Intrepid journeys

New Zealand TV journalist unexpectedly finds herself reporting from the globe's hot spots in lively memoir.

- BY DAVID HILL

Accidental war correspondent", says the subtitle. Kiwi TV journalist Lisette Reymer is young, talented and intrepid.

War correspondents have become the glamour guys and gals of journalism in the past decades. Remember “Scud Stud” Arthur Kent, reporting from a Baghdad rooftop as US missiles speared down? When he appeared on a US talkshow later, the women-only audience erupted inmating calls.

Kent and his kin have become familiar TV tropes, with their PRESS flak jackets and concerned expressions, against backgrounds of ruined buildings and ruined people. Some imply that the real drama is them, but the very best put the victims in the foreground. Supreme among the latter was Norman Lewis, reporting from wartime Italy, Mafia Sicily, Bolivia when the government was “cleansing” areas of indigenous inhabitants, to replace them with white settlers fleeing Rhodesia.

Lewis was also a wondrous narrator. In Guatemala, three chaps with large machetes in their belts entered a bar, advanced on him, paused. “Excuse me for addressing you, sir,” one said, and nodded at the nearby jukebox. “But are you familiar with the method of manipulating the machine over there?” Matchless.

The trade now includes Waikato-born Reymer, who, after covering the Tokyo Olympics, found herself in the UK, where she became Newshub’s Europe Correspondent. She burst into tears when she got the job, which is instantly endearing.