At the heart of a global crisis over news media credibility and trust is Britain’s so-called Hackgate scandal involving the widespread allegations of phone-hacking and corruption against the now defunct Rupert Murdoch tabloid newspaper News Of The World.
Major inquiries on media ethics, professionalism and accountability have been examining the state of the press in New Zealand, Britain and Australia. The Murdoch media empire has stretched into the South Pacific with the sale of one major title being forced by political pressure.
Professor David Robie’s media professorial speech monograph cover, 2012.
The role of news media in global South nations and the declining credibility of some sectors of the developed world’s Fourth Estate also pose challenges for the future of democracy.
Truth, censorship, ethics and corporate integrity are increasingly critical media issues in the digital age for a region faced with coups, conflicts and human rights violations, such as in Fiji and West Papua.
In this monograph, Professor David Robie reflects on the challenges in the context of the political economy of the media and journalism education in the Asia-Pacific region. He also engages with emerging disciplines such as deliberative journalism, peace journalism, human rights journalism, and revisits notions of critical development journalism and citizen journalism.
This monograph was extracted from Professor David Robie’s Inaugural Professorial Address on 16 October 2012. Pacific Journalism Monographs No 2.
Despite bans on foreign journalists in West Papua, there is “no excuse” for journalists to turn their backs on the Melanesian people, says the first professor in journalism studies in New Zealand and the Pacific.
Restoring public trust, engaging in critical journalism, and opening the media’s eyes to common blind spots were all on the agenda for the inaugural address of Professor David Robie.
Speaking on Coups, conflicts and human rights, Professor Robie spoke to a crowded conference room of almost 200 people at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) tonight after receiving his professorship last year.
Beginning with the current so-called Hackgate media crisis and visiting plenty of other “hot spots” throughout the presentation, Professor Robie charted the course of his life’s journey through New Zealand, Africa, Europe and back to Oceania.
Professor David Robie presents his inaugural professorial address at AUT University tonight. Image: Alex Perrottet/PMW
He warned that the current media crisis seemed to be facing a growing “soft” reporting of the Leveson Inquiry in Britain — with a report due next month — and in the wake of the Finkelstein and Convergence Reviews in Australia.
“Already there are concerns by critics that the media has started soft-peddling the issue,” he said.
He said the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review examined the issue of rebuilding public trust in the media.
The only academic Pacific media journal is soon to enter its 19th year of publication and is one of the feathers in Professor Robie’s cap. He is founding editor.
Professor David Robie speaks to Radio New Zealand Pacific reporter Leilani Momoisea. Image: Alex Perrottet/PMC
Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Rob Allen referred to the large and diverse audience in the AUT University conference rooms and observed that it “says lots about David’s life and work”.
Professor Robie said he had started with the Dominion, the New Zealand Herald, and the Melbourne Herald before working as chief subeditor then editor of Sunday Observer in Melbourne, covering politically delicate stories such as the My Lai massacre in Vietnam during the controversial war that divided the Australian public.
He talked about a collection of journalists who had influenced him — and at this paper it was the controversial Wilfred Burchett who was prevented from reentering his own country after reporting the Korean and Vietnam wars from the “other side”.
Dr Robie’s newspaper hired a plane and flew him from Noumea to Brisbane so he could regain an Australian passport.
Africa and beyond
Professor Robie then catalogued how he has reported contentious issues around the globe, from working at the Rand Daily Mail reporting on apartheid issues, to covering coups and independence movements in the Pacific.
He went on a 13,000-kilometre trip from Cape Town to Cairo to report in a freelance capacity for independent news services such as Gemini.
“It ended up being a year-long 20,000 km journey in two stages from Cape Town to Paris,” he said.
He even reported on issues over the emerging Trans-African highway from Mombasa to Lagos: “The big problem was most of this road didn’t actually exist” and his “road-to-nowhere” story featured as a cover story for African Development magazine.
His return to New Zealand via the Pacific followed working for Agence France-Presse in Paris and covering the independence issues of the Kanak people in New Caledonia and French nuclear testing in the Pacific.
He has tracked the same kinds of political events in most of the countries he worked in, noting that “feudalism, militarism, corruption and personality cults isolate people from national – and regional – decision-making”.
