Police Ten 7 feeds racial stereotypes of Māori and Pacific peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

In a recent tweet, Auckland City Councillor Efeso Collins asked Television New Zealand (TVNZ) to drop Police Ten 7, arguing that it “…feeds on racial stereotypes”. Both the Chief Executive of the company behind Police Ten 7, and a former host, defended the show by suggesting that it provides an accurate portrayal of crime in Aotearoa New Zealand. In the current study, we coded a selection of episodes of Police Ten 7 from 2011 through to 2021. We had a single hypothesis: that Māori and Pacific peoples will be more likely to be depicted as committing aggressive crimes than Pākehā suspects. Consistent with our hypothesis, Māori and Pacific peoples were markedly more likely to be depicted committing aggressive offences than Pākehā.

MĀORI IN UNEXPECTED PLACES: Watching Māori on Television

“…What is available points to underrepresentation and a limited and/or negative scope of depictions (Fitzgerald 2010;King 2009;Merskin 1998;Miyose and Morel 2019;Nolan 2009;Pack 2013). Only a small body of research exists that examines Māori representation on mass television (Blythe 1994;L Pihama 1996;Yan et al 2021). Martin Blythe (1994), who examined Māori representation in film and to a lesser extent television from 1910-1988, argued that representations directly relate to evolving concepts of nationhood.…”