One of the big stories in New Zealand’s media lately has been the awful murder of 12-week-old twins, and the way the family has closed ranks and failed to co-operate in any way with police. Politicians and pundits have weighed in. Talkback and letters pages and blogs are awash with calls for decisive action.
The Kahui twins story, as it is being told, combines a bunch of conservative favourites in one neat package of indignation:
- The Kahui family are Maori, and in their few comments on the case have specifically invoked their Maori status to evade responsibility and justify their obstructive actions – playing directly into the ‘one law for all’ covert racism that got Brash so close to winning the election.
- The Kahui family survive on benefits – playing directly into the ‘welfare bum’ mythology that claims the presence of welfare encourages immorality.
- The Kahui family do not have anything resembling a clear nuclear family – playing directly into the ‘demise of traditions’ mythology that claims the absence of a strong father is a social evil.
(There are other aspects to the case as well, but those are the big three.)
As usual, I’m most interested in how the media are dealing with the affair, and how opinions in the media guide and reflect the nation’s mood. There is much to consider.
First: NZ media have certainly pushed a lot of angry conservative voices to the forefront, and made great hay out of their condemnation of the Kahuis, but the worst we have is still miles more considerate and dignified and sensible than the tabloid culture in the UK. This is something for which we should be very thankful. Once a tabloid culture is in place, it is all but impossible to shift, and for whatever combination of reasons we have avoided one so far. This is a definite positive for our national culture.
Second: That said, we don’t have any strong left presence in our media at all, or indeed any differences of opinion worth noting. The Evening Post was NZ’s only remotely lefty paper, and when that was swallowed up into The Dominion nothing remained on the left but the odd columnist in small community papers. (This is part of a bigger issue: the way in which NZ’s homogeneous media converge quickly on a single perspective, which becomes massively influential on NZ society’s perception.)
Third: Today’s editorial in The Dominion Post is as good a summation as any of the ‘party line’ on the Kahui affair. It certainly reflects the underlying premise of much reporting I’ve encountered, and of course the letters pages and talkback are full of less-eloquent expressions of the same ideas.
Unsurprisingly I have a lot of problems with the editorial, its premises and its conclusions. One thing that stood out as a good example of the kind of rhetorical gamesmanship surrounding this and similar issues is the speed of generalising. The whole affair is understood in terms of categories much more than people. (This tendency bears some relationship to the Either/Or stuff I was thinking about two years ago.)
Check out this paragraph, answering a claim that this kind of abuse is due to the legacy of colonial injustice:
“Few dispute that early colonists forcibly took Maori land. But such theft happened more than 100 years ago and successive recent governments have worked hard to atonie for Pakeha sins. Neither colonists nor Pakeha killed Chris and Cru Kahui.”
The nasty elegance of the final rhetorical question is particularly striking. Responsibility for the deaths is parsed in terms of categories, and if it wasn’t the colonist category or the Pakeha category who killed the children, the clear implication, left unsaid for obvious reasons, is that it was Maori, as a category, who were responsible. And this message is exactly what has been and will be picked up and circulated in the story we tell of the Kahui twins.
(I am aware that the construction has an alternate reading, condemning the specific people attempting to shift blame to the general categories “Pakeha” and “colonists” instead of taking responsibility; but the meaning I talk about above is just as present, perhaps even more so.)
While I’m at it, have a look at the “But…” sentence. Aside from the charmingly naive Kiwi perspective that 100 years is a long time, the Pakeha response to injustice is framed in terms of ‘atonement for sins’. Actual redress for the harm done to Maori is nowhere to be seen; the injustice is implicitly constructed from a Pakeha viewpoint, such that a sufficient penance is all that is required to see an end to the matter. The real problem, one that our country has been struggling through for the past thirty years, is that those injustices were a systematic abduction of power which has perpetuated to this day. Penance is not at all what is required to answer what happened in our past; power redistribution is.
Power is precisely what is at stake here. The Kahui family, a screwed-up collection of relatives with no interest in social responsibility, surviving entirely on welfare, is an archetypal example of the legacy of powerlessness. This is exactly what we should expect to have created.
As might be expected, the editorial puts great faith in the redemptive power of capitalism. Paid work, it claims, would have saved this family. This claim is made completely straight-faced, without elaboration, as none is needed; we all understand the assumptions at work here. Once, ‘christian faith’ would have been the solution; the babies would have been killed by godlessness, not joblessness.
The moralism, however, is exactly the same.
Someone I know should go and get a job- at the Dominion Post!
1+1 does equal 2, you know.