“Political independence has not necessarily rid the Pacific of the problems it faces, and, in many cases, our own Pacific political leaders are part of the problem.”
Professor David Robie’s inaugural professorial lecture in 2012. Video: AUT/Café Pacific
Pacific issues
Reflecting on his experience on the Rainbow Warrior, including the infamous chapter of its bombing at the hands of French spies, Professor Robie lamented that not much attention of the New Zealand media was focused on the Pacific, apart from “crisis” stories.
“While the New Zealand media has strongly highlighted the New Zealand role championing a nuclear–free Pacific, it has been less generous about the efforts of Pacific Islands leaders and countries,” he said.
Whether it was the Santa Cruz massacre in East Timor, the People Power overthrow of the Marcos regime in the Philippines, the 2000 coup in Fiji or the Ouvéa massacre in New Caledonia, Professor Robie did not fail to mention each demanding chapter of Pacific sagas.
And in Papua New Guinea, working at the national University of PNG was one of the “sternest challenges I have ever had as a journalism educator”.
Working with students on the UPNG journalism school newspaper Uni Tavur earned them the first ever award from the Pacific, including New Zealand, from the Journalism Education Association of Australia (JEAA), with the 1996 “Ossie Award” best newspaper for a series of investigative reports.
Working at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji earned similar results with the student newspaper Wansolwara, whose student journalists defied a ban on the paper and the closing down of the university during the 2000 coup. The students continued reporting and the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), published the reports online, scooping the Ossie Awards that year.
Media hypocrisy
Professor Robie described events where his writing and critiques of the media earned him the ire of media owners, especially in Fiji, where they attempted to remove him from his position, and the country.
Professor Robie and the PMC team sing the waiata Nga Iwi E at the end of the address. Photo: Karen Abplanalp/PMC
“It is an irony that media executives who are so quick to invoke media freedom for themselves can be equally zealous about suppressing academic freedom or alternative media freedom,” he said.
Professor Robie explained the birth of the Pacific Media Centre and the continuation of the Pacific Media Watch project, which started in partnership with Peter Cronau of ABC Four Corners based at UTS in 1996.
He mentioned the focus on diversity and independence struggles, among other developmental issues facing small island countries in the Pacific.
“The media play an important role in that struggle and thus news values applied by indigenous media are often at variance with those of the West (First World), East (Second World remnants) and developing nations (Third World) in a globalised world,” he said, referring to his “Four worlds” model developed from his own research.
He said more modern influences such as the Nepali Times editor-in-chief Kunda Dixit, Vanuatu-based photojournalist Ben Bohane, and Professor Arlene Morgan of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism were pursuing culturally in-depth “deliberative journalism” models.
Scope for research
Professor Robie stressed that journalism education was a developing field and contained many possibilities for academic research, particularly in a global media climate that was lurching towards sensationalism and away from investigations.
He talked about a collaboration with ACIJ’s Professor Wendy Bacon, who is editor of Pacific Journalism Review’s new Frontline section.
“There are already success stories in this genre of research,” he said.
“Karen Abplanalp, for example, has produced a major investigation into the NZ Superannuation Fund investment in the giant Freeport McMoRan gold and copper mine at Grasberg in West Papua.”
He finished with comments about media “blind spots” in the Pacific, including West Papua, where foreign journalists remained banned.
“This is no excuse for journalists to turn their backs on Melanesian people who are on the brink of genocide,” he said.
“When did the last New Zealand journalist report there?”
He paid tribute to growing independent news groups using citizen journalism resources such as the Sydney-based West Papua Media Alerts.
He repeated that global warming was another blind spot, especially within the Pacific and mentioned that crucial research was been undertaken by postgraduates at the Pacific Media Centre into media and climate change.
Finishing on a hopeful note, Professor Robie spoke of the new Fijian magazine Republika, which pledged to “act as a mirror on society without fear or favour”.
Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Rob Allen commended Professor Robie for putting his personal reflection into the address and an “adventurous career” that had been described.
“He is the only person [in professorial addresses] who stood on the stage and made life at AUT sound rather sedate and quiet with what he experienced before,” said Professor Allen.
‘Sense of purpose’
He said Professor Robie was driven by a “sense of purpose”.
