Do better NZ news.
Do better NZ news.
00:00 / 04:54
The Morning Rumble

Rog, Bryce and Mulls take aim at 'pathetic' NZ news for ignoring Mike King's mental health plea

Do better NZ news.

On the show yesterday (November 1), we played the most traumatic interview with a guest in our show's history. 

That interview was with a broken Mike King. Broken from the system he’s been fighting to try and fix. It was him breaking down, let down - in his words, being “sick of all the absolute shit”. You can watch that video here.

Since going up yesterday, the video has had the single biggest response to a thing we've put up in our show's history in such a short amount of time. Ever.

It has been viewed nearly half a million times - that’s 10% of the whole country have already seen it in less than 24 hours. Nearly 20k people liked it on Facebook, nearly half of those people have shared it on their own platforms. Even the likes of All Blacks hardmen Ardie Savea and Liam Squire have shared it.

It's been viewed and shared so many times, because of the fact it was just so shocking to see. A New Zealander of the year at his wits end. 

But one day on from it, one of the main takeaways for me and the show, is my bitter, if not unexpected disappointment in the New Zealand news media. Here was arguably one of the biggest newsworthy things yesterday, but not a single news site picked it up yesterday.

It was deliberate, we sent it to them in the interest of letting people see it. Stuff declined to put it online, and well The Herald, of course not - they only wanna write about us if it's negative.

We just wanted to say all this to be transparent - there is a complete bias to anything we do by news sites. They are bored of us doing mental health stuff, and tired of Mike King being angry at the system.

I can guarantee you if any other show, like if that was on Fletch and Vaughan, Robbie Rakete, Jay-Jay or Toni Street, it'd be front page.

But as I say, they don't want to write about the good stuff The Rock are trying to do. 

Just for context, in some pleasing news yesterday they did have multiple stories about Melbourne Cup fashion, Cookie Time sales and ice cream flavours. ‘Cause you know… Those stories matter. 

So if you can and would like to, you can donate to Gumboot Friday by texting ‘Boots’ to 469 for an instant $3 donation. It’s you and your sharing of it that will do what needs to be done, because as it seems pretty clear lately, the health system and the media that could help it, aren't.

Have a watch of our yarn up top, and if you or someone you know is struggling, head here for a bunch of resources that may help.