Media freedom means journalism can “shape and spread values, defuse tensions, and counter hate-speech”. Through its capacity to investigate, challenge, and question competing views and opinions with facts and balanced reason, journalism can contribute to positive and sustainable notions of peace.
However, advocating for positive peace in the news media is not just about reducing or eliminating violence or conflict narratives, it is also about offering alternative narratives of hope and action toward peace.
In this case study about West Papua, human rights and peace narratives, the author examines changing strategies over more than half a century by the Melanesian Papuan people to achieve a just, positive, and sustainable peace in the Pacific.
Then head of AUT's School of Communication Studies, Professor Berrin Yanıkkaya; Pacific Media Centre founding director Professor David Robie, and Victoria University's assistant vice-chancellor (Pacific) Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban at the launch of Conflict, Custom and Conscience: Photojournalism and the Pacific Media Centre 2007-2017 at the celebration of 10 years of the research centre in October 2017. Image: Spasifik magazine
One of AUT’s Pacific research centres has been without a director since the end of 2020 and a lack of clarity around its future is causing division among staff and supporters. Teuila Fuatai reports for The Spinoff.
Since 2007, AUT’s Pacific Media Centre has built a considerable portfolio and solid reputation for its research and reporting on issues throughout the Asia Pacific region, and as a training ground for Pasifika journalists and academics.
However, a month after veteran Pacific correspondent and researcher Professor David Robie retired as founding director late last year, the centre was packed up without any formal notification or explanation to the remaining AUT staff members associated with it.
The move prompted a social media outcry among supporters and regional journalists, who raised concerns about the centre’s closure and the lack of communication from the university.
A photo of the packed up PMC office sent to Dr David Robie. Image: Café Pacific
However, in response to queries raised by The Spinoff, AUT’s head of the School of Communications Dr Rosser Johnson denied that the PMC was being closed, and reiterated that the contents of the PMC office had been packed up and relocated to a new space beside other key departments elsewhere in the AUT’s communications department.
“I made the decision that we were going to get all our staff of Pacific heritage in the same sort of place, which is on this [12th] floor,” Dr Johnson said. “We’ve got five staff of Pacific heritage – one won’t be moving because he’s in a department that’s on another floor. The rest are going to come up to here in the School of Communications.”
Dr Johnson also said the decision to relocate the PMC from the space it had always occupied was made by the school’s “senior leadership team”.
Staff connected to the PMC were only notified via email after it was done. Senior lecturer and PMC research associate Khairiah Rahman, said it “would’ve been nice” to have been notified about the shift beforehand.
Fuelled concerns
An AUT staff member for 15 years, Rahman’s involvement with the PMC spans nearly a decade and she is also a member of its advisory board. She said the lack of information to staff members like herself had fuelled concerns about the school’s intentions for the PMC’s future.
She said too that the absence of a succession plan for Dr Robie’s replacement prior to his retirement had been particularly worrying.
“Ideally, [the transition] should be seamless. But Professor Robie retired at the end of last year… and we didn’t have a ready successor. I think it’s not a matter of blame but of strategic planning. Was it up to him [Dr Robie] or was it up to the university?
Former PMC designer Del Abcede, former PMC director Professor David Robie and Tagata Pasifika journalist John Pulu. Image: PMC
According to Dr Robie, he had tried several times to engage with the school regarding a transition plan in the past few years, but nothing had happened. Dr Johnson, however, attributed the delays to the impacts of covid-19.
By September last year, a decision had been made by senior leadership staff “that we weren’t going to do anything new before the end of the year,” he said. The process was delayed again by this year’s lockdowns, he added.
An internal advertisement was circulated among AUT staff over the past week seeking “expressions of interest” for the role of PMC director. Those keen to apply had until Friday March 26.
Chair of the PMC’s advisory board and an associate professor at AUT’s School of Social Sciences and Public Policy, Dr Camille Nakhid, said she was disappointed about the lack of information being offered to staff members like herself. Dr Nakhid also believes the role of PMC director should be advertised externally to attract a range of qualified candidates.
What is the direction?
“I understand… we may move things in a different direction, but we do not know what that direction is,” Dr Nakhid said. “We [the board] do wish for a reinvigorated PMC but we are concerned that the direction in which they take it will be to the detriment of the Pacific and Pacific communities and other communities with which the PMC works.”
