MANUFACTURING CONSENT

In this age of manufactured consent, the current government has shown a willingness to take extraordinary steps in using the media as a tool to shape political outcomes. 

Nicky Hager’s books, The Hollow Men and Dirty Politics, laid out in detail how the current politicians in power, from the PM’s Office down, manufacture consent by using the media to leak sensitive information about opponents, to attack them, and to then dictate talking points about them to mainstream media figures through bloggers and those they call Opinion Makers. 

Use of the media is not in itself unethical.  However when the user is the Government and the Media is Māori, the resultant imbalance for those they attack is hugely amplified, coming as it does on top of the Mainstream media either leading or joining the attack. 

Having seen how real investigative journalists in this country are uniformly attacked by Government and most Media, we can take it as a given that any Māori who oppose or stand in the Government’s way will be treated just as badly, if not worse.

An example is that of Minister of Treaty Negotiations, Chris Finlayson, who last week announced his recently conceived concerns over Tūhoronuku, the Ngāpuhi entity which he has for the past four years either defended or championed as the body with his mandate to settle all of Ngāpuhi’s claims. 

However, in spite of Finlayson’s support, Tūhoronuku failed to deliver its constituency to him, and in last Thursday’s Northland Age (Questions over Tūhoronuku’s mandate) he listed “an array of issues” he now has about Tuhoronuku, including its relationship with hapū and its financial status. 

Poor Tūhoronuku. It seems Finlayson may now be looking elsewhere for a cooperative body to deliver Ngāpuhi to him and to settle according to his and the government’s dictates, just like other iwi entities in the Far North have already done.

Curiously though, a Māori media reporter recently ran an ambush piece from a kūpapa airing the same kinds of criticisms about Te Rūnanga-a-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu as those now coming from Finlayson about Tūhoronuku.

Although the reporter’s producer apologised on air the very next day for her failure to check the kūpapa’s criticisms for accuracy and her failure to contact the Rūnanga for its views in order to ensure she ran a fair and balanced story, that same reporter again contacted Ngāti Kahu Chairperson Margaret Mutu late Sunday night for comment on an interview that she just happened to have done with Mr Finlayson in which he had stated “… that a pair of fresh eyes needs to look over Ngāti Kahu Treaty claims and the Rūnanga mandate ‘doesn’t last forever’.”

Poor Mr Finlayson seems to have forgotten that it was he who walked away from negotiations with Ngāti Kahu, and that it is his warrant that won’t last forever, while Ngāti Kahu’s rangatiratanga will.

In any event the Rūnanga don’t need his mandate to do what their people have already mandated them to do.   

Mr Finlayson’s forgetfulness aside, what is clearly at play here for both Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu is the ongoing efforts of Government, supported by a compliant Media, to obtain an outcome by manufacturing our consent.