Are Gatekeepers destroying Māori media

Why Māoridom has a nepotism issue, and why it‘s going nowhere

In the brilliant Spike Lee film ‘Mo Better Blues’, Denzel Washington's character - a jazz player struggling with the idea that the audiences for his proudly black art never seem to include any other black people - says, brutally, “if we had to depend on black people to eat, we would starve to death.”

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.”

If this was a one-off it would be unfortunate, but not proof of a clear systemic issue. Sadly, it is more the rule than the exception. 

Over on iwi radio, Radio Waatea host and regular Radio NZ political panellist Shane Te Pou hosted his own Māori politics panel show earlier this year. Half of his four guests, Simon Wilson (again) and divisive shock-jock Martyn 'Bomber' Bradbury, are not Māori. They're also not all that different in terms of political leanings or life experiences. 

It's not just that they are outsiders talking at Māoridom, their clear biases point in the same singular direction. 

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. 

If you had asked me a decade ago who should be in a panel of future Māori political leaders, I would have said two people I came across while at Uni - National MP James Rawiri Meager and Labour MP Arena Williams. 

Both came up through their parties' youth political wings. Neither hard to find. 

Arena now has a regular column in the Herald, it's not very good, but James is still under acknowledged and appreciated and it isn’t hard to figure out why. 

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. 

Full disclosure: I am not like James. 

While he came from humble beginnings, I came from an incredibly comfortable childhood. From two highly educated senior public servants with deep political contacts across the left who have lived and been educated around the globe. 

I am also not like fellow Māori David Seymour. 

While he has talked about being treated as not Māori because he wasn’t raised on his marae, I was. In fact I was raised deeply entrenched in Te Ao Māori, surrounded by people who live and practice kaupapa Māori. I have never been anything other than staunchly Māori and was raised to understand that no one can ever rob me of my whakapapa. 

I am not like these two successful Māori in other ways as well, but what we share is an acknowledgement that there is no right or wrong way to be Māori. That ignoring the diversity within Māoridom only hurts and divides us further. 

We are not a hivemind, we share this wonderful culture and history, but we do not have to all see it the same way. 

For me this is what tikanga compels me to do - challenge preconceptions and promote the interests of us all over the interests of my whānau and the bros. 

I don't not see this reflected in Māori media, but half the time I don't see Māori on Māori media. 

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.