New Zealand’s national Māori radio network, Te Whakaruruhau o Ngā Reo Irirangi Māori o Aotearoa, is considering litigation over a potential loss of government funding which it says threatens the survivability of iwi radio stations.

Chairperson Peter-Lucas Jones (Ngāti Kahu, Te Rārawa, Ngāi Takoto, Te Aupōuri) — who was also chief executive of Far North iwi broadcaster Te Hiku Media — told current affairs series RUKU Māori radio was a right under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, not a government handout.

Recent and proposed actions targeting iwi stations, implemented primarily through Te Māngai Pāho (TMP), disregarded the treaty and exposed the Crown to credible legal risk, he said.

“This issue is not about resisting change, iwi radio stations have themselves funded transitions to digital platforms and new media without Crown support.

“The issue is whether the Crown can, through an intermediary, dismantle a treaty remedy without Māori consent.”

There are more than 20 iwi radio stations across New Zealand, from Te Hiku in the North to Tahu FM in the South.

Stations receive funding through Te Māngai Pāho to promote Māori language and culture.

Time-limited funding
TMP currently has $16 million of time-limited funding, equal to almost 25 percent of their total annual funding, which is due to expire on June 30.

Te Māngai Pāho said that while 2026/27 appropriations would not be confirmed until the Budget announcement in late May, the impact of this funding loss would be felt across the whole Māori media sector.

“Te Māngai Pāho is consulting with the Māori media sector, including iwi radio, on the future of our funding allocations. We have requested feedback to understand how any reduction of funding will be felt across the sector.

“Feedback will inform the board’s final decisions around funding allocations. We understand that the stability of iwi radio stations and content creators is threatened by this funding cut.”

Jones said iwi stations unanimously agreed at a special general meeting they would not accept any decrease in funding and would consider legal action in response to any cutbacks.

“Decisions taken by TMP that materially affect iwi radio funding, structure or autonomy remain Crown actions for treaty purposes.

“The Crown cannot discharge its Treaty obligations by delegation and then rely on that delegation to insulate itself from responsibility.”

Rapidly changing audience
The iwi radio network said it had been grappling with a wide range of issues including, rapidly changing audience expectation and emerging technologies, numerous siloed media outlets and an inadequate investment in workforce development affecting the ability to grow and retain a skilled workforce.

Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka said Māori media, including iwi radio, played a critical role in supporting te reo Māori revitalisation and connecting whānau and communities across Aotearoa, shaping public understanding by sharing Māori stories and te reo directly with whānau.

He said no final decisions had been made through the consultation between TMP and the Māori media sector and it was premature to confirm impacts on funding levels, services, or jobs, including claims about specific percentage reductions.

“Earlier financial support of $16 million in time-limited funding was put in place under the previous government and is now coming to an end. The current consultation process is focused on how best to manage that transition within existing funding,” he said.

“As Minister, I do not direct or intervene in Te Māngai Pāho’s operational funding decisions. Those are matters for the board.”

Potaka said the Crown’s role was to ensure a strong and sustainable system for te reo Māori revitalisation.

High quality content
“I expect the consultation process to reflect the importance of Iwi radio and the role it plays in communities across the country, while ensuring funding is used effectively to deliver high-quality content on platforms that meet audience preferences.

“Māori media entities continue to adapt to changes in funding and audience behaviour, and I expect decisions to prioritise value for money while supporting strong te reo Māori outcomes.

“Any organisation is entitled to raise concerns or seek legal advice. However, there is an established independent process underway, and it is important that process is allowed to run its course.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Kia ora koutou. Ko Ngāpuhi tōku iwi. Ko Ngāti Manu toku hapu. Ko Karetu tōku marae. Ko Myles Thomas toku ingoa.

I grew up with David Beatson, on the telly. Back in the 1970s, he read the late news which I watched in bed with my parents. Later, David and I worked together to save TVNZ 7 and also regional TV stations.

The Better Public Media (BPM) trust honours David each year with our memorial address, because his fight for non-commercial TV was an honourable one. He wasn’t doing it for himself.

He wasn’t doing it so he could get a job or because it would benefit him. He fought for public media because he knew it was good for Aotearoa NZ.

Like us at Better Public Media, he recognised the benefits to our country from locally produced public media.

