At a time when “TV is tabloid and channels are ghettoising current affairs”, Māori Television will be covering and challenging New Zealand stories with Māori perspectives in a new, prime-time current affairs show ironically dubbed – NATIVE AFFAIRS. The quote comes from the producers of the hour-long Sunday night show at 8.00 PM: executive producer Colin McRae, producer Sharon Hawke and associate producer Wena Harawira. 

Premiering on Sunday May 6, NATIVE AFFAIRS will give New Zealand viewers a new taste of Māori perspectives in current affairs.  

Covering subjects such as suicide and educational achievement amongst Māori boys, the team is dishing up four field-based video segments a week and one studio-based interview or panel. Māori Television head of news and current affairs, Te Anga Nathan, says the show is also expected to periodically feature a segment from other indigenous television current affairs throughout the world. “This is the vehicle for investigative current affairs that our viewers have asked for from the day we launched more than three years ago,” says Mr Nathan. “The topics we cover will be on the radar of all New Zealanders.”

Fronted by Julian Wilcox – who co-hosted Māori Television’s ANZAC day coverage – NATIVE AFFAIRS premieres with an update on apartheid in Africa, a story about the exhumation of bodies from one cemetery to another, and a penetrating look at suicide amongst Māori in Aotearoa. The team of reporters includes Wena Harawira, Jodi Ihaka, Taiha Molyneux, Annabelle Lee-Harris, Semi Holland and Marisa Balle. “Our philosophy is to look at things differently – from a wide range of Māori perspectives. It's the only place on primetime television you'll get those views in current affairs,” he says. 

For debate, opinion and insight, tune into the new series of NATIVE AFFAIRS – premiering on Sunday May 6 at 8.00 PM. 

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