Pacific Media Centre focuses on reporting wars and dangers for journalists, aid workers

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July 14, 2010

DetEksi to the rescue for Surabaya's youth. Image: David Robie

By David Robie

The publisher of all three major newspapers in West Papua is barely known in this part of the Pacific. Yet the Jawa Pos group is the largest media chain in Indonesia with 140 titles and 20 television stations under the “grand pen” umbrella.

Some brand Dahlan Iskan as a sort of Indonesian Rupert Murdoch entrepreneurial character, a former journalist who took control of the Jawa Pos in the eastern Javanese city of Surabaya in 1982 and within five years had transformed the ailing daily – then selling a mere 6000 copies – into a thriving major newspaper with a circulation of more than 300,000.

Since then, the newspaper’s daily sales have rocketed to more than 500,000 – more than double the circulation of The New Zealand Herald, for example.

As well as an expanding multimedia empire – it is totally dominant in the country’s second largest city and also challenging Kompas in the capital of Jakarta – Iskan has also developed the Jawa Pos network, established an independent newsprint mill and power plants and erected skyscrapers in Surabaya, Jakarta, Makassar and other Indonesian cities.

The three dailies in West Papua owned by the Jawa Pos group are the Cenderawasih Post in Jayapura, Radar Sorong and Radar Timika, published in the town near the controversial Freeport McMoRan copper and gold mine.

Self-taught

Indonesian entrepreneurial media mogul Dahlan Iskan … self-taught publisher and journalist. Image: David Robie

A self-taught publisher and journalist – he never graduated from a journalism or communication studies school — Iskan kicked off his media career at the age of 24 in 1975. His first newspaper job was with a small local paper in Samarinda, East Kalimantan.

The following year, he joined Tempo news magazine and his career took off. Appointed as head of bureau by Tempo in Surabaya, East Java, he was later named by the magazine publisher PT Grafiti Pers as head of the Jawa Pos when Tempo took over the newspaper.

What is the secret of Iskan’s success? Many Western newspaper editors with plunging circulations would love to know this.

Café Pacific put this to the current Jawa Pos editor in a recent chat in the newspaper’s vast and impressive convergent newsroom. Leak Kustiya says Iskan has an astute knack of keeping his finger on the youth pulse in all the cities and towns where he publishes and broadcasts.

“The Jawa Pos group is constantly introducing fresh ideas and isn’t afraid to appoint young guns to key jobs. Most chief editors are under 40,” he says. Leak Kustiya is himself an example of the innovative approach to publishing. He is a former influential political cartoonist, possibly the first cartoonist to become an editor of a major daily in the Asia-Pacific region.

Jawa Pos was the first newspaper in Indonesia – perhaps globally – to launch a special interest section for youth every day. DetEksi was founded in 2000 and has grown enormously in the past decade.

Jawa Pos editor Leak Kustiya — *Jawa Pos* editor Leak Kustiya with Airlangga communications graduate Nur Dheny. Image: David Robie

The average age of the DetEksi editorial team is 20 + – and many of the reporters, photographers and designers are students. Jawa Pos also has a special daily section for “new families” – newly weds or couples with children aged under 10 (Nouvelle) and Life Begins at 50 caters for the growing older age group.

The paper’s slogan is “Selalu ada yang baru” – We always have something new.

Another key string to the Jawa Pos bow is being part of the community and the newspaper launched the Development Basketball League (DBL), Indonesia’s biggest student competition; built a stadium next door to the Surabaya newspaper office; and promoted environment and social campaigns.

Instead of looking to Australia and New Zealand for media inspiration with tired models, Pacific media should be looking to the achievements of its Asia-Pacific neighbours such as at the Jawa Pos. Inspiring indeed.

Jawa Pos website

No colonel of truth in Fiji

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May 1, 2010

For a year, journalists in Fiji have had to live with censors posted in the newsroom. Now a new media decree threatens huge fines and five years in prison for reports “against the national interest”. It is a dangerous precedent for the entire Pacific region, says David Robie. Cartoon by Peter Nicholson

By David Robie

When an Indo-Fijian academic and former trade unionist turned up on Fiji’s shores from Hawai’i in June 2007, invited to conduct a media industry “review’, few took him seriously. Whatever Dr Jim Anthony’s expertise in other fields, news media was certainly not one of his strengths.

Also, it had been decades since he had lived in Fiji and he seemed out of touch.

Two Australian publishers of The Fiji Times have been deported on trumped-up grounds since military commander Voreqe Bainimarama staged the country’s fourth coup in December 2006. Cartoon: Peter Nicholson/The Walkley Magazine

And then there was a niggling question about the legitimacy of his mission. He had been commissioned by then Fiji Human Rights Commission director Dr Shaista Shameem — no friend of Fiji news organisations — to study media freedom and the future of the industry in the Pacific country.

