John McLean: Jolly Rogers, Nga Mihi...Ngarangi

Wāhine bringing their whole selves to “work”

Nevak Rogers is TVNZ’s current Chief Content Officer. As such, Nevak currently oversees all TVNZ non-news programming. She’s also reported to be a frontrunner for a proposed new TVNZ role of Chief News and Content Officer.

Rogers is also gleefully participating in the “Toitū Te Tiriti Hikoi”. That’s the car convoy (Carkoi) of Te Pāti Māori (Māori Party) people and affiliates who object to David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill. The Carkoi is due to arrive in Wellington on Tuesday 19 November…after causing Police-chaperoned disruption to State Highway One for about a week.

Rogers is a proud and radical Māori activist. Her LinkedIn page features “Was pleased to see that over 40 King’s Counsel wrote to the Minister about the Treaty Principles Bill. Tino rawe koutou!”. TVNZ has defended Rogers’ right to participate in the Carkoi.

Pull the other one!

In a belated, lame and disingenuous attempt to pretend its news on race stuff in New Zealand is impartial, TVNZ about three months ago issued editorial standards for “Independence & Integrity”. The standards include the bald assertion “[TVNZ’s News and Current Affairs] is not influenced by any improper political, sectional, commercial or personal interests, whether from inside or outside the organisation”.

Rogers that…to a point

Despite all this, and on debatable balance, I’m inclined to think that Rogers’ participation in the Carkoi is acceptable. She is not currently involved in TVNZ news and is apparently drawing on her annual leave entitlement to take part. She’s exercising freedom of expression and movement, outside of her day job. Perhaps most significantly, nothing Rogers does could contribute to creating an impression that TVNZ’s news coverage is politically biased because TVNZ’s news coverage is already blatantly and brazenly politically race-biased.

But equally, Rogers is a wholly inappropriate person for TVNZ to even consider for the new TVNZ role of Chief News and Content Officer. This is because Rogers is hardwired to bring her extreme political race hustling to her workplace, including any TVNZ News that she’s put in charge of. In her Critical Race Theorist Worldview, bringing one’s “whole self” (i.e., political and cultural prejudices) to the workplace is at least as important as knuckling down and doing one’s core job. In Rogers’ eyes, if she landed the TVNZ News Tsar role it would be a dereliction of duty for herself not to abuse her role and coopt TVNZ News to promote Māori separatism and exceptionalism.

But don’t rule out Rogers becoming TVNZ Head of News. She is a darling at TVNZ. While ordinary TVNZ employees were recently getting made redundant, Rogers and TVNZ’s CEO, Jodi O’Donnell, were larging it up in Los Angeles, on an expensive, taxpayer funded junket, a lark that Rogers unashamedly covered in her personal social media. Plus, despite its Independence & Integrity editorial standard, TVNZ openly promotes the Māori Party and its radical agenda to end New Zealand and create Ethno-State Aotearoa. And in undertaking this promotion, TVNZ manipulates its news accordingly. This jarring clash between TVNZ’s pretend news neutrality and its extreme racial bias is classic Woke Gaslighting. But there’s an apt description for this nonsense – journalistic unprofessionalism.

Board Lords

Nothing will change at TVNZ until the TVNZ Board of Directors changes. TVNZ Directorial appointments appear to be for 3 years. TVNZ Board chair is Alastair Carruthers. He, deputy chair Ripeka Evans and Labour Luvvie Linda Clark were all appointed on 1 July 2023 which means New Zealanders will probably have to endure them until mid-2026.

And the trio also enjoy a wonderful (for them) statutory protection under the Television New Zealand Act. Their prophylactic is that no RNZL director can be removed for any reason relating to the following matters:

* any programme or other content

* any allegation or complaint relating to a programme or other content

* the gathering or presentation of news or the preparation or presentation of any current affairs programme or content,

and the shareholding Ministers are prohibited from giving any directions on those matters.

That protection and prohibition liberates the TVNZ Board to give free reign to the likes of Nevak Rogers, to pursue whatever seditious Māori activism they like. In other words, to unrelentingly bite the hand that feeds the TVNZ Blob.

TVNZ deputy chair Ripeka Evans is a classic of her rare kind. She is a claimant in the “Mana Wāhine” whinge to the Waitangi Tribunal, which dates back over 30 years to 1993. The amorphous but continuing “claim”, with no end in sight, is essentially that horrid white men (as opposed to brown men) have been especially nasty to Māori women. In 2021 Radio New Zealand’s Mani Dunlop (the one whom former Justice Minister Kiri Allen stalked) reported:

[Evans] described the traditional roles of men and women as essential parts of the collective whole, both forming part of the whakapapa that linked Māori to the beginning of the world and women in particular played a key role in linking the past with the present and the future.

Evans provided the historic context of the impact of colonisation.

"The colonial frame in which the colonising culture that looked to men as leaders and chiefs - this caused the negation of wāhine Māori mana motuhake and rangatiratanga over their whenua, taonga, mātauranga, hearts, bodies, minds and beliefs."

….............

Evans said, although the Crown had provided funding for the inquiry, this was not enough to show they had learnt a lesson after 28 years.

"The fact that we are here today, I have to call it out, the Crown funding for this claim is for the Crown to bring it - not for me - not for the claimants to come and tell their stories.

Moana the Moaner

Rogers is on the Carkoi with Moana Maniapoto. Ms Maniapoto is most famous for her band named Moana and the Moahunters, a name which at least acknowledges that Māori hunted moas (as it happens, all seven species of moa, each to extinction). Moana’s marriage to Labour MP Willie Jackson ended in 2001. These days she seems to make State-funded documentaries. You can catch Moana’s current sentiments here:

Moana on the Hikoi and the reaction to the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill

Born again

Also on the Carkoi is Mihingarangi Forbes, whose Aotearoa Media Collective, funded in the millions by NZ On Air & Te Māngai Pāho, produces a fortnightly show (“Mata Reports”) for Radio New Zealand. The Aotearoa Media Collective isn’t much of a collective. It comprises Mihi and Annabelle Lee-Mather. Annabelle’s partner is Jim Mather, the chair of Radio New Zealand. Conflicts run deep in Maoridom, not least conflicts of interest.

Forbes also co-hosts Radio New Zealand’s Saturday Mornings show. She’s what one can properly describe as a born-again Māori. At age 20, she fully “discovered” her Māori ancestry and changed her first name to Mihingarangi (“Mihi” for short).

On 15 November 2024, Forbes posted the following on her social media. It’s a picture of her with Carkoi leader Eru Kapa-Kingi:

Forbes is therefore using taxpayer money and her positions with Radio New Zealand to personally advocate in favour of a racially divided New Zealand. And, with the current Radio New Zealand board in place, there’s noting that can be done about this. As with TVNZ, directors and other officers of Radio New Zealand enjoy a statutory protection that no Radio New Zealand director can be removed for any reason relating to:

* any programme or other content

* any allegation or complaint relating to a programme or other content

* the gathering or presentation of news or the preparation or presentation of any current affairs programme or content,

with the shareholding Ministers again prohibited from giving anyone at Radio New Zealand directions on those matters.

The objectives of these protections and prohibitions are laudable; they in theory protect New Zealand from State controlled media. But they rely on journalistic integrity and neutrality, especially in news reporting.

For such time as the current TVNZ and Radio NZ Boards remain intact and stacked with Woke ideologues, TVNZ and Radio NZ can and will use our taxes and their extreme political operatives to attack New Zealand’s democracy.

John McLean is a citizen typist and enthusiastic amateur who blogs at John's Substack where this article was sourced.