Anna Burns-Francis admits adjusting to her new gig as host of Breakfast has been “a big learning curve” after leaving her previous role as TVNZ’s US correspondent.
The experienced journalist took on the Breakfast role at the start of 2023 following a busy three-year period in which she reported on the US presidential election, its messy aftermath, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a new interview with re_covering, a Media Chaplaincy podcast for RNZ where New Zealand's top journalists discuss the stories that have most impacted them, Burns-Francis revealed just how different the two jobs are.
“I worked all that time [as US correspondent] on my own, out in the field or in a studio,” she told broadcaster and media chaplain Rev Frank Ritchie.
“And to come back and be in this big production where someone does your hair and makeup and there are four other people that you have to talk to every day and bounce off and share ideas with, it's very different."
Burns-Francis says starting at Breakfast has been a “big learning curve” – exacerbated by the fact she only packed up her New York City apartment four days before she was on air here in New Zealand.
She’s enjoyed the team environment, but there has been a period of adaptation.
“I really like sharing ideas with people and talking things through, so I certainly have very quickly noticed I don't feel that loneliness that I used to feel in my work. But at the same time, you have to learn to share other ideas with people where you think… 'that's just not for me'.
“And that's got a place in the show too – someone else is going to make a really good job of it. Quite often the others do really good interviews that I would totally faff, I'd be terrible at them. But they're good ideas and they offer something to someone.”
Burns-Francis’ time in the US has given her a distaste for shallow political discussions, and she’s now using her platform on one of New Zealand’s most-watched news programmes to try and bring depth to political interviews.
Burns-Francis believes the PR training politicians receive is helping them weasel out of difficult questions, which of all the challenges of morning TV she says “frustrates her the most”.
“You see them doing it – they're winding out the clock. They just talk for two minutes and I think, ‘stop!’ but I can't interrupt because they're on a roll and people say, ‘don't be so rude’.
“That's what infuriates me, is that I feel like politicians dumb us down and think that we can't debate agricultural emissions or the value of lowering class ratios or whether it would matter if we changed the way we pay tax.
“They just go, ‘rich people should pay more’ or ‘we should stop giving welfare benefits’. It's just like, come on, let's actually have a reasoned, proper debate and deep-dive into it and stop making it this five-minute talking point. It doesn't get us anywhere.”
Elsewhere in the wide-ranging interview, Burns-Francis discusses the key role she played in bringing an end to zero-hour contracts, the demands of being US correspondent during the pandemic, and her hopes for the future of journalism.
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