From being the headline to creating them, Moana Maniapoto has walked a rather rocky road of swinging between both sides of the media. Known for her award-winning current affairs show Te Ao with Moana on Whakaata Māori, and the 1990's cover of Black Pearl , the lawyer-by-trade doesn't keep her advocacy a secret. Her first introduction to news was at the tail end of the 80's when she was lazed in the guest seat at Aotearoa Radio - Auckland's first Māori radio station - but her kōrero hit a nerve.
"I said something the host considered radical," she said. "He quickly distanced the station from my remarks and that got the phones ringing." It became a race for listeners to punch numbers into the telephone, the first person to get through was New Zealand filmmaker, producer, and writer Merata Mita, who ripped into the host.
"How dare you talk down to her like that," Maniapoto recalled. The very next day she answered the call to host that show from then on. Aotearoa Radio was her first real job working four hours per day, spinning yarns five days a week - no training, no worries.
"Oh, they tried to get us to speak a bit flasher, but no one could be bothered. It was such a lot of fun, a great bunch of people working there. It was also nerve-wracking interviewing people like Erima Henare (NZ politician Peeni Henare's father), but the one I still chuckle about the most was Winston Peters.
" She remembers challenging Peters over a comment he made about Māori in the media; "You're .