Broadcaster Mike McRoberts has revealed his life was never insured when he took viewers to the frontline of global battle zones for TV3.
Speaking to RNZ Saturday Morning, McRoberts said there was just a spoken agreement between himself and then TV3 CEO Brent Impey that his family would be looked after should something happen to him while he was overseas.
“One thing I haven’t really talked about before, but for us to be able to afford to do that at TV3, I wasn’t insured,” he said.
“It was a handshake agreement with my boss at the time Brent Impey.
“So he had to look after Paula (McRoberts’ wife) and the kids if anything went wrong, which even with the words coming out of my mouth now, yeah, I can’t quite believe it,” McRoberts said.
He told Susie Ferguson that when management at TV3 changed, so too did his willingness to take the risk of travelling to warzones.
“When the management changed, that’s when that arrangement changed because I didn’t have the same faith in the new management that they would honour it,” he said.
Listen to the full interview here, where McRoberts also talks about some of the risks that were taken while covering war stories, as well as his time at TV3, and his plans after Newshub’s closure.
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