“Negative reactions of the media industry to human rights scrutiny in the public interest are not unique to Fiji,” Shameem said. “Other human rights commissions have faced similar obstacles — such as the South African Human Rights Commission.”

Dr Anthony immediately clashed with local news media companies and the self-regulating Fiji Media Council and they refused to cooperate with him. He persevered in an atmosphere of hostility and produced a 161-page report branded by his opponents as “racist” — for a sweeping claim that the industry was dominated by eight white expatriates — and “riddled with inaccuracy”.

Ironically titled Freedom and Independence of the Media in Fiji, the report was discredited and appeared to have sunk into oblivion. Yet now Dr Anthony has come back into focus. His recommendations were adopted as the basis of a draconian draft decree widely regarded as a sinister threat to the future of a free press in Fiji and across the South Pacific.

Fiji’s Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum claims the Media Industry Development Decree 2010 “takes the already established rules of professionalism, of media behaviour — or how they should behave — and gives it teeth”.

Singapore-inspired “teeth”
The “teeth” include rolling Dr Anthony’s primary proposals for a Singapore-inspired Media Development Authority and an “independent” Media Tribunal into this proposed law along with a radical curb on foreign ownership, wide powers of search and seizure and harsh penalties for media groups and journalists breaching the decree.

The authority and tribunal would be empowered to fine news organisations up to F$500,000 and to fine individual journalists and editors up to F$100,000 — or imprison them for up to five years — for violations of vaguely defined codes such as publishing or broadcasting content that is “against public order”, “against national interest” or “creates communal discord”.

Foreign ownership is retrospectively restricted to a 10 percent stake in any media organisation and directorships must only go to Fiji citizens resident in the country for five of the past seven years, and nine of the past 12 months.

Many critics see this as a vindictive section aimed at crippling The Fiji Times, the country’s largest and most influential newspaper, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited. The regime wants to put the newspaper, founded at Levuka in 1869, out of business, or at least effectively seize control and muzzle its independent stance — seen by the military-backed government as “anti-Fiji”.

Two Australian publishers of The Fiji Times have been deported on trumped-up grounds since military commander Voreqe Bainimarama staged the country’s fourth coup in December 2006. The High Court also imposed a hefty F$100,000 fine against The Fiji Times in early 2009 or publishing an online letter criticising the court for upholding the legality of the 2006 coup.

While international responses have focused on the serious impact for The Fiji Times group, the terms of the decree will also hit the country’s two other dailies — the struggling Fiji Daily Post, which has 51 percent Australian ownership, and the Fiji Sun, which has take a distinctly “pro-Fiji” (that is, pro-regime) stance but also has some directors.

John Hartigan, chief executive of The Fiji Times’ parent company News Limited, warned that the decree raised “important commercial issues” for the newspaper. “We have made representations to the Fiji authority to find a way to resolve these issues and are awaiting the outcome,” he said.

Year of ‘sulu-censors’
The draft decree follows 12 months of “sulu censors” — so-called because of the traditional Fijian kilt-like garment some officials wear — keeping tabs on newsrooms after the 1997 Constitution was abrogated by the regime in April 2009 and martial law declared.

Responses to the proposed law have been mixed within Fiji, but other media groups have strongly condemned it. Reporters Without Borders criticised the regime for tightening its grip on media, noting that Fiji had fallen 73 places in its annual freedom rankings. Fiji is now placed 152 out of 175 countries.

The Pacific Media Centre branded the draft decree as “draconian and punitive” and the Pacific Freedom Forum said it would “deal a death-blow to freedoms of speech”. The International Federation of Journalists criticised the regime for investing authorities with the power to define the meaning of “fair, balanced and quality” journalism.

Other Pacific journalists see the draft law as a dangerous precedent for the region, one that could be emulated by unscrupulous politicians in other countries as a strategy to control the media.

Already the Suva-based Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and its regional news cooperative Pacnews are facing a dilemma — to stay and risk being compromised, or to leave but have less lobbying influence on the regime. PINA vice-president John Woods, editor of the Cook Islands News, has called on the organisation to relocate out of Fiji, describing PINA as “dysfunctional” and “kowtowing” to the regime.

One Suva old hand, who had been a star reporter at the time of the first two coups in 1987, admitted there were some good aspects to the decee, such as encouraging training and enforcing the codes of ethics: “But it simply continues the censorship — although now in a camouflaged form.”

