Mike McRoberts: Beyond the Firing Line

By Mike McRoberts

The true story behind the stories
When news is often confined to sound bites and brief backgrounders, some of the best stories behind the news go largely untold. Here, without those constraints, Mike is able to give full, truthful and honest portrayals of these event. Admired for his credibility and willingness to go to the hot spots, in a reporting career spanning 25 years, Mike is best known for his work in some of the world's most dangerous places, covering conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, East timor and the Solomon Islands. He has also covered some of the world's worst natural disasters from tsunamis, to wildfires and earthquakes, including the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010, and then, close to home, his informative and compassionate coverage of the Christchurch earthquakes in 2010 and 2011.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Nov 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781743095492

Mike McRoberts

Since 2005, Mike McRoberts has presented TV3's flagship six o'clock news bulletin, 3News, as well as reporting and presenting for the current affairs show 60 Minutes. He has won numerous journalism awards, including Qantas Television Award for TV Journalist of the Year in 2006.

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Introduction

The life of a television reporter and presenter can be a strange one. There are those who want to put you on a pedestal, and others who cannot wait to kick it out from underneath you. Perhaps there is an assumption that because you put your face on the telly each night you must be narcissistic and completely self-regarding.

This is simply not the case amongst the television reporters and presenters I know and whose work I admire. They are more likely to see their visibility as a necessary evil of bringing the stories that need to be told to the public, as they bridge the gap between the world at large and the individual worlds of their viewers.

Far from breeding contempt, familiarity is the lifeblood of television news. News networks all around the world trade on their viewers’ engagement with correspondents they feel they know and trust. As I have increasingly put myself into stories over the years, I hope I have done so not in an egocentric way, but in one that provides context, perspective and greater accessibility for the viewer.

My trademark beige ‘foreign correspondent’ garb has been the source of much amusement over the years, particularly to my colleagues. But it has become somewhat synonymous with what I do and the places I go. I remember waiting at the airport to catch a flight to whatever crisis was unfolding, dressed in my ‘uniform’, and being approached by someone, asking, alarmed: ‘Oh my God, what’s happened?’

Some call it, pejoratively, ‘parachute journalism’ — reporters dropping into conflicts or disasters. Whatever your view on that — and you will soon see mine — there are good reasons why we do it, and it works for us. Our viewers do not just like us reporting at the world’s biggest news events: they have come to expect it.

Frequently I have been the only Kiwi journalist in those situations, often anchoring the news as well as reporting. It is an extension of TV3’s longstanding philosophy of only employing presenters who are journalists. And it has been a bit of a game-changer in New Zealand television, extolled in one promotional campaign slogan: ‘He doesn’t just read the news, he gets it.’ I think it appeals to our country’s hands-on, resourcefulness ethic; we are a nation that values hard work.

And there is something uniquely New Zealand, too, about the way my colleagues and I have covered these stories, which I hope you will appreciate. I am not sure if it is the tight budgets, our consequent inventiveness, or even the unwavering optimism of our goals, but it makes for rich story-telling material.

Often what you see on the six o’clock news is only part of the story, given the constraints and purpose of a news bulletin. This book takes you beyond the sound-bites and strictly formatted bulletins to the stories behind and beyond the front line.

Writing this book has been a cathartic experience. I have been forced to go back and articulate thoughts and feelings I had in some cases either forgotten about or chosen not to remember. Some of it has been a surprise even to those closest to me.

Clearly my reporting from conflict zones forms a large part of the book, but it has also been a great opportunity to illustrate some of the other work I have done, and reflect on the wonderful people who have helped me achieve it.

I have never characterized myself as a ‘war correspondent’; it just doesn’t sit well with me. Personally I find war deplorable, especially in the way it debases the human spirit. However, it is the human reaction to these situations that drives me to cover them. I am a people-person and I love telling human stories, and so often the unlikeliest and most powerful of those come from conflict or disaster zones. I think viewers connect with the people in those stories, and through them appreciate the wider issues.

Going into war or disaster zones and making people aware of what is happening is, I think, one of the more noble forms of journalism. Whether it is bringing pressure to bear on warring parties to spare the lives of innocents or summoning help for a population stricken by drought, they are powerful stories for a reason: their ability to create change. And therein lies the privilege of what I do.

