Decolonising Journalism in Aotearoa New Zealand: Using a Tiriti-Led Framework for News Practice

ABSTRACT

In 2020, newspaper conglomerate and owner of Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest news website, Stuff, issued an historic public apology for its racist portrayal of Indigenous Māori after an internal investigation showed it had contributed to stigma, marginalisation and stereotypes against Māori. This study explores what has changed since Stuff’s apology and, by deploying an analytical framework grounded in Māori worldviews and Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the founding treaty signed between Māori and British colonisers), demonstrates how an Indigenous lens can help news organisations better identify and rethink Western-centric journalistic norms to develop more inclusive and equitable practice. The study analyses Stuff’s then largest newspaper, The Press, via a content analysis of two constructed weeks, one before Stuff’s apology (n = 480 articles) and another post-apology (n = 430 articles), along with a topic modelling analysis of 5091 articles published between 2016 and 2021. Analysis grounded in kaupapa Māori and te Tiriti shows some improvement in news coverage—as well as opportunities for more equitable representation by incorporating Indigenous tikanga (custom) in reporting practice. It also finds ongoing problems, indicating more fundamental and transformative action is needed for news media organisations to meet their commitments to anti-racism and de-Westernising the field.

KEYWORDS:

• Journalism
• representation
• race/racism
• Māori
• Indigenous
• Te Tiriti o Waitangi
• content analysis

Introduction

In November 2020, Stuff, a newspaper conglomerate and owner of Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest news website, issued an historic public apology for its racist portrayal of Indigenous Māori and committed to doing better. It was the first New Zealand media organisation to make such an acknowledgment—and the only one to apologise—and followed a number of apologies from other media globally as they reckoned with racism in their coverage.

Stuff’s head of news said at the time: “Our coverage of Māori issues over the past 160 years ranged from racist to blinkered. Seldom was it fair or balanced in terms of representing Māori” (Stuff 2020). Since then, the company has implemented a range of measures to improve its newsroom culture and reporting practice. At the time of its apology it introduced a company charter with commitments to the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Aotearoa’s founding treaty signed between Indigenous Māori and British colonisers), revised its Editorial Code of Practice and Ethics, and created new editorial roles, and advisory groups with Māori. It has been increasing its use of te reo Māori (Māori language)– increasing the use of translations and bilingual content, and creating bespoke language training for rollout in 2023–and is working with Māori organisations to help improve te reo Māori use in Aotearoa more generally (Parahi 2022). It has also adopted a goal of shifting from monocultural to multicultural practice as one its four core business priorities, requiring all staff, and not just journalists, to act as pou tiaki (guardians) who apply Tiriti o Waitangi principles and equity to their work (Parahi 2022).

Aotearoa’s other mass media have yet to examine themselves in the same way, let alone apologise to Māori for racist and colonial practices, and in this respect Stuff has shown significant leadership.

Neason (2021) argues that any apology that leaves patterns of racism unchecked, or Indigenous people in the same positions as before, risks being little more than an affirmation of white power: “to chart a new path forward, we will need much more than regret”. Rankine et al. suggest (2022, 16) that for news organisations to effectively transform dominant monocultural media practices, systemic change is needed across all areas of their activity: organisational stuctures, culture, leadership, policy, practices, relationships with Māori and other groups, employment and training. Stuff’s initial steps in response to the call for decolonisation and racial justice (which were sparked by Māori journalist activism [STIR & NZPHA 2021, 23]) have carved new ground for mainstream news media in Aotearoa and, as such, merit closer scrutiny, to foreground best practice and determine how news practices warrant further change. This study aims to explore reporting patterns in Stuff’s news coverage pre- and post-apology to gauge whether and how its journalism has changed, and how it supports the commitment to biculturalism and Māori knowledge and voices.

Stuff’s position in the natonal media context makes it a useful case. For one, it holds a dominant position in Aotearoa, where its website is the most popular news site¹ (Hope et al. 2022). Stuff is also one of the largest media companies in a small news media ecosystem, broadly comprising independently owned media companies, a handful of large shareholder- and private equity-owned media companies, and three state-owned broadcasters: public-interest broadcaster RNZ; free-to-air broadcaster TVNZ; and the Māori Television Service (MTS), known in te reo as Whakaata Māori (Hope et al. 2022). The government funds MTS (along with 21 iwi radio stations) under its statutory Treaty of Waitangi obligations to Māori language and culture, and the funding is primarily for language revitalisation purposes not news per se (Middleton 2020a; 2020b, 47). Māori media are crucial for providing Indigenous and public-service news and current affairs (Smith 2016), but have a fraction of the reach of larger mainstream media, such as Stuff.

The apology also comes as Stuff returns to local ownership. CEO Sinead Boucher bought the company from its Australian owners Nine Entertainment for $1 in May 2020 (RNZ 2020, 25 May) and has started the process to become a B Corporation (a company verified by B Lab to achieve high levels of social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability). Middleton (2020a; 2020b, 55) notes the company stepped up its commitment to te reo and reporting the Māori world with its launch of a Māori-interest section in 2020, which corresponded with an acceleration in the representation and inclusion of Māori and indigenous perspectives in mainstream news generally (most notably at RNZ, but also at Stuff and NZME), and with increasing social support for Māori culture and language more broadly. Stuff’s reckoning with racism also comes as the government focuses on boosting Māori journalism and the diversity of newsrooms² and news content through a $NZ55m injection of funding through a Public Interest Journalism Fund (PIJF) (Hope et al. 2022), and on wider structural reform of the public sector to realise te Tiriti partnership between Māori and the Crown (Ahuriri-Driscoll et al. 2022).