David knew, from a long career in media, including as editor of The Listener and as Jim Bolger’s press secretary, that NZ’s media plays an important role in our nation’s culture, social cohesion, and democracy.

NZ culture is very important. NZ culture is so unique and special, yet it has always been at risk of being swamped by content from overseas. The US especially with its crackpot conspiracies, extreme racial tensions, and extreme tensions about everything to be honest.

Local content the antidote
Local content is the antidote to this. It reflects us, it portrays us, it defines New Zealand, and whether we like it or not, it defines us. But it’s important to remember that what we see reflected back to us comes through a filter.

This speech is coming to you through a filter, called Myles Thomas.

Commercial news reflects our world through a filter of sensation and danger to hold our attention. That makes NZ seem more shallow, greedy, fearful and dangerous.

The social media filter makes the world seem more angry, reactive and complaining.
RNZ’s filter is, I don’t know, thoughtful, a bit smug, middle class.

The New Zealand Herald filter makes us think every dairy is being ram-raided every night.

And The Spinoff filter suggests NZ is hip, urban and mildly infatuated with Winston Peters.

These cultural reflections are very important actually because they influence us, how we see NZ and its people.

It is not a commodity
That makes content, cultural content, special. It is not a commodity. It’s not milk powder.

We don’t drink milk and think about flooding in Queenstown, drinking milk doesn’t make us laugh about the Koiwoi accent, we don’t drink milk and identify with a young family living in poverty.

Local content is rich and powerful, and important to our society.

When the government supports the local media production industry it is actually supporting the audiences and our culture. Whether it is Te Mangai Paho, or NZ On Air or the NZ Film Commission, and the screen production rebate, these organisations fund New Zealand’s identity and culture, and success.

Don’t ask Treasury how to fund culture. Accountants don’t understand it, they can’t count it and put it in a spreadsheet, like they can milk solids. Of course they’ll say such subsidies or rebates distort the “market”, that’s the whole point. The market doesn’t work for culture.

Moreover, public funding of films and other content fosters a more stable long-term industry, rather than trashy short-termism that is completely vulnerable to outside pressures, like the US writer’s strike.

We have a celebrated content production industry. Our films, video, audio, games etc. More local content brings stability to this industry, which by the way also brings money into the country and fosters tourism.

We cannot use quota
New Zealand needs more local content.

And what’s more, it needs to be accessible to audiences, on the platforms that they use.

But in NZ we do have one problem. Unlike Australia, we can’t use a quota because our GATT agreement does not include a carve out for local music or media quotas.

In the 1990s when GATT was being negotiated, the Aussies added an exception to their GATT agreement allowing a quota for Aussie cultural content. So they can require radio stations to play a certain amount of local music. Now they’re able to introduce a Netflix quota for up to 20 percent of all revenue generated in Aussie.

We can’t do that. Why? Because back in the 1990s the Bolger government and MFAT decided against putting the same exception into NZ’s GATT agreement.

But there is another way of doing it, if we take a lead from Denmark and many European states. Which I’ll get to in a minute.

The second important benefit of locally produced public media is social cohesion, how society works, the peace and harmony and respect that we show each other in public, depends heavily on the “public sphere”, of which, media is a big part.

Power of media to polarise
Extensive research in Europe and North America shows the power of media to polarise society, which can lead to misunderstanding, mistrust and hatred.

But media can also strengthen social cohesion, particularly for minority communities, and that same research showed that public media, otherwise known as public service media, is widely regarded to be an important contributor to tolerance in society, promoting social cohesion and integrating all communities and generations.

The third benefit is democracy. Very topical at the moment. I’ve already touched on how newsmedia affect our culture. More directly, our newsmedia influences the public dialogue over issues of the day.

It defines that dialogue. It is that dialogue.

So if our newsmedia is shallow and vacuous ignoring policies and focussing on the polls and the horse-race, then politicians who want to be elected, tailor their messages accordingly.

There’s plenty of examples of this such as National’s bootcamp policy, or Labour’s removing GST on food. As policies, neither is effective. But in the simplified 30 seconds of commercial news and headlines, these policies resonate.

Is that a good thing, that policies that are known to fail are nonetheless followed because our newsmedia cater to our base instincts and short attention spans?

Disaster for democracy
In my view, commercial media is actually disaster for democracy. All over the world.

