This story was originally published on The Spinoff.
Earlier this month, it was revealed that long-running Māori news and current affairs shows Te Karere and The Hui missed out in the 2025/26 funding round of Te Māngai Pāho, the Māori broadcast funding agency. While there had been indications for some time that wider change was in store for the Māori media sector, the news still came as a shock to many.
TVNZ’s Te Karere, a daily te reo Māori news bulletin that first aired in 1982, received $2.7 million in funding from Te Māngai Pāho for 260 episodes this year, with TVNZ contributing an extra $900,000. In an announcement about this year’s funding decisions, Te Māngai Pāho said, “all the fluent proposals [programmes aimed at fluent speakers] were declined due to not sufficiently meeting the assessment criteria”. Te Karere is believed to be working on a second funding bid, and according to the Herald, Te Māngai Pāho is confident it will continue to screen.