Against this backdrop, the government’s media funding body, NZ on Air, which oversees the PIJF (which has funded some of Stuff’s journalism), has produced a Te Tiriti Framework for News Media (Rankine et al. 2022) to help newsrooms be more accountable and responsible in representing Māori, and organise their structures and processes to align with te Tiriti o Waitangi. Grounded in te Tiriti and media obligations to Māori as tāngata whenua (people of the land), it identifies a number of domains to prompt news media to critically assess how they are operating and what transformative actions they need to make to commit(Rankine et al. 2022, 4). Though written for an Aotearoa context, the framework provides a useful lens for rethinking Western-centric and settler colonial journalism in other settings (particularly colonial but decolonising contexts).

News values, racism and white supremacy. Multiple studies have demonstrated the long history of racism in Western news production, ranging from overt racism (Jakubowicz et al. 1994; Van Dijk 1991) to stereotypical narratives and racist tropes (Cottle 1997; 2000; Downing and Husband 2005; Wilson, Gutierrez, and Chao 2003), marginalisation, (Pietikäinen 2003), and the perpetuation of the view of dominant groups (McCallum and Holland 2010). Recent scholarship provides evidence that problems endure, with continued use of longstanding and negative tropes (Davidson, Pickett Miller, and Day 2022), racialised representation of Indigenous groups (Dreher and Waller 2022; Johnston 2020), and discriminaton against Black journalists (Douglas 2022). Aotearoa-based studies reflect similar patterns, finding that mainstream media have routinely subjected Māori, Pasifika and other ethnic minority groups to stereotyped coverage that is negative and narrow (Allen and Bruce 2017; Barnes and McCreanor 2023), and have produced news that is largely by Pākehā (New Zealanders of European descent), for Pākehā, and reliant on dominant Pākehā discourses (Abel 1997; Barnes et al. 2012; Hokowhitu 2013; Nairn et al. 2012; Rankine and McCreanor 2004), sources (even in stories about other ethnic groups), and an overwhelmingly Pākehā workforce (McGregor 1991).

Tsagarousianou (2022) argues that the “taken for granted” canons in journalism practice are fundamentally ethnocentric, monocultural and privilege Western-centric (rather than Indigenous) approaches to journalism, and are deeply embedded. Several scholars have written about the dominance of the Western-centric view of journalism and the field’s failure to recognise and reflect non-Western journalistic practices, cultures, and traditions, (Chalaby 1996; Dreher and Waller 2022; Hafez 2009; Obijiofor and Hanusch 2011; Wasserman and de Beer 2009), with Hanitzsch (2019, 214) going so far as to describe the Western bias in journalism as a “continued Western hegemony in the way we approach and understand journalism on a global scale”.

Governments, corporations and politicians are increasingly making apologies for racism and some media have followed the trend (Hoecker 2021, 90; Spencer 2021, 4). In 2000, the United States’ oldest continuously publishing newspaper, Hartford Courant, apologised for its role in contributing to the slave trade and, since then, several US media have apologised for racist coverage, reporting failures during the Civil Rights Movement, and their role in supporting segregation and racial violence (Hoecker 2021; Pinsky n.d.). Recent examples include high-profile media such as National Geographic, which apologised in 2018 for decades of racist coverage, and the LA Times’, which, in 2020, published an atonement package detailing its history of racism (Neason 2021). But apologies are meaningless without also addressing the deeply embedded bias and Whiteness of legacy journalism (Hoecker 2021, 103). That presents a key problem for news organisations committed to anti-racism: how do they overcome their inherent blindspots? Rankine et al. (2022, 18) note that the good intentions of organisations elsewhere have yet to result in equitable outcomes for marginalised groups; it is hard to see one’s own culture and systems from the inside, and harder still to understand where and how to change it. Instead, mainstream news organisations must examine journalism practice from a non-Western perspective, as that has the most potential to call into question, Hanitzsch says (2019, 216) the “key assumptions about journalism that we have long taken for granted”.

As such, this study employs a framework based on Indigenous perspectives and Te Tiriti o Waitangi to analyse Stuff’s reporting. Aotearoa’s context as a bicultural nation under Te Tiriti o Waitangi affords a unique opportunity to use Māori worldviews to guide improved journalism practice. In Aotearoa, the term bicultural refers to Indigenous Māori (tāngata whenua, who make up almost a fifth of the national population) and non-Māori (tāngata tiriti, all those who have come by right of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the country’s founding document signed in 1840 between Māori and the British Crown). Though repeated breaches of Te Tiriti of Waitangi have caused significant conflict in the decades since its signing–and persistent inequalities (Ministry of Social Development 2016; White et al. 2008) and discrimination toward Māori (Revell, Papoutsaki, and Kolesova 2014)–efforts to honour te Tiriti have led to its increasing legal recognition in public life (Orange 2012). By building on an understanding of te ao Māori (Māori ways of perceiving and understanding the world) and bicultural partnership, te Tiriti provides a guide for reviewing Western-centric journalism practice and the organisational structures and processes that privilege and routinise white standpoints. Fundamentally, a Tiriti approach requires news organisations to be accountable and responsible not just in the ways that they represent Māori, but also in their media systems and broader societal accountabilities, i.e., the ways they align their organisational structures, policies and practices to their bicultural obligations, for instance in their relationships with Māori and their wider contribution to te Tiriti relations and social justice (Rankine et al. 2022, 7). In practice, a Tiriti framework can help individual journalists become more effective practitioners and news organisations address their commitments to anti-racism and decolonisation.

