A popular New Zealand TV personality has revealed she is dying of cancer.
Joanna Paul-Robie, best known for reading the news on TV3, told Radio New Zealand on Friday that she was ‘unfortunately dying’.
She revealed the heartbreaking news after receiving the Icon Award for her contribution to the creative industries on Thursday night.
She said the award was the ‘most honourable experience of my life’.
‘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.’
She received the award with her family by her side.
‘I can’t tell you the lightness, the brightness, the feeling of aroha inside me last night.’
Paul-Robie said that starting out as one of the few Māori on New Zealand’s screens was tough.
“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.
She said it was her life’s work to bring together her Māori side and her work as a broadcaster.
Having started her media career in radio Paul-Robie made her television presenting debut with TVNZ’s Wildtrack in 1989, but was soon recruited to be the breakfast newsreader on the new TV3 channel.
Joanna Paul-Robie (pictured) best known for reading the news on TV3, told Radio New Zealand on Friday that she was ‘unfortunately dying’
Joanna and Lucien Paul-Robie attend a party in Auckland after a screen awards in 2007
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