Tova O’Brien Biography – Tova O’Brien Wiki
Tova O’Brien is a New Zealand political journalist. She hosts the Tova Breakfast show on New Zealand news and talk radio station Today FM, and previously led the team of political reporters for Newshub.She was earlier a reporter in the parliamentary press gallery in Wellington before joining MediaWorks New Zealand in 2007. In 2016 she was assigned the role of European correspondent for Newshub (MediaWorks’ news division). In 2018 she returned to Wellington and became Newshub’s political editor, succeeding Patrick Gower. Her style of journalism, according to Gower, is “edgy”, and she attracts a lot of criticism due to her high profile.
In October 2020, her interview with Jami-Lee Ross, co-leader of the Advance New Zealand party garnered 7 million views. She was internationally praised by journalists for preventing Ross from mentioning conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic during the interview.
In November 2021, Mediaworks, O’Brien’s former workplace, rehired her for a talk-radio show to be launched in early 2022. She will leave Discovery and her Political Editor position at Newshub at around the same time. Broadcaster Tova O’Brien will have to wait two months to begin her new job as the host of Mediaworks’ rebranded breakfast radio show, after losing her case at the Employment Relations Authority. O’Brien resigned her role as TV3’s political editor in November to join Mediaworks in the new year.
She was to start on Monday, January 24, 2022, but TV3’s owner Discovery NZ told her it considered Mediaworks’ Today FM a competitor in the lucrative breakfast market and would enforce a three-month restraint of trade clause in her contract. She challenged the clause at a three-day hearing at the ERA, arguing the clause did not apply as she was going into radio and her show would be competing with Newstalk ZB and Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report. She left Discovery and her Political Editor position at Newshub prior to starting with MediaWorks.
In 2019, O’Brien won the award for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards. The citation read: Courageous, tenacious, O’Brien wielded considerable influence on the 2018 political scene with her scoops, as a good member of the fourth estate should. She leads from the lip and is not put off by those who would have her silenced. A true political muckraker.
After high school, she began studying for a degree at the University of Otago in film and psychology. She did not complete the degree, instead of going overseas to work in Melbourne and London in hospitality. In 2006 she decided to train as a journalist and completed a qualification at Massey University. Her first journalism role after graduating was at Radio Active in Wellington.
Tova O’Brien Age
She was born in 1982/1983 in Papua New Guinea.
Tova O’Brien Husband
She married her husband Nathan “Nato” Hickey in 2016 in London; they had known each other since 2006 in Wellington. Hickey is a drummer for the Wellington heavy metal band Beastwars.
Tova O’Brien Parents
She was born in Papua New Guinea. Her mother, a British journalist, and her father, a New Zealand helicopter pilot, had met while working in the country. When she was six months old, the family relocated to New Zealand. Her parents separated when she was three and O’Brien was brought up by her mother in Wellington.
Tova O’Brien Instagram
Her Instagram handle is @tovaobrien.