Research Design

Following the lead of activist scholars Lana Lopesi (2018) and Heather Came (2013), I declare my position here as a multi-generaton Moana (Pacific)³ and Pākehā (settler) New Zealander. I recognise Māori as tāngata whenua and Te Tiriti o Waitangi as both the founding document of New Zealand and mechanism that affords me citizenship and the responsibility to do research that is relevant to Māori and which addresses Indigenous ethics of mana (justice and equity) and manaakitanga (social responsibility). My grandmother migrated to Aotearoa from Tuvalu and I write this article from the standpoint of a Moana person living in diaspora, while rooted in the collective identity of all Moana peoples (including Māori) and their shared connection with Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa (Pacific Ocean).

As a Moana researcher and former journalist who has worked for Stuff newspapers, I have a strong interest in research that can contribute constructively to transformational and anti-racist journalism practice. I am not Māori and do not attempt to speak for Māori. Instead, as a researcher of Tuvaluan as well as Pākehā heritage, I draw on Moana and Indigenous perspectives to value and foreground Māori worldviews, values, and norms.

My enquiry is grounded in theoretical frameworks that privilege Indigenous worldviews. This reflects both my standpoint as a Moana researcher and my desire to answer the call for scholarship that both addresses the dominance of white standpoints and foregrounds Indigenous knowledges (Dreher and Waller 2022). First, I draw on the Moana approach of teu le va, which quite literally means to care for the va, the relationship. It is a philosophical and cultural reference that provides a methodological framework for examining relational and social space (Anae 2010; Suaalii-Sauni 2017), and is useful for positioning myself sensitively to te ao Māori and for foregrounding the need for journalists to build relationships and trust with Moana communities (Robinson and Culver 2019). In order for Stuff journalists to enact Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles of partnership or to seek out a greater range of Māori voices and standpoints in their reporting, they must nurture the va, in this case, their relationships with iwi (tribe) and hapū (sub-tribe). Second, I draw on Kaupapa Māori⁴ Theory (Barnes et al. 2012; Wilson, Gutierrez, and Chao 2003), which offers a by Māori, for Māori, with Māori approach to research and–because it is based on tikanga Māori (custom), underpinned by Māori values, and predicated on Māori notions of tino rangatiratanga (sovereignty) and mana motuhake (self-determination)–a guide to the priorities and tika (just) processes required to achieve an anti-racist future (STIR & NZPHA 2021, 14) I use Kaupapa Māori Theory here to privilege Māori worldviews and challenge dominant discourses and representations that position Māori in negative or harmful ways. Foregrounding Indigenous knowledge in this way helps to tease out the biases inherent in otherwise taken-for-granted news values and media logics. Last, but not least, I draw on Te Tiriti Framework for News Media (Rankine et al. 2022) (see Table 1), which I use here to assess news media practices in relation to news values, angles and topics, sourcing, ethnic labelling, and imagery. The framework provides pertinent questions for analysing The Press’s discourses and practices, and the editorial structures that underpin its news articles, to determine how routinised news values and practices continue to produce racialised hierarchies of attention (Dreher and Waller 2022) that privilege Pākehā, or not.

Table 1. Te Tiriti o Waitangi news media framework.

Domain	Central ideas	Elements	Broad questions
Rationale	Māori never ceded sovereignty Mass media play a critical role in power relations in our society	Te Tiriti o Waitangi Rights Obligations	How do mass news media avoid negative and racist representations of Māori? Is reporting equitable?
Media systems	Mass media have responsbilities and accountabilities to Māori that apply across the sector	Policies, practices, systems, charters Leadership Monitoring Recruitment and training Relationships	How do organisations actively address their commitments and responsibilities to te Tiriti at all levels?
Societal accountabilities	Reporting on Māori and Māori issues reflects the onoing colonial constitution of society	Inequities, institutional racism, Pākehā privilege Do no more harm	How do mass media frame and present issues, colonisation, structural racism, harm prevention and Māori advancement?
Media practices	Mass media are not neutral News stories reflect and promote the worldviews, values, stories and language of the dominant Pākehā group	Language, culture, Pākehā norms, practices, silences Construction of Māori and non-Māori	Whose language and culture is dominant? Whose voice is heard? Whose voice is central? What stories are told and how are they told?
Māori-controlled media	Māori-controlled media have different Treaty accountabilities from mass media	Māori diversity Assumed audience Te reo fluency Nuance around te ao Māori	How are diverse audiences represented? What news content is provided for Māori not fluent in te reo? How is nuance managed in particular issues?

