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New free press book a must read for Pacific ‘media spoilers’

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By Patrick Craddock in Suva

Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific is being published today [24 April 2014] while Fiji is voicing the mantra of the “free press” at the same time as it continues to ban experienced Pacific reporters such as Barbara Dreaver and Michael Field from New Zealand and Sean Dorney of the ABC.

Ashwin Raj, chairman of the new Media Industry Development Authority (MIDA) is haranguing journalists at public media meetings using expressions such as “…the complicity of select Fijian journalists and media either wittingly or those that remain oblivious to the laws of Fiji…”

The same MIDA that is so upset with Sean Dorney’s mild comment that “there was a feeling in the room anyway that the situation in Fiji wasn’t as free and open for the media as it should be” is also asking for “an ethos of robust debate”.

9781877484254-cover crop 200tall
The Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific cover. Image: Little Island Press

MIDA might strengthen its interpretation of robustness by reading David Robie’s arguments for improving journalism education rather than putting media training on hold.

Dr Robie has been concerned with the quality of Pacific journalism training for many years. He looks beyond conflict reporting and quotes Kunda Dixit, editor–in-chief of the Nepali Times, who has little love for counterpoint in journalism stories that foster the tension and drama of controversy making most reportage “sound like a quarrel” in a way that obscures rather than increases clarity about global problems.

Dr Robie writes on “deliberative journalism” which he says includes peace journalism, development journalism and human rights journalism. He tries to nail down his own interpretation, which is “critical development journalism”, by saying it goes beyond the standard reportage model to get into the gutsy questions of “how, why” and “what now”.

His views are parallel with an Asian-Australian academic, Asia-Pacific Media Educator editor Dr Eric Loo, who recently tried to “rescue” the journalism school at the University of Papua New Guinea, and who criticises a “biased” view by Western journalists of a journalism model that stresses successful social and economic development, instead of the conventional focus on conflict, such as failed government projects and their policies.

Important issues
While Dr Robie struggles, perhaps inconclusively, to get precision into the terminology of the many forms of journalism, he is clear on the need for journalists to continue to strengthen their skills in order to scrutinise the institutions of governance affecting many peoples of the Pacific.

He notes the diaspora of Pacific people migrating and settling in Australia, New Zealand and North America. These migrants, some of whom are now second and third generations, look to journalists to inform them on important Pacific issues other than disasters.

Writing quality journalism while dealing with cultural and tribal pressure is a problem identified by Dr Robie. He notes that former Fiji Daily Post editor Jale Moala says about the Speight Coup of 2000 that customary obligations are a burden, that it:

“…was not so much one of reporters taking sides, as it may have seemed at the time, but the inability of many reporters to function objectively under the pressures of the crisis. A lack of leadership in newsrooms was one reason. One media organisation that came under early criticism was the state-owned Radio Fiji, which seemed to suffer from a combination of confusion over who was in power or who was going to end up in power, and lack of newsroom discipline and leadership…”

Dr Robie worked in Papua New Guinea for a number of years and frequently wrote about Bougainville. He went to Kieta to report on the new war and stayed in a hotel where soldiers sat eating their dinners with their guns on their laps. This is a colourful chapter, full of detail with Robie at the heart of the conflict and reporting it.

New Zealand consultants had come up with a report saying the mining company was causing huge environmental damage. Dr Robie published a series of articles on Bougainville and then as head of the journalism programme at the University of Papua New Guinea he got his students to cover the conflict.

This rich chapter probes a nasty part of Pacific history.

A lesser-known conflict for Pacific readers was the 1989 struggle by Canadian Indians of the Lubicon Lake Nation with their call for sovereign rights on traditional hunting and trapping. Dr Robie draws parallels between the struggle of the Indian tribes and the New Zealand Ngati Whatua’s occupation of ancestral land at Bastion Point in Auckland, which was ended by a police and army raid after a peaceful occupation of 507 days.

Dr Robie neatly updates the Canadian story with one of the leading protagonists who says the original conflict continues and it is now in the hands of the courts.

Painful stories
The book has photographs that reflect faces of families embroiled in the numerous conflicts, the plump faces of their leaders and lean soldiers toting guns. Painful stories from Tahiti, Tonga, Timor-Leste, Fiji, the Philippines and other parts of the disturbed Pacific help to make this book an important part of our Pacific history.

Dr Robie says this book may be seen as a sequel to two earlier volumes, Blood on the Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific and Tu Galala: Social Change in the Pacific. Investigative journalist John Pilger describes it as an “extraordinary secret history”.

Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face, with its overview of various conflicts, needs to be added to the shelves of Pacific newsrooms and journalism schools. It would make a valuable addition to the shelves of numerous politicians who provided the author with considerable content for this book and who are now feeding him material for his next one.

Professor David Robie is director of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology. For more than two decades he has reported on the Asia-Pacific region. Formerly he was head of journalism at both the Universities of Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific. The book is being launched today [24 April 2014].

New free press book a must read for Pacific ‘media spoilers’

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David Robie talks to Te Waha Nui’s Monique McKenzie about the new book

By Patrick Craddock in Suva

Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific is being published today while Fiji is voicing the mantra of the “free press” at the same time as it
continues to ban experienced Pacific reporters such as Barbara Dreaver and Michael Field from New Zealand and Sean Dorney of the ABC.

Ashwin Raj, chairman of the new Media Industry Development Authority (MIDA) is haranguing journalists at public media meetings using expressions such as “…the complicity
of select Fijian journalists and media either wittingly or those that remain oblivious to the laws of Fiji…”

The same MIDA that is so upset with Sean Dorney’s mild comment that “there was a feeling in the room anyway that the situation in Fiji wasn’t as free and open for the media as it should be” is also asking for “an ethos of robust debate”.

MIDA might strengthen its interpretation of robustness by reading David Robie’s arguments for improving journalism education rather than putting media training on hold.

Don't Spoil My Beautiful Face
Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face cover

Dr Robie has been concerned with the quality of Pacific journalism training for many years. He looks beyond conflict reporting and quotes Kunda Dixit, editor–in-chief of the Nepali Times, who has little love for counterpoint in journalism stories that foster the tension and drama of controversy making most reportage “sound like a quarrel” in a way that obscures rather than increases clarity about global problems.

Dr Robie writes on “deliberative journalism” which he says includes peace journalism, development journalism and human rights journalism. He tries to nail down his own interpretation, which is “critical development journalism”, by saying it goes beyond the standard reportage model to get into the gutsy questions of “how, why” and “what now”.

His views are parallel with an Asian-Australian academic, Asia-Pacific Media Educator editor Dr Eric Loo, who recently tried to “rescue” the journalism school at the University of Papua New Guinea, and who criticises a “biased” view by Western journalists of a journalism model that stresses successful social and economic development, instead of the conventional focus on conflict, such as failed government projects and their policies.

Important issues
While Dr Robie struggles, perhaps inconclusively, to get precision into the terminology of the many forms of journalism, he is clear on the need for journalists to continue to strengthen their skills in order to scrutinise the institutions of governance affecting many peoples of the Pacific. He notes the diaspora of Pacific people migrating and settling in Australia, New Zealand and North America. These migrants, some of whom are now second and third generations, look to journalists to inform them on important Pacific issues other than disasters.

Writing quality journalism while dealing with cultural and tribal pressure is a problem identified by Dr Robie. He notes that former Fiji Daily Post editor Jale Moala says about the Speight Coup of 2000 that customary obligations are a burden, that it:

“…was not so much one of reporters taking sides, as it may have seemed at the time, but the
inability of many reporters to function objectively under the pressures of the crisis. A lack of
leadership in newsrooms was one reason. One media organisation that came under early criticism was the state-owned Radio Fiji, which seemed to suffer from a combination of
confusion over who was in power or who was going to end up in power, and lack of
newsroom discipline and leadership…”

Dr Robie worked in Papua New Guinea for a number of years and frequently wrote about Bougainville. He went to Kieta to report on the new war and stayed in a hotel where soldiers sat eating their dinners with their guns on their laps. This is a colourful chapter, full of detail with Robie at the heart of the conflict and reporting it.

New Zealand consultants had come up with a report saying the mining company was causing huge environmental damage. Dr Robie published a series of articles on Bougainville and then as head of the journalism programme at the University of Papua New Guinea he got his students to cover the conflict. This rich chapter probes a nasty part of Pacific history.

A lesser-known conflict for Pacific readers was the 1989 struggle by Canadian Indians of the Lubicon Lake Nation with their call for sovereign rights on traditional hunting and trapping. Dr Robie draws parallels between the struggle of the Indian tribes and the New Zealand Ngati Whatua’s occupation of ancestral land in Auckland, which was ended by a police and army raid after a peaceful occupation of 507 days.

Dr Robie neatly updates the Canadian story with one of the leading protagonists who says the original conflict continues and it is now in the hands of the courts.

