February 16, 2016
What is going on at Radio NZ?
What is going on at Radio NZ?
MARTYN BRADBURY
How a bi-cultural society functions in a multi-cultural country takes perseverance, partnership and public broadcasting leadership. It demands upon TVNZ and RNZ to counter much of the free market right wing propaganda and petty racism that bogs us down as a nation, and it requires them to generate the space where those voices, ideas and kaupapa can be platformed.
That's the hope, but the reality suggests otherwise.
In 2007, the TVNZ chief executive Rick Ellis, told MPs that Shortland Street and Police Ten-7 were examples of the state broadcaster making content that met its charter obligations to Maori. The unthinking racism Ellis accidentally highlighted still prevents TVNZ doing anything agenda setting. In the race to the bottom where broadcasters now define success by clicks, TVNZ has veered to the entertaining rather than informative. A handful of shows keep Maori content real on TVNZ, but it's a handful who are under constant budget review.
TVNZs commitment to providing the necessary space where we as a country can debate the issues of our day has been several compromised by Seven Sharp which now reeks of a wealthy privilege. Mike Hosking not only pushes Maori issues to the side, he pushes every working class persons issues, every minorities issues, every women issue and every beneficiaries issue to the periphery.
White rich men telling NZ how it is does not a public broadcaster make.
TVNZ is at least trying, what can be said of the RNZ?
Research Waatea undertook shows that on the weekdays between 9th November 2015 and 29th January 2016, the number of Maori stories amounted to a pittance. Out of 1 440 hours of content, RNZ played a mere 99 minutes of Maori content. That's barely an hour and a half out of 1440 hours of content.
Barely an hour and a half out of 1440 weekday broadcasting hours is as pitiful a commitment to Maori as TVNZ chief executive Rick Ellis' comment almost a decade earlier that Police Ten-7 was TVNZs evidence of supporting Maori.
When the spaces on our public broadcaster are eroded for right wing demagogues and clickbait content we lose a part of ourselves. We have a media more interested in heat rather than providing light to issues and if RNZ and TVNZ are going to take such a limp view of Maori content and providing the public spheres of debate for those voices in society rarely platformed, then how do we advance, celebrate, debate and shape the Treaty?
Martyn Bradbury
Editor – TheDailyBlog.co.nz
Waatea 5th Estate
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