On 4 December 2020 RNZ published online an extensive feature 'We don't fit in' - the struggle over Funded Family Care.
Photo: RNZ / Diego Opatowski
The feature comprised text along with video interviews with carers and people in various forms of supported care. It also included audio of a Checkpoint item which aired on 4 December. The Checkpoint item was about severely disabled people, their families and carers, and their difficulties in getting the necessary support and assistance (mostly from government agencies).
This Checkpoint programme included excerpts from an interview with Gerri Pomeroy, then-president of the Disabled Persons Assembly (DPA). The interview had taken place in February 2020 but for various reasons was not published until December 2020, by which time Ms Pomeroy was no longer president.
It is this interview and the excerpts used that brought a complaint from the DPA, alleging (among other things) a breach of Media Council Principle 1 (accuracy, fairness and balance). The Media Council has upheld aspects of the complaint.
The item included claims that Disabled Persons Organisations represented mainly those with physical disabilities, that they had too big a say in consultation processes and that there was no DPO to represent those with a significant intellectual disability. These claims were clearly represented as the opinions of the speakers and were not endorsed as fact by the interviewer.
However the interviewer then went on to talk about the "controversial" idea that only those with lived experience of a disability are entitled to talk about it, and to air a section of the interview where she asked Ms Pomeroy if a parent could have a lived experience of a disability. Ms Pomeroy had replied that for various reasons a parent's lived experience of disability was different from that of a disabled person. She did not say that a parent could not have that experience, merely that it was different. However in the Checkpoint item the interviewer immediately went on to comment "Try telling [one of the parents interviewed] that she can't speak for her son because she does not have his lived experience", and the item discussion moved on to talk about the absence of a voice for those with high or very high needs.
In the view of the Media Council, this commentary was unfair and promoted the idea of a rift that does not exist. Ms Pomeroy was not saying that parents could not speak for or represent their children, merely that their personal experience was necessarily different. This reflects the DPA philosophy that wherever possible, disabled people should have their own voice in decisions that affect them, and that where communication is difficult, strenuous efforts should be made to overcome the difficulty.
The Media Council also considers it unfair that RNZ did not even attempt to contact Ms Pomeroy or the DPA in the ten months between the interview and the Checkpoint item. Much could have happened in the interim either in personal terms or to change the accuracy or relevance of the interview material, and much did happen. Ms Pomeroy was no longer president of the DPA (thus leading to a minor inaccuracy in the item when she was introduced as president).
This is a brief version of the Media Council ruling. The full ruling is on Media Council website.