But of course, we can’t control commercial media. No-one’s suggesting that.

The only rational reaction is to provide stronger locally produced public media.

And unfortunately, NZ lacks public media.

Obviously Australia, the UK, Canada have more public media than us, they have more people, they can afford it. But what about countries our size, Ireland? Smaller population, much more public media.

Denmark, Norway, Finland, all with roughly 5 million people, and all have significantly better public media than us. Even after the recent increases from Willie Jackson, NZ still spends just $44 per person on public media. $44 each year.

When we had a licence fee it was $110. Jim Bolger’s government got rid of that and replaced it with funding from general taxation — which means every year the Minister of Finance, working closely with Treasury, decides how much to spend on public media for that year.

This is what I call the curse of annual funding, because it makes funding public media a very political decision.

National, let us be honest, the National Party hates public media, maybe because they get nicer treatment on commercial news. We see this around the world — the Daily Mail, Sky News Australia, Newstalk ZB . . . most commercial media quite openly favours the right.

Systemic bias
This is a systemic bias. Because right-wing newsmedia gets more clicks.

Right-wing politicians are quite happy about that. Why fund public to get in the way? Even if it it benefits our culture, social cohesion, and democracy.

New Zealand is the same, the last National government froze RNZ funding for nine years.

National Party spokesperson on broadcasting Melissa Lee fought against the ANZPM merger, and now she’s fighting the News Bargaining Bill. As minister she could cut RNZ and NZ On Air’s budget.

But it wouldn’t just be cost-cutting. It would actually be political interference in our newsmedia, an attempt to skew the national conversation in favour of the National Party, by favouring commercial media.

So Aotearoa NZ needs two things. More money to be spent on public media, and less control by the politicians. Sustainable funding basically.

The best way to achieve it is a media levy.

Highly targeted tax
For those who don’t know, a levy is a tax that is highly targeted, and we have a lot of them, like the Telecommunications Development Levy (or TDL) which currently gathers $10 million a year from internet service providers like Spark and 2 Degrees to pay for rural broadband.

We’re all paying for better internet for farmers basically. When first introduced by the previous National government it collected $50 million but it’s dropped down a bit lately.

This is one of many levies that we live with and barely notice. Like the levy we pay on our insurance to cover the Earthquake Commission and the Fire and Emergency Levy. There are maritime levies, energy levies to fund EECA and Waka Kotahi, levies on building consents for MBIE, a levy on advertising pays for the ASA, the BSA is funded by a levy.

Lots of levies and they’re very effective.

So who could the media levy, levy?

ISPs like the TDL? Sure, raise the TDL back up to $50 million or perhaps higher, and it only adds a dollar onto everyone’s internet bill. There’s $50 million.

But the real target should be Big Tech, social media and large streaming services. I’m talking about Facebook, Google, Netflix, YouTube and so on. These are the companies that have really profited from the advent of online media, and at the expense of locally produced public media.

Funding content creation
We need a way to get these companies to make, or at least fund, content creation here in Aotearoa. Denmark recently proposed a solution to this problem with an innovative levy of 2 percent on the revenue of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney.

But that 2 percent rises to 5 percent if the streaming company doesn’t spend at least 5 percent of their revenue on making local Danish content. Denmark joins many other European countries already doing this — Germany, Poland, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France and even Romania are all about to levy the streamers to fund local production.

Australia is planning to do so as well.

But that’s just online streaming companies. There’s also social media and search engines which contribute nothing and take almost all the commercial revenue. The Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill will address that to a degree but it’s not open and we won’t know if the amounts are fair.

Another problem is that it’s only for news publishers — not drama or comedy producers, not on-demand video, not documentary makers or podcasters. Social media and search engines frequently feature and put advertising around these forms of content, and hoover up the digital advertising that would otherwise help fund them, so they should also contribute to them.

A Media Levy can best be seen as a levy on those companies that benefit from media on the internet, but don’t contribute to the public benefits of media — culture, social cohesion and democracy. And that’s why the Media Levy can include internet service providers, and large companies that sell digital advertising and subscriptions.

Note, this would target large companies over a certain size and revenue, and exclude smaller platforms, like most levies do.