Dr Robie, who is the founding editor of the research journal Pacific Journalism Review and continues to publish work through various outlets, has been critical of the treatment of the PMC since his departure from AUT. He is adamant those with long-standing links to the centre — like Dr Nakhid and Rahman — not be sidelined in planning for its future.
“On every parameter, the centre’s done incredibly well,” Robie said. “If they follow through with the team they’ve got, I see a great future.”
A multi-disciplinary research unit, the PMC focuses on media and communication narratives in the Asia Pacific region and has a special focus on communities and journalists that have been marginalised or censored by authorities and power structures.
Prior to its move, the centre also housed a range of outlets enabling students and academics to publish and promote their work, including the award winning Pacific Media Watch, which was co-edited by a journalism student every year and helped foster the careers of Pasifika journalist Alistar Kata and RNZ journalist Alex Perrottet.
Dr Robie himself brought considerable experience to the centre, having lived and worked extensively in Papua New Guinea and Fiji, and covered significant human rights and media abuses throughout the region over a 40-year career.
The PMC had been established as an outlet to continue that work and for journalism students to research and cover regional issues largely neglected by New Zealand’s mainstream media, such as West Papuan human rights abuses and electoral corruption in Fiji.
The PMC Project– a video made by Alistar Star, a former PMC student contributing editor on the Pacific Media Watch internship.
Time to reassess
Don Mann, chief executive of the Pacific Media Network (PMN) which runs 531 PI and Niu FM, said the PMC’s current transition period was an opportunity for AUT to assess other ways it could strengthen Pacific media.
“First and foremost, I think to have an organisation that stands for what PMC was originally set up for — a watchdog organisation that protects the freedom of journalism and its role in the democracy — is very worthy,” he said.
“I think the issue which AUT is possibly facing is whether that’s AUT’s role.”
Moving forward, Mann said a focus on developing Pacific people in media and journalism at AUT would be great to see. The underrepresentation of Pacific people who are experts in their communities in media spaces has been a problem for far too long, he said.
“It would be a really opportune time for AUT to look at a centre of excellence for developing Pacific people in broadcasting, new media, journalism and multimedia.
“You look at where our office, Pacific Media Network, is based in Manukau,” Donn said.
“Within walking distance, we’ve got MIT, AUT and Auckland University. The question I’d be asking if I was in AUT is: What’s our plan to engage with diverse communities? What’s our plan to engage with Pasifika communities? What’s our representation at AUT of Pasifika people? I’d be taking this opportunity to look at all those issues.”
Teuila Fuatai is a freelance journalist specialising in social and cultural issues. This article was first published by The Spinoff and the Café Pacific blog, is republished here with the permission of both The Spinoff editor and the author.
None of the claims presented in this article by AUT management about a transition were borne out. The PMC subsequently closed and most of the people involved in the centre later formed an independent non-government organisation to carry on.
Radio 531pi’s Ma’a Brian Sagala talks to the retired founding director of the Pacific Media Centre, Professor David Robie, and Tahitian researcher and advocate Ena Manuireva on the Pacific Days show about uncertainties over the centre’s future.
Pacific Media Network (PMN) podcast, 26 March 2021. Republished with permission.
Former AUT Communication Studies head of school Professor Berrin Yanıkkaya, PMC director Professor David Robie and Victoria University's Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Pasifika) Laumanuvao Winnie Laban at the PMC 10 year anniversary event. Image: Mata Lauano/Spasifik/RNZ Pacific
RNZ Pacific
Auckland University of Technology has denied claims that the Pacific Media Centre is being dumped or sidelined.
The centre’s recently retired director Professor David Robie has raised concern about the way AUT is handling the PMC’s leadership succession, as well as the removal of its physical office without a clear relocation.
But little over a month after Dr Robie retired as its director in December, he was sent photos of the PMC’s office stripped of its theses, books, monographs, research journals, media outputs and other history.
“I was hugely disappointed when I heard about the removal of the office and we were sent photographs by the team back there at AUT,” Dr Robie said.
The PMC Project – a Pacific Media Centre profile. Video: Alistar Kata/PMC
Expressions of interest
But the Head of AUT’s School of Communication Studies, Dr Rosser Johnson, said the faculty had opted for a call for expressions of interest in the leadership role, rather than directly appointing someone.