Source: Te Tiriti Framework for News Media (Rankine et al. 2022).

The data for this study was collected from The Press, a daily newspaper produced in Aotearoa’s 2nd-largest city, Christchurch, and distributed throughout the upper South Island. There is no national newspaper in Aotearoa and at the time of data capture The Press was Stuff’s largest newspaper⁵ and the largest circulating daily in the South Island. Its location within the rohe (regional boundary) of South Island iwi, Ngāi Tahu, makes it a useful unit of analysis in relation to reporting on Māori. Ngāi Tahu have the largest tribal area of all iwi, covering roughly half the country, and sole authority as mana whenua for much of the South Island, which arguably provides The Press a more straightforward Tiriti relationship and engagement with local Māori. Where news media in other major cities, such as Auckland and Wellington, are required to orient to several iwi (who often have competing interests), The Press orients to only one. Ngāi Tahu were also among the first to settle their Tiriti o Waitangi claim with the Crown and, since receiving partial financial and cultural redress in their 1998 settlement, have become a significant economic and political force as Aotearoa’s richest iwi and largest iwi corporate (McCrone 2020; Te Ao Māori News 2018). Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, the entity created to manage the collective assets of the tribe, has almost $NZ2b in assets in areas such as tourism, farming and property development (Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu 2022), and the iwi and its constituent rūnanga have roles in key decision-making fora, including regional council, and interests in most issues reported on by The Press.

The study looked at newspaper articles, mainly because newspapers remain a significant feature of the Aotearoa’s media environment. They do much of the heavy lifting in local and regional news reporting and remain a key source of revenue. Even Stuff’s news website, which is Aotearoa’s most popular news site, relies on subsidisation from its affiliated newspapers’ advertising sales (Baker et al. 2020, 31). Data were collected in two ways. First, via constructed week sampling (to ensure that short-term events did not affect results [Riffe, Aust, and Lacy 1993]) from two three-month periods, October-December 2018 (before Stuff’s apology) and January-March 2021 (after its apology). Second, via a scrape of the Factiva database, which electronically archives more than 40 of Aotearoa’s newspapers, including The Press.

The constructed week samples produced 480 articles overall for the 2018 data capture and 430 for 2021. Articles were coded descriptively to identify common patterns in categories of analysis, including authorship, length, timing and location of publication, localness, sourcing, topic, and references to Ngāi Tahu/Māori (including whether articles included Māori sources, subjects and/or issues). An intercoder reliability test was used to check consistency between two coders, with a Cohen’s kappa score of 0.87 (almost perfect agreement). From a total sample pool of 910 articles, 75 articles met the inclusion criteria of containing a reference to Ngāi Tahu/Māori (56/480 in 2018 and 19/430 in 2021). Key patterns in the sample were then explored further, drawing on a Tiriti Framework (Rankine et al. 2022) to consider the representation of Māori via the following questions: what types of stories were told, whose voices were heard, whose voices were central, whose language and culture was dominant, what types of imagery were used to represent Māori, and if and how coverage differed pre- and post-apology.

In addition, the Factiva Database was scraped using the UC DIGI-405 Python scraper to search for all articles published by The Press over a five-year period, between 30/11/16 and 29/11/21, and containing one of the following key words/phrases: Māori <OR > Maori, Ngāi Tahu <OR > Ngai Tahu (to account for varying use of the macron), producing a corpus of 5091 articles in total. A topic modelling tool was then used to generate 30 topics from the corpus (where each topic was made up of 20 semantically related words). The total of 30 is a relatively small number of topics for a corpus of this size, but provides a useful level of detail for exploratory analysis.

Findings and Discussion

A simple, high-level snapshot of the The Press’s coverage suggests there has been a shift in the representation of Māori peoples and issues over time. The corpus compiled across a five-year period spanning Stuff’s apology shows usage of the words “Māori/Maori” clearly increasing over time, both in terms of occurrence in the corpus overall and the number of articles in which they appear. It was used almost twice as much in 2021 than 2017 and, post-apology, there was a significant increase in the number of articles that included the words, up 31% from 893 in 2020 to 1171 in 2021. Though a crude measure, it does suggest a shift in the attention The Press affords Māori.

A closer examination of content via the two constructed weeks in 2018 and 2021, however, demonstrates that coverage of Māori peoples and issues by article-count remains disproportionately low. Despite making up more than 17% of the national population (StatsNZ 2021), the proportion of articles about Māori reached a high of only 13.1% (Table 1), and coverage was higher in the pre-apology snapshot than after. Some of that can be attributed to the political context in 2018 when Māori politicians led two of the country’s major political parties⁶ (i.e., of the 17 politics-coded articles relating to Māori in 2018, 14 referred to at least one of three Māori political leaders who had left leadership or parliament by 2021, and in that sample, there were only four politics-coded articles related to Māori and no references to these political figures) (Table 2).

Table 2. Proportion of The Press stories about Māori issues.

