Profile: Derek Fox, Maori Television chairman

By WARREN GAMBLE

The chairman of the Maori Television Service was supposed to be camping in the remote wilds of Lake Waikaremoana last Saturday.

Instead, on a stunning 24-degree day, Derek Fox left his home overlooking the peaceful crescent of Opoutama Beach, south of Wairoa, flew to Auckland and suspended his chief executive of six weeks, John Davy.

It was the end of a bad week, and the beginning of a hellish one.

On Monday, he sacked the Canadian who falsified his academic record and parts of his CV.

After a week of continuing fallout, Fox offered to resign on Thursday night from a job which marks a peak in his 20-year struggle to get the voice of Maori on air.

The offer was unanimously rejected by his board and the Government's partner in the television service, the Maori electoral college Te Putahi Paho.

The 54-year-old, who has pioneered a succession of Maori radio and television initiatives, also has the Government's confidence. Prime Minister Helen Clark this week called him the "pre-eminent Maori broadcaster of his generation". Former TVNZ political editor Richard Harman, who worked with Fox in his early television current affairs days, says he is "one of the most eminent journalists of his generation, Maori or Pakeha".

But there is no getting away from it. For the usually wily Fox - broadcaster, politician and leader - the week has been spectacularly bad.

"In my worst nightmares, I would never have expected this," Fox told the Dominion. "But unfortunately I have gone through one of the worst nightmares I have ever had, in the last few days."

Some believe Fox fanned the flames of his personal hell.

In the days before the sacking, the chairman mounted an aggressive defence of Davy and his credentials and accused the Herald and other media of Maori-bashing.

On the Friday, the day before he suspended Davy, he told the Herald: "You haven't got one thing that has stood up.

"Everything you have raised so far has been shown to be incorrect. I have to be satisfied and that's what we have done. We have done our checks. We did them previously.

"When will you be apologising to Mr Davy for these allegations?"

His handling of the issue drew criticism from Finance Minister Michael Cullen. He told Parliament that Fox should have waited for inquiries to be completed before making any further statement about Davy last Friday.

Cullen disagreed with Fox that the media inquiries were Maori-bashing, saying they were a legitimate investigation.

Yesterday, at the end of a week in which he has faced hundreds of interviews, an exhausted Fox said he would not have done things differently.

He said that after initial doubts about Davy were raised last week, the consultants who recommended him were asked to do further checks, and Davy was asked to explain.

The consultants checked his last three jobs and were satisfied; Davy faxed an explanation and a copy of his master of business Administration degree to Fox on the Friday.

Fox had a teleconference with his board members and they put out a statement saying the recruitment processes were robust and correct.

"I thought to myself, 'How could this man, if he knew I was going to check this [the degree], how could he have done it if it would not check out'."

The next morning the consultants advised Fox that the degree did not stack up.

He flew to Auckland, confronted Davy at the service's small office in Parnell and gave him until 5pm on Monday to come up with an explanation.

"The guy who caused the problem is not Derek Fox, it is John Davy, who is now the subject of a police complaint.

"The moment I had the facts on this man that I could act on as chairman of the board, I did. When I knew on Saturday morning that something did not stack up, John Davy's fate was sealed from then on."

Fox stands by his charges of Maori-bashing, saying the affair has gained media coverage way out of proportion to its importance.

Coverage of Air New Zealand's hefty losses, he says, did not generate the same media attention towards its board members as a story involving "relative minutiae" and little financial loss for the Maori Television Service.

"The public perception is these are a bunch of hories who cocked up again," says Fox.

However, some Maori media and observers are surprised that someone with Fox's 35 years of journalistic experience had breached one of the basic communication rules: if you are in a hole, stop digging.

Fox became involved in several heated exchanges with journalists about his role in the affair. Typical was an exchange with talkback host Pam Corkery about why he did not act earlier on questions raised about Davy in the media.

Corkery: "So you knew nothing, you were completely out of the frame, not hearing any media till Saturday morning?

Fox: "Pam, let me, Pam, I don't run my affairs through the media. You might find that crippling to your psyche. I don't analyse things through the media".

Fox also accused journalists at the Ruia Mai news service of Maori-bashing when the story was breaking.

The managing director of Mai FM, Graham Pryor, says Fox "just exacerbated the whole thing".

"If Derek has not recognised it was a big media issue maybe you have to question that."

Pryor, who applied for the chief executive job and did not make the shortlist, says despite being media rivals - Fox founded the Mana News network - he was a family friend who was a "highly entertaining, highly intelligent" man.

"He's very passionate about what he does. Maybe he loses his cool sometimes, but generally speaking he keeps himself pretty much under control."

One senior Maori broadcasting figure, who did not want to be named, says the Maori- bashing comments were wrong and embarrassing.

He says that while the mainstream media are guilty of ignoring Maori issues, the Davy case was a legitimate story and Fox himself should have recognised it.

Others say the comments came from a wider frustration with Pakeha-dominated media that have ignored Maori issues, including the struggle for a Maori voice on air. Some say Fox is not at all concerned about his image with Pakeha but fears a loss of mana in Maori circles, having been seen to be involved with procedures that were intended to be above reproach but which ended in ridicule.

A national Maori leader, who did not want to be named, says Fox handled the issue abysmally. He says Fox is a polemicist whose stock-in-trade response to controversy is to attack Pakeha members of his profession. The best and most obvious course would have been to say nothing until investigations were complete.

Gary Wilson, a former journalism tutor who now heads the Mana stable of radio news and Mana magazine he helped launch with Fox, says his friend gets understandably cranky.