Dr David Robie is an associate professor at Auckland University of Technology, director of the Pacific Media Centre and editor of Pacific Scoop. He was formerly head of journalism at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. This article was published first in The Walkley Magazine, No 61, May-June, 2010.

David Robie: Fiji media fights on for free press

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April 16, 2010

Fiji military coup leader Voreqe Bainimarama . . . draconian draft media decree being imposed. Image: Pacific Scoop

By David Robie

Editors, broadcasters and publishers are struggling to defend the last vestige of a free press in Fiji in the face of a draconian media decree aimed at gagging two of the country’s three daily newspapers.

Other critics of the military-backed regime also face a tough future.

The draft Media Industry Development Decree 2010 features harsh penalties for journalists and news organisations which breach vaguely worded content regulations.

The decree warns media not to publish or broadcast material that is “against the public interest or order, is against national interest, offends good taste or decency, or creates communal discord”.

It also caps foreign ownership in media organisations at 10 percent.

Breaches under the decree can lead to a F$500,000 fine against news groups, or a fine of up to F$100,000 for individual journalists and/or being jailed for up to five years.

The government “consulted” news media and non-government organisations last week and Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said some “useful suggestions” were being considered. A further consultation is planned before the decree becomes law.

‘Focusing on principles’
“We are coping by focusing on our principles (since getting balance is out at the moment) of getting important information to the public – such as health, education, the economy and industries,” said Fiji Broadcasting Corporation news director Stanley Simpson.

“It is important also, despite not getting the other side/point of view, of letting people know what this government is doing, or aims to do, because — like it or not — they are in charge of the country’s future right now.”

Many critics see “vindictive sections” in the decree aimed at crippling The Fiji Times, the country’s oldest, largest and most influential newspaper and 100 percent owned by a Rupert Murdoch subsidiary, News Limited.

The regime wants to force the newspaper, founded at Levuka in 1869, to “change its mindset” — seen by the government as “anti-Fiji”.

About 170 people are employed by the newspaper and their livelihoods are at stake.

Two Australian publishers of The Fiji Times have been deported on trumped up grounds since military commander Voreqe Bainimarama staged the country’s fourth coup in December 2006. The High Court also imposed a hefty F$100,000 fine against The Fiji Times in early 2009 for publishing an online letter criticising the judges for upholding the legality of the 2006 coup.

While international responses have focused on the serious impact for The Fiji Times group, the terms of the decree will also hit the country’s two other dailies — the struggling Fiji Daily Post, which has 51 percent Australian ownership and is also a critic of the regime, and the Fiji Sun, which has taken a distinctly “pro-Fiji” (i.e. the regime) stance but also has some expatriate directors.

Year of ‘sulu censors’
The draft decree follows a year of “sulu censors” keeping tabs on newsrooms after the 1997 Constitution was abrogated by the regime at Easter in 2009, the judiciary sacked and emergency regulations imposed.

Responses to the proposed law have been mixed within Fiji, but international press freedom groups and other media have strongly condemned it. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders criticised the regime for tightening its grip on media, noting that Fiji had fallen 73 places in its annual freedom rankings.

Fiji is now placed 152nd out of 175 countries.

The International Press Institute said the Fiji media had struggled with “censorship and draconian media regulations”. Freedom House is about to release a new annual global media report in which Fiji takes a sharp tumble.

Most Fiji journalists are reluctant to speak out publicly with their jobs potentially on the line. But some have contributed postings to some of the 72 post-coup blogs about Fiji or shared insights with their Pacific colleagues on cyberspace networks.

Other Pacific journalists see the draft law as a dangerous precedent for the region, one that could be emulated by unscrupulous politicians in other countries as a strategy to control the media.

This article was first published by The New Zealand Herald Online. Dr David Robie is director of the AUT University Pacific Media Centre and a former head of journalism at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. His media blog is Café Pacific.

Pacific Media Centre – www.pmc.aut.ac.nz

Pacific Media Centre – a video profile

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November 27, 2009

Pacific Media Centre

Introducing some of the team and projects involved in the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Meet Josephine Latu from the Pacific Media Watch project, Violet Cho from Irrawaddy magazine, filmmaker Jim Marbrook, TVNZ Tagata Pasifika’s John Utanga and director Professor David Robie and others.

