Juno News - The government's confusing COVID-19 messaging

00:00:00.000 let's talk about communications messaging and politics now when you're trying to communicate

00:00:12.560 a message there are a number of tips and rules that any communications professional will tell

00:00:17.360 you there are things like simplicity you can use repetition it's about connecting to your audience

00:00:22.000 in the way that they understand there's really a playbook and any communications professional

00:00:26.080 worth their salt is going to tell you about the same type of things and be able to craft you a

00:00:30.400 really really good message now if you're like me and you've been paying attention to some of the

00:00:34.880 messages coming out of the government with regards to the covert restrictions you may have noticed a

00:00:39.280 number of problems with the sort of inconsistency and the failure to really connect with messaging

00:00:44.880 that is causing a lot of problems for individuals to try and really understand what are the rules and

00:00:50.480 that is a serious issue when you're trying to get the number of cases down now my friend andrew

00:00:56.800 lawton covered this on his show and i think the real crux of it is somewhere around here where

00:01:02.400 the government said you shouldn't really travel within your province in ontario and recently they

00:01:07.760 canceled what is called social circles and that's where you can have 10 people that you can connect

00:01:11.920 with that are outside your family so you pick those 10 people and you're only supposed to see those people

00:01:17.120 but on the other hand the mall is still open so you might say okay well i'm not really supposed to

00:01:22.000 travel within the province and i can't see you at my house but i'll just see you at the mall for coffee

00:01:29.040 so a number of these things don't really make sense and that makes it very very difficult for ontarians

00:01:34.480 and people across the country who are getting this advice from dr tam or from the other provincial

00:01:39.440 medical officers of health makes it very very difficult for them to not only understand what is going on

00:01:44.000 but to eventually trust what what is going on now you have many many competing voices on this and for

00:01:49.680 example again in ontario because i'm in ontario the liberal leader wants to shut down bars restaurants

00:01:56.960 and gyms but if you think about this purely from a messaging and communications perspective it actually

00:02:03.520 does make some sense on a certain level because he's saying and the claim can be made well the numbers

00:02:09.760 of cases are much much higher than in the beginning then in the beginning of the pandemic we are now

00:02:15.120 at a much much higher rate even though the death rate is much lower but that's a total

00:02:19.360 separate thing and you're not really supposed to talk about that apparently but this is a serious

00:02:24.640 point that well if we if we closed everything before we were in a total lockdown or near total

00:02:29.280 lockdown before when the cases are much higher why are we still leaving bars and restaurants and gyms

00:02:33.920 open now and it's a real serious point if the counter to that though is that well now we know

00:02:39.760 more about covid we uh you know we have social distancing in practice we have masks we have all

00:02:45.040 these things that's going to be the counterbalance that messaging needs to come out where is the messaging

00:02:50.880 from this nobody knows you combine that with the type of messaging that is coming out and then you have

00:02:57.360 for example here there's not going to be body checking in the ohl and so it's just a mixed bag of

00:03:03.520 messaging and it's a very very difficult job i understand because there's many many moving

00:03:08.480 parts and i'm really not trying to criticize in particular the ford government or you know any

00:03:13.040 any particular person there because again it's a very very large thing but the messaging needs to

00:03:18.400 be consistent you're you're you're making people confused by your lack of consistency and your lack of

00:03:25.280 clarity and lack of simplicity but what is it about politics that perhaps is driving this now i have

00:03:31.120 experience working in the communications field but also in a political field and so i'm able to kind

00:03:34.960 of switch between both hats in a political sense when you put out messaging you have because of the

00:03:41.920 way our government is set up with opposition parties you have a built-in critic and many times

00:03:47.920 opposition parties really just oppose they don't necessarily provide any you know constructive

00:03:52.800 criticism they just do opposing and as people get more polarized it looks like they you know they're

00:03:58.320 just out there to oppose you no matter what you do even if you did the exact same that the exact

00:04:02.720 same thing that they had wanted you to do they would come up with some criticism the next day of

00:04:06.240 you know you didn't do it good enough you didn't do it fast enough you didn't do it whatever enough

00:04:09.520 so you have sort of a built-in critic but that affects the messaging and i saw this firsthand when

00:04:15.520 i was in the ontario legislature and it was the first day that the uh the legislature was sitting again

00:04:21.520 and the ford government got pretty hammered by questions from the opposition about their record on

00:04:27.280 school safety during covet now you might say okay well that's you know that's what they're gonna

00:04:31.440 do they're just gonna pick at whatever the government had an issue with or whatever in

00:04:34.960 general is an issue and then blame it on the government you might say that that is true 0.99

00:04:38.640 but if you have on one hand the opposition painting a portrait of you as weak or irresponsive

00:04:44.160 to the pandemic or not concerned with safety you're not gonna want to let that message just stand out

00:04:49.760 there so you're gonna have to do something to either directly directly oppose that or counterbalance it

00:04:55.920 and so this on one hand pushes ford to be stronger on certain things with covet than he may otherwise

00:05:03.680 want to be or may otherwise think that the evidence is suggesting so again you have opposition pushing

00:05:10.320 a party in one particular direction the government doesn't want to go in that direction but they

00:05:14.960 cannot show weakness or they cannot show inactivity on and the criticism that they're getting so they

00:05:20.240 have to act in maybe another realm and this is one of the reasons why political messaging is often

00:05:26.960 such a hodgepodge because that consistency that clarity and that simplicity that you're really

00:05:32.720 looking for in messaging it gets lost in the politics because as we all have to remember politics

00:05:38.720 is ultimately about getting re-elected you can't do any of the things that you want to do any of the

00:05:43.440 things that you believe in or you think should be done if you're not in office to be able to do them

00:05:47.760 and so the lens which you're constantly looking at the world through is a lens where how is this going

00:05:53.600 to be taken by the public now i think a lot of politicians really need to focus on the overall

00:05:59.520 messaging because when you are successful when you're a winner people like that and they will they will

00:06:04.160 want to listen to you better um i think the governments need to stand up more if they are making

00:06:09.360 evidence-based decisions they should really stand up and say that instead of trying to be uh sort of you

00:06:13.440 know too smart by half they're they're kind of you know trying to think of ways to outfox the

00:06:17.200 opposition but being a straight shooter is generally a pretty good strategy in in most scenarios and i

00:06:23.040 really think government needs to be consistent especially with the covid messaging because

00:06:27.040 ultimately this is a public safety public health issue so i hope you enjoyed this video and i hope

00:06:32.160 that next time you see some messaging coming coming out of the government you'll maybe take a deeper look

00:06:36.800 and see where is the opposition on this what influences may have caused the message to be crafted in

00:06:41.280 such a way and uh definitely let me know what kind of messages you do see like that in the comments

00:06:45.840 because i'm always excited to hear what you guys think so thanks again for watching again i'm sam

00:06:49.680 ashkenazi and have yourselves a great day

Juno News - October 10, 2020

The government's confusing COVID-19 messaging

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript