For most of the week, the deaf in New Zealand are shut off from the television communication the rest of us take for granted. But for half an hour each Sunday, they can join the rest of the world, through a special programme called News Review.
This is the age of communication. Telecom frogpeople rise out of the water, faces calm and flexicable at the ready. Without these, we are told, the global village in which we live would promptly revert to the global ghetto – a sad and barren land yet to know the cellular phone.
One group of people have no choice but to live in this land. They are New Zealand’s deaf. (There are 6,200 profoundly deaf, 32,500 severe or profoundly deaf and 472,000 deaf or hearing impaired people in New Zealand. The deaf live without cellular phones. They also live without radio, regular telephones and, more often than not, television. While we spend our smokos and morning teas dissecting Roxanne’s diet on LA Law or the latest from Romania – speaking the language of the global village – the deaf are still trying to come to terms with life in the ghetto: When did postage go up to 40c? What is all this talk of safe sex?
When you consider that of 129 hours of television each week, only eight-and-a-half are subtitled on Teletext, it is clear how limited the opportunities are for the deaf to keep up in a hearing world. And if information is power, a much sought-after 90s commodity, then today’s deaf are mostly down and broke.
But for half an hour each week all that changes. Each Sunday the deaf get to join our world through News Review, a summary of the week’s events made especially for them, complete with their own sign language and subtitles.
Tony Mooar is in charge of News Review. He remembers being given the programme on the strength of his knowledge of the deaf world. When TVNZ in Christchurch was casting around for someone to produce the programme, Mooar had a deaf family friend staying with him – the only deaf person he knew. Today Mooar talks about News Review with a mixture of pride and protectiveness: “It’s the only programme for the deaf. It must survive.”
If survival comes down to dollars and cents, then News Review is probably in for a long run. It costs TVNZ very little to make the programme; these days most of the tab is picked up by the Broadcasting Commission. What’s more, for the better part of the week News Review is a one-person operation – Mooar. On Monday, when we meet, Mooar is starting on the next programme. Over the weekend there have been soccer riots in Yugoslavia, alleged war criminals in New Zealand and the National Party’s northern regional conference in Auckland. Mooar is reading aloud a One Network News report of this last event and wondering how he’s going to turn it into great news for the deaf.
“At the Auckland regional National Party conference, delegates heard Jim Bolger unveil National’s carrot and stick employment policy,” Mooar moans. “Carrot and stick – the deaf wouldn’t know what the hell that was. And it’s patently obvious that there are delegates there because you can see them.”
“Hearing people tend to think that if someone is profoundly deaf that can still read. If you went deaf now you would be a good reader because you’re a good reader anyway. But profoundly, pre-lingually deaf people aren’t necessarily good readers at all.
“Take our two signers [Susan Thomas and Ava Buzzard, who co-host News Review]. Both are extraordinarily intelligent women, but we often have to discuss current issues with them so they understand what the story is about… Last week we had a lengthy discussion about Nazis. What were Nazis? There was no doubt about what World War II was — they have the big ideas, but when you start to bring it down…”
Without hearing, Mooar explains, it is almost impossible to pick up these smaller details that go to make up the hearing person’s general knowledge. “To learn language to the degree that you could read a newspaper and understand it fully, you’ve got to hear it… There’s no such thing as deaf and dumb. They’re just deaf and unlearned – untutored.”
Thomas and Buzzard agree. “We don’t hear the radio and all the little bits that are going on. Often it is totally impossible for a deaf person to be involved in the hearing world.”
“And as if to emphasise the gulf that exists between the two worlds – deaf and hearing – this interview with Thomas and Buzzard could be done only with the help of one of New Zealand’s two deaf interpreters, Megan Mansfield – the other is Linda Prouse – who converts the questions into and the answers out of sign language.
In the end the news of National’s big push north becomes “National’s Auckland conference: Jim Bolger talked about his new employment policy.” Mooar looks pleased.
Both Thomas and Buzzard were born deaf. In the case of Thomas, the problem wasn’t picked up until she was six months old. It was the old story – Thomas would play quietly on the floor as doors slammed and children screamed. At the age of three she started at the Sumner School for the Deaf, boarding there until she was 17. Buzzard was also at Sumner, but only for 11 years. Both women left the school to go to Polytech and both ended up with jobs – Thomas at Haywrights and Buzzard as a typist for a gas company. Today Thomas shares the News Review signing with Buzzard and looks after four children, all of them hearing, all of whom communicate with her in sign language. Buzzard also has one child, a son, who is deaf.
As we talk it becomes obvious that Thomas and Buzzard are far from satisfied. The half-hour of News Review, good though it may be, hardly compensates for all these hours each week that the deaf go without television. Just how much the deaf miss out on TV becomes clear as Thomas talks about her wish for election-time: that party political broadcasts, normally a much avoided television species, could be subtitled.
Thomas and Buzzard believe that two minutes of deaf news each day, say before the Network News, would go a long way towards getting the deaf out of the ghetto. Buzzard: “The most important thing at the moment is getting that news every day. By Sunday it’s not alive – it’s old news. We want news every day so we can participate in life.”
But in the meantime News Review gives the deaf ears on the world outside. And Thomas reckons that the programme has been a real boost. “It’s deaf pride. Seeing other deaf people on the television signing, it gives deaf a lot of pride in their culture and their language.”
At the heart of this pride – at the heart of the programme – are the signs themselves. The Review team seems to delight in showing off the more memorable ones: Rob Muldoon is a forefinger poked hard into cheek; David Language is a pair of arms extended wide over the stomach (also the sign for the US, although no one seems to know why). Some signs are watered down for News Review – Buzzard demonstrates the deaf for prostitute, a handbag swung seductively above the shoulder. Thomas isn’t so sure about the moderation. She believes that it is their news, their only news, and that anything should go.
“We do stories about Aids or cervical cancer. It’s important for deaf to know these things so we’ve got to explain what they are in their language. So I don’t get embarrassed – it’s deaf culture and that’s the way we sign it.”
This would please boss Tony Mooar. He has seen the ride in deaf confidence and knows what his programme means to the deaf. “They know me. If they don’t like a thing, or if they do like something, they tell me. The feedback is extraordinary. Because we’re positive about News Review, because everybody in the station supports the programme, this has changed the deaf’s perception of themselves. We treat them like hearing people. It’s great – I love it.
“At the end of the week I look at News Review and think, ‘Yeah, we really did it this week.’”
News Review, TV1, Sunday midday.
Photo caption: News Review’s Susan Thomas (left) and Ava Buzzard (centre) with deaf interpreter Megan Mansfield.