Separate from annual budget
The huge benefit of a levy is that it is separate from the annual budget, so it’s fiscally neutral, and politicians can’t get their mits on it. It removes the curse of annual funding.

It creates a funding stream derived from the actual commercial media activities which produce the distribution gaps in the first place, for which public media compensates. That’s why the proceeds would go to the non-commercial platform and the funding agencies — Te Mangai Paho, NZ On Air and the Film Commission.

One final point. This wouldn’t conflict with the new Digital Services Tax proposed by the government because that’s a replacement for Income Tax. A Media Levy, like all levies, sits over and above income tax.

So there we go. I’ve mentioned Jim Bolger three times! I’ve also outlined some quite straight-forward methods to fund public media sustainably, and to fund a significant increase in local content production, video, film, audio and journalism.

None of it needs to be within the grasp of Melissa Lee or Willie Jackson, or David Seymour.

All of it can be used to create local content that improves democracy, social cohesion and Kiwi culture.

Myles Thomas is a trustee of the Better Public Media Trust (BPM). He is a former television producer and director who in 2012 established the Save TVNZ 7 campaign. Thomas is now studying law. This commentary was this year’s David Beatson Memorial Address at a public meeting in Grey Lynn last night on broadcast policy for the NZ election 2023.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Why did criticism of a modest sum spent on a single mini-documentary made two years ago suddenly spring up in the news in two national networks this week — and then disappear?

“I’m just so sick of everything getting taxpayer money for these projects. Why can’t people just pay out of their own pocket?” Newstalk ZB deputy political editor Jason Walls asked on air last Tuesday.

“I just keep seeing these things crop up time and time again, when we have hospitals overwhelmed. Twenty thousand dollars is not tons of money in the grand scheme of things, [but] that sort of stuff keeps adding up,” he added, noting Three’s latest Masterchef series aired and screened without draining the public purse.

More public money than ever is being spent on media content these days — and the spending does deserve scrutiny.

But the single project that triggered his concern this week was not a costly one — or especially newsworthy.

Siouxsie and the Virus is a short online video shot in March 2020 and it has been online for almost two years now, with its sources of public funding noted at the end. It snapshots Dr Siouxsie Wiles’ life in “fly-on-the wall”-style as New Zealand went into Level 4 lockdown.

It was made for the online platform Loading Docs which describes itself as “a launchpad for New Zealand documentary shorts.”

Enables short documentaries
It enables local makers to produce short documentaries which are then available to other media outlets. It is backed by the NZ Film Commission, the government broadcasting funding agency NZ On Air and Māori broadcasting funding agent Te Māngai Pāho.

Walls’ objections were rushed out as a news story online by Newstalk ZB and its sister paper The New Zealand Herald. The stories were shared on social media with the claim “the amount spent has left some gobsmacked.”

“Would you pay $20,000 for a documentary about ‘science superhero’ Dr Siouxsie Wiles? Because you already did,”  the Herald’s story began.

On the air Walls had referred to $20,000 of Film Commission funding but said he wasn’t sure how Siouxsie and the Virus had been funded.

It turned out that sum relates to a different project yet to be made.

Loading Docs producer Julia Parnell told Mediawatch that Loading Docs provided $6000 in production finance and $2000 towards the post-production for Siouxsie and the Virus.

The funding model requires filmmakers to raise other funds themselves via crowdfunding.

Parnell told Mediawatch that Siouxsie and the Virus raised $7685 through the crowdfunding platform “Boosted”.

Boosted by The Herald
Ironically the mini-doco was also boosted by The New Zealand Herald back in 2020.

“It was launched in partnership with The New Zealand Herald on their platform, along with a high-profile story in [Weekend Herald supplement] Canvas. It then went on our platform, TVNZ On Demand, RNZ, PlayStuff and The Spinoff. It has had over 200,000 views and it has been so appreciated by audiences,” Parnell told Mediawatch.

Initially the director, Gwen Isaac, was funded to make a completely different film about a Kiwi MMA fighter in Japan.

“When the covid lockdown happened, we had to pivot and find something else. The director was able to get that access (to Dr Wiles) in that week prior to covid. It was a society-changing moment and we were able to capture it. I’m very proud of that,” Parnell told Mediawatch.

“Loading Docs has a platform-agnostic approach which means that more New Zealanders can connect with our work and the work of our documentary makers,” she said.