	Total articles	Articles about Māori	Percentage of articles about Māori	Articles with a significant focus on Maori	Percentage of articles with a significant focus on Maori
2018	480	63	13.1%	7	1.5%
2021	430	23	5.3%	4	0.9%

A crude count of articles is useful up to a point; an Indigenous and Tiriti framework reveals a more interesting picture in terms of who journalists are listening to. Dreher and Waller (2022, 1677) argue that news media shape voice through routinised “hierarchies of attention”, wherein journalists prioritise and attend to some voices (usually elites, such as the political figures above), and not others. Viewed in this way, media silences can be understood not simply as the absence of voice or stories, but as the result of deeply entrenched, and often racialised, failures or refusals to listen or pay attention. Analysis of The Press’s representation of iwi and hapū reveals a conspicuous lack of attention that belies a failure to both address routinised elite sourcing and build relationships with mana whenua (people with authority over land). In te ao Māori, identity and society is organised around iwi and hapū. These entities constitute the main political bodies for Māori and maintain mana whenua (authority over land) in their rohe (tribal area). In Christchurch and the South Island where The Press is based, the local tribe is Ngāi Tahu, yet analysis shows only four articles about Ngāi Tahu in 2018 (fewer than 1% of all articles), and two in 2021 (0.004%)—and of these six articles, only four included Ngāi Tahu voices, two simply talked about Ngāi Tahu. This gap in The Press’s representation of mana whenua may reflect the fact that its coverage overall is dominated by externally produced, rather than local content. Analysis of the 2018 dataset’s localness (Ross, forthcoming) shows less than a third of articles were produced by Christchurch or Press regional bureau authors, and 71% were produced by journalists based in Stuff’s national network or offshore. That has obvious implications for both the newspaper’s relationship with Ngāi Tahu and its representation of mana whenua voices and issues. From an Indigenous and Tiriti standpoint, newsrooms should be engaging specifically with local Māori and building relationships (va) with iwi and hapū leadership, but The Press’s coverage suggests its news values and practices have yet to routinise source relationships and partnerships with mana whenua in the organisation’s news area. If news media instead foregrounded Indigenous knowledges and expertise, such as understandings grounded in kaupapa Māori and teu le va, they might recognise how professional norms of objectivity and distance (and a corporate view of audiences as markets or commodities) do not easily admit the deeper, more reciprocal engagement that is needed to build and nurture relationships with Indigenous Māori (Ross 2022). The patterns evident in this content analysis suggest Stuff needs a different approach to relationship-building with mana whenua, both in terms of routinised day-to-day reporting and at the organisational level. Both are integral to Tiriti principles of partnership—and Stuff’s mission to rebuild trust with Māori communities, and audiences in general (Ross 2020).

Focus of News Coverage: Type of Stories Told

A breakdown of the monthly occurrences of “Māori/Maori” in the five-year corpus (2016-2021) suggests that coverage is broadening beyond historically narrow focal points. Across most years, the monthly breakdown shows a low hum of coverage with a prominent spike of attention each September, reflecting that month’s Māori Language Week activities. Where that spike represents the only significant attention in earlier years, in 2020 there is a sharp increase in attention in late November/December, around the time of Stuff’s apology, and in 2021 there is a notable increase in reporting generally, with two spikes in attention, one in February around Waitangi Day (a national day commemorating the signing of te Tiriti o Waitangi), and another in May, when stories with the highest number of occurrences of “Māori/Maori” reveal a range of subjects, including health, welfare, housing, leadership and local government, largely related to social and Tiriti justice. The pattern suggests The Press is reporting with a wider lens that is not restricted to anniveraries such as Waitangi Day and Māori Language Week.

Topic modelling analysis further supports this, with proportionately more reporting over time on topics about Māori language and culture, Te Tiriti o Waitangi and issues of racism, and less reporting on Māori within the historically narrow frames of sport and crime. For instance, where crime stories dropped as a proportion of all stories about Māori, from 3.74% in 2016 to 1.66% in 2021, stories about Māori language and culture rose from 2.02% to 4.87%, suggesting the subjects discussed in relation to Māori are changing over time, possibly in line with wider social trends and public discussion (Middleton 2020a; 2020b, 55).

When compared to news coverage overall, however, Māori continue to be represented within a narrower range of topics, demonstrating the extent to which racialised hierarchies of attention are “institutionalised” (Dreher and Waller 2022, 1678). Articles with an explicit reference to Māori in the 2021 post-apology constructed week were predominantly focused on sport and arts/entertainment, and were much more likely to be about these topics than articles overall. There were proportionately fewer economic and business stories about Māori, despite Ngāi Tahu’s role as a major economic force in the South Island. The Tiriti framework recommends (2022, 12) that news media routinely report activities of Māori-owned and iwi businesses, however, topic modelling of the 2016–2021 corpus shows that articles about Māori or Ngāi Tahu in relation to business and the economy or local government (topics in which iwi could be expected to feature as an elite voice) declined as a proportion of coverage, running counter to Ngāi Tahu’s position as a regional leader and economic powerhouse⁷, and to a kaupapa Māori ethic of foregrounding Māori knowledge and expertise. In addition, stories in the 2018/2021 datasets were coded for their public interest journalism measured by relevance to local democracy institutions (i.e., local government and elected community and health boards). Only five of the 63 (8%) articles relating Māori in 2018 referred to LDIs, and only one of 23 articles in 2021 (0.4%). The patterns of attention and inattention identified here have “powerful political and social implications” (Dreher and Waller 2022, 1678), effectively silencing mana whenua and prioritising Pākehā interests on key economic and democratic issues, thereby undermining Stuff’s commitments to Tiriti o Waitangi principles and equity by failing to routinely exercise public interest journalism in the Māori sphere.