At the beginning of 2009 the conflict between Israel and Hamas had escalated into full-blown war. Hamas fired hundreds of Qassam rockets into Israeli territory. In retaliation, the Israeli Defense Force launched a three-week bombing campaign and invasion of the Gaza strip. More than 1,000 civilians were killed.

I was on holiday at the time, watching it unfold, and finally succumbed: I needed to be there. We timed our trip around the likelihood of a ceasefire, so that we would also be able to get into Gaza and see the effects of the war. I sat down my children, Ben and Maia, to explain why I was cutting short our summer break. And to defuse their concern about the danger, I told them that by reporting on what was happening, hopefully myself and other foreign journalists could put pressure on Hamas and the Israeli Defense Force to agree to a ceasefire and prevent further loss of innocents’ lives. They nodded their heads in agreement.

Our plan worked beautifully, and after only a couple of days on the ground in Israel a truce was called. That night I rang home and got Ben on the phone. He had watched the news and excitedly said to me: ‘Hey, Dad, well done — you got a ceasefire.’

Youthful enthusiasm and family bias aside, I hope that what I do — a bit of which you will see in the pages to come — will make my children proud.

A tale of two quakes

— Christchurch and Japan, 2011

Christchurch, 2011

Over the past decade of covering wars and some of the world’s worst natural disasters, I have often been asked how I deal with the experiences when I return home. ‘How do you switch off from what you’ve seen and carry on with normal life?’ While it is true that I have witnessed some horrific things, and seen first-hand the tragic consequences that devastation — man-made or otherwise — can wreak on a population, I have found it relatively easy to keep home life and these events separate. The simple truth of it is that ‘those things’ happen overseas, not at home, and more often than not New Zealand could not be further away from it.

That tidy theory came crashing down at 12.51pm on Tuesday, 22 February 2011. The 6.3 magnitude earthquake — centred just 2 kilometres from the port town of Lyttelton, and 10 kilometres from Christchurch — felt from the outset like a major catastrophe. And it was happening in the city I grew up in.

From the early reports of buildings collapsing in the central business district (CBD), combined with the timing of the earthquake — in the middle of the day — it was clear there would be a loss of life, the likes of which most New Zealanders had never seen before.

I was at home in Auckland when the first messages came through. It was a sickening feeling, hastily packing my bag while also trying to contact my family. Apart from a sister living in Brisbane, all of my family still live in Christchurch, and I have extended family there, too — a grandmother, uncles, aunties, cousins, nieces and nephews. None of my messages or telephone calls had been answered as I raced to the airport. I knew the telephone network in Christchurch would be overloaded, and I kept reminding myself of that as I constantly checked for replies.

Auckland airport was chaotic. No aircraft were flying anywhere, as the air traffic control base in Christchurch — which monitors the entire nation — was down. It seemed that even when flying was restored it would be hours, maybe even a day, before civilian flights would be landing in Christchurch. Veteran producer Keith Slater, colleague John Campbell and I ran through the options. We had the offer of a chartered jet that could get us to Timaru, but then we would need to make the two-hour journey back to Christchurch. There was a helicopter flying to Darfield, but the flight time was five hours, and — being a chopper — would be far more susceptible to the weather.

By this time the first images from Christchurch were appearing on screen. Despite the mayhem at the airport, there was virtual silence as we all stood watching helplessly. One of our local crews had made it to the Pyne Gould Corp (PGC) building, and applause rang out as a woman was rescued.

In the midst of this I got a text from my mother, saying she was all right. Kelly, my sister in Brisbane, was having more luck contacting our family (presumably the telephone network from there was less swamped) and called me with further good news. My brother Kerry, a sign-writer working near the city centre, was safe, but had been involved in a rescue and had helped free a woman trapped in a crushed bus. The woman was lucky; three others on the bus had been killed. At that point I hadn’t spoken to my brother, but I knew that having seen death up close he would be struggling. He later told me that, with so many buildings down and roads blocked with rubble, the only way he had any sense of where he was in the city was by recognizing the different signs or the remains of shop windows he had previously painted.

I was still miles from this unfolding disaster, and yet it already felt more gut-wrenchingly intimate than any other I had ever reported on.

