I’m a lot braver in a war zone than I am in real life,” says Lisette Reymer. “I won’t even jump off a diving board. I’m a real baby.” To the rest of us, though, she is Newshub’s fearless Europe correspondent, bringing the visceral reality of the Ukraine war into the nation’s living rooms.
She has made us care. She has made us understand what it is to be living amidst the horror that is Vladimir Putin’s war.
Lisette and her cameraman Dan Pannett made a brief trip home in November to be honoured for Best News Coverage at the New Zealand Television Awards for their work in Ukraine. Her boss Sarah Bristow, Newshub’s head of news, put it succinctly: “In our business, the pinnacle is reporting that reaches into your chest, squeezes your heart and makes you feel something. Your storytelling, your poetic scripts and the shots that are taking us right there have allowed our audience to feel the human toll of this war. You two set our coverage apart.”
They’ve had quite the year, with six hair-raising trips to Ukraine. One minute, Lisette’s dodging landmines and Russian missiles. The next, she’s delving into the on-going angst over Prince Harry’s broken necklace and the injuries he sustained from his dog bowl.
Add to that the Queen’s death,
