Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air
Back at his base in London this week, Daniel Faitaua took a moment to reflect on the weeks just gone.
“When you are on the ground and you are reporting it for the news and you are seeing it first-hand it’s really, really haunting,” Faitaua says.
“You see tired faces, exhausted faces and as you are going in hundreds if not thousands are trying to get out that is part of the job to try and get the story out of there so we can ensure that our viewers back there in New Zealand and the Pacific can understand what is going on.”
Faitaua left New Zealand in 2019 with his wife and three sons to work out of London as TVNZ’s Europe correspondent and while it’s been an eventful posting so far – especially with the Covid-19 Pandemic causing chaos in the UK – covering the war in Ukraine has left a deep impression.
“We started in Romania and we hit the Ukraine border right there and covered Ukrainians fleeing in their hundreds just coming across and freezing temperatures – you know minus 6 degrees, minus 7 degrees,” he says
“We were standing there crossing live and still coming from behind me, were women and children. Because of course at the time, and even now, men of fighting age cannot leave Ukraine, they have to stay behind and fight.
“You know as a dad, you have kids of your own, you just look at them and you just think gosh this could be us.”
Faitaua says it’s hard not to be emotional seeing things first-hand in Ukraine.
“People say journalists shouldn’t allow their emotions to take over but you’d have a really black heart if you didn’t let the emotions take over from what you are seeing there from the sidelines and the hardest thing was, you were there from the sidelines observing and you just so wanted to help out.”
Faitaua says he and his crew would offer rides to some of the families to the train station because they had the room in their car and that, even in the midst of war, people showed love and kindness.
“They would want to give us a hot coffee or give us a blanket to keep us warm and they had nothing on them and yet, here they were giving us what they had and it was just an incredible show of human spirit,” he says.
“These people have very little, yet were willing to give me everything that they had to ensure that my safety and my warmth was being looked after. It was really heart-wrenching and heart breaking at the same time.”
Language hasn’t been a barrier for the proud Samoan who’s been able to connect with locals even while live on television. A woman introduced herself as Lena while Faitaua was crossing live to the 6pm news bulletin in New Zealand.
“She looked at me and she just had that look that she just wanted to tell her story, she wanted someone to listen and she reminded me of my grandma,” Faitaua says.
“When she stood there and started talking to me, I just thought she has a story to tell me and I knew that I was going live at the same time but I couldn’t ignore her.
“If that was one of my family members and someone was there that could help, even by listening, then I would want them to, because every person has a story to tell and I think that’s all they wanted is just someone to listen.”
Faitaua made headlines earlier this year as the first Kiwi and Pacific person in 134 years to be the president of the Foreign Press Association in London. While it’s an important role, Faitaua says it’s vital that the media can keep people informed.
“I think it’s important as journalists now and it really showed not just with the war at the moment in Europe but also with covid-19,” he says.
“[It put a] light on the work of journalists in telling and giving information on what was important out there and covid-19 started that and so at a time here in the UK where you spent almost 2 years in some form of lockdown and some form of restrictions, the foreign press association here in London still managed to bring up and give us these interviews online which helped immensely.”
Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.