Keith, John and I decided to go with the chartered jet to Timaru; with the two-hour drive to Christchurch, we worked out we would be there around nine o’clock that evening. Cameraman Phil Johnson, reporter Tristram Clayton, and the then Nightline presenter Rachel Smalley joined us at the airport.

The other six or seven seats on the plane had been sold to Christchurch residents who had been working in Auckland that day and were now desperate to get home. Among them was financial adviser Richard Austin, whose wife Susan Selway, a clinical psychologist, had a private practice on the fourth floor of the Canterbury Television (CTV) building. He had not heard from her since the quake, but like the rest of us had watched the footage of the building, collapsed and on fire. We all felt his anxiety and his pain.

As we waited for our aircraft to arrive, a seat became available on an emergency flight that was picking up rescue workers in Nelson. The plane was then flying straight into Christchurch, and would arrive in the stricken city hours before we were due to. There was no question amongst the group as to who would take that seat. As Richard left the small private terminal for the earlier flight, there were hugs and handshakes and whispered words of support.

I later heard that Richard Austin made it to the CTV building and waited all night in the hope of seeing his wife, Susan, walk out alive. Like so many others, she did not.

Some of the images being shown by now were truly awful, and as a viewer were difficult to comprehend. My 3News co-host, Hilary Barry, was already hours into a marathon on-air shift, anchoring our coverage, often having to commentate on unedited, raw and dramatic footage. In the mix of emotions I was feeling at the time, I remember being enormously proud of her. It was the most challenging of circumstances, but she handled it superbly, with a sensitivity and a composure which I think set the tone for the rest of our coverage.

As we landed in Timaru I still had one member of my family — brother Jayson — unaccounted for. Jayson is a prison officer with the Corrections Department and is sometimes on duty at the courts in the centre of Christchurch. All I could do was hope he had not been there that afternoon.

We decided to grab some supplies in Ashburton, where there were already queues of people waiting for petrol. The traffic in the main street was bumper-to-bumper.

A van loaded with people and possessions swerved to the side of the road: the driver was an old mate of mine. Dave’s house in Sumner had been wrecked, and so he had bundled his family and what stuff he could grab into the van and fled. He was heading to their family bach in Twizel. His eyes were like saucers as he described the devastation and the panic he had witnessed on the way.

Our eyes were probably the same as we neared the centre of Christchurch. Could this be the same city I grew up in?

With the power out to much of the city, only the headlights of our vehicle illuminated the destruction we saw. Roads were grotesquely bent and twisted out of shape; cars were left where their drivers had simply abandoned them. Around TV3’s building in Kilmore Street, the liquefaction was waist-high in some places; vehicles that had been parked there looked like they had been driven into quicksand. One of those vehicles stranded behind our office was a CTV car. I did not notice it straight away, but for the next week it remained a miserable reminder of those who had lost their lives that day.

When we arrived at TV3, we had to park in the middle of the street, the liquefaction along the sides of the road was so bad. The glass front door to the building was smashed, and the floor was covered in silt and water where reporters and crews had been racing in and out all afternoon.

The Christchurch reporting team had done a truly outstanding job. Led by Phil Corkery, journalists like Hamish Clark and Jeff Hampton had been filing reports and fronting live crosses. Campbell Live’s Natasha Utting and Jendy Harper had also provided moving first-hand accounts and on-the-spot interviews.

From the time of the first earthquake in September 2010, and then the Pike River coalmine disaster in November of that year, I had spent a lot of time with the Christchurch 3News team. I had been amazed at their dedication, commitment and ability then; now, it was all I could do to hold back the tears as we shook hands, hugged and kissed. They were more than workmates; they felt like family. As clichéd as that might sound, I can think of no better or more appropriate way to describe them. The unity amongst the Christchurch team and the way they responded to this — a third disaster in such a short space of time — I think embodies everything I love about TV3.

As we arrived at the office I finally heard that my brother Jayson was safe. He had been out of Christchurch, transporting prisoners to Timaru, when the earthquake struck. His first stop after getting back to Christchurch was to comfort my other brother.

Hilary knew that I had been desperately trying to track down my family, and throughout the afternoon she had texted me for updates. As John Campbell and I prepared to do a live cross into our rolling news coverage, I was able to tell Hilary off-air that all of my family was safe. As good friends do, she shared in my relief. It was about that moment, I think, that it really struck me that so many families would not be so lucky, and it was likely that we would know people who would be suffering.

