Mike McRoberts: 'You could read the 6 o’clock news and not know anything about te reo Māori back then'

Mike McRoberts has been a familiar face and voice on TV and radio for 40 years. His career has included stints first as a sports reporter for RNZ, then TVNZ, and a long period working for Newshub, hosting various shows that included the 6pm bulletin.

It all began when he was a teenager, he tells RNZ's Tony Stamp on The Mixtape.

“The Māori Affairs Department asked me if I'd like to go on a writing hui, where I met another 16-year-old in the form of Michael Bennett, the author.

“And so I went on this hui, and one of the things we did is we went into the RNZ newsroom in Christchurch at around 11.30, so just before the midday bulletin.

“And I was absolutely gobsmacked, just the adrenaline, the smoke, the din of the manual typewriters, the pink sheets of paper that you wrote on. I loved it.”

He landed a cadetship with the national broadcaster and cut his teeth for the next 10 years in radio, doing pretty much every job that came his way, he says.

“I started in Wellington, actually, and went around every department. I was the internal mail boy, and you know, you get to know a company when you're the internal mail boy.”

After completing a broadcasting diploma, he landed in the Christchurch newsroom.

“There were, I think, 14 reporters in the Christchurch newsroom, plus a chief reporter, plus an editor. So I was an add-on.

“So, I was doing a lot of animal stories and not much else. And then I came up in sport. I'd always loved sport, so I jumped into that.”

Eventually, television beckoned, taking McRoberts to the Holmes programme and then host of 60 Minutes.

“My dream job when I first started in broadcasting was to one day work on 60 Minutes, which actually happened a few years later, which was cool.

“And I loved working on the Holmes Show. Paul was a very generous mentor to me. And taught me a lot, actually, about performing, which is one of those dirty words as a journalist. Sometimes you need to have a performance to help tell the story. So, I don't see that as a bad thing.”

McRoberts has reported from conflict zones around the world over his career, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, East Timor and Solomon Islands.

Seeing war up close changed and challenged him, he learnt to compartmentalise, he says.

“It's not a good thing, it took me a long time to work that out, it just about destroyed me.

“Getting too good at it, and then you stop living, stop feeling things.”

At the same time, it was addictive, he says.

“Telling the biggest stories in the world, and I use that word carefully, but you were telling the biggest story in the world, and you were seeing it first hand, you were writing history.

“And these stories were so rich, I've never been a fan of war, absolutely not, It's terrible the way it debases the human spirit, and you see it so many times.

“But you also see incredible things that people do to get through these events, and those are the stories that I love telling.”

A remark by Willie Jackson in 2013 spurred him to reclaim his reo, he says.

“He’d written a piece for one of the papers and basically said that I wasn’t a real Māori, and that burned me.

“Growing up in Christchurch, there was just never an opportunity to learn te reo Māori, certainly not at school. I could have gone through my entire childhood, early adolescence, without ever having heard a word of te reo Māori spoken.”

In those days, it didn’t hamper him professionally, he says.

“It’s a terrible thing to say, but you could read the 6 o’clock news and not know anything about te reo Māori back then.”

That brought with it whakama [shame], he says.

“Trauma, shame and it comes from the fact that te reo Māori for us, if you’re Maori, is not a second language it’s our language.

“So, if you’re really shit at it, what does that say about your identity?”

A full immersion course was a turning point.

“It just about killed me, a full day’s study, 9 till 3, in a classroom. I hadn’t been in a classroom for 30 years.

“It was incredible, just the most amazing bunch of people.”

McRoberts, who is now Te Ao Māori editor at NBR and has hosted the recent RNZ podcast RNZ 100: A Century of Stories podcast, says watching Six60 play ‘Kia Mau Ki Tō Ūkaipō’ in Christchurch was an emotional moment.

“There were 20,000 people at this venue singing in te reo Māori, and I was standing there with my brother, and [Six60 bassist] Chris Mac’s wife Mel in the mixing tent in front of the stage, and I was just bawling my eyes out.

“I remember Mel saying, ‘What’s wrong?’ And I just never, ever thought as a young Māori boy growing up in this city I’d ever see a rugby stadium full of 20,000 people singing in te reo Maori.”

'Yesterday Was Just The Beginning Of My Life' – Mark Williams

'Escaping' – Margaret Urlich

'Down in Splendour' – Straitjacket Fits

'Home' - @Peace

'Kia Mau Ki Tō Ūkaipō' – Six60