The location of articles in the newspaper further demonstrates a racialised hierarchy of attention in The Press’s coverage. Articles were assessed for their place in the news agenda by noting the page on which they appeared. In 2018, only eight of 63 articles related to Māori appeared in the front news section, and only one on the front page (an article about Prince William’s visit to Aotearoa, which included mention of a haka [dance] performed by students from Hato Paora College). More than 87% of articles (n = 55) appeared further back in the newspaper, reflecting the high proportion of sport (which runs in the back section), opinion and softer news features in The Press’s Māori coverage. In 2021, only one of 23 stories related to Māori ran in the front news section, on p.3; all others ran from p.10 onwards, suggesting that the newspaper’s values and routines continued to relegate Māori voices and issues in the news agenda. That said, these stories were reported in more depth (probably reflecting their subjects—mostly human-interest profiles and arts/entertainment—which are typically written as longer-form features). Analysis of the 2018/2021 constructed weeks reveals more space was given to articles about Māori in the post-apology period. The average length of articles explicitly referencing Māori was longer in 2021 than 2018, and much longer than the overall average article length: 740 words compared with 480 words for articles overall. While positioned low on the news agenda, these longer articles nonetheless allow more room for Māori voices and reporting context and nuance, particularly around complex issues such as systemic racism.

Sources: Whose Voices Were Heard, and Whose Were Central?

Studies show news media over-rely on institutional sources and under-represent Māori sources, particularly those representing iwi and hapū, and the number and proportion of Māori commentators has traditionally been low (Rankine et al. 2022), affording Pākehā considerable symbolic power to name and define issues (Loto et al. 2006). Who The Press considers to be experts about issues and how it decides to quote Māori sources, therefore, is an important measure of its commitment to Tiriti partnership and improved representation of Māori. Notwithstanding the absences of iwi and hapū noted above, the datasets show some improvement in sourcing, with more Māori voices in articles about Māori peoples post-apology, allowing more opportunity to reflect Māori values, language and worldviews. In articles about Maori issues or with Māori individuals or groups as subjects, the percentage of Māori sources increased from 2018 to 2021 (see Table 3). Likewise, where Māori were the primary subject, the percentage of Māori sources increased and Māori sources dominated. Perhaps a better signal of journalists’ improved sourcing practices is the increase in the proportion of Māori sources in articles that were not primarily about Māori issues (from 24% in the 2018 dataset to 38% in 2021), indicating that journalists may be looking to Māori for expert comment on more than just Māori issues, which is an important step to avoiding ghettoising Māori voices and news, and helping journalists to avoid assuming Pākehā mainstream values as the norm.

Table 3. Percentage of Māori sources in articles 2018 and 2021.

	2018			2021
	Māori voices	Other voices	Māori voices as % overall	Māori voices	Other voices	Māori voices as % overall
Stories about Māori issues	8	10	80%	3	7	43%
Stories with Māori as primary subject	10	15	67%	6	8	75%
Stories with Māori as subjects	14	56	25%	16	28	57%

Notably, in half of the 10 articles in the 2021 dataset that directly quoted Māori sources, Māori were quoted as “experts” (e.g., researchers, government experts, lawyers and business leaders), and in eight were also the first source quoted, affording Māori sources more power to define and frame the issues, and promote Māori worldviews and values.

Interestingly, though, on key issues, such as the environment, Māori voices were conspicuously absent. International efforts in natural resource management and conservation increasingly recognise the profound differences in environmental philosophy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultures, and the increasing legal rights and land ownership of Indigenous peoples (Ens et al. 2012). Māori have particular environmental rights and interests guaranteed under Te Tiriti or Waitangi, and a unique worldview of environmental guardianship, known as kaitiakitanga, that is based on the understanding that all life is interconnected. If Stuff was applying a kaupapa Māori and Tiriti approach to its journalism, we would expect to see that reflected in its environmental journalism, as environmental issues provide a key area where differences in Māori and Pākehā values emerge, and an arena in which Māori hold specific roles as kaitiaki and experts. However, this study found little reflection of Māori voices or knowledge in relation to the environment.. Across the 2018 and 2021 datasets, not one of the 30 articles categorised as “environment” included Māori voices, demonstrating a significant silencing of Indigenous voices and standpoints. Three articles referred to Ngāi Tahu (in two cases, only tangentially), but none quoted Ngāi Tahu sources—not even a 2021 article about the joint establishment of a conservation park with Ngāi Tahu sub-tribe, Te Hapū o Ngāti Wheke. The vast majority of environment stories (27 of 30) did not refer to hapū, iwi or Māori at all. That is despite the fact that multiple articles, especially in the 2021 dataset, were focused on climate change (which has a disproportionate impact on Indigenous peoples [United Nations n.d.]), and on conservation of endangered Indigenous species, for which Māori have designated decision-making responsibilities. In addition, the 17 environment-related articles in the 2021 dataset included 31 voices, all of whom were Pākehā, further demonstrating how the The Press continued to privilege Pākehā standpoints, even post-apology.