It was almost 10 at night, but our ‘day’ was really only starting. Driving through the city we saw the devastation at its worst. John took a crew to the CTV building where rescue work was continuing, and I went to a temporary evacuation centre in Hagley Park.

We were both due to front a breakfast special at six the next morning, and knew we would need material to put into it. Not that there was any shortage of stories. I spent a couple of hours at the evacuation centre and heard of dramatic escapes, met others who had lost workmates or loved ones, and spoke with heroes who had defied the danger to help the trapped or injured.

It had been raining heavily, and there was mud and water everywhere, but no one seemed to mind. They were in a place of safety, and had food and bedding. The evacuation centre was actually a huge marquee that had been erected for the coming Ellerslie Flower show. Within hours of the earthquake, the marquee had been cleared and a temporary floor put in to accommodate more than 600 people. When it ran out of room, buses arrived to take hundreds more to satellite centres in outer suburbs.

The many tourists and international visitors I spoke to were full of praise for the well-organized Civil Defence operation. One Australian couple told me how they had survived Cyclone Yasi in North Queensland only a month earlier, before coming to Christchurch for a holiday. They had been shopping in the central city as buildings around them started to fall. The husband was wryly calling their trip ‘our lucky break’.

We eventually made it to our motel on Blenheim Road. Accommodation was at a premium, and I was sharing a very basic room with producer Keith Slater. Not that we would be in the room for long: we had about two hours to sleep before getting up for the breakfast programme. And even then the violent aftershocks put paid to any real rest. I have covered a number of earthquakes, but these tremors were unlike anything I had experienced before. You could literally hear them coming, like a train rumbling towards you. It was actually a relief to get out of bed and start the day.

For the rest of the week I did live crosses and interviews into our breakfast programme, then I would shoot and write a story for the six o’clock news, then present the news and later a mid-evening half-hour news special. They were 17-, 18-hour days, mentally and physically exhausting.

The day after the quake I also fronted a 60 Minutes special. 60 Minutes reporter Paula Penfold (my wife) and producer Eugene Bingham had done an amazing job of going through all of the footage and assembling it into a clear and concise timeline of what had happened. But the story needed a personal element to it, and Paula suggested I interview my brother Kerry, who had helped rescue a woman trapped in a bus.

Thankfully most New Zealanders will go through their lives without ever having to witness the sort of scenes that those in the inner city of Christchurch had to endure that Tuesday afternoon. Although Kerry had helped save the life of a woman, in the process he had had to kneel next to three others who had been killed when the bus was struck by debris. One of them, an elderly man, had been crushed with great force; an image Kerry told me he would never forget.

We hugged at the end of the interview.

Kerry’s cameo became part of a 60 Minutes story I remain incredibly proud of.

As hundreds of rescue workers and emergency personnel began arriving in the city from all around the world, I started to get a new perspective on a phenomenon which until then I had only ever witnessed overseas.

I have been in numerous countries amidst disasters or wars when New Zealanders have come to help. From soldiers to engineers, aid workers to fire-fighters, I have reported as they have at times put their lives on the line to help others. Now I was reporting on foreigners doing the same thing in our country, and I was moved by how grateful and welcoming the people of Christchurch were. On countless occasions I saw members of the public go up and thank the international police and rescue teams who had been sent to Christchurch to help. They were deservedly treated as heroes, and, in those first few dark days after the quake, such interactions provided moments of kindness and light.

The first release of names of victims of the Christchurch earthquake numbered only four, and one of them was 22-year-old barman Jaime Gilbert. Jaime had been working at the Iconic Bar on Manchester Street when the quake struck. He and his sister Amy had fled the bar, but were buried when the front of the building fell on top of them.

A cousin of mine, Leanna Christie, owned Iconic and had hired Jaime. She was distraught at Jaime’s death and very protective of his family, who were now fielding requests from national and international media organizations. She contacted me on Friday morning to tell me that Jaime’s body was going to be returned to the family that evening, and that they had asked if I could be there to tell his story. It was a hell of a privilege to be asked, but it also felt like an enormous responsibility.

I was not able to get to their house until after the news, and by then Jamie’s body was lying in state inside.