This is a fab post!
morgan. i’m going to be honest with you. i’m sick and high on panadol. but i have to comment.
the other day i was in wanganui staying in a motor lodge. i hadn’t slept well. and was grumpy and beginning to get ill. i open the door in the am to get my paper. what a treat i had thought. i never have MY OWN PAPER. well i nearly vomited right there and then. UTU it said. “utu”, i thought. i also thought “fuck you dominion post”. way to frame this as a cultural thing. this is not cultural. although some people thing that perhaps if you offered fish n’ chips vouchers this would all be resolved. probably because maoris like fish and chips. its a cultural thing there too probably. did i mention fuck you dominion post. and how tariana and pita s. are a bit random sometimes but how their most random things get to be headlines and their more rational and aimed at structures rather than culture comments get igored or hidden in the detail. anyway, needless to say i am deliberately not reading papers, watching closeupwithwatsername or that other show that is better but still not great.
The ‘utu’ thing drove me crazy as well.
I don’t read the paper except occasionally in cafes. But I read the headlines when I walk past a vendor and I eavesdrop on conversations. It gives me enough to know actually reading the paper regularly will just make me mad all the time.
Some interesting points, Morgue. Excuse me if I ramble in my response – my grey matter takes a while to formulate an opinion.
From what I can see, your concern is with the reporting of the issue. I think I agree on that. I find it odd that the media seems to want to portray “Maori” as the culprits.
I read something (probably on stuff.co.nz) where someone said that this needed to be sorted soon as it was giving “Maori a bad name”. I disagree that this gives them a bad name (unless the Maori card is being played as an excuse). Why this is a racial issue I don’t understand. I can understand people wanting to look at the “bigger issue” behind the culture. But, to my simple mind, a terrible crime has been committed and someone needs to be held accountable. That, to me, is an issue regardless of race (and forgive me if I am leaning too far right, towards Brash’s “one law for all”).
Yes, there are perhaps bigger social issues that have been raised. Yes, I think they need to be dealt with. But, let’s deal with the immediate issue too.
Not particularly cohesive, and I’m not sure I’ve made my point (or if I had one). But maybe some points for discussion.
usually i dont read the paper ever or even watch the news. such sources are madmaking. as you say.
doesn’t stop me commenting on this again though.
jon – i certainly wouldn’t argue that this is a race issue. and if there is someone who is responsible for this, then by all means use the law on them. but i think it is naieve to say that this doesn’t (at least have the potential to) give maori a bad name. my experience is that when an issue is poorly framed – as this one is – people start to look at culture and say “well, in maoridom this is accepted” or that “maori should take responsibility”. piss off. pakeha arent asked to take responsibility when pakeha do something wrong. so all i’m asking, or all i would ask if anyone ever asked me, would be fair framing of an issue and being aware that framing things culturally does imply that there is some deficit in Maori culture which allows for significant childabuse.
The Dom Post ran a big headline on their ad billboards that said “SILENCE OF THE BABY KILLERS.”
I guess they were trying to link it to Silence of the Lambs. The headline told you nothing about the case, and in fact made no sense unless you already knew what the article is about. The Dom Post is fucking appalling.
I totally agree about the legacy of colonialism living on today. A quick survey of indigenous people around the world should be enough to show this.
As for left-wing media, there’s still The Listener and some radio; TV3 also has its moments, particularly Campbell Live. Local newspapers are’t even good for wiping your butt with.
Check this out, Chris Trotter is supposed to be this big leftie, but here is is rather patronizingly playing the race card:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/print/0,1478,3717125a1861,00.html
Just re point 2, has there ever been a strong left presence in mainstream media? I guess it’s all about categorisation. But to my knowledge, outside of union/political parties etc, there has never been the groundswell/impetus for a left media in New Zealand. Also, I am cautious about overstating the effect of media influence on “NZ society’s perceptions. One of the best explanations I’ve heard about the latest Iraq war, racism, and globalisation was the hairy guy downing bourbon and coke mixers on the Brooklyn bus. I have faith in people’s ability to smell out BS, at least some of the time.
Jon: totally agree on the fact the crime was terrible. But it’s definitely being portrayed in race terms, which is what bothers me.
AndyMac: I don’t think there’s ever been a strong left media in NZ, the Listener notwithstanding. I was, specifically, following on from point 1 where I compare us to the UK’s tabloids – we have no equivalent in terms of their social power – to say that neither do we have anything to match The Independent or The Guardian.
And I am utterly convinced that our big media massively shapes the way in which our society perceives issues.
I come from a small place and family means everything to me. Ive just been through hell the last month all so. I lost two of the most important people in my life, both taken from my family and i in a tragic car accident. You know what i mean when i say that the pain is unbearble, as you have just gone through a traumatic loss. Now this is to the family of Chris and Cru, i know you loved them very much but they deserve justice so if you know what happened on that horrible night please give your information to the police and help solve the mystery? and remember that their are people out there, who cant have children, and you were blessed with two beautiful babies. Look after and love your children and remember that they are the future and its up to you to give them what they need. ALWAYS LOVE YOUR TAMARIKI 🙂