Like Minds Media Savvy - Pacific media - Tagata pasifika

My name is Stephen Stehlin, I'm the producer of Tagata Pasifika. The show's 23 years old, it’s been on air, constantly, 52 weeks of the year since 1998. I have been producer since the early '90s. Tagata Pasifika is a news and current affairs-driven programme of cultural identity. We try to reflect what's going on in the community, and the community is very complex. There are seven major groups. And the notion of Pasifika is a late twentieth century one. There's no more Pasifika than you're European. And there's differences, too, between the New Zealand born Pacific people; to throw them into Samoa, they'd be completely lost – they've never seen a palm tree in their lives, and they've never lived a traditional lifestyle, and certainly wouldn't fit into a village lifestyle. The Pacific community is very, very young – 70% are under the age of 30, and 50% are under the age of 20 – so we have our challenges. Don't have an opening. We get invited to the opening of an envelope. It's great, but it's not great television. What is great television is a person's personal story. So you have an initiative around a particular part of mental health, then try and illustrate that, try and illustrate the change that you want to see. You know your communities best. Find the best example of what you want to achieve from the people that you've already helped. If you can't see this person and shed a tear with them, or laugh with them, I don't think you've got much of a story. [If you're] finding the right talent, if they've gone through a journey, and are still going through a journey, but have got sufficient trust in you to tell their story, don't expect to get it first time. You have to spend a long time with the people to open up like that. I guess if you're trying to twist people's arms, it's what difference can you make; and if you tell your story it will make a difference, it will affect the lives of many other people. We've always had difficulty around getting people to talk about their mental illness. We had a spate of young women abandoning their babies under churches and things, and this was extremely difficult for us to broach, because this is a cultural and a mental health issue. But we could never get the talent to tell us why, so we'd get a bunch of experts telling us what we should think. And even then, it was difficult for us to find Pacific experts, so we would have palagi experts telling us what it was. So what's right for the Pacific community? To see themselves, and to have a real person that has gone through that journey. For the Pacific community it's the radio, and we have the luxury of two big networks: 531PI, for the older population, so it's language specific at times, and we have Niu FM which has got a younger demographic. So these are very strong and cheap ways of getting things out. You can spend a lot of money making pamphlets and all the rest of it, but why? I'm not saying don't do it, I'm just saying that if it's going to cost you a lot of money you want effectiveness, and then English might be a better bet. The Niueans and the Cook Islanders are the most fragile in my opinion, because they've had such a long association with New Zealand and there's cultural loss and language loss going on. Samoans are very strong – the language retention is great. Tongan community, for sure, you'll get the older people. Like all programmes you plan ahead, and if you're part of that community and you want something on, give that programme plenty of notice. If people think that we're sitting around the office waiting for a story to come in, and we've got a crew standing by, we're actually organised weeks ahead. If you're organising something, organise it well in advance and include us in that. You know, we mightn't be able to give you a yes or a no immediately, but we'll know that it's happening. And that happens with news as well. It's just a phone call is enough, an email, a fax, we'll take any way; often it's just people that we meet in the community, or just roll on up – it's not unknown for people to arrive here and we're delighted to see people. When we did the Like Minds, Like Mine special and there were two programmes, there were several aims and objectives that we worked with, the Ministry of Health. In Pacific communities mental illness is acknowledged, but I think it's a bit like the John Kirwan story, you know, when you see ordinary people that you would never think have had a mental illness actually they have, and do, and everybody will encounter it sometime or another in their lives, but there's a way through it and it's not an object of derision.