“We do get people who want to be a professor because they want to be a professor, and there are some people who are professors because of what they are. And sometimes they have a sense of purpose that stands out.
Professor Allan’s remarks highlighted Professor Robie’s passion for critical and deliberative journalism, saying that it was important to provide possible solutions, which is a key component of the type of journalism Professor Robie was proposing, particularly in developing countries.
Journalism students at the University of South Pacific’s Laucala campus in Fiji gathered to watch the live stream of Professor Robie’s address and sent this picture via their Facebook page.
“What will we do? It seemed to me by the end that’s what makes David stand out,” he said.
“Not only is he an academic, a journalist, he is a committed person whose questions will always be: What is the truth and what will we do about it?”
Students at the journalism school at the University of the South Pacific watched the live stream of Professor Robie’s address from Suva, Fiji, and sent good wishes through their newly-launched WansolwaraFacebook page.
West Papua, a struggle of contrasts between the ill-equipped from fighters and the Indonesian military machine. Cartoon: Malcolm Evans/Pacific Journalism Review
By David Robie and Alex Perrottet
The state of Pacific media freedom is fragile in the wake of serious setbacks, notably in Fiji, with sustained pressure from a military-backed regime, and in Vanuatu, where blatant intimidation has continued with near impunity.
Apart from Fiji, which has a systemic and targeted regime of censorship, most other countries are attempting to free themselves from stifling restrictions on the press.
But the Indonesian-ruled Melanesian territory of West Papua has emerged this year as the Pacific’s worst place for media freedom violations, says our report in the latest Pacific Journalism Review.
Against a backdrop of renewed unrest and mass rallies demanding “merdeka”, or freedom, with two bloody ambushes in Abepura on the outskirts of the capital Jayapura in early August, Indonesian security guards firing on strikers at the giant US-owned Freeport-McMoRan copper mine and last week’s attack on the Papuan People’s Congress, repression has also hit news media and journalists.
In the past year, there have been two killings of journalists, five abductions or attempted abductions, 18 assaults (including repeated cases against some journalists), censorship by both the civil and military authorities and two police arrests (but no charges).
Besides criminal libel, Papuan journalists are forced to contend with the crime of makar (subversion) as applied to the media.
According to West Papua Media Alerts editor Nick Chesterfield, “Regular labelling of the Papuan press as being ‘pro-separatist’ is another significant threat against journalists seen to be giving too much coverage to self-determination sentiment.”
Flawed, manipulated referendum
Indonesia became rulers of the Dutch colony of West Papua, which shares a frontier with Papua New Guinea, through a flawed and manipulated referendum in 1969 — the so-called “Act of Free Choice”.
Coupled with governments that are sluggish to introduce freedom of information legislation and ensure the region-wide constitutional rights to free speech are protected, there are few Pacific media councils and advocacy bodies with limited resources to effectively lobby their governments.
Those that do run the risk of backlashes by government figures who have a poor appreciation of the role of independent media in national development. For smaller countries, media is still largely under the thumb of governments and mainly an instrument for uncritically disseminating official information.
Since the military coup in December 2006, Fiji has faced arguably its worst sustained pressure on the media since the original two Rabuka coups in 1987. The Bainimarama regime in June 2010 promulgated a Media Industry Development Decree.
The new law enforced draconian curbs on journalists and restrictive controls on foreign ownership of the press.
This consolidated systematic state censorship of news organisations that had been imposed in April 2009. The Public Emergency Regulations have been rolled over on a monthly basis ever since. Promised relaxation of state censorship after the imposition of the decree never eventuated.
Foreign ownership limit
A controversial issue about the decree was a limit imposed on foreign ownership of not more than 10 percent, a clause vindictively aimed at the country’s oldest and most influential newspaper, The Fiji Times (founded in 1869), because of its unrelenting opposition to the regime.
This newspaper company was then a subsidiary of News Ltd. The company sold the newspaper to Fiji’s trading company, the Motibhai Group, and managing director Mahendra “Mac” Motibhai Patel, a director on the Times for more than four decades, took control.
Patel said: “Fiji without The Fiji Times is unthinkable”. He hired an Australian former publisher, Dallas Swinstead, to lead the newspaper in a more “accommodating” direction to safeguard the survival of the business.
