Haimona Gray on Maori media

Haimona Gray writes:

This is how I feel about Māori media – if Māori were only informed by Māori media they would be intellectually starved to the point of mind rot.  

They would also have to listen to a lot of white men telling them what’s good for Maori. For them, but really for ’them’.

These shows exist to make left-wing pakeha feel good about themselves for tuning in. They do this by pitching shows directly at an audience that wants loud voices who will play the notes they expect to hear. 

In a ‘Te Ao with Moana’ panel debate on “who sets the election narrative”, the panel of four people was half pakeha men. 

This week’s ‘Te Ao’ episode covered the Treaty Principles Bill. To discuss it they brought on former Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson (pakeha man, but hugely respected in Māoridom), Matthew Hooton (pakeha man), Max Harris (pakeha man), and Heather Came (pakeha woman).  

This is a show on Māori Television, which receives public funding to produce Māori focused content. This is also a show where host Moana Maniapoto asked (pakeha) NZ Herald senior writer Simon Wilson “is the media just talking to itself?”

I would answer with a resounding “yes, you are, and you’re choosing to do so by prioritising ideology over Māori voices you or your audience might not agree with.”

They are not alone there.

Re: News – the most recent of Radio NZ’s expensive failed experiments in youth news – announced it was partnering with M9 for a Māori TED-style series. This would include nine Māori leaders discussing the role of Te Tiriti in the future of Aotearoa. 

These nine guests included a current Māori Party MP, a former Māori Party MP, the son of a current Māori Party MP, a former head of Greenpeace who was forced to resign as Human Rights Commissioner for disparaging Police, and an anti-dairy farming activist. 

Do you see a pattern? More specifically, do you see how this contributes to a racist idea of Māori as a hivemind? 

While I’ll never condone celebrating people losing their jobs, I’m not sure we as taxpayer dollars were getting any value from a media outlet so aggressively slanted and one which sees this as a balanced coverage of Māori thought.

An argument given to me by the hosts and producers of these shows is “well we can’t find different voices” and “there aren’t a lot of Māori who can speak eloquently about politics who aren’t affiliated to a political party on the left – we must have you on!” 

Spoiler alert: they never do. 

Diversity in everything except thought!

While James’ maiden speech was correctly lauded for its eloquence, his most powerful message was that there isn’t just one way to be Māori. 

He talked about how he is from “simple straightforward people”, and that his father had never set foot on the North Island. 

This is the real reason why James, who was long known about and rated highly by political dorks like myself – He is not the son of a current Māori Party MP. Not the heir to a Māori political dynasty like the Henare’s or Harawira’s or Jackson’s. 

He does not owe his place in life to whānau connections, and therefore he is not on the radar of those who gate keep these shows and use their influence to advocate for their own politics and a Māoridom weighed down by nepotism. 

In his speech James said, “members opposite do not own Māori.”

This is the issue facing Māori media – they have become so narrowly focused, so beholden to nepotistic practices, so ‘jobs for the bros’ it doesn’t matter if the bros aren’t Māori and/or if the show is publicly funded to be. 

They can’t see how this is hurting Māoridom, that we are metaphorically starving our youth while feeding others to the point of creating a slovenly elite that’s so out of touch it would rather hear pakeha voices in Māori spaces than Māori who may challenge them. 

Just because most Māori vote centre-left doesn’t mean all Māori do. And the current Cabinet is over one third Māori.

This is the issue – who gets to be Māori in the media is so deeply gate kept that the Māori experience is filtered through a lens so coloured by political bias and privilege that it bears no resemblance to the real views of many Māori. 

This wouldn’t be a problem if there was a diversity of opinions shown, but the regularity of Simon Wilson or Martyn Bradbury appearances highlight the sad reality that these are media pitching a singular point of view. One that is not Māori, just aristocratic. 

That’s the way these gatekeepers want to keep it. 

A challenge for the Māori media.