Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Culture View Points in Media ahead of the elections
The scheduled general elections in October 2008, is expected to witness debates of ethnicity, culture and race like never before as per the experts. While the previous elections had issues related only between the majority Pakeha community and the Maori, this year's elections would supposedly witness debates of Asian immigration.
The media is expected to play key role in setting up such debates before the elections.
Pakeha: The Pakeha who constitute the majority of the population (67%) in New Zealand has issues with the increased immigration in recent times. The liberal immigration policies of the ruling Labour party have triggered anger among the Pakeha community. They demand to trim down policies of immigration. The free trade agreement between New Zealand and China which provides more immigrants from China has triggered insecurity among the majority Pakeha community.
Maori: The Maori community still feels a lot needs to be addressed in the “Treaty of Waitangi” singed in 1840. They express that they are not fully represented in the government institutions. Maoris allege that they have been hoodwinked by Pakeha community based on race. The Maori community's main demand is direct representation in regional councils and increased number of the Maori seats in the general elections. Presently, there are seven separate Maori seats in the New Zealand Parliament.
The Maori community is in- secured of the increased immigrants from Asia which they allege that would suppress their protest movement. The Maori's present populations constitute about 15% of New Zealand's population and Asian community constitutes 12% of the population at present. With the pro-immigration policy of the Labour government the population is likely to shoot up in the coming years and the numbers could out-number the population of the Maori's in another ten years. .
Asian community; Asians especially the Chinese and the Indians, who constitute the majority of the Asian population in New Zealand, feel that they had to face racial slur in public and private.
The Asians also feel that they had been sand-witched between the Maori and Pakeha community feud and simmering tensions. The Asians also fee that they are experiencing a cultural shock in New Zealand and feel threatened with lack of representation in government.
Quantitative Allocation of Story Types; For example, we take two publications 1) Mana and 2) North-South magazines. Mana published in winter 1995 and North-South published in November 2005.
Mana publication: Mana has several pages of obituaries. Mana has strong bias towards patterns of adversary news. Mana is critical of the majority Pakeha community. Recently Mana magazine was a finalist in the Cover of the Year, Lifestyle category of the Magazine Publishers Association Awards 2007.
In the Mana winter 1995 magazine the number of pages per stories were
Letters -2 Obituaries - 2 Small Profiles - 11 News Features - 11 Political Profile - 1 Sports General -4 Arts Profile - 3 Fictional Story -2 Human interest -5 Food review - 11 Editorial - 1 Letters 4. Business 2 page.
North-South publication: North and South magazine have become more life style oriented. There is also the Maori basing syndrome associated with the magazine. Take the example of North and South November 2005 publication the number of pages for sections are
Features - 5 second feature - 1 Agenda -4 Cover story -11 Feature -6 Fashion - 7
Food -5 Perspectives -9 Strategies - 3 Preview - 6 Music -3
The crux of the magazine stories is positive towards the Pakeha community. The life - style articles of the magazine clearly advertises cruises, pub-culture, costly - perfumes all by-products of the colonial European mind-set. Some the experts in media industry view that this approach of the North-South publications which's presumably a life-style magazine had diluted the radical approach of the Maori. They allege that the Maori's after reading such articles, stories and editorials would like to emulate the Pakeha life-style.
For example, the North- south November 2005 publication, the cover story talks of the life-style of the New Zealanders in overseas. The cover story revolves around the costly, pub-culture of the London and the Kiwis who constitute them. Needless, to say the Maori would definitely want to emulate such life-style, which would take them away from their demands of representation back in New Zealand.
The magazine talks little of the other community in New Zealand like the African-Americans, Asians or the Pacific Islanders. This is a classic example of the bias prevalent in main-stream New Zealand journalism.
Qualitative Analysis
Points of View: The point of view of the subject person is represented uncritically in both magazines. North and South uses mainly European people, while Mana mainly Maori people.
Handling of spokespeople: Very respectful - solicits their point of view.
Visuals, people, and backgrounds: Some Maori design elements in Mana.
Language: It is appropriate to readership. Mana has quite a few Maori words. North and South can include quite a few Maori words when they have an article on a Maori subject. Often North and South can be critical of Maori, but also they are usually they are usuallycritical of the government.
North and South is a more intellectualised language. In a single article, it can have a mix of personal statistics, then go to a investigative and serious stage, and then go back to more personal information. It mixes it up quite a bit. This makes for an interesting read.
Allocation of news on ethnic basis: Nearly 67.6% people of New Zealand belong to the European ethnic group, 14.6% of people belong to the Maori group and the rest consists of the Asian immigrants, Africans and Latin Americans.
Ethnic group in New Zealand - 2006 census

New Zealand
Percentage
European
2,609,592
67.6
Maori
565,329
14.6
Pacific People
265,974
6.9
Asian
354,552
9.2
Middle Eastern, African and Latin American
34,743
0.9
Other Ethnicity
New Zealander
Other Ethnicity
429,429
1,491
11.1
Total Other
430,881
11.2












In the Waikato Times January 29, 1996, the news paper published a story titled “City Muslims seek bigger mosque” it's one of the rarest times when the daily had reported on community issues of Muslims living in Hamilton. The copy is attached with the assignment.
Languages Spoken: Apart from English, the next common language spoken in New Zealand is Maori, which is spoken by 4.1% of people.
80.5% of people in New Zealand speak only one language.
1.6% of Maori in New Zealand were born overseas.
The spread of population determines the stories based on them. Majority of the publications in New Zealand cover the Pakeha oriented stories, while the other publications and broad cast units like the Maori Television give much of their space to the Maori related subject.
The left out are the migrants from Asia that includes India and China, and the African immigrants from countries like Somalia, South-Africa, Ethiopia and Sudan. The news papers like the Waikao Times, New Zealand Herald and Sunday Times hardly cover the stories of the migrants and so the TV channels like the Maori Television and TV 3 news channel.
The migrants also owe any channels on their own or any publications to spread the news around their community. The Chinese have started few publications last year and the majority Sikh-Indian community has plans to start one in Hamilton soon.
Reference
Stats.govt.nz
Daphne, Bell (2001). New to New Zealand : A guide to ethnic groups in New Zealand
Maori Television
Mana Magazine ( Winter 1995)
North-South magazine (November 2005) publications.
Waikato Times January 29, 1996.

1 comment:

Karla said...

Balaji, you hugely misrepresent the beliefs of the cutures featured in your blog. Maori are not against asian immigrant in controlled numbers and we do not fear that the increase will jeapadise our treaty of waitangi claims. We are supremely confident of our position within this society, and we in fact see asian immigrants as another culture that under the crown. You cannot expect to refer to how a culture feels unless you are directly quoting someone who has been chosen to speak for those people, and you are not this person. I found your blog lacking true representation, offensive and a poor display of journalistic writing.