Pasifika community feels 'battered and bruised' by communication blunders
Monday, 30 August 2021
OPINION: “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate,” is the famous excuse the Captain uses to beat up Paul Newman’s character in the 1967 classic movie Cool Hand Luke.
But more recently, it’s the Pasifika community who are feeling battered and bruised over a series of Covid-19-related communications blunders.
Our Minister for Pacific Peoples was recently challenged on TV’s Breakfast to acknowledge the Covid-19 vaccination messaging failures. He responded that no system is 100 per cent, then skilfully dodged the question by bridging to the wider public health reforms.
He was being grilled about the vociferously vocal criticism by Pasifika leaders and health professionals, including staunch Labour Party supporters, over the Covid-19 vaccination rollout and the low Pasifika uptake – the lowest of any ethnicity we’ve been told repeatedly.
**READ MORE:
* Covid-19: Pacific health workers frustrated with 'catch-up game' of vaccination
* Covid-19: 58 cases linked to Pacific church event, NZ's largest sub-cluster
* Covid-19: Over 50% of outbreak cases Pasifika, church event 'could become biggest cluster'
**
The critics contend the advice of Pacific providers and leaders has been ignored and they haven’t been part of the solution-making. The Government and Ministry of Health diplomatically disagree.
We’ll never know the internal politicking and machinations, but media-wary community leaders and health professionals don’t normally air their divisions publicly, unless they’re feeling exasperated.
It usually means all in-house manoeuvrings and channels have been exhausted. And when our largest health provider The Fono is also being publicly critical, there’s definitely something amiss. That various institutions of government allowed it to reach this point is communications failure No 1.
The next communications failing is just as complex – the vaccination data.
The media has been empathetic in its coverage of the low Pasifika vaccination rates – One News described the rollout as “stunningly unsuccessful”.
The Covid Minister and the Director-General of Health have always pushed back, arguing they’re on track with their equitable outcomes approach, but no-one has really understood what that meant. Even when the health ministry released data to prove it on August 6, it was largely ignored by the media and the low vaccination rates narrative persisted.
Admittedly, it would have been easier to crack the Enigma code than decipher the ‘equity’ chart that accompanied the ministry’s release, but it did illustrate that Pasifika vaccinations were exceeding their equity targets for almost all age groups.
Communications failure No 2 is the hash job the ministry made of releasing and explaining the vaccination ethnicity data. Much of the consternation over low vaccination rates could have been addressed with easily digestible information and regular, clear media and community updates.
Earlier in July, a frustrated NZ Herald cobbled together their own figures, showing 7.3 per cent of Pasifika had been vaccinated and 9 per cent for Europeans. Pasifika make up 8 per cent of the population, so given older age groups were vaccinated first and Pasifika has a younger population profile, these figures were surprisingly good.
Communications failure No 3 is that most of the media didn’t pick up on this. There was little fact-checking or critical analysis of the vaccination rates early on – to be fair though, the health ministry didn’t help.
Media largely reported actual vaccination numbers as a way of showing a significant gap between European and Pasifika rates.
But understanding that the median age (age that divides the population in two parts of equal size) is almost a generation apart for European and Pasifika, would have helped explain the gap, and contextualise the ministry’s equity approach – the European median age is 41 and Pasifika is 23.
RNZ cottoned on to it recently and must have been scratching their heads after doing their own calculations from MoH spreadsheets. In the same week they found themselves reporting about low Pasifika vaccination rates, then two days later about Pasifika achieving the highest vaccination rates of any ethnicity in the pertinent 40-plus age group.
Stuff also did their own analysis with graphics of the percentage of fully-vaccinated people aged 12-plus within each major population. Again it contradicted the low vaccination rate narrative, showing Pasifika on a par with other groups: Pasifika 23 per cent, Asian 27 per cent and European/Other 26 per cent. Māori were the lowest at 17 per cent.
But why couldn’t MoH have communicated all this more effectively themselves? It’s a good news story after all.
Communications failure No 4 was at the Sunday, August 22, Covid-19 update press conference. While most of New Zealand was giggling over the Covid minister’s “spread their legs” gaffe, many Pasifika were bracing ourselves for the racist fallout when the Director-General of Health, speaking from the Parliamentary pulpit, singled out a “Samoan church” as a location of interest.
The “Samoan church” headlines were immediate – it was like bigot-bait for the race-haters. It was also as if MoH had learned nothing from exactly one year ago when the Papatoetoe family was vilified.
Communications failure No 5 is that without any consideration, the media embraced the DG’s lead, staining almost every headline with a racial identifier. Some argue that “Samoan church” was a useful descriptor for a concerned public, but surely “Mangere church” would have been more illuminating. It’s likely that “Samoan” was a convenient editorial tag for online searches.
At the next Parliamentary presser, the DG doubled down, talking about Samoans making up 50 per cent of the cases in the current outbreak. More headlines followed, more hate posts ensued.
The following day the health ministry issued a statement that racist comments had been directed at Pacific people. The DG hit out, calling the remarks “disappointing and frankly gutless”. “Pasifika” was trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons.
The media are to be commended though, after realising the impact and hearing the concerns of Pasifika communities, the pointless ethnicity label disappeared from headlines. It was as if there was a collective recollection of the principle in the Journalism Code of Ethics not to place unnecessary emphasis on race.
One would think, in hindsight, the DG’s communications advisers would also have taken more care with the phrasing and use of a racial label at a major media conference, when “Mangere AoG church” would have been a better identifier.
How the community responded from a communications perspective was also instructive. Crisis communications is a highly specialised branch of public relations; community spokespeople like Fa’anana Efeso Collins, Alf Filipaina and Pakilau Manase Lua were in their element.
But the Cause Collective is also to be applauded for the role it appeared to play – supporting the PR-inexperienced church to present another perspective, the sure-handed spokesperson function of Jerome Mika, and the nimble media wrangling that would have been involved.
Regrettably, the Pasifika community has found itself at the centre of all this through no fault of its own. And the irony is that every actor had principled intentions and social good objectives. But the failure to communicate effectively and with care and consideration has resulted in unfortunate community hurt and damaged sector relationships that may take some time to heal.
On top of Covid health concerns and the impact of a protracted lockdown on household budgets and schooling, the wider Pasifika community is feeling bashed about and fatigued.
The community can probably empathise with Paul Newman’s convict character in Cool Hand Luke. The line that leads to his beating is when the Captain tells him he’s wearing chains for his own good, the prisoner responds: “Wish you’d stop being so good to me, Captain.”
– Samson Samasoni (Samoa/Tokelau) is a senior communications specialist who has worked in New Zealand, the Pacific, Middle East and the UK, and a journalist/producer.
This story was first published on Pacific Media Network and is republished with permission.