It was clear that, while Jaime’s father, Robert, and Amy were happy for me and my cameraman to be there, a few of the family were not quite so pleased with the idea. This is not unusual, and all you can ever hope for is that, by being respectful and taking it slowly, you might win them around.

We filmed Amy’s interview in her bedroom in near-darkness, with only a sun-gun on the camera for lighting. The right side of her face was yellow and bruised, and the stitches in a head wound were visible. It was a tough, emotional recount of what had happened four days earlier.

Amy had rushed outside with Jaime, and, as the building collapsed on top of them, he had tried to protect her by throwing his body over hers. She said the next thing she remembered was waking up, buried under rubble but still holding her brother’s hand. She thinks he was still alive then, but felt his grasp weaken the longer they remained there.

She started calling for help, and luckily Sam Siave — a workmate who had remained in the bar during the quake — realized Jaime and Amy were not safely outside as he had thought. He had already started digging through the concrete blocks and building façade when he heard Amy’s calls. After pulling Amy free, Sam went back to try to rescue Jaime.

One of the most dramatic images from the immediate aftermath of the earthquake was of Amy being led away from the building, bleeding heavily and screaming for her brother.

As she talked to me, she struggled to hold back the tears. We all did.

Amy went on to describe the electrician who had thrown Jaime into the back of his van, and the police officer who had tried desperately to resuscitate him while they were driving. But by the time they arrived at Christchurch Hospital, Jaime was dead.

I also interviewed Jaime’s father, Robert, who spoke movingly about his son’s character. He then talked selflessly about how lucky his family was to have Jaime back, and how much they felt for all the other families who did not have their loved one — or in some cases still did not even know their fate.

Throughout the evening, other family members came into Amy’s bedroom and watched as we worked. They brought photos, stories and songs, and helped give me a sense of Jaime and the person he was. The camera had long stopped rolling, but for hours we sat and listened and shared their grief.

It was to be the first story we would air about one of the quake’s victims, so I felt a tremendous responsibility. I knew how much it meant to Jaime’s family, but I also knew how important it was to the people of Christchurch and to the New Zealand public that I got it right. We would be judged harshly if it was not, such was the understandably high level of sensitivity.

After the story went to air, the family called to say how much they appreciated the way I had told Jaime’s story, and they invited me to attend Jaime’s funeral. Amy and rescuer Sam also featured in a 60 Minutes story the following week.

The relationship between the public and the media can often be very strained in times of crisis, particularly when the crisis is in our own backyard. Journalists are not held in especially high regard at the best of times, but in situations where there has been loss of life and devastation on such a large scale it is easy for the media to be seen as intrusive or insensitive. By and large that did not happen with the Christchurch earthquake; if anything, it was quite the reverse. I believe that TV3’s coverage of the earthquake and its aftermath was done with considerable compassion and sensitivity. I think many of our viewers also understood that our Christchurch team was not only covering the event, they were very much living it as well.

Personally, I don’t think I have ever received so much positive feedback about our work, and at the end of some long weeks that made all the difference. I remember one night finishing late — too late to get anything to eat — and stopping off at a dairy down Riccarton Road. I grabbed a couple of things, which probably came to around $10 in total, and the Indian owner of the dairy point-blank refused to take my money.

Time and again I came across amazing stories of generosity and selflessness. Like Steve Hira, a man with two young children and a third on the way, who lived in one of the worst-affected areas: Aranui. When he realized after the earthquake that many in his community were struggling with no food, water or power, he went to his employer and asked to take some time off so he could help out. When his employer refused, he simply quit his job, gave back his firm’s car, laptop and cellphone, and set to work. When I caught up with him, he was running a full-on food and household goods distribution centre out of Aranui Primary School, feeding thousands a day. Most of the food he was distributing had come from church groups and other communities in the North Island, arriving daily by the truckload. When I asked him what he would do for a job when all this was over, the devout Christian said, ‘Something will turn up.’

At the end of an exhausting three weeks covering the Christchurch earthquake, I was looking forward to heading home. It was Friday, 11 March, and I was booked on a 7.50pm flight from Christchurch to Auckland. As I had done throughout our coverage in Christchurch, I presented part of the news from there, and then made my way to the airport. To be honest, I was looking forward to having a glass of wine and half an hour’s sleep on the plane.

While