Ethnic Media asserts crucial role in combatting COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy
Ethnic Media asserts crucial role in combatting COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy
By Mila Astorga-Garcia
The Philippine Reporter
The National Ethnic Press Council of Canada (NEPMCC) has produced a major report titled, “Combatting Vaccine Hesitancy,” which serves as its 2021-2022 Submission to the Federal Budget.
This report boldly asserts that combatting vaccine hesitancy “is not only a priority of the government of Canada – it is a priority for NEPMCC.”
The reason for this is that the alarming number of people in the country who are hesitant to be vaccinated are members of ethnic communities, which is a concerning fact considering that they comprise majority of the front liners in the fight against COVID 19.
Thus, the report maintains, it becomes imperative that for vaccine hesitancy and misinformation to be countered in Canada, the role of the ethnic press is crucial, since it is the most capable of bringing information that is linguistically and culturally appropriate to the several ethnic communities in the country.
“We know that COVID-19 is affecting a disproportionate amount of racialized people: after all, when we look at the profiles of essential workers, we see heavily racialized workforces working in long term care homes, Amazon shipment centrres, manufacturing facilities, and every other place in between,’ the report says.
The report cites an alarming study released by Ekos Research on December 2, 2020 confirming that vaccine hesitancy is higher among visible minority Canadians — a challenge as they are considered to be among the high-risk groups.
That there is a “clear and present danger” in the current situation, asserts the submission, citing the following reports of vaccine hesitancy in visible minority groups:
• In a January 4, 2021 Queens Park Briefing addressed cited vaccine refusal rates for PSW’s, highly racialized workers where “Miranda Ferrer, head of the Ontario Personal Support Workers says that more than half of her members don’t want to be vaccinated, at least right now.” She adds, “they feel like guinea pigs, a lot of them,” she said.
• “The Service Employees International Union has also seen high levels of vaccine hesitancy among its 22,000 long-term care workers,” even as PSW’s know that they are high risk yet they would rather not get vaccinated, the same source cites.
• In a Toronto Star story, Dr. Upton Allen of Sick Kids Hospital said that “only 30-35% of African Americans would get the vaccine and that Black Canadians were ‘pretty close’…that’s really quite a concern.”
There has been a call from medical associations for the need for “culturally competent” campaigns to reach visible minorities, – a crucial role ethnic media is best positioned to take on.
Even in their attempts to fulfill their role of bringing truthful information to these high risk groups, ethnic media has been hampered in its ability to do so. The pandemic has taken a toll on their financial resources, that they have been forced to implement drastic cost cutting measures including layoffs, greatly reduced circulation and programming, and even closures.
The report notes that current estimates say that 80% of journalists working for ethnic media have been laid off.
To enable ethnic media to perform its crucial role of reaching high risk populations to fight vaccine hesitance due to misinformation from various sources, the NEPMCC has proposed a number of recommendations to the federal government.
“To fight a fire, we need firefighters,” the submission states, meaning assistance is needed to put reporters back to work by enabling media to re-hire them by government supporting their advertising base and increasing its access to official news sources.
Advertising has not returned to ethnic publications – and a wide range of outlets have received little to no pubic health announcements from the Government of Canada,” says the submission.
The organization is formally calling all levels of government to make their public health officials available to the ethnic press, as it is mostly mainstream media allowed to have access to them. It is also asking government to allow ethnic media access to government press conferences and briefings, and even to hold press meetings with just the ethnic press in attendance, so more information can be gathered and disseminated relevant to ethnic populations.
The organization also recommended that local journalism initiatives programs that provide opportunities for ethnic journalists to cover issues and provide information in hard to reach areas should continue with more support.
Other recommendations include support for essential translation services, circulation stabilization, and digital modernization – all towards increasing the capability of the ethnic media to play their crucial role at this time of the pandemic in providing information to combat vaccine hesitancy in particular, and COVID-19 in general.
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