The newspaper as political antagonist

Editorial discourse and the othering of Maori perspectives on the foreshore and seabed conflict

Bibliographic Data

ID7478940
AuthorsSean Phelan (0000-0002-6488-1703, Massey University, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume10
Issue2
Pages217-237
Publication date2009-03-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournalism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-8849 • E-ISSN: 1741-3001
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1464884908100602
OpenAlexW2050020632
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited17

The 2003 political conflict over the ownership of the country's foreshore and seabed, which followed a June 2003 Court of Appeal ruling, was regarded by many New Zealanders as a defining moment in the evolution of the country's post-colonial relationship between the Crown and Maori. This article examines how the conflict was discursively constructed in the first editorial on the issue by New Zealand's four biggest-selling daily newspapers, all of which asserted their strong support for the Government's promise to quickly introduce legislation that would reinstate the status quo assumption of Crown ownership. My analysis shows how the editorials established an antagonistic discursive frontier between `national' and `Maori' interests. This was mainly done by constituting the conflict through a culturally available set of discursive assumptions that were prejudicial to nominal Maori perspectives and foreclosed open-minded assessment of the Court's ruling

Appeal · Government (linguistics · Legislation · Newspaper · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Status quo · Australian History and Society · Commonwealth, Australian Politics and Federalism · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Law