Painful stories
The book has photographs that reflect faces of families embroiled in the numerous conflicts, the plump faces of their leaders and lean soldiers toting guns. Painful stories from Tahiti, Tonga, Timor-Leste, Fiji, the Philippines and other parts of the disturbed Pacific help to make this book an important part of our Pacific history.

Dr Robie says this book may be seen as a sequel to two earlier volumes, Blood on the Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific and Tu Galala: Social Change in the
Pacific. Investigative journalist John Pilger describes it as an “extraordinary secret history”.

Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face, with its overview of various conflicts, needs to be added to the shelves of Pacific newsrooms and journalism schools. It would make a valuable addition to the shelves of numerous politicians who provided the author with considerable content for this book and who are now feeding him material for his next one.

Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific (2014)

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Don't Spoil My Beautiful Face
Don't Spoil my beautiful face: Media, mayhem and human rights in the Pacific cover

By David Robie

A comprehensive “hidden stories of the Pacific” media and communication book about many of the region’s major issues of the past two decades such as the Fiji coups, Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville war and resource development crises, nuclear testing and health challenges, environmental degradation and climate change and West Papua.

The author writes with insight and personal experience of all the events covered. It is the first book by the author since his Mekim Nius: South Pacific Media, Politics and Education (published at the University of the South Pacific, 2004).

Australian investigative journalist John Pilger: “This is an extraordinary ‘secret history’ of a vast region of the world of which David Robie has been a rare expert witness. What makes this epic work so timely is that it allows us to understand the Asia-Pacific at a time of renewed Cold War ambitions and dangers.”

Corruption, illegal tuna fisheries and a ‘lifestyle tsunami’ trouble Pacific business editors

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Greenpeace activists hold up a banner highlighting the fragile state of Pacific fisheries
Greenpeace activists hold up a banner highlighting the fragile state of Pacific fisheries. Image: Greenpeace

Café Pacific

How ironic. For two days this week, veteran Pacific affairs correspondent Sean Dorney from Australia Network was contributing hugely to an inaugural regional business media summit organised by the Asian Development Bank.

His final contribution to the seminar was a rundown on “tunanomics” and how illegal fishing was, for him, the biggest economic story confronting the Pacific.

He punctuated this presentation with an ABC video report from 28 October 2013 which exposed how lack of cooperation by at least six Pacific countries was undermining the Forum Fisheries Agency’s surveillance efforts.

Anthony Bergin, the Deputy Director of the Australian Security Policy Institute, estimates that about US$1.7 billion is lost through illegal and unregulated fishing activity in the Pacific. He’s proposing that the Australian patrol boat programme should not only be a Defence Department commitment but that Australian aid should also contribute to the programme now being developed to replace those 22 patrol boats that Australia has donated to Pacific countries but which are coming to the end of their work life.

No sooner than his fine contribution and the ADB seminar was over, Dorney found himself in the gun again with Fiji media “control freaks” — Dorney’s description — who seem determined to use the controversial 2010 Media Industry Development Decree to gag anything deemed to be “un-Fijian”.

And this seems to include every shred of criticism from the foreign media.

Although this issue never really made it to the floor in this media seminar, there was a lot of muttering behind the scenes over a complaint of alleged bias by Dorney in his reporting from recent Pacific Media Summit in Noumea, New Caledonia, sent from the decree bureaucracy octopus MIDA (Midas would be more apt after the Greek mythological king who turned things to gold but ended up dying of starvation).

MIDA, or the Media Industry Development Authority, was supposed to be the new media accountability agency that was going to oversee media freedom and freedom of expression and usher in a new era of political discourse and discussion leading to the 17 September 2014 general election.

Chief MIDA moguls . . . former USP academic Ashwin Raj (left) and ex-PINA official Matai Akauola
Chief MIDA moguls . . . former USP academic Ashwin Raj (left) and ex-PINA general manager Matai Akauola. Image: Fiji Television

Instead, the chief MIDA moguls, USP academic Ashwin Raj and former Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) general manager Matai Akauola, have set themselves the task of finding ways to zip-up foreign journalists (and more than a few locals).

Both men are pleased with the existing blacklist topped by Dorney (ABC – Australia), Barbara Dreaver (TVNZ – NZ) and Mike Field (Fairfax Media – NZ). But they don’t want it to end there.

More names are wanted for the banned list, and the ABC’s Campbell Cooney has also been mentioned for a “dishonourable” recommendation.

Sean Dorney and Ashwin Raj recentlyin Noumea
Sean Dorney and Ashwin Raj recently
in Noumea . . . happier times? Image: Unnamed paparazzi

What did Dorney say in his Noumea report that was so “offensive”? Well, for a start he merely said that “there was a general feeling that there is not much media freedom in Fiji”.

