He also moved up to producing nightly sports bulletins, under the influence of veteran New Zealand journalists Tony Ciprian and Angus Gilles.

[6] Santamaria has remained visible in New Zealand media in recent years, with regular radio slots on RadioLive, NewstalkZB, and RNZ, and articles for The Spinoff.

[9] In 2004, Santamaria moved to New York and London, and in 2005 was recruited by Al Jazeera English to become a news presenter in Doha, Qatar.

[15] Santamaria returned to New Zealand in March 2022, joining TVNZ to present the network's Breakfast programme from April 2022, replacing John Campbell.

A subsequently discredited announcement was made on 28 May 2022 that he had resigned for "family reasons" and would be leaving effective immediately, only a month into his time on the show.

[18] It was also reported that complaints of a similar nature had been made against him during his time at Al Jazeera, raising concerns about the hiring process TVNZ had followed.

In addition, Santamaria claimed that some of the allegations leveled against him over the past four months lacked context, were lies, or amounted to a "rewriting" of history.