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I do not accept that what TVNZ calls “a VHS copy of the item in which
the word Waikato is used” is necessarily a true copy of what I heard on
the day in question. Both you and TVNZ have refused to send me a free
copy of this self-styled “copy”, so there is no way of knowing what it
actually contains. TVNZ is party to this dispute, and it routinely uses
unethical practices (in fact, I have never heard the terms “ethics” and
“television” used together in New Zealand in my entire life) to pursue
its own anti-male and (in all probability) anti-Non-Maori, in-house ideological
beliefs.
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I do not accept the way that TVNZ has simplified the issue. It is
not that I object to their having examined my complaint in the context
of Standard 6 “Fairness”, but I do object to their having focussed solely
upon the pronunciation of the New Zealand English word “Waikato”. My
original complaint clearly concerned both this and the pronunciation of
the Maori word “kooti” in the Te Karere
programme in question. My complaint was that TVNZ operates a double-standard
(See the words in bold in my original letter to TVNZ below) on loan-words
between English and Maori. It pretends that there is no New Zealand English
word in existence that has been borrowed (and therefore adapted) from
the Maori language. It pretends, for example, that there is no NZ English
word “Waikato”, and that any time this common word is used in NZ English
it is (or should be) a case of citing a non-English word ! This is a
farcical pretence – especially when compared with TVNZ’s practice of treating
all English loanwords in the Maori language as having been assimilated
into the Maori language!
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My point was that TVNZ should drop this double-standard – either it
should force Te Karere and other Maori-language
programmes to pronounce English loanwords “properly” (e.g. “kooti”
should be pronounced as “court”), or it should allow English-language
programmes to pronounce Maori loanwords in the assimilated manner in which
they are usually pronounced. I have a personal preference for allowing
assimilation in both sorts of cases, which is why I said, “I am not complaining
about this perfectly routine, normal, common process of one language borrowing
words from another language and adapting them to the syllable-structure
and phonemic inventory, as well as to the morphology, of the target language”
(in my original letter) – but my main point was that this racist double-standard
had to be eliminated in one way or another.
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In David Edmunds’ letter to you of 23 May 2002, he states that the
issue needs to be looked at in the context of Maori and English having
equal status before the law. To the extent that his point is at all relevant,
it strengthens the position of the NZ Equality Party in this complaint:
From a historical point of view, TVNZ’s racist double-standard predates
the granting of official status to the Maori language, and so it is perhaps
irrelevant. However, irrespective of the historical issue, my complaint
is based precisely on the moral and/or legal equal status of the two languages:
they are equal, so there should be no double-standard. The trouble is
that Ideologically Correct organisations such as TVNZ do not understand
the word “equal”, which is bi-directional. They think that “equality”
means that we should prejudge one of the parties as being discriminated
against, ask them what their demands are, and rush to comply with them.
That, I have to inform you, is not “equality”. Equality occurs when both
parties represent their own interests and ensure that double-standards
that discriminate against both parties are eliminated.
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David Edmunds’ final point about the pronunciation of Welsh loanwords
by the BBC is irrelevant. New Zealand has long been independent of Britain,
and is old enough tomake its own decisions. In addition, it is possible
that the BBC took TVNZ’s racist double-standard as a precedent in introducing
its policy, so that it would be ludicrous to use the case of the BBC as
a precedent in an effort to justify TVNZ’s racism. Thirdly, racism is
not any more appropriate in the BBC (if it exists there) than in TVNZ.
