Waatea News, Auckland’s bilingual Māori radio station, has ended its content-sharing agreement with the New Zealand Herald.
In a statement today, the station’s general manager Matthew Tukaki said he couldn’t continue any form of agreement in light of an advertisement bought by Hobson’s Pledge on the front cover of the Wednesday, August 7 edition of the New Zealand Herald.
“I cannot, and will not, in all good conscience accept that the Herald decided to accept an advertorial filled with misinformation – accepting a payment for what was essentially an advertisement sowing division between Maori and non-Maori,” Tukaki said in a statement this afternoon.
“That said I would be happy to debate the issue with Don Brash on Waatea, having read the statement issued by Hobson’s Pledge.”
He said it was a “shame” that the Herald team published an “impressive piece dealing with the whenua”, referring to the ongoing Whenua: Our Land, Our Stories series, “only to have that undone by this latest descent into misinformation”.
Tukaki said he had written to the Herald asking it to cease publication of Waatea’s content.
An analysis of the New Zealand Herald website shows it has republished 36 Waatea News articles this year, with an additional reporting credit given on seven articles, and the station’s staff or news content directly mentioned or quoted in a further six articles.
