News Cowboys

Behind the scenes of international breaking news, through the eyes of a leading foreign correspondent

Mike Amor

• Publisher: Echo
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN:
  9781760689650
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Journalist Biographies

News cowboys - it was the nickname the reporters and camera people at Seven Network's Los Angeles bureau jokingly gave themselves as they headed off on assignments, not knowing what to expect and often unprepared for what they found. It was a way of coping, of not taking too seriously what was often deadly serious, as they witnessed some of the worst moments in recent world history.

For 18 years Mike Amor was one of those journalists. He was on the ground during 9/11 and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He reported on mass shootings from Port Arthur to Sandy Hook, covered the earthquake in Haiti and the astonishing rescue of a little girl named Winnie, investigated Mexican drug cartels, came under fire in Gaza - and much more. There were good times, too - following the Olympics or Chloë McCardel's record-breaking Cuban swim - but the mental and physical toll was incalculable, on him and on his wife and son.

Mike, who won the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Network Award in 2011, recounts these experiences with honesty, compassion and humour, but also takes on the big questions: Why do foreign correspondents do this job? Why do they, sometimes recklessly, expose themselves to danger when they have family at home?

News Cowboys is a brave, moving and thought-provoking book. To read it is to see the world differently and to understand the high price paid by those who will stop at nothing to tell the truth.

Table of contents

• News Cowboys
• Dedication
• Praise for News Cowboys
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Day the World Changed: 9/11
• Chapter 2 Killing Without a Conscience: Massacres
• Chapter 3 Mr President: American Elections
• Chapter 4 Paying the Price: Guantánamo Bay
• Chapter 5 Left to Die: Hurricane Katrina
• Chapter 6 Hard Game: Dealing with Dokić
• Chapter 7 The Other Side of Paradise: Fiji
• Chapter 8 Heartbreak and Anger: Gaza
• Chapter 9 Winnie’s Story: Haiti
• Chapter 10 Lifting Off: The Last Shuttle
• Chapter 11 Goodbye to Gaddafi: Libya
• Chapter 12 Drug Tunnels and Butterflies: Mexico
• Chapter 13 A Long Way from Queensland: Father Kevin and Misión México
• Chapter 14 A Special Young Man: The Killing of Chris Lane
• Chapter 15 At the Bottom of the Canyon: Havasupai
• Chapter 16 Beyond Copacabana: The Real Brazil
• Chapter 17 Conquering the Caribbean: Chloë McCardel
• Chapter 18 No City of Angels: Skid Row
• Chapter 19 Armageddon: The Eruption of Kīlauea
• Chapter 20 Locked Down: Coping with Covid
• Chapter 21 When Things Go Wrong: Bloopers
• Chapter 22 Looking Back: Good Times and Bad
• Acknowledgements
• Picture section
• About the author
• Imprint