Short video produced by television students Sophie Johnson and John Pulu. 2009.

www.pmc.aut.ac.nz

Fiji’s ‘how to gag the media’ report

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March 1, 2008

Fiji's Interim Minister for Labour and Tourism Bernadette Rounds-Ganilau is interviewed by Dr James Anthony during the media "inquiry". Image: Fiji Human Rights Commission website

By David Robie in Café Pacific

It is ironic that Jim Anthony’s flawed report for the Fiji Human Rights Commission should be dubbed with an Orwellian title “Freedom and Independence of the Media in Fiji”. It is far more like a “How to gag and shackle the media” report. It’s the sort of report that gives even military-backed regimes bad reputations. A great pity. A constructive, well-researched and useful – but genuinely independent – examination of the Fiji media is long overdue. A 2007 review of the NZ Press Council is an example of the sort of thing that can be done. But the Anthony report doesn’t show any interest in “free media” models that work well – he has been seduced by authoritarian straitjackets. Perhaps he isn’t even aware of the M*A*S* work of the late Professor Claude-Jean Bertrand, the pioneer of global media accountability systems. A report as racist, provocative and ill-informed as this – with not even elementary referencing or sourcing – is rather embarrassing.

However, much of the media response in Fiji is also extraordinarily defensive and hypocritical, even bordering on hysterical. Why do they even bother to take such a report seriously? Surely the Anthony report deserved to quietly fade into oblivion – hardly worthy of any serious response. Yet some of the over-the-top reactions have ensured the Anthony report has gained far more international attention than it ever warranted. And certainly the spotlight is on foreign influence in media ownership. But the public deserves more than the defensive bleatings from self-interested media and political voices — where are the independent commentators and analysts for balance?

The Fiji Times is one of the few to publish the odd independent reaction, such as from the Ecumenical Centre for Research Education and Advocacy (ECREA), which criticised the media for being the ‘mouthpiece of the elite’ and also for poor journalism standards. We also wonder about the timing of the report’s release, given that it was made available hurriedly just three days after the arbitrary deportation of Fiji Times publisher Russell Hunter. Ousted Opposition leader Mick Beddoes described Dr Anthony as “paranoid”, saying some of his “accusations and conclusions are not worth the paper they’re printed on”. A former deputy PM in Mahendra Chaudhry’s People’s Coalition government deposed by George Speight in 2000, Dr Tupeni Baba, dismissed the report as biased.

Dr Anthony told Radio New Zealand International that media and government relations had broken down, and for years the media had poured venom into Fiji’s body politic:

“Playing crybaby over this report isn’t really going to wash. The media representatives, the media barons, were invited to participate in this report; they chose to boycott the inquiry. In my opinion, that was a fatally flawed decision.”

A quick summary of the report’s recommendations:

Expatriate journalists living in Fiji would be banned from working in the country under recommendations by the country’s human rights commission.
A media tribunal would be established independent of government control.
A Fiji media development authority would be established based on a system in Singapore to monitor media organisations and train journalists.
A 7 percent tax on media advertising and license fees would be imposed to fund the tribunal and authority.
New sedition laws would be introduced.

Too many whites in media, says academic – audio – Anthony’s defence of his report on Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat
Fiji should ban expat journos: report
Media report calls for training authority
A Fiji Times breakdown of the FHRC media report into handy pdf morsels – and a summary of media reactions
The Ecumenical Centre for Research Education and Advocacy (ECREA) response
Report author condemns failure of media to take part
Fiji should ban expat journos: report
Fiji media walks the fine line
Freedom and Independence of the Media in Fiji – The Anthony report (FHRC website)

David Robie on Pacific media freedom under siege

David Robie on The News Manual and The Pacific Journalist books for the region

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December 2, 2007

The News Manual . . . the three-volume Pacific journalism text produced under UNESCO's PACJOURN programme in Papua New Guinea for the region as a "straightforward, no-nonsense guide" in 1991. Image: The News Manual website

By David Ingram

Over the years, one of the Pacific region’s most respected journalism educators, Professor David Robie, has said some very kind things about The News Manual.

Our association goes back a long way. He was supportive of our work at the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) and later headed the journalism programme there. It might, therefore, be thought that his praise has been coloured by friendship.

However, anyone who knows Professor Robie knows him to be a long-time proponent of objective journalism, so we have always accepted his comments in that spirit of objectivity.

We do, however, take advantage of that friendship to give the following extracts from some of his references to The News Manual in books and conference papers over the years.

In 2001 he published The Pacific Journalist: A practical guide at the University of the South Pacific, in which he quoted from several sections of The News Manual.

In his acknowledgments he wrote: “I thank UPNG’s late journalism co-ordinator Peter Henshall and David Ingram … for the example set by The News Manual in 1991. This has served the region well. It inspired me to produce a ‘millennium generation’ book as a successor.”

More recently, in a 2007 paper presented at the 16th AMIC Annual Conference/1st World Journalism Education Congress titled “Foreign aid in Pacific media education: Panacea or Pandora’s box?“, he set the advent of The News Manual in the context of a period when journalism education in the Pacific flourished.