Ironically, Patel himself was imprisoned for a year after being found guilty of corruption in April 2011 in his role as chairman of Fiji Post — nothing to do with the newspaper. But the impartiality of the judiciary since the 2006 coup has been under question.
“During its history,” said a longstanding former editor, Vijendra Kumar, “The Fiji Times has changed hands at least five times and has been none the worse for it. Each new owner infused it with new fresh ideas and better resources to ensure its continued growth and expansion”.
Fiji journalists themselves are divided about the impact of the regime. Some have taken the view that faced with the reality of working under a military regime, they would strive towards rebuilding the independence and integrity of Fiji’s news media with the promised return to democracy in 2014.
According to Fiji Broadcasting Corporation news director Stanley Simpson, who has recently resigned: “In the main, journalists today are not as confident (or as aggressive, as some would describe it) as their counterparts were prior to 2006, and in the 1980s and 1990s.
‘Courageous’ to be journalist
“I am not saying that current journalists lack courage — in fact, it is a courageous thing to be a journalist at this time.
“However, given the PER [Public Emergency Regulations], we are constantly checking ourselves and asking ourselves if the stories we write will breach the PER and what the consequences may be.”
While the region’s media freedom status may appear relatively benign compared to other countries, such as in the South-east Asian democracies of Indonesia and the Philippines, which enjoy a nominally free press but pose serious dangers to journalists, there remain significant media freedom issues in most Pacific Island countries.
Cultural issues involve the reconciliation of the ideals and values of a burgeoning media with the entrenched practices of compliance with traditional tribal or communal authority and for the most part, small communities with many conflicts of interest.
Other issues include problems of educating populations about dealing with the media, and a lack of access to media experienced by many communities.
An ongoing feud exists between the Suva-based Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and its breakaway former members and detractors who would like the body that runs the regional Pacnews agency to pull out of Fiji rather than risk being compromised by its proximity and collaboration with the military regime that is so blatantly restricting freedom of the press.
In its defence, PINA argues it can only convince the regime to respect freedom of the press by working with it as it prepares to draft the country’s new constitution in the lead up to elections.
Clashes over media
Clashes over media issues are not new, although they came to a head in Vanuatu last November when crusading Vanuatu Daily Post publisher Marc Neil-Jones was strongly opposed by the Media Association Blong Vanuatu (MAV) when he applied for a radio licence.
Vanuatu provides an example of an intense media climate without any official censorship such as in Fiji.
Neil-Jones’s case in March 2012 when he was assaulted by a group of men at the behest of a government minister was another episode in a saga of violent reactions to his publication’s reports.
A minor fine for his political attacker prompted further dismay from international media freedom and human rights advocacy groups.
In East Timor, the vibrant local media scene continued to grow this year with the launch of the island nation’s fourth daily newspaper, The Independente. But a controversial new documentary, Breaking the News, highlights the dangers for Timorese journalists.
Other countries and territories of the Pacific with burgeoning media outlets experience development issues that restrict their ability to bring news to both their citizens and diaspora who live abroad. The Territorial Assembly of French Polynesia decided this year to drop the popular online news agency Tahitipresse and to scale back the national broadcaster Tahiti Nui TV as part of a raft of public spending cuts brought on by pressure from France.
Amatus Douw . . . a Papuan asylum seeker protesting in Auckland in 2011. Image: Del Abcede
By David Robie
The most astonishing unreported story in this week’s [9 September 2011] Pacific Island Forum in Auckland was a remarkable shift by the United Nations chief over West Papua. And the local media barely noticed. For all the hoo-ha about “converting potential into opportunity” at the predictable annual political talkfest, this was the most dramatic moment.
It was thanks to the probing of a young Papua New Guinean journalist studying in New Zealand who knew the right question to ask. But the significance was lost on local journalists — and even the Pacific and international journalists present. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon suggested that the West Papuan issue should be discussed by the Decolonisation Committee of the United Nations General Assembly.
What? Coming in the wake of the Indonesian repression in West Papua throughout August in the face of a wave of unrest by Papuans more determined than ever for self-determination, this was almost unbelievable.
Question: [unclear] With regards to human rights – for more than 42 years, there’s a struggle in West Papua as people seeking their [own] government in the province of West Papua.
