Mike McRoberts’ greatest moments

Friday, 19 April 2024

After a 40-year career in journalism, most of it on TV, and nearly half of it as a co-anchor of Newshub’s flagship 6pm bulletin, Mike McRoberts has announced he is stepping aside.

McRoberts has covered some of the biggest stories of the last 19 years in that role, both from behind the anchor desk and in the field, and made the odd headline himself.

Here are just a few of the moments he’ll be remembered for.

Rescuing a little girl in Haiti

McRoberts left a family holiday to jump on a plane to Haiti in January 2010 after an earthquake struck.

Also on that plane were relatives of Nelson woman Emily Sanson-Rejouis, whose husband and two of her three children were killed when their apartment block collapsed.

While reporting from a makeshift camp, McRoberts met a 5-year-old girl, Chedna, who had been orphaned in the quake and had what he would later describe as “a gaping wound in her leg the size of a cricket ball and an arm that had multiple breaks and had swollen to twice its normal size”.

McRoberts and his crew took Chedna to hospital. In an interview last month with Stuff investigative journalist Paula Penfold, his ex-wife, McRoberts recalled criticism he had received for that action.

“For stepping in,” he said. “For not being objective… We slept on the back porch of a broken home. Yeah. Had no food. But it was such an important story to tell.”

Reporting from an active war zone in Gaza

In 2014, McRoberts travelled to Gaza to cover a conflict between Israel and Palestine, reporting live from a Palestinian enclave as missiles flew overhead.

It brought the scale of the war, which would claim 2300 lives in just six weeks, home for Kiwis thousands of kilometres away, and made a lasting impression on McRoberts.

Speaking to RNZ’s re_covering podcast in 2022, he recalled seeing four Palestinian kids killed by a mortar strike directly outside his hotel, amid other horrors.

“You never forget that stuff, you know?” he said.

Running a sub-four hour marathon

Despite cold winds and heavy rain, McRoberts completed the 2017 Christchurch Marathon in 3 hours 53 minutes 34 seconds, shaving almost 25 minutes off his previous best.

McRoberts had wanted to keep his goal to run a sub-four hour marathon a secret but after confiding in co-presenter Samantha Hayes it 'somehow ended up at the end of the news on Friday', two days before the event, he told Stuff at the time.

Christchurch-raised McRoberts praised large-scale events like the marathon, which “bring people back into the city” following the 2011 earthquake.

Joining a student climate change protest

School-aged protesters who turned out to call for action on climate change in Auckland in 2019 had a slightly older, much more famous face amongst them: Mike McRoberts.

He flouted company policy when he jumped into the front line to join his daughter, Maia.

“I thought about how it wouldn’t play well with work for about five seconds,” he told Stuff in 2021. “And then I looked at her and thought, why the hell not? I support her, and I support what she's doing… I got sick of climate change sceptics being interviewed for stories because there is really no need to hear their opinion.”

Debuting his sculpted abs

Viewers were probably not terribly surprised when McRoberts was named as a contestant for the 2019 season of Dancing With the Stars; the show always includes at least one high-profile Three personality and his co-anchor, Sam Hayes, had won the competition the year before.

What they were surprised by, however, was then-53-year-old McRoberts’ body, and specifically his defined abdominal muscles, as revealed in the show’s first promo that April.

Social media comments included 'Wow wee Mike McRoberts hot hot hot“, 'Wow Mike McRoberts body damnnnn”, 'Wow Mike McRoberts has a banging body!“ and ”I'm hoping for a shirtless number – that body.'

While his abs may have captivated viewers, judges were less taken with McRoberts’ dancing prowess; he was fourth eliminated.

Discovering his Māori identity

McRoberts’ father is Ngāti Kahungunu and his mother Pākehā, but he was raised without any strong connection to Māori culture - to the point where he said he experienced anxiety just saying “kia ora” at the top of the news.

In 2022 he made a documentary, entitled Kia Ora, Good Evening about his efforts to learn te reo and connect with te ao Māori as an adult.

He broke down during an interview in the film, saying: “I felt humiliated and ashamed of not knowing the language. I made a point of calling myself a journalist who was Māori, not a Māori journalist because then I wasn't expected to know the language [and] know tikanga.'

Stuff’s review called it “not only a very personal journey, but also a look at what it means to be Māori in contemporary Aotearoa”.

Reporting his own demise

McRoberts and Hayes were put in the surreal position of reporting the end of their show as part of their show, when Newshub’s drastic cuts were forecasted back on February 28.

'Going, going but not quite gone… The future is looking bleak for Newshub,' was how McRoberts opened the bulletin that night.

'After providing daily news for almost 35 years Three looks set to lose Newshub live at 6 and all its associated news programmes, including its online news platform.'

After committing substantial time to the cuts during the show, Hayes closed the broadcast by saying “that's Newshub live at 6 for today,' before McRoberts added 'and every other day for the next couple of months so keep tuning in, we really appreciate your support.”

We now know while Three’s 6 o’clock news will go on, albeit with a different name and produced on contract by Stuff, the final Newshub bulletin will also be McRoberts’ last as a presenter.