RNZ reporter Anusha Bradley speaks to Rev Frank Ritchie. Photo: Stephanie Soh Lavemaau
Content warning: This article references rape and suicide.
RNZ reporter Anusha Bradley has opened up on her award-winning reporting on ACC, revealing she had to step away from covering personal stories of the agency's failings last year to protect her own mental health.
Bradley's investigations uncovered a lax privacy culture and other systemic issues at ACC, prompting policy changes, a review into how private information is handled, and major law reforms for women who suffer birth injuries.
While proud to have driven genuine change through her coverage, Bradley made the difficult choice early last year to step away from further reporting on it because she was struggling to deal with the magnitude, complexity and intensity of the stories she was hearing.
Bradley spoke candidly about the personal impact of her reporting in a new interview with re_covering, a Media Chaplaincy podcast for RNZ featuring some of New Zealand's top journalists talking about the stories that have most shaped them.
"I failed to help everyone and that's quite hard to deal with as a journalist" - RNZ reporter Anusha Bradley
"I think I just got to a point where the emotional toll was so high that I felt like I couldn't help them objectively, you know?" she reflected to host Rev Frank Ritchie.
"It was just anxiety. You feel like you're in knots a bit, struggling to know how to pursue a topic ... I'd send myself emails at 3am - 'I've got to do this', 'check out that angle', that kind of thing.
"I would also worry about the actual people as well, I'd worry is this actually gonna help them? … I'd feel responsible if it didn't go well - and sometimes stories didn't [prompt] change, sometimes stories didn't work out, sometimes it wouldn't go the way they like it."
Bradley said she was taken aback by the depth of trauma some of the people she was speaking to had experienced. Some had been denied cover for rape, others were suicidal. On one occasion, she had to stay on the phone when an interviewee threatened to end their life.
"You'd hear from people all the time with these huge, deep-seated problems," Bradley said.
"They not only had been traumatised by actual abuse, but I felt like they had been broken by the system that was supposed to look after them - and that was really hard to deal with."
With every article published, she would receive a flurry of more emails from other victims.
Sometimes this would result in a big scoop, like the revelation ACC staff were sharing and making jokes about sensitive client data on Snapchat; or that staff had viewed a man's sensitive case file, which included details of childhood sexual abuse, dozens of times after his case was closed.
But most of the time it would only serve to increase the pressure Bradley felt.
She told Ritchie listening to so many stories was heartbreaking and difficult, particularly as she was determined to respond to everyone that came forward.
"I'd do a story about someone's case and they would say, 'Thank you so much for listening to me. Thank you. You've really helped me in my healing', and that would feel amazing.
"But then I would just get 10 more emails from people who I couldn't help. I'm proud of the work I did, [but] I do feel sometimes that I failed in a way. I failed to help everyone and that's quite hard to deal with as a journalist.
"I'm empathetic, and that's a really hard thing to deal with as a journalist because you want to help people. I would try to talk to everyone and listen to their stories, which were sometimes horrible - actually, they were always horrible - and that personally affected me."
After speaking with a counsellor, Bradley made the call to step away from writing about ACC clients.
"I would start to just pass on stories to other reporters that were keen to take on some challenging stories.
"That was really good because I knew that these victims were being looked after by other excellent journalists and also I was sharing the load - it wasn't just me, it wasn't just my responsibility.
"That worked for a while, and then once I had some distance I could just say, 'sorry, I'm not covering this topic anymore, I've got to focus on other things'. And I got better at saying no."
When it comes to coverage of ACC, Bradley now focuses her attention on the larger-scale, structural and political issues at the agency.
It has been hard to stay away from the personal case studies, because reporting on them has represented such a significant part of her career - but ultimately she was pleased to be focused on other reporting.
"The lesson for me has really been about putting in good boundaries and knowing what I'm capable of and what I'm not capable of," Bradley told Ritchie.
"I can do a job, a really good job within a certain limit - but if I push myself too much, it affects me too much. And so this has been a great learning curve for me."
Listen to the full re_covering interview with Anusha Bradley here.