What is the United Nations stand on that?
BKM: This issue should also be discussed at the Decolonisation Committee of the United Nations General Assembly. And when it comes again, whether you are an independent state or a non-self-governing territory or whatever, the human rights is inalienable and a fundamental principle of the United Nations.
We will do all to ensure that people in West Papua, their human rights will be respected.
Question: Does a human rights fact-finding mission has be dispatched to West Papua at some time?
BKM: That is the same answer [to a previous question on Fiji] that should be discussed at the Human Rights Council amongst the member states.
Normally the Secretary General acts on the basis of a mandate given by inter-governmental bodies.
Because journalist Henry Yamo’s question was overshadowed by queries about Fiji, it probably slipped below the media radar. Was it a slip-up that officials were keen to brush aside? However, NGOs such as the Auckland-based Indonesia Human Rights Committee were quick to seize on the moment. Overnight a media declaration was produced by 15 Australian and NZ NGO signatories with the help of four West Papuans being hosted on the AUT University marae.
They called for the UN Secretary-General to:
appoint a Special Representative to investigate the situation in West Papua – to review the circumstances and outcome of the 1969 ‘Act of Free Choice’, as well as the contemporary situation; and
use his good offices to persuade the Indonesian government to allow free access to West Papua for media representatives from the international community and for non-governmental human rights organisations.
The statement also called on the Pacific Islands Forum to:
send a fact-finding mission to West Papua to investigate the human rights situation;
support the West Papuan people in their call for peaceful dialogue with the Indonesian government;
grant observer status to West Papuan representatives who support the people of West Papua’s right of self-determination; and
recommend to the United Nations General Assembly that West Papua be put back on the agenda of the Decolonisation Committee.
In spite of a West Papuan protest outside the Forum opening and later at the summit hotel, the local media were only interested in a parallel protest against the Fiji military regime and the Forum communiqué failed to mention West Papua. Hypocrisy. While the Forum has already welcomed New Caledonia and French Polynesia as associate member status, and Timor-Leste (another former Indonesian former colonial possession) as an observer and is now granting American Samoa the same privileges, it remains silent about the atrocities and human rights violations in a Melanesian territory of the Pacific.
Amatus Douw . . . symbolically locked up in a bamboo cage as part of a protest in Auckland. Image: Del Abcede
At the West Papuan protest, Green MP Catherine Delahunty grabbed a protest placard and tried to attract the interest of Pacific delegates in the plight of the Papuans. A gagged young man who was symbolically “locked up” in a bamboo cage, also had a story to tell. He was Amatus Douw, one of 43 Papuan political asylum seekers who fled to Australian in 2006. The other marae-based activists were Dr John Ondawame (West Papua People’s Representative Office in Vanuatu); Rex Rumakiek (secretary-general of the West Papua National Coalition for Liberation – WPCNL); and Paula Makabory (Institute of Papuan Advocacy and Human Rights – IPAHR).
The absence of West Papua from the final communiqué was not the only blot on the Forum’s outcomes. While New Zealand was busy talking up the success of the Forum — “[Murray] McCully scores with his A-list forum”, as the New Zealand Herald billed it — most social justice and human rights issues were sidelined. There were structural problems too.
Violence against women
Although the issue of Sexual and gender-based violence against women was cited in the communiqué again this year, it was remarkable that media took little notice. Amnesty International collected a petition of 21,000 signatures and to his credit, President Anote Tong, accepted this while no other Pacific leader did.
But the media took even less interest, apart from reports by the student journalist team from Pacific Scoop. Jocelyn Lai of the Young Women’s Christian Association spoke harrowing tales and provided case studies of violence against women and girls in the Solomon Islands, a culture of silence and impunity because of the stigma. A report about Solomon Islands slums denied sanitation and safety was devastating, yet no SI journalist turned up for this let alone any other Forum journalists. Two thirds of women and girls aged between 15 and 49 had experienced physical or sexual violence from their partners and other family members.
In fact, the Forum’s engagement with civil society was dismal. While Pacific leaders recognised in the communiqué many of the issues identified by civil society were ones already on the regional agenda. There is still much rhetoric and not enough action. Female representation, or rather lack of it, is nothing short of “scandalous”. Move over Gulf Arab states, the Pacific is far worse. Six out of the world’s 10 countries without female representation are in the Pacific.
