Rebecca Singh's role all good news

By LOUISA CLEAVE

TV3 presenter Rebecca Singh - the first Indian woman to front mainstream news on New Zealand television - has been in the job only a week but already she is being seen as a positive role model.

The 26-year-old Indo-Fijian was headhunted by TV3 news from her high-profile job reporting and presenting the evening news on Fiji Television.

Singh can be seen on TV3's news breaks during the day. "As far as TV3 goes, I'm doing whatever is pushed my way," says Singh. "I fit into the greater scheme, which I think is to fill the screen with more people who are representative of New Zealand."

Within two hours of her first day on the job, Singh was phoned by an Indo-Fijian woman who saw her presenting and said it had given her hope for her own daughter.

"I'm glad to be a role model in that respect," Singh says. She worked for Fiji Television for nearly six years and was a multi-skilled producer, presenter and journalist. But, like many journalists in Fiji, she became disheartened by last year's coup and the daily struggle to report a truthful version of events.

"To me, it was very hard just to go to work and to have to read things I knew were so wrong."

Singh said she made the decision to leave Fiji with the intention that she would return one day and work in politics.

"At the moment you have to leave it up to the powermongers. In 15 years I can go back and make a more positive contribution."