a language revitalisation tool
OPINION: Did you know that in Aotearoa we have three daily national news services in te reo Māori? Āe, e toru ngā ratonga pūrongo.
They’re all funded by the state under various Treaty of Waitangi obligations.
On television, there’s Te Karere, the koroua or granddaddy that started on TVNZ in 1983 and Te Ao, produced by Māori Television, itself now 16 years old; both shows are subtitled in English. The third is the reo-only Waatea News, produced since 2004 by Auckland-based urban Māori radio station Te Reo Irirangi o Waatea for the iwi radio network.
Over the past four years, I have been immersed in all three for my doctoral thesis, now complete, on the nature of Māori-language journalism.
As I did my research, filming reporters as they gathered news ki wīwi ki wāwā, all over the country, an increasingly persistent question arose: Where is the next generation of Māori-speaking journos coming from? Ka ahu mai rātou i whea?
Link to article: https://www.stuff.co.nz/pou-tiaki/300050756/te-reo-mori-news-more-than-a-language-revitalisation-tool