Fiji at Home and in the World: Public Opinion and Foreign Policy . . . the cover.
Little will change politically in the Pacific region without more women and greater diversity in the parliamentary representation. Yet women’s and other civil society groups were largely marginalised, if not actually excluded, by the Forum establishment elite. Next year in the Cook Islands an actual “dialogue” is needed between the region’s political leaders and the NGOs.
Think tank excluded
An independent think tank, the Pacific Policy Institute based in Vanuatu, was actually excluded from the Forum. While the conservative Australian-based Lowy Institute enjoyed a privileged position, including having a day-long conference in an Auckland hotel just two days before the Forum opened and had the opportunity to launch a controversial Fiji opinion poll, its opposite number — a real Pacific think tank, was being denied any accreditation.
It is believed that this is because of its policy on Fiji where it seeks “positive engagement”.
The Forum wasn’t all negative by any means. It certainly put the “Pacific” of Aotearoa on a world map with the presence of UN and European Union at the top level — plus the largest Chinese and US delegations — in a manner that has never been achieved previously in four decades of leader summits. The opening Pacific Showcase at the Cloud on Queens Wharf is a drawcard. And NZ Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully can take the credit for this.
Also some NGOs welcomed the “responsiveness” of Forum leaders to climate change needs, civil society involvement in the future and the UN Arms Trade Treaty. Trade still remains a problem – it has been a very thorny issue in the past — and while Fiji will now be allowed back into the Pacer Plus (a pragmatic decisions based on necessity rather than any “softening up” of policies by Australia and NZ), negotiations are still likely to be delicate. Fiji has achieved some diplomatic successes in recent months and may force Australia and New Zealand to take a more pragmatic line rather than leaving a regional political void to China.
"Don't gag West Papua" . . . a protester at an Auckland demonstration on the waterfront in support of West Papuans during the South Pacific Forum summit on the eve of the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Image: Del Abcede/Café Pacific
By David Robie
The most astonishing unreported story in this week’s Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) in Auckland was a remarkable shift by the United Nations chief over West Papua. And the local media barely noticed.
For all the hoo-ha about “converting potential into opportunity” at the predictable annual political talkfest, this was the most dramatic moment.
It was thanks to the probing of a young Papua New Guinean journalist studying in New Zealand who knew the right question to ask. But the significance was lost on local journalists — and even the Pacific and international journalists present.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon suggested that the West Papuan issue should be discussed by the Decolonisation Committee of the United Nations General Assembly.
What? Coming in the wake of the Indonesian repression in West Papua throughout August in the face of a wave of unrest by Papuans more determined than ever for self-determination, this was almost unbelievable.
Question: [unclear] With regards to human rights – for more than 42 years, there’s a struggle in West Papua as people seeking their [own] government in the province of West Papua.
What is the United Nations stand on that?
BKM: This issue should also be discussed at the Decolonisation Committee of the United Nations General Assembly. And when it comes again, whether you are an independent state or a non-self-governing territory or whatever, the human rights is inalienable and a fundamental principle of the United Nations.
We will do all to ensure that people in West Papua, their human rights will be respected.
Question: Does a human rights fact-finding mission has be dispatched to West Papua at some time?
BKM: That is the same answer [to a previous question on Fiji] that should be discussed at the Human Rights Council amongst the member states.
Normally the Secretary General acts on the basis of a mandate given by inter-governmental bodies.
A gagged young man who was symbolically “locked up” in a bamboo cage on Auckland’s waterfront, also had a story to tell. He was Amatus Douw, one of 43 Papuan political asylum seekers who fled to Australian in 2006.. Image: Del Abcede/Café Pacific
Because journalist Henry Yamo’s question was overshadowed by queries about Fiji, it probably slipped below the media radar. Was it a slip-up that officials were keen to brush aside?
However, NGOs such as the Auckland-based Indonesia Human Rights Committee were quick to seize on the moment. Overnight a media declaration was produced by 15 Australian and NZ NGO signatories with the help of four West Papuans being hosted on the AUT University marae.