He wrote: “For three years, until 1991, UPNG became the hub for regional industry short-course media training as well as formal journalism education while the university hosted the US$1 million PACJOURN project.

“This was a productive and cooperative era for Pacific journalism education with a series of short courses being conducted in the region.

“The period climaxed with publication of a three-volume Pacific journalism textbook, The News Manual (Henshall & Ingram, 1992), which became the key training publication in the region for a decade.”

Republished with permission from The News Manual website.

Minister praises Pacific Media Centre launch and projects

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November 30, 2007

Associate Minister of Pacific Island Affairs Luamanvao Winnie Laban and onlookers at the Pacific Media Centre's launch at AUT Univerity in October 2007. Image: Inside AUT

AUT University

Auckland University if Technology’s Pacific Media Centre (PMC) was officially launched by the Associate Minister of Pacific Island Affairs Luamanuvao Winnie Laban last month [October 2007].

Media, staff and students watched as the minister was welcomed onto the centre by student Natasha Greer, who performed a traditional Tongan dance.

The PMC is one of a cluster of school research centres linked to AUT’s Creative Industries Research Institute (CIRI) and focuses on Māori, Pasifika and ethnnic media research.

READ MORE: Other PMC reports

The minister told the audience how PMC had the potential to significantly change the public’s awareness of Pacific issues.

“The media basically provides New Zealanders with much of what they know about the Pacific and its peoples. If the media coverage is once-over-lightly and clichéd, then New Zealanders’ understanding of these issues will be similarly flimsy,” she said.

“If, however, because of the good work that will doubtless come from the centre, the media approach to Pacific issues becomes deeper, more analytical, more attuned, then we will have a more imformed, more aware, and healthier understanding developing in wider New Zealand and the Pacific.”

Associate Professor David Robie, who is the PMC head, announced funding for projects., covering issues mostly sidelined bu mainstream media.

Social documentary photographer John Miller (Ngāpuhi) was awarded a four-month “journalist-in-residence” research fellowship grant to study the controversial Ngatihine forestry block development in Northland, New Zealand, in the 1970s.

Senior television lecturer Jim Marbrook in AUT’s School of Communication Studies was awarded a research grant to to help with the development of a documentary about New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanaks and their political and industrial rights.

First published in Inside AUT, November 2007.
Miller, J. (2011). Seeing the wood for the trees: Media coverage of the Ngatihine Forestry Block legal dispute 1976-8. Pacific Journalism Review : Te Koakoa, 17(1), 175-193.
https://doi.org/10.24135/pjr.v17i1.378

Reporting from the Pacific front line

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June 30, 2007

The newly established Pacific Media Centre at AUT University aims to better equip journalists for the challenges of reporting on the region. Cartoon: Bruce Slane/AUT Insight

By Andrea Malcolm

Journalists covering the South Pacific face new challenges, as tensions heighten, environmental issues take precedence and economic activity increases.

“A decade-long civil war on Bougainville, four coups in Fiji, ethnic conflict in Solomon Islands, factional feuding in Vanuatu and political assassinations in New Caledonia and Samoa are all part of the volatile mix,” says AUT University associate professor of communication studies Dr David Robie.

The newly established Pacific Media Centre at AUT University aims to better equip journalists for the challenges of reporting on the region.

PMC will also scrutinise how the news media is fulfilling this watchdog brief as well as provide resources for media in the region.

A new postgraduate paper in Asia-Pacific Journalism looks at the political economy of the media in the region and in selected countries such as Fiji, Indonesia an Tonga.

Guest lecturers have included Middle East reporter Jon Stephenson, Daniel Eaton of The Press, Scoop editor Selwyn Manning, TVNZ’s Barbara Dreaver and TV3’s Ingrid Leary.

The PMC is part of the new Creative Industries Research Institute (CIRI). It has embarked on a project designed to create a D-Space digital repository for a 10-year archive of media freedom reports and hopes to encourage research with scholarship assistance for doctoral and masters candidates and a journalist-in-residence.

Nine students are enrolled in the postgraduate Asia-Pacific Journalism course — four from New Zealand and five from Asia-Pacific.

This article was first published in the winter 2007 edition of AUT Insight.
More information at PMC: https://pmc.aut.ac.nz/

Bruce Slane cartoon — The newly established Pacific Media Centre at AUT University aims to better equip journalists for the challenges of reporting on the region. Cartoon: Bruce Slane/AUT Insight

Wansolwara: Ten years on – 1996-2006

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August 20, 2006