Official: Media plays vital role in reassuring population

By REBECCA KUKU
OPEN media briefings play an important role in reassuring the population, says a longtime Papua New Guinea resident and Institute of National Affairs executive director Paul Barker.
Barker said an outbreak of a deadly virus could not be controlled by health workers and police alone and the critical need was to get the message out to the public in a clear manner.
He made this comment after the National Operating Command and Control (NOCC) centre stopped its daily briefing and started an NBC Q&A programme for which they were now paying for airtime to have it telecasted by the country’s other two television companies.
Barker said the NOCC may be doing this to better control the message and avoid undisciplined distribution of information from multiple unauthorised sources.
“But that could also be done by managing the media sessions and have all the media invited (both electronic and print) and able to ask pertinent questions,” he said.
“The experience from Liberia, when they experienced the deadly Ebola virus, as stated by their former president Ellen Stirleaf, was that it couldn’t be controlled by use of health workers with police alone. The critical need was to get the message out to the public in a clear manner so that they (the people) took the lead in owning and tackling the problem, together with health professionals and others.
“Now, the radio is a very important medium in PNG, as supposedly it has the greatest reach right out into rural areas.
“It’s concerning that we have some feedback that, apart from those provincial stations and towers that are down, many rural communities have no radios.”