Pacific Islands Forum shuns West Papuan issue at the annual talkfest

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September 9, 2011

WP Forum protest 800wide — "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.

"Don't gag West Papua" — 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.

But the Forum simply ignored the West Papua issue.

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.

First published on David Robie’s Cafe Pacific blog in 2011.

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

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December 14, 2010

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.

READ MORE: The Pacific Media Centre

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.

Republished from The New Zealand Herald under the title “Promoting informed journalism”.

Indonesia’s Jawa Pos – a remarkable success story

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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