He said they were looking to make the Pacific Media Centre more visible and more integrated with the life of the faculty.
“We’re moving a few people around. One of the groups of people who are moving around is the PMC,” Dr Johnson explained.
“But it’s moving to space that’s got double the office space and at least double the space for people to work in.”
However, people within the School of Communication who spoke to RNZ Pacific were uncertain about where the PMC office would be, and whether it may simply be a small part of a larger, open space shared with other divisions.
The office of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology was abruptly emptied of its contents in early 2021. Image: RNZ Pacific/Café Pacific
A lack of communication and consultation over the move has drawn condemnation from many regional journalists and researchers.
With almost three months [more than two years] having elapsed since Dr Robie retired, there has been growing suspicion that AUT management will look to change the Pacific focus of the centre.
Bullying rife at AUT
Ena Manuireva, a Tahitian doctoral candidate, said that given the recent Davenport review of the university’s culture which found bullying was rife, the handling of the PMC is shameful.
“It’s good for AUT to have some critical thinking in that department in their university. I’m trying to see what is the gain that they’re trying to have, what will be the outcome,” Manuireva said.
“The outcome would be that AUT would be looked at as a university that’s not open to everyone, especially to the Pacific.”
But Johnson denied that the School of Commuications was looking to change the Centre’s Focus. His characterisation of the matter suggests that the PMC will grow its presence.
“There’s only so much one or two or three people can do. So having more people involved opens up more opportunities for people to link into their communities.
“There’s absolutely no intention at all to limit the Pacific Media Centre.”
The office of the Pacific Media Centre in early February 2021 . . . stripped clean of its research documents, publications, and the Pacific Journalism Review archives. Image: RNZ Pacific/APR
Dr Robie said he would wait and see what transpires, but in his view there was a gap between what was said by AUT and “the reality”.
“The thing is that as a centre, [PMC] had this unique combination of media output as well as the research,” Dr Robie explained.
“I guess what I fear is that there will be a stepping back from the actual media outputs and especially that very broad coverage that we had.”
Dr Johnson said a call for expressions of interest in the Pacific Media Centre leadership role would go out this week.
Café Pacific notes: In spite of the defiant claims by AUT’s School of Communication Studies made in this report, nothing had been done two years after the claims and it is widely accepted that the the Pacific Media Centre – featured as a Creative Commons case study in 2010 – has ceased to exist although its website at the time of closing used to be accessible until recently at http://pmc.aut.ac.nz. Professor David Robie’s own account of the death of a centre was published in Media Asia research journal in September 2022. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The award-winning USP journalism newspaper Wansolwara ... reporting on the university's own award winners. Image: Wansolwara
By Wanshika Kumar in Suva
The 20th University of the South Pacific Journalism Student Awards in Suva last month were dedicated to retiring Pacific media professor Dr David Robie.
In his remarks to the USP journalism students, the coordinator of the programme, Dr Shailendra Singh, also paid tribute to USP journalism alumni making a “sterling contribution to the region”.
Dr Singh reminded students that they had an important role to play and as journalists to never underestimate their responsibilities to society.
“The region faces many challenges. Climate change is seen as the gravest one of all. But even before climate change we faced problems like corruption and environmental degradation, that have become entrenched,” he said.
“As journalists, it is our responsibility to draw sustained attention to these issues.”
He described Professor Robie, former coordinator of USP Journalism Programme and the founding director of the Pacific Media Centre based at New Zealand’s Auckland University of Technology, as a “champion” of media freedom and media development in the Pacific.
Professor David Robie with his wife, Del Abcede, and Tagata Pasifika broadcaster John Pulu at the Pacific Media Centre’s symposium last month when David and Del were farewelled after 18 years with the university. Image: PMC/John Pulu
“Professor Robie introduced these awards 20 years ago and it is only fitting that on the 20th anniversary of the awards he is honoured for his contribution to media in the region,” he said.
Smaller affair this year
The 20th USP Journalism Student Awards was a much smaller, internal affair due to constraints caused by covid-19.
According to Dr Singh, the awards were the longest running and most consistent journalism awards in the Pacific region.