Visibility: Types of Imagery Used

In terms of visibility, a Tiriti framework demands that the imagery used in news reporting represents Māori equitably, and the 2021 data indicate Stuff’s use of visuals falls short. Of four articles that were focused primarily on Māori issues, and illustrated, only one included Māori subjects in the photos–and then only as a fourth subsidiary image at the end of the article. In another article, about Government plans for a Māori vaccination communications plan, Māori were rendered invisible: The article was illustrated online with a photo and video of Prime Minister Jacinda Adern, a photo of Director General Health Ashley Bloomfield and a stock photo of a white-skinned vaccinator and patient that most readers would assume to be Pākehā, thereby visually privileging whiteness. Even when Māori were present in visuals, the quality of images was sometimes poor. In two articles, the photos used of Māori experts were supplied images (one a selfie) that stood out for their substandard quality. Interestingly, one expert is regularly interviewed by media (including Stuff), yet neither The Press nor Stuff appeared to have a professionally shot photo of him on file. The Press did better with imagery in its softer feature profiles. Of six articles profiling Māori individuals or groups, five were illustrated with photos of Māori subjects; the sixth (the article that mentioned Te Hapū o Ngāti Wheke above), neither quoted nor visualised the Māori hapū that was a partner in the story and instead ran with photos of Pākehā leaders and hikers.

This Tiriti analysis of The Press’s visuals does more than simply highlight gaps in representation. It suggests structural shortcomings in Stuff’s graphics stock library, and the need for more intentional resourcing to prioritise visual journalism of key Māori leaders and commentators (particularly as it endeavours to include more Māori voices in its stories). A kaupapa Māori approach would take newsrooms a step further, by considering these gaps as a space that is “waiting to receive new and diffferent perspectives” (Borell et al. 2020, 206). Rather than simply assigning photojournalists the job of backfilling photo stock with the same portraiture of old, Stuff could use the opportunity to bring a Māori gaze and thereby empower Māori understandings and analyses of the world (and disrupt taken-for-granted Pākehā understandings).

Use of Māori Language and Tikanga (Custom)

A key measure of news organisations’ commitment to te Tiriti and equitable representation relates to the use of te reo. Māori language and its protection has figured prominently in Māori protests and won important legal recognition (Higgins and Keane 2013; Smith 2016, 20). Stuff has been steadily increasing its use of te reo Māori and made it a key plank in its Pou Tiaki strategy. In 2017, well before its apology, it introduced macrons (tohutō) for Māori words (Crewdson 2020), which was an important step, as including or excluding a macron in te reo Māori makes a big difference to a word’s meaning. Where The Press’s use of macrons in 2018 was variable –most articles included macrons, but some used them incorrently (for example, “Maōri” instead of the correctly spelt Māori) and some did not use them at all, even on iwi names (misspelling Ngāi Tahu and Tūwharetoa)—in 2021 it not only used common kupu (words) routinely, but also used macrons consistently and accurately, which likely reflects Stuff’s prioritisation of te reo Māori—and subsequent hiring of language experts—as part of its apology. In addition, The Press demonstrated more advanced awareness of te reo Māori through its use of iwi dialects, for instance, using the Te Arawa-specific word “pōhiri” for a traditional Māori welcome in a story about a well-known Te Arawa musician, rather than the more commonly used “pōwhiri”.

In contrast, content analysis reveals repeated privileging of Western-centred journalism norms over Māori cultural values and tikanga (custom).. Again, taking The Press’s identification of iwi and hapū as a starting point, the datasets show only a small fraction of The Press articles that explicitly referenced Māori (both before and after Stuff’s apology) provided iwi or hapū affiliation for Māori subjects. A feature profile about government minister Kiritapu Allen was one of the few that did, but it did so as an online update after publication—the printed version did not refer to her hapū or iwi at all. Yet, in te ao Māori, whakapapa affiliations are essential to one’s identity and for making connections. In Māori media, interviews often start with an acknowledgement of whakapapa, and journalists typically name people’s iwi or hapū in their stories as an important way of allowing audiences to make their own connections (Middleton 2020a; 2020b).⁸ It is possible this reflects the news practice of avoiding explicit ethnic labels in reporting. A long history of problematic labelling of Māori in news media, particularly in relation to crime, provides good reason for such “ethnic blindness”, but it runs counter to Māori tikanga and a kaupapa Māori approach that would otherwise prioritise whakapapa and kinship connections. From the inside, Stuff’s policy of “ethnic blindness” might be assumed to be “neutral”—especially given its newsrooms are dominated by Pākehā, for whom it can be hard (as with any dominant group), to recognise their own culture and systems (Rankine et al. 2022, 18). From a Māori perspective, however, the practice has far from neutral outcomes and, in fact, elides Māori subjects’ whakapapa—and visibility. Leaving out iwi and hapū affiliation obscures Māori agency by allowing audiences to assume subjects are Pākehā. It also risks obscuring Māori success and the positive news representations that might boost Māori individuals’ self-esteem (and moderate other groups’ hostility toward Māori). While the rationale for avoiding ethnic-labelling in stories is arguably a good one given past racism, it is a blunt measure that stands in the way of incorporating Māori custom and practice, and nurturing the va with and between different groups. A simple solution could be to make it standard practice to ask story sources and subjects how they prefer to be identified, but until that fundamental tension between journalism norms and tikanga is acknowledged, it cannot be addressed.

