The saga re: Paul Holmes' inflammatory Waitangi Day column is ongoing, but coming to a head. The editor of the Weekend Herald, David Hastings, responded to my complaint to the Press Council (after two complaints to his paper), and I was given an opportunity to respond. What I wrote is below. The Press Council will judge the case on the 7th of May. If they uphold the complaint, they'll forcing the Herald to retract the piece and apologise, but, more importantly, signalling that this type of thing isn't on. The damage has been done now, but if the Council intervenes here an important precedent will be set.
I am sad to say that Mr
Hasting’s response to my complaint is shallow and inattentive. His main line of
response is that I am taking Paul Holmes’s words out of context. His claim that
when in context Holmes’s claims aren’t inflammatory is simply a bare assertion.
In contrast, in the original complaint I discussed at length why the context
does not make Holmes’s claims any better, and in fact makes it worse. Mr
Hastings has simply ignored this. Nor could he make a convincing reply. The
most striking element here is the fact that Holmes doesn't make a single claim
about the protestors in particular, and a large number of claims about Māori
without qualification.
There is the one time he mentions the "loony Maori fringe" (it is
worth noting that it isn't obvious whether this is meant to be a fringe of
Māori society, or that Māori are supposed to be a loony fringe of New Zealand
as a whole—many of those who commented on the piece took the latter,
discriminatory reading). But the three times Holmes says something about what
the protest consists in, his characterisation aims at Māoridom as a whole:
firstly, when describing the protest it is "irrational Maori ghastliness
with spitting, smugness, self-righteousness and the usual neurotic Maori
politics" (note the lack of qualification); secondly, when describing what
they should instead be concentrating on is the litany of social ills that
affect Māori (pointedly, making no mention of the content of the actual
protest); thirdly, when describing the desired effects of the protest he
introduces it with "if Maori want..." (again, without qualification).
At no point does Holmes say how the protesters are to be seen as a single,
distinct part of Māoridom, whereas he frequently suggests that the protest
represents Māori without qualification.
Mr Hastings has challenged my reading of the third point listed above. He says
that Holmes is "saying that if mainstream Maori support the extremists the
day will be dominated by the antics and agendas of the extremists that he finds
so abhorrent." But this is simply a nonsense reading. Holmes says nothing
here about the relationship between the protesters and Māori as a whole. There
is only the mention of "Maori", not of the influence of one section
of Māori on another. There are simply no grounds for concluding what Mr
Hastings does, and his reading must be dismissed.
The above is just one of the occasions where Mr Hastings accuses me of making
unjustified inferences. I have no doubt he employed this strategy against the
other complaints as well. But this retort is entirely mistaken. There are two
features of inferences in natural language to consider here: the logical and
pragmatic features. On both of these aspects, Mr Hastings's readings are
nonsense.
Logically, an inference like 'if X, Y' or 'Y, because X' (note the different
positions of X and Y) provides sufficient conditions: the truth of the
antecedent X is supposed to make the consequent Y inevitably true. Holmes, in
the above-mentioned example, says that if Māori want Waitangi Day for
themselves, we should let them defraud Pākehā. I conclude from this that Holmes
is saying that Māori want to defraud Pākehā. That is incontrovertible: Māori
wanting to protest as they did is sufficient for us letting Māori get what they
want and defraud Pākehā, Holmes asserts, which entails that Holmes believes
that protests like these are sufficient to prove that Māori want to defraud
Pākehā. And that is the substance of my complaint: Holmes is asserting (amongst
other things) that Māori are out to cheat Pākehā. Holmes is thereby driving a
wedge between Māori and Pākehā, and the Press Council is correspondingly
entitled and required to step in.
This same logical structure is behind what I have called a subtler bigotry,
that Holmes has different standards for what is acceptable for Māori as opposed
to Pākeha. Mr Hastings seems to have missed the point of this. For reasons of
space I won't repeat what I've said earlier, where I describe how Holmes is
engaging in abusive mud-raking by tarring the protesters with the social ills
of Māori, a standard he fails to consistently apply regarding the personal
failings of individual Anzacs and the existence of Anzac atrocities (and we
cannot impugn Holmes with the unseemly innocence required to deny their
existence). I'm not saying we shouldn't support Anzac Day either: I'm saying
that Holmes should show the same grace to Māori as he does his family members
and their comrades in arms. His failure to do so indicates a discriminatory
standard. I provide this analysis as an indication of the context within which
Holmes is writing, and that context supports my reading, rather than Mr
Hastings's.
The other feature of inferences, pragmatic, is something which linguists and
philosophers call 'conversational implicature'. In short, we need to assume
that people are being helpful with what they divulge in order to make sense of
what they tell us (see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/implicature/ ).
Very little of natural language use meets the standards of explicit and precise
statement that formal logic requires, and we plug the gaps by making use of
certain co-operative standards. I don't wish to labour this point with a
summary of how conversational implicature works. The long and short of it is
this: the only way we can make sense of the fact that Holmes repeatedly talks
about features of Māori as a whole when describing what is objectionable about
the protests, is that he believes that their being Māori is the pertinent fact.
He doesn't even give any indication about the content of the protest—that too
seems to be irrelevant in his eyes. No other explanation is provided, so, by
the co-operative standards, Holmes must be saying that this is the relevant
explanation, and enough of one. This is borne out by Holmes moving on to
different, unrelated, topics, after the "No, if Maori want Waitangi Day
for themselves, let them" paragraph: he has said his piece. And all that
Holmes has talked about is his disgust at what is supposed to be an attempt by
Māori to disregard their real problems and exploit Pākehā. The fact that he
never troubles himself with separating the protesters in substance from Māori
as a whole, or even what the protest was about, must be read as him asserting
that there isn't anything pertinent to say there. Otherwise we render Holmes's
column into contentless bleating. In contrast, there is an easy reading
available which makes sense of the piece, where Holmes is casting Māori against
Pākehā. There is a large audience of people who understood him as such. We are
driven by the standards of language use to do the same.
The Mr Hastings spends the majority of his response to my complaint in
reminding the Press Council about the freedom afforded the press to print even
offensive items. He also lists a variety of pieces his paper has published on
the issue. All of this is idle talk, however. The freedom to publish
controversial items is not unqualified, and there are occasions where the
Council can, must, and does intervene. Representing a variety of opinions is
not an unqualified good, not if the breadth of opinion is enlarged to include
the inflammatory and the racist. These are unfortunately viewpoints which find
a ready audience, but we have a responsibility not to spur on divisions among
New Zealanders. I am deeply worried by the fact that Mr Hastings and the Herald
are entirely unreserved and unrepentant in their endorsement of Paul Holmes’s
piece, which included (and this is not contested!) claims that the protest
against John Key was driven by a conspiracy to extort money from Pākehā and
calling Māori a race of child-abusers. A line has been crossed—the only
possible effect, if Holmes is taken seriously at all, is a deepening divide
between Māori and Pākehā on the basis of his ill-considered comments. Since the
Herald does not seem to have the good judgement to recognise this as a matter
calling for moderation, we have to depend on the Press Council to intervene.
Yours sincerely,
Marinus Ferreira
