News headlines across the past week have been brutal. If it’s distressing to hear them, what’s it like for those having to read them?
In Wellington, parliamentary protesters have attacked police with punches, pitchforks and picnic table legs. In Ukraine, five are dead after Russian forces demolished a Kiev TV tower with missiles. Meanwhile, 43 arrests have been made in Aotearoa after an investigation into a global child porn ring that includes “violence, assault and degradation” towards infants and children.
It’s just after 10am and RNZ’s headlines for this chaotic Wednesday morning make for bleak listening. With omicron case numbers rising, a lengthy anti-mandate protest being disbanded, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine well underway, and a child porn case, it’s potentially one of the busiest news days of the year. Even the weather’s bad: heavy rainfall is set to hit the West Coast.
On air, veteran broadcaster Nicola Wright has sounded measured and composed through all of it. She’s been fronting Morning Report’s half-hour bulletins since 6am, a job she’s been doing for the past 22 years. Despite the worrying headlines, her professionalism that earned her the title of best newsreader at the 2021 Radio Awards is on full display. “We’re ready for anything to happen,” she says.
Yet, picking up The Spinoff’s call a few minutes after her 10am bulletin ends, she admits today’s been especially hectic. “It’s a relentless onslaught every day, but today’s particularly bad,” Wright says. Making things worse is the amount of reporters working remotely to evade omicron. “It takes a little more time to get things done,” she says.”It all adds to the pressure of producing the bulletin.”
As a listener, all of those headlines heard one after the other has a compounding affect. It’s depressing, like end times could be nigh. How does Wright feel about it? She’s too busy doing her job to think about it, trying to present those shocking headlines in a way that doesn’t overwhelm listeners. She describes her job as providing “an oral arm around the shoulder,” like a friend sidling up and saying: “Listen, I’ve got something bad to tell you.”
In other words, Wright’s trying to make everything sound okay, even if it’s not. That means getting names right, and make sure her pace and tone isn’t out of step with the information she’s presenting. She points out she’s just one person in a 15-strong team. “It’s important that all the work that reporters, bulletin editors and supervisors have put together doesn’t get ruined by a substandard presentation,” she says. “It’s a responsibility, so you’ve got to be ready to do it right.”
Sometimes, though, it does get a bit much. This morning’s story about pedophilia got to her. “You don’t want to think too much about that,” she says. “It’s important that the news is out there and that it’s going on and stuff is going on to stop it [but] you can’t let your mind keep thinking about that story after you’ve read it.” Other stories stay with her too: the day Christchurch mosque shooting and earthquakes are moments she struggled to shake.
When the news is this grim, it’s no surprise. Others have found their emotions seeping into bulletins this week. Newshub at 6 presenter Samantha Hayes took to Instagram Stories to warn there might be tears during Tuesday’s show. “I’m not sure if I’m going to make it through the bulletin tonight without crying,” she told her followers. “The stories are horrendous.” That night, Hayes did seem emotional, but made it through a horrific broadcast about a six year-old Ukraine war victim intact.
For one young newsreader, this was the week it all became too much. James Tapp has been volunteering as a morning newsreader at Auckland student radio station bFM for the past two and a half years. His second shift, at the age of 18, was covering the Christchurch mosque attacks. He doesn’t remember much from that day. “Everyone was in shock,” he says. “I imagine it was a lot to process afterwards.”
He’s been presenting headlines and bulletins for two years since then, but has just quit his job, partly because of his studies, but also because he was finding the constant churn of news all too much. “I felt like I was getting too burnt out by it all, even though I really love it,” says Tapp. “It’s a never-ending cycle when it comes to the news. There’s so much desensitisation to all of it. ‘Oh, there’s a war starting,’ or, ‘Here’s another awful Covid statistic’. That’s what you end up dealing with every day. It can be quite hard to step back and say, ‘People’s lives are on the line here.'”
Tapp is already missing it, and the friends he made at bFM, but he’s looking forward to news being just the news and not “this huge big thing you have to keep track of all day every day”. He’s already pared back his habits. “There’s a lot of burnout that comes from being around news 24/7 and having to constantly keep track of what’s going on in the world,” he says. “People are relying on you to write your stories well and read those stories well so they know what’s going on in the world.”
With her years of experience, Wright, from RNZ, has some tips for Tapp, other young broadcasters, and the rest of us doomscrolling our way into oblivion. Her advice? Learn coping measures, find the off switch, do something to cleanse the timeline. For her, it’s playing co-op card games with her sister. “It’s very absorbing,” she says. “You find after two or three hours you haven’t thought about anything else. It’s a circuit breaker.”
As Wright well knows, once the protests are over, Russia’s finished dropping bombs on Ukraine, and omicron’s spread as far as it can, there’s going to be more news to deal with. “You come into the job knowing that news is full of people being horrible to other people and bad things happening all around the world,” she says. “There’ll be more bad news tomorrow.” With that, Wright’s got to go. It’s nearly 10.30am, she’s got more headlines to read, and those protesters seem to be picking a fight with the police.