Pasifika in the news: the portrayal of Pacific peoples in the New Zealand press

Abstract

Pacific Islanders have faced discrimination in New Zealand particularly since the 1960s when communities began to be transplanted from their home nations to Aotearoa as cheap immigrant labour. Subsequently, the New Zealand vernacular has contained references to Pacific Islanders as 'overstayers', 'coconuts', 'bungas' and 'fresh off the boat' [FOB]. However, the legacy of a domineering relationship between the Palagi 1 majority group and Pacific minorities 2 that is captured by such derogatory terms is still evident in public forums such as the media. Using a quantitative content and qualitative narrative analysis, this paper documents portrayals of Pacific Islanders in New Zealand print media reports (n ¼ 65) published over a 3 month period. Findings reveal that Pacific people are predominantly portrayed as unmotivated, unhealthy and criminal others who are overly dependent on Palagi support. We consider this offered pacific identity formation with that implied for Palagi, which is active, independent, competent and caring. Issues in coverage are discussed in relation to how Pacific Islanders are encouraged to see themselves, and the health and social consequences of dominant practices in press coverage. We offer some suggestions as to how more equitable representations of Pacific people could be fostered in news media.

Constructing the Other: News media representations of a predominantly ‘brown’ community in New Zealand

“…Indeed, media theorist Stuart Hall argued that 'people who are in any way significantly different from the majority-"them" rather than "us"-are frequently exposed to [and] seem to be represented through sharply opposed, polarised, binary extremes ' (1997, p. 229). New Zealand studies reflect the international results, finding that the media regularly construct Pacific, Māori and Muslim peoples as Other (e.g., Kabir & Bourk, 2012;Kupu Taea, 2008Loto, Hodgetts, Chamberlain, Waimarie Nikora, Karapu, & Barnett, 2006;'Ofa Kolo, 1990;Moewaka Barnes, Borell, Taiapa, Rankine, Nairn, & McCreanor, 2012;Noorzai, 2014). Indeed, researchers claim that despite implicitly 'claiming to speak for all New Zealanders', much mainstream media coverage is produced 'by Pakeha, for Pakeha and about Pakeha' (Cosgrove & Bruce, 2005, p. 340;Moewaka Barnes et al, 2012).…”

“…Conversely, Pacific people were almost invisible as journalists (< 2 percent), although they make up 7 percent of the New Zealand population; Māori too were under-represented in journalism at 4-6 percent, despite comprising 15 percent of New Zealand's population (Journalism, 2014;Hollings, 2007;Hollings et al, 2007;Statistics New Zealand, 2015). Thus, it should not be surprising that mainstream New Zealand media coverage represents nonPākehā ethnicities through a lens that implicitly normalises Pākehā perspectives (Loto et al, 2006;Moewaka Barnes et al, 2012;Spoonley & Trlin, 2004). The result is that white power 'reproduces itself regardless of intention, power differences and goodwill' (Dyer, 1997, p. 9).…”

“…Loto, Hodgetts, Chamberlain, Waimarie Nikora, Karapu and Barnett's (2006) argument that 'ethnic minorities are significantly disadvantaged in mainstream media coverage, which often functions to silence minority voices, while drawing on majority voices to frame issues of relevance for minority groups ' (p. 102; also see Noorzai, 2014) is reinforced by the much larger body of research on Māori representation which concludes that mainstream media 'demonstrate an effective marginalisation of Māori stories, and of Māori voices on issues concerning Māori' (Rankine et al, 2014, p. 228) and 'establish a common sense against which Māori views of the world struggle to gain legitimacy' (Hodgetts, Masters & Robertson, 2004, p. 459). Thus, by under-using Pacific, Māori or Muslim voices and perspectives, such coverage provides little evidence of dialogue in which power imbalances in representation can be contested, (Freire, 1996).…”

“…Content analysis provides a way of counting and identifying common themes, concepts, language and structures (Bruce, Hovden & Markula, 2010). Major categories for analysis were derived from other New Zealand studies of representations of ethnicity, immigrant and other forms of marginalised identities (e.g., Bruce & Scott-Chapman, 2010;Hodgetts et al, 2004;Loto et al, 2006;Meijer, 2013;Noorzai, 2014;Spoonley & Butcher, 2009). Key patterns from the content analysis were then explored in more depth through textual analysis of 35 newspaper articles of two significant events, treating the media texts as 'material traces' of how journalists make sense of the world (McKee, 2003, p. 15).…”

“…Existing research shows that ethnic minorities are often represented within the New Zealand news media in ways that prioritise negative aspects (Hodgetts et al, 2004;Spoonley & Trlin, 2004;Walker, 2002), such as representing Pacific peoples and Māori as violent, criminal, others ('Ofa Kolo, 1990;Nairn et al, 2012;Walker, 2002). Such associations are often connected through the use of ethnic tagging which explicitly identifies the ethnicity or ethnicities of the individuals involved in news reports (Loto et al, 2006). Although ethnic tagging was explicit in the text of only 18 percent of articles (95 mentions), Pacific people were by far the most tagged, being identified in 73 percent of the explicitly tagged coverage (58 percent Pacific Islander, 8 percent Tongan, 6 perecent Samoan, 1 percent Niuean), followed by Māori (22 percent), which reinforces South Auckland as a brown place (see Figure 4).…”