Ourhistory of racism laid bare

Nearly 160 years ago,

The Press published a front page editorial about ‘‘native policy’’. It was the 10th edition of the Christchurch newspaper, founded by James Fitzgerald, a former Mpfor Lyttelton.

The article comprised the entire front page, and mused on whether settlers and Ma¯ori could peacefully coexist.

‘‘For an inferior race, coming in contactwith one greatly superior, there are generally but two possible and conceivable destinies – absorption or destruction.’’

This framing was common then. The settlers who wrote the newspaper were engaged in a struggle against Ma¯ori; if Ma¯ori did not assimilate, destruction was inevitable.

Soon afterwards, Wellington’s The Evening Post reported on the Government’s pursuit of Te Kooti, which involved recruiting and arming Ma¯ori.

‘‘Where is there a country in which a civilized and enlightened race has deliberately and persistently gone on arming a neighbouring people – a people whom they were dispossessing – a warlike, jealous, bloodthirsty people – with whom they must one day close in a death grapple,’’ the paper wrote.

Both examples give a glimpse at the foundations of two of our most prized mastheads. The articles contain unabashed racism, perpetuating a view that Ma¯ori were inferior. There were many more stories with similar framing.

It would be comforting to condemn these examples to history, but we can still see their embers burning in Stuff

and its mastheads’ coverage today. The words we use might be different, but the attitudes, in essence, are not.

More than a century later, for example, in our coverage of fatal child abuse involving Ma¯ori:

‘‘Is this how Maoridom celebrates its warrior ancestry?’’ The Evening Post

asked in a 2000 editorial.

‘‘By practising on its tamariki?’’

The Press editorial commenting on a dispute between twoma¯ori MPS and the head of Women’s Refuge:

‘‘New Zealanders have again had the message reinforced that some prominent Maoris are not prepared to acknowledge the child abuse that is defiling their race.

‘‘Do not excuse it. Do take personal responsibility for it.’’

A GROSS DISTORTION

A lot had changed in the 130 years separating those stories.

What had not changedwas a retrograde view of Ma¯ori. To newspapers predominantly written by, and for, Pa¯keha¯, Ma¯ori were portrayed as deficient.

This phenomenon has been the subject of books and academic articles dating back decades. In the 1950s, researcher Richard Thompson examined the portrayal of Ma¯ori in the media.

Thompson concluded that, with a couple of exceptions, all newspapers wrote about Ma¯ori in the same way: a gross distortion of Ma¯ori ‘‘news value’’ and fixed conventional images of Ma¯ori people, oversimplified and confused assumptions, rather than the complexities of reality.

This misrepresentation still lingers in our newsrooms.

In 2006, the first Ma¯ori governor-general, Sir Paul Reeves told a group of journalists: ‘‘The media tends to regard Ma¯ori as an entity or phenomenon that their readers need to know more about.

‘‘The relationship with Ma¯ori is at arm’s length. Ma¯ori are not seen as part of the core readership.’’

At the same time he made those comments, concerns were growing about unfair, racialised news coverage.

Newspapers had covered a string of fatal child abuse cases involving Ma¯ori; the foreshore and seabed controversy; and a race-based, divisive election campaign led by then National leader Dr Don Brash. It would soon be exacerbated by coverage of the 2007 anti-terror police raids across the country.

Our ‘‘distortion’’ of Ma¯ori news and the ‘‘at arm’s length’’ nature in whichwe regarded Ma¯ori, informed our coverage during that time, leading to one of our darkest eras as a news organisation.

We used accusatory language about Ma¯ori whenever they took a public stand over land rights, calling them ‘‘stirrers’’, ‘‘angryma¯ori’’ or ‘‘protesters’’.

Ma¯ori were referred to as a singular group, particularly in stigmatising ways. We covered issues involving Ma¯ori without any apparent knowledge of, or interest in, tikanga Ma¯ori.

In 2003, two of our major newspapers sought to explain the foreshore and seabed issue.

‘‘Debate over Maori customary rights to the foreshore and seabed is making New Zealanders nervous,’’ wrote The Dominion Post.

A few days later, The Press, on its front page, wrote: ‘‘Kiwis will remain free to walk the beaches around New Zealand’s coastline, but the Government is facing revolt from Maori over its plans for the foreshore and seabed.’’

Both were examples of how a monocultural lens can affect the neutrality of a news report. Each sentence separates two groups: Ma¯ori, and Kiwis or New Zealanders – we were implying to our readers that Ma¯ori were not New Zealanders.

It aligns with the national Our Truth, Ta¯ Ma¯tou Pono project, which found Stuff and its newspapers have been racist, contributing to stigma, marginalisation and stereotypes against Ma¯ori.

We have apologised publicly and plans are in place to better representma¯ori and all communities in Aotearoa. But we have a long way to go.

THE PERSISTENT MONOCULTURAL LENS

‘‘What a fine thing it is to be a Maori,’’ the Waikato Times wrote in 1872, two months after the paper was founded.

‘‘The natives are habitually idle, drunken, and improvident, and consequently they are at some seasons of the year not too well off for food. What does the Government do? Why it steps in, gives them flour and sugar and feeds them; gives them wheat to sow their lands with, ploughs to till the soil, and horses to drag their ploughs.’’

Like many newspapers of the era, the Waikato Times was founded by settlers. It went a step further than most: in its first editorial, the paper declared it would ‘‘watch over the interests of the Waikato settlers’’.

For much of this period, newspapers functioned as political instruments, for example, the Taranaki Herald, which covered one of the most significant events in our history, the siege at Parihaka.

We now understand this event as a sickening atrocity: peaceful Ma¯ori were beaten, raped and imprisoned, their homes and taonga destroyed by Government forces, who sought to further expand British settlement in the region.

The Crown formally apologised in 2017.

For weeks beforehand, the

Taranaki Herald had aligned with the Government and its plans to invade the settlement. Afterwards, its editorials falsely described the invasion as a ‘‘peaceful victory’’ and ‘‘justified’’.

At the turn of the 20th century, direct violence between Ma¯ori and settlers had waned, but negative stereotypes persisted. Among the most perniciouswas that Ma¯ori, as a race, were in terminal decline.

‘‘The natives, they say, are dying off like sheep and simply because they are lazy and idle,’’ the Auckland Star wrote in 1907.

Also consistent has been the lenswhich sees the Pa¯keha¯ worldview as the default.

‘‘You don’t belong – that’s the primary message,’’ says Dr Raymond Nairn, who has for 30 years been researching how media portray Ma¯ori.

‘‘It’s a dismissal of Ma¯ori people and their knowledge, their practice, their language.’’

The most significant land march in our history thundered into Auckland on September 23, 1975.

Led by Dame Whina Cooper, thousands of people walked across the Harbour Bridge on their hı¯koi to Parliament in Wellington.

The Auckland Star published two stories about the march, one on its front page.

‘‘Falls, fright as marchers sway bridge,’’ the headline read.

Rather than explore the structural issues that inspired the hı¯koi, the paper explored the structural integrity of a bridge.

Nearly three decades later,