And MIDA wants a retraction from the ABC? Hardly.

At the MIDA media conference announcing the establishment of a “bias” monitoring unit, Raj was reported to have told Pacific Freedom Forum (PFF) coordinator Ricardo Morris he would have to choose between being a journalist and an advocate (he is also editor of the monthly news magazine Republika).

Morris defended the right of journalists to speak out for themselves on media issues.

Café Pacific publisher David Robie branded the MIDA media tightening up development as “mind-boggling” at a time when MIDA should be pulling out all stops to restore a vibrant and fearless political debate in Fiji during the return-to-democracy election campaign.

Back at the ADB media summit in Sydney: This was an excellent occasion for all 20 senior media people from eight countries who took part and was a reminder of how constructive things can be when the divisive political baggage is left at the door.

As well as Dorney, a relentless critic of PINA, there was PINA head himself, president Moses Stevens, from Vanuatu, who appealed to the ADB to assist Pacific media to face “the challenges of infrastructure, manpower and the business aspects of our industry”, and the deputy chair of rival Pacific group Pasifika Media Association, Kalafi Moala of Tonga.

ADB media summit in Sydney 2014
Taimi Media Network’s Kalafi Moala, freelancer Russell Hunter, ABC’s Sean Dorney and Talamua’s Lance Polu at the ADB media summit in Sydney. ADB’s Michael Hutak is on the right with the ABC’s Jemima Garrett crouched in front with a microphone. Image: David Robie/PMC

Moala again had a message of “collaboration” for the Pacific media.

Aaron Levine explaining issues around alternativebank security to land title
Aaron Levine explaining issues around alternative
bank security to land title. Image: David Robie/PMC

The opening day was focused on the ADB in Pacific development; the Pacific economic outlook; the private Sector Development Pacific Initiative aimed at building up the business environment in the region; and the A$1.3 billion Pacific Region Infrastructure Facility.

The final day was instead directed at media issues, such as the Pacific media business outlook; “coconut wifi” with internet, mobile and digital technology changes; gender and business; and a lively final session discussing the region’s “biggest stories”.

Café Pacific found business law reform specialist Aaron Levine’s session on the online Company Register initiative in the Solomon Islands and in other Pacific countries especially innovative in a region where only one island country — Cook Islands — has a Freedom of Information law.

Branchless banking in Papua New Guinea
Branchless banking in Papua New Guinea. Image: David Robie/PMC

A presentation on village banking and mobile banking in Papua New Guinea, a country that has a low density of bank branches and ATM machines but high uptake of mobile phones was also intriguing.

Among issues reported on by Pacific Media Watch:

The “human tsunami” of lifestyle diseases will overshadow climate change and other big Pacific economic stories for some countries, a regional conference has been told.

“The climate change story – while it is real and huge – will be overshadowed in Samoa by non-communicable diseases,” Talamua publisher Lance Polu said.

He described the crisis as an economic and health “human tsunami” at the two-day inaugural ADB … summit in Sydney. Other speakers said the crisis also affected several

Pacific countries, such as Tonga.

Diseases caused by a huge shift in lifestyle and diet has caused obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney failure and heart conditions, according to Polu who cited research reports.

“The heart of the problem is the shift in diet to a domination of imported processed foods like chemically grown chicken, fat-infested turkey tails, low-grade tinned fish, sugary fizzy drinks and much more,” he said.

“And we keep on importing them and returning only empty containers so they can fill up quickly and be sent back again to make our people even more sick and kill our productive populations at a very young age.”

Polu gave an example of the death from lifestyle disease in the past three months of two young Samoan chief executives of government ministries – one aged 45 and the other 50.

Bankruptcy risk
“The problem for us is so serious, some medical experts predict it will ultimately bankrupt our country in the near future,” Polu said.

We’re struggling to keep two dialysis units going to treat the number of kidney patients and the cost to the economy is enormous.”

Polu said the key was “information, public awareness and continuing education”.
“The media plays a hugely important and a vital role in this process to change attitudes and lifestyle. And it takes time and money.”

He called on the Pacific Islands media and ADB to consider a collaboration project on the issue because health had a major impact on sustainable growth in the region ….

Climate change topped the anecdotal list along with corruption; social justice and human rights; resource extraction industries such as logging, mining and fishing; asylum seeker economic packages; and changing political climates, such as with Fiji preparing for a “return to democracy” election later this year.

Rights violations
Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie said the worsening human rights violations in West Papua were likely to also have a serious economic impact on ventures such as the giant Freeport McMoran copper mine after the presidential elections in Indonesia next month.