Conclusion

As Tsagarousianou argues (2022, 8), organisational cultural change, particularly change as fundamental as de-Westernising news practice, requires continuous and reflexive engagement with what the current hegemonic model takes for granted. Stuff’s 2020 self-audit and apology marks a trailblazing beginning, but as a Tiriti framework analysis of The Press’s coverage demonstrates, it is just that, a starting point. Critically, the Indigenous frameworks used in this content analysis demonstrate that self-evaluation that is based on long-established Western news practices is inevitably limiting, as evidenced here by continued patterns of “colonial coverage” (STIR & NZPHA 2021, 22), in which Indigenous Māori continue to be under-represented and Pākehā privilege dominates.

There is a wealth of scholarship on the news media’s continued racism and misrepresentation of marginalised groups, and corresponding calls within the academy to address the “overwhelming dominance of white standpoints in media and media scholarship” (Dreher and Waller 2022, 1672). There is less written, however, about how exactly to address or transform this. Looking at Stuff’s post-apology advisory groups, for instance, one might ask how they are resourced and on whose agenda they operate. What tangible changes have they produced? (Indeed, future research could usefully map and analyse power dynamics in the structures, systems and policies of newsrooms’ anti-racism responses.) Recent Australian research offers some recommendations for action, largely around actively seeking out Indigenous voices and authorship (Dreher and Waller, p. 1688). This study demonstrates, too, how Indigenous perspectives and frameworks can provide useful starting points for critical self-reflection and accounting. Indeed, Kaupapa Māori Theory and the Tiriti framework (Rankine et al. 2022) can help to disrupt the taken-for-granted norms of Western-centric journalism practice not only within Aotearoa’s mainstream news media, but also in other journalism contexts. As Rankine et al. (2022, 18) note, it is difficult to see one’s own culture and systems from the inside, and these frameworks provide helpful levers for prizing open the black box of “common sense” news practice to problematise and critically analyze otherwise accepted news values and logics.

In the Aotearoa context, Indigenous epistemologies, such as Kaupapa Māori and the Moana concept of teu le va, also provide a rationale for pushing news media beyond apologies toward more genuine and reciprocal relationships with mana whenua and other marginalised groups. To borrow from Hokowhitu and Devades (2013, p.xvi), it is one thing for news media to understand how they represent marginalised communities; it is quite another to comprehend how then to work with these communities to transform dominant practice. For instance, scholars are right to call for the inclusion of more Indigenous voices—as this study demonstrates, they are too often missing—but inclusion first requires a relationship. Until news organisations build and strengthen relationships with hapū and iwi, Māori standpoints are likely to remain marginalised. That work requires a more fundamental reimagining of the ways that journalism might be practised, i.e., not through traditional methods of cultivating sources, but through meaningful, reciprocal relationship-building at all levels of a news organisation. Indigenous epistemologies, which foreground relationship, dialogue and manaakitanga (the process of showing respect, generosity and care for others), and which are grounded in values of collectivity, reciprocity and respect, provide a model of practice to guide newsrooms’ relationship-building and anti-racism work. They also provide the values system that ought to underpin redress of anti-Māori news coverage. Anti-racist practitioners in Aotearoa argue (STIR & NZPHA 2021, 11) that the levers of institutional racism are best disrupted by doing what is tika (just) and proper–and that is intrinsically grounded in a commitment to the wellbeing and values of those harmed by colonisation and racism.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In 2020, TVNZ attracted the biggest audiences (behind YouTube and Facebook), with net daily reach of 56% of all New Zealanders 15+ on air and online (NZ on Air 2020). Stuff and NZME’s main newspaper, NZ Herald, were also popular (reaching 12% and 11% daily), while MTS did not rank above the 4% threshold for reporting in the audience survey& nbsp;(NZ on Air 2020).

2 There are relatively few Māori journalists in Aotearoa, particularly in mainstream news media. The last workforce survey, in 2016, put the proportion of Māori journalists at 7.9%, well below their 15% share of the wider population (Hollings et al. 2016; Stats NZ 2017), though new initiatives funded through PIJF are helping to boost numbers.

3 Moana is used here in place of Pacific, and Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa in place of Pacific Ocean, to privilege Indigenous terms.

4 Kaupapa Māori Theory is an Indigenous epistemological framework that centres understandings in Māori knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values (Barnes et al. 2012).

5 The Press was then Aotearoa’s 2nd-largest daily newspaper, behind NZME’s Auckland-based New Zealand Herald.

6 New Zealand First’s Winston Peters, Ron Mark and Shane Jones were all ministers in the 2017–2020 coalition government (Peters was also Deputy Prime Minister), and Simon Bridges and Paula Bennett were leader and deputy leader of the country’s main opposition party.

7 Ngāi Tahu contributes about $NZ200m to the South Island economy annually (Te Runanga o Ngāi Tahu n.d.).

8 Rankine et al. (2022, 22) advise replacing the catch-all “Māori” with the names of hapū, iwi or organisation under discussion to better reflect diversity among Māori.