Opinion - Pharmac has today been “outed” for using a media-avoiding strategy, something many journalists have long suspected.
An investigation by RNZ’s Guyon Espiner revealed the Government’s drug-buying agency operates with media bias on the advice of a PR agency.
And while it's quick to take advice on which journalists are considered “impartial”, “friendly” or “hostile”, Pharmac doesn’t seem to be looking in the mirror.
Documents obtained under the Official Information Act revealed advisers described journalists as “friendly” or “hostile”. As a journalist who has covered many Pharmac-related stories, I’d use those same two words to describe the different ways the agency treats media requests.
I’ve seen Pharmac treat me well when it wants to, but faced with tough questions - or if you’ve given a platform to those speaking out against it - the mood changes.
So, it was interesting to read that an Official Information Act request had uncovered what Pharmac’s senior communications adviser, Jane Wright, thought of me.
"I do know that Indira is a massive Fiona Tolich fan so likely already prejudiced," she writes in reference to SMA advocate Fiona Tolich.
I can only assume she was writing about me because of an interaction I’d had with her when working on TVNZ’s Breakfast.
For the past three years, it was consistently difficult to get Pharmac’s CEO Sarah Fitt to front on the show, despite our multiple requests.
So, why did Pharmac think I was a “fan” of Tolich?
The reality is Tolich is one of a small group of advocates who has consistently and vocally challenged the drug-buying agency on its lack of transparency when it comes to making decisions around funding drugs.
Many viewers will be familiar with Tolich because she has shown up to front on almost every media platform to advocate for people who are suffering with diseases.
She has long advocated for Spinraza, a treatment for the deadly muscle wasting disease SMA, to be funded for children in New Zealand (18 and under).
She had been on Breakfast with me, yes. Did that make me a “fan” or “prejudiced”?
Maybe it’s an interaction that happened two months before Pharmac’s communications person, Jane Wright, described me like that. Wright emailed wanting to discuss an announcement Pharmac would be making the following morning.
Pharmac was going to reveal its moves towards public consultation for funding Spinraza for children. And, unusually, Pharmac was offering CEO Sarah Fitt for an interview on Breakfast.
In a phone call on the September 27, 2022, I told Wright how “wonderful” the news would be for so many families who had children with SMA. That was just a fact. It would be – it meant everything for those families. We also agreed that it was great news for Fiona Tolich who had done incredible work advocating for Spinraza for years.
In fact, Pharmac had told Tolich before they announced it, so she would be ready to comment to media when the news was released.
Two months later, Wright would state in an email that I was a “massive Fiona Tolich fan, so likely already prejudiced”.
Between that September phone call with Wright and November of that same year, Breakfast was offered a “coffee” meeting with Fitt to discuss “how we can share information on Pharmac processes and decisions ahead of time”.
In November 2022 another Pharmac communications adviser emailed two producers and me a question: “I was wondering if there was someone who it is best to go to if we have any exclusives we’d like to work with your team on?”
What makes the comment that I’m a Tolich “fan” more strange to me is that I have interviewed Tolich only once in the past three years, though I also interviewed her at RNZ in 2019.
I remember that Pharmac declined multiple requests for interviews about stories in 2019 and instead repeatedly insisted on providing a statement.
I follow Tolich on social media, like many other journalists, to keep up with her advocacy work. It’s because our work does not stop immediately after an interview has gone off air. Our interests in peoples’ campaigns and stories continue.
But I have also kept tabs on Pharmac and maintained an interest in their work and campaigns. Does that make me a Pharmac “fan”?
Pharmac may figure some journalists are prejudiced and others friendly, but actually the media would provide more balanced coverage if Pharmac would front for interviews more often.
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