Siouxsie media attack

Last week some of our media engaged in an attack on Dr Siouxsie Wiles. Siouxsie, with her iconic pink hair, has been a leading voice globally, but certainly here in NZ/Aotearoa for a sensible, science and evidence-based approach to handling the Covid pandemic. (And, of course, Siouxsie will be familiar to many NZ Skeptics, having MC'd and spoken at our conferences in the past.)

During the pandemic, Siouxsie has endured constant attack from those opposed to our country's exemplary response (at least early on) to the pandemic. The threats have been serious, up to and including death threats. It seems that some people are threatened by powerful female voices, particularly if they don't conform to their strict conceptions of what women should look like and how they should present.

Criticism came from Jason Walls, who is the Deputy Political Editor at NewstalkZB. He criticised public funding, supposedly to the tune of $20,000, given to make a documentary titled Siouxsie and the virus.

The documentary was produced by Loading Docs, which describes itself as “A launchpad for New Zealand documentary shorts”. Filmmakers apply to get some funding to make short documentaries. Before the pandemic started, a filmmaker, Gwen Isaac, applied and received funding to make a documentary in Japan about a kiwi Sumo wrestler. When the pandemic hit, they had to pivot - remaining in NZ and finding another topic to make a documentary on. Siouxsie agreed to be followed around during that critical period in the initial couple of weeks in March 2020, when Covid was beginning to circulate, and leading up to the first level 4 lockdown.

As Siouxsie said, she agreed to be in the documentary, “not because I want to be in a doco but because a good friend of mine is a historian, and tells me it's important we document what's happening.”

The NZ Herald and NZME articles and social media posts are incredibly harmful, and undermining. In Siouxsie's own words:

“I've just found out Newstalk ZB & the NZ Herald are running pieces that basically attack me. The harm they will cause is immense. They undermine people's trust in my advice on how to protect our lives & livelihoods from COVID & further embolden those who harass & threaten me.”

The short documentary is great (and it's short - just under 9 minutes). It was great to get a peek into Siouxsie and her family's life and how her public appearances have had an impact. You can watch it on the Loading Docs site, or directly on YouTube (and give it a “like”).

Gwen has continued to follow Siouxsie, and is proposing making a full-length movie - Siouxsie the Movie. https://siouxsiethemovie.co.nz/.

The public funding of $20,000 was even in dispute. Some of that total figure was crowd-funded. Nevertheless, the implication was that we don't have money to “waste” when we're in the middle of a public health crisis. This type of criticism is, I think, similar to the fallacy of relative privation, where the implication is that we shouldn't be spending money on things that aren't “the most important thing”. (Why spend money on space research when there are children hungry and starving in the third world?)

It would appear that the criticism of the criticism hit home, with NZ Herald and NZME taking the items down, now showing “oops, not found” 404 pages instead.

I hope that, in the spirit of the Streisand Effect, the documentary will now get a wider airing that it would have previously had without the publicity.

One final point: the documentary has been available for viewing since about September 2020, and NZ Herald actually promoted it at the time. I wonder what caused the change of heart?

If you'd like to learn more about this story, the Radio New Zealand Mediawatch podcast had some good coverage of it.