On social media, Dr Wiles pointed out on Thursday she made nothing from the mini-doco, and $20,000 would have cost each New Zealanders about half a cent.

She also pointed out NZME — the owner of Newstalk ZB and The Herald  – received $9 million in covid wage subsidy in 2020 that would have taken $2.25 out of the pocket of every Kiwi.

LOL I just found out how much taxpayer money NZME who owns the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB got in the first half of 2020. $8.6 MILLION! If you are a taxpayer, that’s $2.23 you paid. Oh, and their net PROFITS after tax rose by $1 million to $7.8 MILLION. https://t.co/pq6WhvnXyO pic.twitter.com/kOxQk0v5yM

— Dr Siouxsie Wiles (@SiouxsieW) July 21, 2022

Wage subsidies repaid
Some media companies  — including Stuff and The Spinoff – repaid wages subsidies received in that year when business subsequently stabilised.

NZME has not, even after profits and revenue increased in 2021.

NZME CEO Michael Boggs told Mediawatch in April they used the wage subsidy for the intended purpose of retaining jobs and NZME declined the second tranche of wage subsidy when it was on offer.

Dr Wiles’ observations would have been relevant additions to The Herald and ZB online news stories highlighting the “gobsmacking” Film Commission funding decision, but by this time anyone who went looking for that would only find that those stories were not online anymore.

The Herald‘s link yields an error message that says, “Oops, looks like a dead end”.

The stories have been scrubbed from The Herald and ZB social media feeds without explanation.

Thanks @MediawatchNZ for looking into the dangerous hitjob Newstalk ZB and NZ Herald did on me last week. This was never about asking questions about the use of taxpayer funds. I honestly believe it was about stoking outrage, attacking the arts, & undermining & harming me. https://t.co/SdwWwF90z1

— Dr Siouxsie Wiles (@SiouxsieW) July 23, 2022

First funding questioning
Loading Docs’ Parnell said this was the first time the funding of any production had been questioned in the media.

But it’s not the first time ZB’s Walls has criticised public spending on media content.

Last year he labelled a range of arts projects bankrolled with covid recovery funds “a smorgasbord of abject waste” under the headline: Not a single cent more for podcasts, poetry and picture books in the name of ‘covid recovery.’ He wrote:

“It’s easy to take aim at the Creative NZ funding and to poke holes in what the government’s decided to fund through its $55m Public Interest Journalism Fund.”

Last year NZME secured up to $2995,702 from the PIJF to employ 15 reporters “to fill gaps in court reporting” in 11 of its publications — as well as two national reporting roles.

In 2020 — the year Siouxsie and the Virus was made — the PIJF allocated up to $200,280 to NZME for “a kaupapa editor and an audio innovation editor to improve access to news for blind and low vision New Zealanders.”

NZME also received up to $940,188 over two years “to retain reporting roles in its free community newspapers across Rotorua, Napier, Hastings, Whanganui, Manawatū, Taupō, Horowhenua, and Kapiti.”

More funding
An interactive NZME project exploring “how and when land became part of the Pākehā property system in Aotearoa New Zealand” got a further $80,500.

And just this month, the PIJF fund announced $255,000 of taxpayers money for a Herald series called Unraveling Anxiety.

This is based on a series of videos for The Herald’s website showing how people from different cultural backgrounds coped with anxiety disorders during covid-19 lockdowns and after.

It’s the kind of idea you might expect to find on a platform like Loading Docs, but so far The Herald and ZB have not aired any views on whether that is unjustifiably draining money from the public purse at a time of stress in our hospitals.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Watch Siouxsie and the Virus on YouTube

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The future of the flagship Māori news show Te Karere is on the line as the New Zealand government proposes to create a single Māori news service run by Māori Television.

The government this week released its much-aniticipated proposals for a major Māori media shake-up, Te Ao Pāpāho Māori, but some of the plans have come as a shock to the industry.

After 38 years on air, Te Karere on TVNZ1 is still the highest-rating Māori news bulletin in Aotearoa New Zealand, so news this week that the government wanted to create a single Māori news service run by Māori Television came as a blow to TVNZ.

READ MORE: Proposed single Māori news services alams journalists – Mediawatch

The state-owned network’s general manager of local content Nevak Rogers said they met with the Te Karere team after the proposal came out.