Indications are that elections could result in a leadership change that may be even worse for the people of West Papua,” he said.

Dr Robie praised Vanuatu Prime Minister Moana Carcasses Kalosil for the “only principled stand” over West Papua by a Pacific leader in recent months with his outspoken speech at the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Representatives from Fiji Television, Fiji Sun, Fiji Times, Matangi Tonga, Solomon Star, Taimi Media Network, Talamua Media Samoa, PNG’s National Broadcasting Corporation, Pacific Islands News Association, Asia Pacific Journalism Centre, Pacific Media Centre, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation took part.

Participants in the ADB media seminar
Fiji TV’s Geoffrey Smith (from left), ABC’s David Hua and PMC’s David Robie at the ADB media summit in Sydney. Image: John Wallace/APJC

This article was originally republished on the Cafe Pacific blog.

The talanoa and the tribal paradigm: Reflections on cross-cultural reporting in the Pacific

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"Sit down everybody. This is a takeover" - Sitiveni Rabuka's first coup in Fiji, 14 May, 1987. Image: New Outlook (June/July edition)

By David Robie

Alongside normative definitions of the Fourth Estate as an independent watchdog on political power, in the South Pacific there is also a notion of a “fifth estate”, an Indigenous traditional cultural pillar, which is a counterbalance to all other forms of power, including the news media.

This is especially so of Fiji in the wake of four coups, or five if the 2009 Easter constitutional putsch is counted as a separate coup.

This paper explores traditional chiefly political power, the Taukei ethno-nationalist movement and the dilemmas of cross-cultural reporting with a particular reference to the expected return to democracy in Fiji with a general election due in September 2014 after a quarter-century of coup cycles.

It also argues for a tanoa model incorporating culture as part of a philosophy of talanoa, or a more nuanced, reflexive approach to journalism in the Pacific based on a flexible and open form of communication, dialogue and negotiation.

The paper draws on the author’s experience as both a journalist and media educator for almost three decades in the region.

"Sit down everybody, this is a takeover"
“Sit down everybody, this is a takeover” – Sitiveni Rabuka’s first coup in Fiji, 14 May, 1987. Image: New Outlook

David Robie talks Rainbow Warrior to Newstalk ZB’s Total Recall

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On board the Rainbow Warrior at Rongelap Atoll, May 1985
On board the Rainbow Warrior at Rongelap Atoll, May 1985. Image: David Robie

Pacific Media Watch

While in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, for the Asian Media Information and Communication (AMIC) media conference, David Robie was contacted by Newstalk ZB’s Total Recall co-host Sam Bloore for a phone interview.

Sam talked to David about the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior scandal on 10 July 1985 and his recollections as a journalist on board the environmental ship.

Dr David Robie, author of Eyes of Fire: The last voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, talks about the humanitarian voyage to the Marshall Islands and how the sabotage of the ship by French secret agents was part of a pattern of state terrorism against indigenous groups, especially Kanak pro-independence activists during the 1980s.

Rainbow Warrior photograph: (c) David Robie 1985

This is the recorded interview broadcast on Sunday, 7 July 2013, and posted with permission thanks to Newstalk ZB. 

Link to news story on Pacific Media Watch:
https://pmc.aut.ac.nz/pacific-media-watch/audio-pmc-director-talks-rainbow-warrior-and-paranoid-french-politicians-8358

Coups, conflicts and human rights: Pacific media challenges in the digital age

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By David Robie

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 professorial speech monograph cover, 2012
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.


Professor David Robie’s professorial address at AUT University, 16 October 2012. Video: Café Pacific/AUT

Media blind spots overcome by ‘critical’ journalism, says first Pacific j-professor David Robie

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By Alex Perrottet

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
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 International reporter Leilani Momoisea.
Professor David Robie speaks to Radio New Zealand Pacific reporter Leilani Momoisea. Image: Alex Perrottet/PMC

He is the author several books on South Pacific media and politics, including Mekim Nius: South Pacific media, politics and education.

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
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
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 Wansolwara Facebook page.

The full video of the address can be seen here.

Alex Perrottet is the contributing editor of the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch project.

West Papua a media black spot

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West Papua, a struggle of contrasts
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.

West Papua-themed Pacific Journalism Monograph, 2011
West Papua-themed Pacific Journalism Monograph, 2011. Image: Pacific Media Centre

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.

Pacific Islands Forum shuns West Papuan issue at the annual talkfest

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Amatus Douw
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.

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.

Papuan asylum seeker Amatus Douw
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 cover
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.