Derek Fox, TVNZ.

Tu Tangata, Issue 9, 1 December 1982, Page 22

Derek Fox, TVNZ.

“How would you like to be the nosiest person in town, and get paid for it.” Being the nosiest or one of the nosiest people in New Zealand for the last sixteen years has been my job. I’ve even been paid to be nosy on behalf of New Zealand overseas, doing the equivalent of three or four round-the-world trips. In short, I’m a journalist.

My brand of journalism is television and radio, and my current label is “television producer”. But over the years its been reporter, journalist, frontman, news editor, and director. Regardless of the title however, its meant that for certainly the last ten years I’ve enjoyed being one of the country’s “super-nosies”.

For me it all began in a woolstore in Gisborne in 1966. I was working there during the varsity holidays, when one of the other students a pakeha from Gisborne told how he’d taken an audition for a job as a radio announcer with the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation in Wellington. That scrap of information picked up during a woolstore smoko, began some dramatic changes in my life.

On the strength of it I moved from Auckland to Victoria University in Wellington. Then, plucking up all the courage I could as a quiet country-boy from Ruatoria, I one day walked in off the street and asked the NZBC’s Personnel Manager for a job. Somehow it worked.

Sixteen years on you still only require the fingers of one hand to count the number of Maori jounalists in radio and television. I think the fingers of a second hand would more than cover Maoris in newspaper journalism. While our people have flocked to work in the Post Office, or take up teaching posts, they’ve shunned newspapers, radio and television. They’ve done so for all the right reasons, those organisations have never been very ‘hospitable’ to Maoris. But not being there has been to our

Biographical details: Like many Maoris I’ve got two mountains, two rivers, and two canoes. I was born at Wairoa in June 1947. My mother is Kahungunu my father Ngati Porou. They farm at Ruatoria on the East Coast. I was intitially brought up at Opoutama on the Mahia Penninsula by grandparents, as a result my first language was Maori. When my grandfather died (I was six at the time) I moved to Ruatoria to join my parents. I spent three years at Ngata Memorial college gaining school certificate in 1963. I then moved to St Stephens school for sixth and seventh forms (1964/65). Spent 1966 at Auckland university, moved to Victoria and NZBC in 1967. My grandmother, Mereana Mika Totoru, now in her 90s still lives at Opoutama.

and the degree course at Canterbury University. Qualifications gained from those institutions are important, but as important, from my point of view is ‘taha Maori’. We really need a large influx of bilingual or at least bi-cultural Maori people into journalism. We can only correct the bad Maori pronunciation by being there before it happens. We can only break the monocultural view of our society by being able to offer a Maori view at the time of writing or production. And that can only be done by being inside the system in sufficient numbers to have a real impact. Those of us on the inside have come under severe pressure in the last couple of years, taking the strain of trying to make our branches of the media more aware of the Maori view, we could certaintly do with some help. It can be very hard work, but it can also

have its rewards. As I said earlier I’ve been around the world a few times on assignments which have ranged from international conferences to covering wars. Hopefully the battle to get more Maoris into newspapers, radio and television may soon see a breakthrough. Maybe shortly the people who do the hiring for radio and television will add Maoris to the “exotic nationals’’ list instead of saving all the places for visiting Britons, Canadians, Australians, Rhodesians, and even South Africans. I did mention didn’t I that it wouldn’t be easy. Kia kaha, kia u.

disadvantage. Its allowed the ‘media’ to hold and to present a lopsided view of Maoris, sometimes through ignorance, but more often through sheer laziness and a tendancy to think Maoris don’t matter anyway. Clearly we need to be better represented in the media, and I would hope that this campaign by “Tu Tangata” will get more people motivated towards a career in journalism. It’s not as easy to get in now as it used to be. But there are more established entry routes like the Journalism courses at technical institutes,