They called for the UN Secretary-General to:
appoint a Special Representative to investigate the situation in West Papua — to review the circumstances and outcome of the 1969 “Act of Free Choice”, as well as the contemporary situation; and
use his good offices to persuade the Indonesian government to allow free access to West Papua for media representatives from the international community and for non-governmental human rights organisations.
The statement also called on the Pacific Islands Forum to:
send a fact-finding mission to West Papua to investigate the human rights situation;
support the West Papuan people in their call for peaceful dialogue with the Indonesian government;
grant observer status to West Papuan representatives who support the people of West Papua’s right of self-determination; and
recommend to the United Nations General Assembly that West Papua be put back on the agenda of the Decolonisation Committee.
In spite of a West Papuan protest outside the Forum opening and later at the summit hotel, the local media were only interested in a parallel protest against the Fiji military regime and the Forum communiqué failed to mention West Papua.
Hypocrisy. While the Forum has already welcomed New Caledonia and French Polynesia as associate member status, and Timor-Leste (another former Indonesian former colonial possession) as an observer and is now granting American Samoa the same privileges, it remains silent about the atrocities and human rights violations in a Melanesian territory of the Pacific.
At the West Papuan protest, Green MP Catherine Delahunty grabbed a protest placard and tried to attract the interest of Pacific delegates in the plight of the Papuans.
A gagged young man who was symbolically “locked up” in a bamboo cage, also had a story to tell. He was Amatus Douw, one of 43 Papuan political asylum seekers who fled to Australian in 2006.
The other marae-based activists were Dr John Ondawame (West Papua People’s Representative Office in Vanuatu); Rex Rumakiek (secretary-general of the West Papua National Coalition for Liberation – WPCNL); and Paula Makabory ( Institute of Papuan Advocacy and Human Rights – IPAHR).
The absence of West Papua from the final communiqué was not the only blot on the Forum’s outcomes. While New Zealand was busy talking up the success of the Forum — “[Murray] McCully scores with his A-list forum”, as The New Zealand Herald billed it — most social justice and human rights issues were sidelined. There were structural problems too.
Violence against women
Although the issue of sexual and gender-based violence against women was cited in the communiqué again this year, it was remarkable that media took little notice. Amnesty International collected a petition of 21,000 signatures and to his credit, President Anote Tong, accepted this while no other Pacific leader did.
But the media took even less interest, apart from reports by the student journalist team from Pacific Scoop. Jocelyn Lai of the Young Women’s Christian Association spoke harrowing tales and provided case studies of violence against women and girls in the Solomon Islands, a culture of silence and impunity because of the stigma.
A report about Solomon Islands slums denied sanitation and safety was devastating, yet no SI journalist turned up for this, let alone any other Forum journalists. Two thirds of women and girls aged between 15 and 49 had experienced physical or sexual violence from their partners and other family members.
In fact, the Forum’s engagement with civil society was dismal. While Pacific leaders recognised in the communiqué many of the issues identified by civil society were ones already on the regional agenda. There is still much rhetoric and not enough action. Female representation, or rather lack of it, is nothing short of “scandalous”. Move over Gulf Arab states, the Pacific is far worse. Six out of the world’s 10 countries without female representation are in the Pacific.
Lowy Institute Fiji Poll 2011. Image: Lowy Institute
Little will change politically in the Pacific region without more women and greater diversity in the parliamentary representation. Yet women’s and other civil society groups were largely marginalised, if not actually excluded, by the Forum establishment elite. Next year [2012] in the Cook Islands an actual “dialogue” is needed between the region’s political leaders and the NGOs.
Think tank excluded
An independent think tank, the Pacific Policy Institute based in Vanuatu, was actually excluded from the Forum. While the conservative Australian-based Lowy Institute enjoyed a privileged position, including having a day-long conference in an Auckland hotel just two days before the Forum opened and had the opportunity to launch a controversial Fiji opinion poll, its opposite number — a real Pacific think tank, was being denied any accreditation.
It is believed that this is because of its policy on Fiji where it seeks “positive engagement”.
The Forum wasn’t all negative by any means. It certainly put the “Pacific” of Aotearoa on a world map with the presence of UN and European Union at the top level — plus the largest Chinese and US delegations — in a manner that has never been achieved previously in four decades of leader summits. The opening Pacific Showcase at the Cloud on Queens Wharf is a drawcard.
