observing, there were journalists from all over the world who were doing exactly the same thing. But a gossip columnist decided to criticise you for that. And I'd forgotten this, but Angus reminded me that after reporting the horror of that Haiti quake for days on end, where did you go to sleep at night?

MM: We slept on the back porch of a broken home. Yeah. Had no food. But it was such an important story to tell.

PP: It was. I'm not asking you this because — and I'm sure you don't want people to think this is ‘woe is me’ at all — but you raise the point that people think this is a glamorous industry, when the truth is it's not at all.

MM: And yet we do it, we love it, and New Zealand is going to be a lesser place without it. I'm really concerned about it. I've never felt more pessimistic about the New Zealand media than I do now. And it's not just because I'm losing my job. I look at what's happening across all media here. It's terrible.

PP: Do you remember the video store that used to be in our neighbourhood?

MM: Yes.

PP: Do you remember explaining to our kids when it shut down?

MM: Mmm.

PP: Do you remember what you said to them? Because we loved that mum and son who ran that video store.

MM: Yeah, they were awesome. And we drove past one day and all the windows had been filled with brown paper. And I said, oh, it's closed. It's gone. And the kids said, why? And I said, because it's a sunset industry. It's not really needed anymore. And I said, you know, television, where your mum and I work, that's a sunset industry too, and they said, whaaaat? I said, yeah, it's on the decline. Hopefully we've got a few years yet to go, but that will probably go the same way. And I honestly believed that even if that did happen, and I anticipated it would, we'd just move to a different platform. But to not have that at all, just cut it and it's gone. Wow. I still actually find it hard to believe.

PP: Just one last question. Tell me about when you arrived at the pub on Wednesday night after finishing the news.

MM: Yeah. So, you know, it had been a day. But I knew I had a news bulletin to put out, and I wanted to do that in the most professional way I could. And I thought, get to 7 o’clock and then I can go to the pub and join the others. I had no idea how many were there. We walked into the beer garden and there were probably 50 or 60 people there, and they just stood up and applauded. It's an amazing team, such wonderful people. Some of my best friends.

PP: They're good people.

MM: Yeah, they're really good at what they do. Really good at what they do.

PP: Well, thank you for representing them by talking to us. We're very sorry too, we feel it as well.

MM: Yeah. One of the crazy things is I've had so many messages, also from other media, and it's lovely. I think everyone's feeling it. It’s going to be a tough couple of months.

PP: Thank you for talking to us.

MM: Tēnā koe.

PP: Tēnā koe.

Ex TV3 editor/director Toby Longbottom and ex TV3 cameraman Phil Johnson filmed this interview with the help of Newshub freelance cameraman Cam Williams, who worked the slider, and Sailesh Patel, who lit the studio.