Mike McRoberts admits he’s ‘dealt badly’ with personal impact of reporting on traumatic events

  • 11/08/2022
Mike McRoberts talks about his experiences in the Middle East.
Mike McRoberts talks about his experiences in the Middle East. Photo credit: Stephanie Soh

Warning: Graphic details from warzone may disturb some readers. 

Newshub Live at 6 newsreader Mike McRoberts has lifted the lid on the personal impact of his years at the frontline of traumatic news events. 

McRoberts (Ngāti Kahungunu) spoke candidly about the toll of covering the Gaza War with re_covering, a Media Chaplaincy New Zealand podcast produced for RNZ featuring New Zealand’s top journalists discussing the one story from their career that has shaped them most.

McRoberts told re_covering host and media chaplain Reverend Frank Ritchie the heaviness of reporting on these sorts of stories is “not easy”, and the trauma can “mess you up” if it’s not dealt with in the right way.

“When you go to a big natural disaster or a warzone, on the flight over there, you're gearing yourself up for what's going to happen. But as the reporter who goes to a car crash at Spaghetti Junction and sees someone dead… they’re big things and shocks to the system,” he said.

“Having to deal with that, it can be hard. There have been lots of times over the years where I've dealt with it badly and probably drunk too much.

“I felt that as long as I talked about it and got it off my chest, it would be okay. But often the talking about it came too late. It needed to be done at the time, not three weeks later when you've had a bottle and a half of merlot.”

McRoberts is no stranger to heavy subject matter. A journalist who regularly reports from warzones, he travelled to Gaza when conflict between Israel and Palestine broke out there in 2014 - a war that would claim the lives of more than 2300 people in just a month-and-a-half.

As missiles flew overhead, McRoberts was on the ground in the Palestinian enclave bringing the world’s attention to the realities for the Gazans living through the war.

“It was so horrific,” McRoberts recalls. “There were four Palestinian kids killed when they were hit by a mortar who were playing soccer on the beach that was just in front of our hotel.

“I remember a direct hit from a drone attack not far from us. We went round, and just the dust and the mayhem… There was an ambulance there and I thought there may have been some survivors, so I was talking to the ambulance driver, asking, ‘Is there someone inside that I can talk to to find out what happened?’

“He was shaking his head… he opened the door and [inside the ambulance] it was just a bunch of hands and feet. You never forget that stuff, you know?”

Asked whether he ever feared for his own safety, McRoberts said he just wanted to bring the conflict into the public consciousness and never really worried about the dangers of reporting from the frontline - though conceded that could just be naivete.

“I just have a belief that I'm doing the right thing, and it'll be okay. It’s funny… I've had people come to me over the years and say that God is looking after me. Now that's bloody handy when you're hopping on a plane to go into the Middle East.

“I know I've been incredibly lucky over the years. It does start to become a numbers game after a while, and there have been situations where I've just said ‘I don't think it's worth it’ - not many, but it's just been a gut instinct.”

The Gaza conflict received huge global coverage and drew widespread condemnation here in New Zealand, with peace rallies held across the country and vocal criticism from then-Prime Minister Sir John Key.

Eventually there was a ceasefire and McRoberts came back home, but he admits the aftermath of reporting on the Gaza War and other assignments like it can be difficult.

“At that time you're dealing with something that is vital, [something] everyone wants to know about, and they're huge emotions and you're absorbing them - you have to absorb them. And you try not to let that tip you over because you've got a job to do,” he said.

“And then in a couple of weeks, you're up in Whangarei interviewing some guy who paints his letterbox a funny colour or whatever, and the gravity, the vital-ness of it isn't there. You kind of wonder what you're doing, you know?

“I've seen it with a lot of people, friends who are in those war zones and stuff full-time, and that's why the burnout rate is so high. It's not so much the time spent in theatre; it's the time out of it and trying to adjust and make sense of the world.”

McRoberts has done training in trauma, and has been able to use what he’s learned to help less experienced journalists recover from reporting on the likes of the Christchurch earthquake or mosque attacks.

He encourages other media personnel who have found what they’ve witnessed confronting to talk it out early.

“It's so much better to talk to people who are around you at the time. That’s what I encourage our journalists to do when we're in the middle of big things - even if they're not life and death, you know, something like the Rugby World Cup, just talking to my colleagues about the All Blacks losing.

“[It’s about] dealing with those things, so that it's not going to hit you when you get back and you’re not kind of feeling flat. Even just recognising that that might happen is a big change.”

Listen to the full re_covering episode with Mike McRoberts here.

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