NZ TV presenter Joanna Paul-Robie reveals live on air she is dying from cancer

Popular New Zealand TV presenter Joanna Paul-Robie has revealed she is dying of cancer.

Paul-Robie, who is known for reading the news on TV3, told Radio New Zealand on Friday she was “unfortunately dying.”

The beloved newsreader announced the news as she received the Icon Award for her work in the creative industries.

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“I was so touched because this award means so much to me, coming from (New Zealand city) Tauranga Moana,” Paul-Robie said.

“But more importantly, because I am, unfortunately, dying — I have terminal cancer — and really to have this award before one posthumously gets it is an even better break.

“I can’t tell you the lightness, the brightness, the feeling of aroha inside me last night.”

Paul-Robie reflected on beginning her career as one of the few Māori people on New Zealand’s TV screens.

“The newsroom was really … it was being run by mostly a pair of middle-class, middle-aged white men who had the audacity and the balls to say ‘If it bleeds it leads’ but these guys you know they had never been in a Māori world,” she said.

Paul-Robie started her career at Radio New Zealand, then became a newsreader for TV3 and a program and production manager at Māori Television, which she helped to establish in 2004.

During a 2011 interview with NZOnScreen Paul-Robie spoke about setting-up the network.

“There’s been a handful of people in the world who have built a television station and taken it to air,” she said.

“There are only a handful of people in the world who can do that and even though it nearly broke me in half on the day that we launched I thought ‘hell we did that’.

“I think it is difficult for someone like me with an A-type personality to think now you have done your big thing maybe you should take it easy now.”