Opinion: Māori Affairs Correspondent Te Aniwa Hurihanganui says the voters suffer when political parties shut out reporters.
It was one of the year’s biggest nights in politics, but you wouldn’t have seen how the night unfolded on TVNZ’s 6pm bulletin because we weren’t allowed to be there.
Te Pāti Māori candidate Oriini Kaipara won the by-election for Tāmaki Makaurau against Labour’s Peeni Henare by a landslide, and celebrated with her team at an event in Auckland last week.
“We have decided that TV1 cannot attend our function tonight,” I was told just hours before the event. 1News was not the only media outlet excluded.
Te Pāti Māori has since accused journalists of “predatory media behaviour” during the campaign, claiming reporters were “pouncing out of bushes” and “screaming” at them while demanding interviews.
Co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said the party chose not to engage with “mainstream tabloid aggression” out of concern for safety.
I can’t speak for other media outlets, but I can say with certainty that none of those things occurred with 1News reporters. Ngarewa-Packer has yet to clarify who behaved this way, or where it happened.
But those accusations - baseless or not - aren’t the reason I’m writing this.
The real issue is what happens when a political party decides to pick and choose who is good enough to access a candidate or be in the room. Last week, 1News was shut out. And that matters. Because democracy only works when the public can see it working.
Paid for by the people
Politicians are elected by the people. Their positions are paid for by the people. And the people have a right to see what they do, hear what they say, and understand what they stand for. They have a right to question, scrutinise and hold them accountable.
Without the media, the public’s ability to do that is limited. Te Pāti Māori didn’t just shut 1News out on election night, they shut the door on you - our viewers.
Some might argue that’s not the case, because other outlets with predominantly Māori audiences were given access. And yes - it was absolutely right for them to be there.
But to assume the absence of our cameras didn’t hinder Māori access to such a pivotal moment in our political landscape is wrong. So is the assumption that 1News doesn’t serve or care about Māori. We do.
Hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders watch 1News at 6pm every day. And, while it’s true that most of our viewers are Pākehā, it’s also true that we have the largest Māori audience of any news platform in Aotearoa.
We want to tell stories that matter to them. But we can’t do that if we’re not in the room.
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