The relationship between crisis and media

Christchurch's New Normal - Radio Documentary

The youth of Christchurch have been through a lot, there is no doubt in anyone's mind about that. For nearly 10 years, Christchurch has suffered through earthquakes, fires and most recently a terrorist attack. Caught right in the middle, are the adolescents. The young people. Their stories exist, but they aren’t heard nearly as much as they need to be. In reality, these are the stories that need to be told, as they are a refreshing take on the stories the media has regurgitated over the last decade. We have talked to four young people from Christchurch who have spent what is nearly a decade of their lives, their formative years, growing up, experiencing and adapting to these tragedies.

September 4th 2010 was the start of it all, when at 4:35am a magnitude 7.1 earthquake hit the sleeping city, this was the first experience of a large scale disaster for many of Christchurch’s youth. As if it wasn’t hard enough to comprehend that terrifying disaster, only months later the city was hit by yet another large scale earthquake on February 22nd, 2011 at 12:51pm. Not only were these disasters immediately physically and mentally challenging for the youth of Christchurch, these events continued to challenge the youth as they carried the heavy weight of the damage with them while living in a broken city. The stories which young people from Christchurch have are ones that carry a lot of emotion, intense descriptions and the unique ability to pinpoint when their innocence was shattered.

This documentary was created to share the stories and views of Christchurch youth who haven’t had the opportunity to voice what it was like for them living through two earthquakes followed by witnessing a damaging blaze on the Port Hills and a terrorist attack against two of the Muslim community’s Mosques. Topics discussed include the amount and type of media coverage the people of Christchurch encountered after these events, the concept of disaster fatigue, as well as what people remember about a pre earthquake Christchurch, and how it compares now.

Christchurch's New Normal

Otautahi's Post-Quake Homeless Crisis

What impact did the 2010/2011 earthquakes in Christchurch have on the homeless of this city? This was one of the many questions we put to Annie Smith, of Christchurch Methodist Mission. Smith is the practice lead social worker for the organisation and specifically works with a team that helps provide public housing for lower income members of the Christchurch community.

The earthquakes of September 2010 and February 2011 created a situation where a lot of inner city, low income rental properties were badly damaged, and landlords of undamaged properties doubled and even tripled the rents they were charging, which lead to Christchurch having one of the highest rates of homelessness in New Zealand.

Prior to the earthquakes, there were certain groups of people that were possibly always going to be homeless. However, according to Smith “the earthquakes generated a whole new group of homeless who had lost their houses, lost their jobs, couldn’t pay their rent”.

Smith believes the general public have misconceptions around the homeless, some of which could be attributed to how media portrays that portion of society. However, she also thinks media “often provides what the majority of people want to hear…they don’t want to know the truth…they don’t want to know they’re living in a society where people are homeless”.

Smith said that media has a role to play in breaking down those misconceptions of what causes homelessness, and what type of person is homeless, as it is so much more that the person you see on the street begging for money. It’s the family that are sleeping on their friend's couch with three or four children or the ones that are in the car freedom camping at the beach, because they've got nowhere to go. “Those people, they are honestly just you or I that have fallen into some situations in life that have been really challenging”, said Smith.

The recent $54 million dollar investment by the government into initiatives to assist with housing issues has been welcomed by Smith, especially the Housing First programme. This initiative is particularly designed for people who have been homeless for a long period of time, quite often due to mental health, drug or alcohol issues. The reason these people are often still homeless is because they're being judged for the lifestyle that they're living.

Housing First will give these people the house regardless as research shows that unless you have a house that is warm, dry, safe and affordable you can't put time or energy into healing yourself or making yourself better.

Support organisations like Christchurch Methodist Mission can approach landlords and say they want to rent their property, paying market rent from the funds in the ‘Housing First’ package, and that the property will be returned in the condition the landlord needs it in. Part of the money from this initiative goes into supplying a key worker who makes sure people have got support wrapped around them that will help them stay in the house.

As Smith said, it’s a human rights expectation that housing is provided to people regardless of what their situation is.

Otautahi's Post-Quake Homeless Crisis - Local Feature

Local Feature

Alternatively Unpacked Radio Feature

Our Radio Feature, Alternatively Unpacked, is a three part series covering historical events that happened in the 1980’s.

In each episode we cover a different event - The Springbok Tour of 1981, The Rainbow Warrior Bombing of 1985 and The Southland Floods of 1984.

We give a general rundown of the event and have a look at the media coverage at the time, as well as interviewing people of the era who remember the events.

This series has taken a lot of inspiration from Buzzfeed's popular series “Buzzfeed Unsolved” and it was used as our main inspiration for the show.

We decided to use events from the 80’s as that is the target demographic of the station it will be broadcast on -The Garage 96.1 so it’s important we try and cater to the target psychographic which is men between the age of 44- 55.

Rainbow Warrior

Southland Floods

Springbok Tour

A Decade in Disaster

In this three part documentary web-series we tackle the question of what it is like to be part of the media environment before, during and after a significant crisis. With our theme being ‘Media and Crisis’ we wanted to get an understanding of what media people are up against and the difficulties they face given the ripple effects of each crisis. We have always seen television media from the perspective of the viewer, however, in this web-series we dive behind the camera to see the work of those involved in today’s media making process, especially in relation to dealing with a crisis. Our target audience is those who watch the 6pm news on a nightly basis and those that are interested in how a news story is created to inform the audience that watch it.

Lisa Davies, Steve Bloxham and Jordan Oppert are the three talents that we interviewed. In each of the episodes we sat down with them and discussed their experiences as journalists in regards to the crisis they had covered. Episode one follows Lisa and her experiences having covered the Pike River Mine tragedy as a journalist for TVNZ’s One News. From dealing with grieving people to building relationships with those she interviewed, episode one gives you a really raw and authentic depiction of how hard it is to be a journalist sometimes and what it’s really like to have to go through a crisis like that, as a media representative.

Episode two follows Steve and his experiences during the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes as Bureau Chief at TVNZ. Now retired, Steve was in charge of the distribution of news resources and sending reporters into the field, and in episode two we begin to understand the real value of the work that goes into making sure people and the public are informed of what is going on.

Our third and final episode looks into how Jordan, a young journalist at TVNZ’s One News, dealt with reporting on the March 15th Mosque attacks. We are shown the true passion one must have to be able to take on whatever is thrown at them in the media environment, crisis in particular.Through this three part documentary web-series we hope to show our target audience what it is truly like to be on the other side of the television screen. This is the media, a decade in disaster!