And NZ Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully can take the credit for this.
Also some NGOs welcomed the “responsiveness” of Forum leaders to climate change needs, civil society involvement in the future and the UN Arms Trade Treaty. Trade still remains a problem – it has been a very thorny issue in the past – and while Fiji will now be allowed back into the Pacer Plus (a pragmatic decisions based on necessity rather than any “softening up” of policies by Australia and NZ), negotiations are still likely to be delicate.
Fiji has achieved some diplomatic successes in recent months and may force Australia and New Zealand to take a more pragmatic line rather than leaving a regional political void to China.
David Robie has played a key role in establishing the Pacific Media Centre as part of the Creative Industries Research Institute (CIRI) with a commitment in 2007 to boosting Māori, Pasifika, ethnic and other New Zealand media research and publication.
AUT Feature
The Pacific Journalism Review, the only journal to investigate media issues in the South Pacific, Asia-Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, is expanding its interest to the broader impact of contemporary media practice and education.
The peer-reviewed journal which is published twice-yearly is a primary research output of the Pacific Media Centre (PMC) and is edited by the centre’s founding director Associate Professor David Robie.
Dr Robie says while one objective of the journal is research into Pacific journalism theory and practice, it is also expanding its interest into new areas of research and inquiry that reflect the broader impact of contemporary media practice and education.
The May 2010 issue of the journal, with the theme “Reporting Wars”, includes articles on trends in war reporting, the relationship between journalists and aid workers and the experiences of New Zealand journalists covering overseas conflicts.
Spotlight on war reporting safety. Video: Pacific Media Centre
Previous issues have focused on “The Public Right to Know” (October 2009) and “Diversity, Identity and the Media” (May 2009).
Another of the PMC’s activities is maintaining Pacific Media Watch, a digital archive of dispatches about Pacific journalism and media, which has been run by centre staff and postgraduate students since 2008.
It also jointly publishes the high profile independent Pacific Scoop news website with Scoop Media, with contributions from postgraduate students and analysis from respected regional academics.
The Pacific Media Centre (Te Amokura) was established in 2007 as part of the university’s Creative Industries Research Institute. The centre focuses on Māori, Pasifika and ethnic diversity media as well as community development.
It also collaborates with other Asia-Pacific media centres, including the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism and the University of the South Pacific regional journalism programme.
The PMC has about a dozen researchers and research associates, who include leading media academics from the Pacific, and working journalists. Among them is Jon Stephenson, who has reported on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and natural disasters including the 2004 Asia-Pacific tsunami.
Another working journalist associated with the PMC, is masters in communication studies scholar and journalist Selwyn Manning, co-editor of Pacific Scoop. The PMC will stage an inaugural conference in December that looks at a number of issues central to the media in this region and internationally.
Conference chair Associate Professor David Robie says the three-day Media, Investigative Journalism & Technology event will have a multidisciplinary programme aimed at attendees from around the world.
“This international conference is dedicated to bringing together the diverse aspects of media in an open forum for interdisciplinary collaboration and networking,” says Associate Professor Robie.
The event is intended to advance the centre’s mission of promoting informed journalism and media research to contribute to economic, political and social development in the region.
Keynote speakers will include Nepali journalist Kunda Dixit, who worked for the BBC in New York and reported in the Pacific as Asia-Pacific director of Inter Press Service, and Professor Wendy Bacon, an Australian investigative journalist and media lawyer with a long history of campaigning on free speech issues.
Bacon is a director of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at Sydney’s University of Technology which, along with the University of the South Pacific regional journalism programme, is a PMC collaboration partner.
She has contributed to the Pacific Journalism Review.
DetEksi to the rescue for Surabaya's youth. Image: David Robie
By David Robie
DetEksi … another angle. Image: 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 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.
For a year, journalists in Fiji have had to live with censors posted in the newsroom. Tearsheet: The Walkley Magazine
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.
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.
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.
He even reported on issues over the emerging Trans-African highway from Mombasa to Lagos: “The big problem was most of this road didn’t actually exist” and his “road-to-nowhere” story featured as a cover story for African Development magazine.