Wilson says Fox has waged a long battle against huge odds to develop a Maori voice in the media. Fox believes it is the most critical area of Maori development ahead of treaty settlements, forestry and fishing.

His initial reactions to the Davy story were born from a frustration with media organisations which did not fairly represent a significant part of the population they served, says Wilson.

"He is an enormously talented, enormously frustrated guy who is often surrounded by people who have been far more obstructive than they realise, and that includes the Herald," says Wilson.

"He ought to be understood, not necessarily applauded."

Fox's unpleasant week had one respite, a quick midweek trip home to Mahia, his touchstone, a place where he can wear shorts all year round.

He lives in a clifftop house he built on the land he grew up on, 45km east of Wairoa on the neck of the Mahia Peninsula. The 5km-long Opoutama Beach stretches below, the clear waters beyond providing plenty of opportunity for his fishing and diving.

Fox was born in Ruatoria but spent his youth between his parents' farm there and his grandparents' house on the site of his present home. Maori was his first language.

At a Gisborne woolstore he stacked bales alongside a trainee radio announcer. He decided to try it, walking into the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation studios in Wellington and getting a job with the overseas programme exchange.

Months later, he was transferred to television, forging a formidable career in news and current affairs.

Maori programming in the 1960s was confined to a 10-minute bulletin on Sundays on 2YA. Carbon copies of stories which mentioned the word Maori were left in a box for one of the first Maori broadcasters, Wiremu Parker, to rummage through.

Fox says that when the first moves to put Maori on TV were made in the early 1980s he was "the nearest hori ... and that was enough".

He fronted the first Maori current affairs programme, Koha, and became producer of Te Karere, the Maori news programme launched in 1983 and still running after 20 years.

He left in 1986, dissatisfied with TVNZ's commitment to Maori programming. "I had probably had enough of the organisation and, to be fair, they probably had enough of me."

At the same time his marriage broke up and he returned to Mahia to fish, chill out and build a new home.

Wilson lured him back to the media in the late 1980s to try to make their long-talked-about Maori presence in the media a reality.

Together with broadcaster and magazine editor Piripi Whaanga they formed Mana Maori News, negotiating a contract with National Radio for news bulletins after 6pm in Maori and English.

Three years later they launched Mana Magazine.

Both remain relatively successful but Fox and Wilson have been frustrated that the radio service in particular has not been allowed to grow - a victim of what Wilson says is former Broadcasting Minister Maurice Williamson's free-market approach, which has diluted funding and talent for Maori radio.

Fox is no longer a director of Mana but retains a "koro-at-large" association with the magazine, writing the occasional article.

He says Mana and other Maori programmes were launched because Maori could not get a voice within the mainstream system.

"I think the people who had the power to do those things felt we were all New Zealanders. That was the perspective from Remuera and Herne Bay so that must be the one perspective.

"I'm not saying there was not a perspective from those places, but I tried to say there was another perspective.

"It's like watching a game. If you're sitting behind the goalposts you see a slightly different game than from the halfway line."

Fox says the current media coverage has parallels with the outcry over Tuku Morgan's purchase of the country's most famous pair of underpants when he was working for Aotearoa Television.

He refused to have any part in that project because the resources provided meant it was doomed to failure, despite the best efforts of the people who took up the challenge and produced more than they were expected to.

"I have said many times, 'Why haven't you [the media] gone to find out how much Sharon Crosbie [National Radio head] pays for her underpants, because the money she spends is exactly the same as the money that Tuku had."

Fox was initially critical of the funding for the Maori Television Service, but took the chairman's job because he believes it has a better chance of getting Maori programmes to air.

Commentators have suggested it was a neat political manoeuvre by Helen Clark to take Fox away from his plans to contest this year's elections with an independent Maori party.

Fox says the future of any such party will be discussed at a meeting in the next few days.

Fox, who has six children, will not discuss his private life other than to say fishing at Mahia is one of his biggest relaxations. He also dives, hunts and has just renewed his private pilot's licence. His partner is a Wellington communications consultant.

He lost his trademark moustache several years ago, and a low carbohydrate diet in the past year has seen him trim 16kg off a frame that performed credibly on the rugby fields of Gisborne before a knee injury sidelined him.

Friends say his sense of humour and ability to mix with a wide range of people - in shorts at his Mahia home, in suits in bids to win more business as Mayor of Wairoa, on a marae or in a boardroom - give him a unique edge.

Fox lost the mayoralty last year to local farmer Les Probert, and angrily blamed an anonymous letter-writing campaign in the local newspaper questioning whether he would be an absentee mayor because of his political and television roles.

The Wairoa Star says it published only five letters, three raising absentee issues, two in support of the mayor. Noms-de-plume were allowed.

Fox says apathy among Maori played a part in his defeat but he also blames the media for running stories suggesting he would be getting a fat salaried job with Maori Television. His chairman's fee is $36,000 a year.

Some say that his skills are more suited to the broadcasting frontline - his return to fronting the Marae television programme this year is his only current on-screen role.

Others say he may struggle with the business demands of setting up a television station from scratch and that his passion for the cause sometimes clouds his judgment.

It was particularly galling and embarrassing for him to help choose Davy - a controversial selection because he is a Pakeha and a foreigner - for his business skills, only to find those skills had dodgy origins.

But Fox says he is now focused on the big picture of creating a successful Maori station.

What drives him is a desire for Maori to be able to turn on their television sets and watch "Maori telling Maori stories from a Maori perspective and in the Maori language".

"It will be a window for non-Maori on Maoridom and a window for Maoridom on the world."

Full coverage: Maori TV