“It was definitely a shock,” she said.

“We have our annual application for funding for Marae and for Te Karere currently with Te Mangai Paho so we are on tenterhooks here.

“We don’t know what the outcomes of those decisions will be. It’s pretty tense times.”

The Māori media proposals have been in the works for years.

The project covers Māori broadcasting funding agency Te Māngai Pāho, Māori Television and Te Whakaruruhau o Ngā Reo Irirangi Māori which represents 20 iwi radio stations around the country.

In the discussion document out this week – the government said some Māori media outlets struggle to generate and deliver news and that the number of Māori news services funded by Te Māngai Pāho is “not sustainable”.

It wanted to see “an authorative clearing house for news and current affairs content” which would also feature content made by iwi radio stations, who would be in line for extra resourcing.

While Te Karere is aired on TVNZ, it is produced independently with funding by Te Māngai Pāho.

Rogers said she knew money was tight – each news show was made for as little as $9000 – but canning it was not the answer.

“At the moment, the public media review is happening and there has been a lot of talk of plurality of voice and how important that is.

“And yet here we are looking to go in the opposite direction.”

A plurality of Māori voices
Prominent Māori journalist and producer Annabelle Lee Mather agreed.

She said the goverment had poured tens of millions of dollars into the media recently and kept talking about the need for plurality and diversity in the media.

“A single news service for Māori does not achieve that and it also assumes that all our interests, our whakaaro, our lenses are the same and they are not,” she said.

“Māori audiences deserve the same service and diversity as our countrymen.”

The proposal also put Mather in a stressful position.

She leads the weekly Māori current affairs show The Hui on Mediaworks channel Three and said they did not know what it meant for them either.

In any case, she said Te Karere was a legacy and should not be “thrown in the bin on the scrap heap”.

‘Not going to be accepted’
“We have seen too much emphasis and importance being placed on the plurality of voice and so to accept Māori to be minimised and subordinated through one news services while everyone else enjoys a variety of news services, is just not going to, I think, be accepted,” Mather said.

The government was also proposing a Centre for Media Excellence to develop staff and appoint joint members to boards of the Māori Television Service and Te Māngai Pāho.

It recommended a national radio station broadcasting in te reo Māori and making taxpayer-funded content freely available to Māori media.

Iwi media organisations could be funded to contribute as regional news bureaux with “the Māori media ecosystem” having access to all the content, the report said.

Māori Television chief executive Shane Taurima said he supported plurality in Māori media too, but the industry was under-resourced and under pressure.

“What I think is great about the proposals that have been shared is that we will see more resource and more attention given to that fact so that we can create more reo Māori speaking journalists to be able to deliver a diverse news offering,” Taurima said.

A former editor of Te Karere, Taurima said he never wanted to see it go.

Up to the challenge
He did not want to jump the gun but he said if the proposal went ahead, Māori Television would be up to the challenge.

“Can Māori television deliver to expectations? Absolutely yes.

“If the decision is taken for this news hub to be placed in the hands of Māori Television, that Māori Television is supported and backed from a financial and resource perspective and from a community perspective to be able to do a good job of it.”

Te Karere will not go down without a fight, however.

Rogers said if a single Māori news service was what was wanted, TVNZ hoped it could make a bid to run it too.

“I feel like we have been handed the mantle in terms of kaitiakitanga of these taonga and we need to fight as hard as we can to make sure we can maintain them,” she said.

Minister urges calm and kōrero
Māori Development Minister Nanaia Mahuta would not say whether that was possible, but invited TVNZ to talk.

It was too early to say what funding implications the move could have on Te Karere, she said, but she hoped it would not spell the end for the news programme.

“I would hope not … in mainstream media there is the advantage of Te Karere to link into TVNZ and there is one service through Radio New Zealand.”

“TVNZ has been bailed out recently to be able to continue to do what they are doing and I am inviting them to engage in the conversation they want to have.”

The central service would also use news content created in the regions by iwi radio, which would maintain a plurality of Māori voices, she said.

“In the Māori media space, there have been real challenges to ensure that we can continue to contribute to growing and revitalising te reo Māori, providing the diversity of content, but also being responsive to a quickly changing and evolving world in the media sector.”

The discussion document will be open to submissions for the next fortnight.

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz