Former Newstalk ZB Early Edition host Kate Hawkesby.
Former Newstalk ZB Early Edition host Kate Hawkesby.
Former Newstalk ZB host Kate Hawkesby breached broadcasting standards with “exaggerated and misleading” comments about Māori and Pacific patients being prioritised for surgery due to their ethnicity, says the Broadcasting Standards Authority.
In a decision released today, the authority has described her comments as “serious” and “inflammatory” with the potentialto cause serious harm to Māori and Pacific people and audiences more generally.
It has ordered Newstalk ZB owner NZME to broadcast a summary of its findings and to pay costs of $1500.
The authority said that comments by Hawkesby on her Early Edition show in June last year were misleading and discriminatory.
The authority upheld a listener’s complaint about comments that Hawkesby made as she discussed Health New Zealand/ Te Whatu Ora’s new “equity adjustor score” in the Auckland region.
Under the system, health authorities use five categories to place patients on the non-urgent surgical waitlist - clinical priority, time spent waiting, location, deprivation level and ethnicity.
The authority said Hawkesby made statements over the course of the hour-long show “to the effect that the score meant Māori and Pacific people were being ‘moved to the top of surgery waitlists’”.
It found that her comments gave the “misleading impression” that ethnicity was the only - or key - factor in an assessment. It also found that her comments breached the discrimination and denigration standard by reinforcing or embedding negative stereotypes.
“Hawkesby’s comments played into the stereotype that Māori and Pacific peoples disproportionately take up resources and are given undeserved special treatment in Aotearoa New Zealand’s society, at the expense of other ethnicities,” said the authority.
“While not said explicitly, in our view, the exaggerated and misleading nature of Hawkesby’s comments had the effect of evoking this type of prejudicial bias.”
Former Newstalk ZB host Kate Hawkesby. Photo / Michael Craig
In its full decision, the authority quoted many of Hawkesby’s comments:
“So this new Equity Adjustor Score. Auckland surgeons are now being dictated to on ethnicity grounds over who should get surgery first. Māori and Pacific Islanders waiting for surgery, they’re being moved to the top of the very lengthy hospital waiting lists, and they’re giving - the system is going to give patients numbers on the list, so choosing to prioritise them in terms of when they’ll be operated on.”
As she introduced General Practice New Zealand chair Dr Bryan Betty for an interview, she said: “Māori and Pacific patients are being moved to the top of surgery waitlists. The reasoning is based on a new algorithm that prioritises on urgency and ethnicity. Healthcare professionals are conflicted over the Equity Adjustor Score that is seeing some patients pushed back two years or more.” During the interview, she questioned Betty on whether the policy was contentious and racist.
Near the end of the show, as she handed over to ZB Breakfast host Mike Hosking, the pair spoke about the policy:
Hawkesby: “Mike Hosking, good morning. This Equity Adjustor thing has gone off, like I literally can’t keep up with all the texts, but I think the tenor of what I’m getting is that the Government and Te Whatu Ora have made an issue out of something they think, and know, is an issue statistically but they have waved the race card in our faces for people that didn’t, we weren’t thinking about it that way but now everyone’s claiming it’s racist, do you know what I’m saying?”
Hosking: “Well it is racist.”
Hawkesby: “It’s backfired is what I’m saying.”
Hosking: “There’s no question it’s racist. You’re making a decision based on race, that’s an irrefutable … The difficulty with this subject is everyone’s correct. Because the Māori outcome health-wise is dreadful. But for every person they make – well they live in rural parts of the world where you can’t get access to health – well so does every non-Māori who lives in the same area, and so it goes. And for every time you help Māori out, disproportionately based on race, you are not helping somebody else out who should be getting that help. That’s the madness of this. The thing I want to know is why isn’t it nationwide? This thing seems to have come out of Auckland, and it seems to be in Auckland alone. And whether that’s a top-down Ayesha Verrall decision, or whether it’s somehow the local board in Auckland that’s decided to do this, so anyway we’ll get to the bottom of this ...”
The authority described Hawkesby’s conduct as “serious, featuring repeated and sustained inaccurate descriptions of the Equity Adjustor Score over the course of a one-hour broadcast, which in turn had the effect of embedding negative stereotypes about Māori and Pacific peoples. This was despite accurate information being to hand.
“There was a high level of public interest and some controversy in the introduction of the Equity Adjustor Score at the time, meaning while there was value in discussing and generating debate about the issue, it was important for reporting on the subject to be accurate.
“The broadcaster chose to frame an important news story in a misleading and inflammatory manner. The framing of the issue created an environment where potentially harmful comments from the audience were foreseeable, and the broadcaster chose to read many such comments out on air.
“As a result, the broadcast had the potential to cause serious harm, both to Māori and Pacific peoples – minority groups which already experience significant disadvantages in our community – as well as the audience more generally.”
It ordered Newstalk ZB to broadcast an approved summary of its findings within one month of today’s decision. The summary must be broadcast at the end of Early Edition and just before the 6am news bulletin.
An NZME spokeswoman said today: “We accept the BSA’s decision. We don’t have any further comment.”
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.