At the 2018 USP Journalism Student Awards, Professor Robie, invited guest speaker at the time, reflected on being at the university when he set up the awards.
“It is with pride that I can look back at my five years with USP bridging the start of the millennium,” he said.
“Among high points were gaining my doctorate in history/politics at USP — the first journalism educator to do so in the Pacific – and launching these very annual journalism awards, initially with the Storyboard and Tanoa awards and a host of sponsors,” he had said.
“When I look at the outstanding achievements in the years since then, it is with some pleasure.
“And USP should be rightly delighted with one of the major successful journalism programmes of the Asia-Pacific region.”
Ten awards presented
Ten special awards were up for grabs at the 20th USP Journalism Student Awards.
Dr Singh said the event recognised and rewarded students who excelled in their coursework, and this included producing news for print, online and broadcast media.
The awards were organised by the USP Journalism Students Association and USP staff.
Speaking on behalf of the graduating class, Shreya Kumar said the past three years had been a humbling experience.
“We created more memories than we realised which is why I am also filled with anxiety and sadness,” she said.
She urged her peers to persevere in life despite the hardships and challenges.
Earth Journalism News Pacific Partnership coordinator and USP Journalism alumni Donna Hoerder said covid-19 brought about a huge challenge for everyone but as a journalist there was always a story to be told.
“Whatever you publish or broadcast you can always relate it to the current situation,” she said.
“But don’t stop there, be sure to look at how this relates to the region and even at the global level,” she told journalism students.
“Remember your role is that of a watchdog or the fourth estate of power. Use your influence to tell a story that relates to now and one that can be linked to the wider picture not only because that’s how you get more recognition.
“But most importantly because you hold government, civil society and the private sector to account,” she said.
Wanshika Kumar is a reporter with the USP journalism newspaper Wansolwara, which was distributed last week by the Fiji Sun as a liftout. She was also one of the award winners. Asia Pacific Report collaborates with Wansolwara and USP Journalism.
Recipients of the 10 awards:
Most Promising First Year Students Award – Viliame Tawanakoro and Sera Sefeti
Best Radio Student Award – Josefa Babitu
Best Television Student Award – Ioane Asioli
Best Documentary – Group 2: Kim Rabuka, Swastika Singh, Verenaisi Domoika and Ian Chute
Best News Reporting – Wanshika Kumar and Jeshu Lal
Best Sports Reporting – Bulou Naugavule
Best Feature Reporting – Brian Lezutuni (Solomon Islands)
EJN Best Environmental Reporting – Ben Bilua (Solomon Islands), Jared Koli (Solomon Islands), Sera Sefeti and Patrick Lestro
Exemplary Student Award – Dhruvkaran Nand
Most Outstanding Graduating Students – Jared Koli and Shreya Kumar
USP students at the journalism awards night. In the centre is the Tanoa trophy, one of the founding awards, with coordinator Dr Shailendra Singh (behind, black shirt), and other journalism staff Eliki Drugunalevu (bula shirt) and Wansolwara editor-in-chief Geraldine Panapasa on the right. Image: Wansolwara
As well as playing a role in critical moments of history as a journalist in the region, Professor David Robie's students have also covered landmark events that helped shape some Pacific nations. Image: John Pulu/Tagata Pasifika
By Laurens Ikinia
A journalist who sailed on board the bombed environmental ship Rainbow Warrior, was arrested at gunpoint in New Caledonia while investigating French military garrisons in pro-independence Kanak villages, and reported on social justice issues across the Pacific has stepped down as founding director of the Pacific Media Centre.
Professor David Robie, 75, an author, academic, independent journalist and journalism professor at Auckland University of Technology, retired this week after more than 18 years at the institution.
He has been working as a journalist for more than 46 years and as an academic for more than 27 years.
As well as playing a role in critical moments of history as a journalist in the region, his students have also covered landmark events that helped shape some Pacific nations, especially in Melanesia – such as the 1997 Sandline mercenary crisis in Papua New Guinea and the George Speight attempted coup in Fiji in May 2000.
But a journalism or academic career were not always clearcut pathways for Dr Robie. During his studies in high school, he was heavily involved in outdoor pursuits and he became a Queen’s Scout.
At the time he was thinking of becoming a professional forester and he was recruited by the NZ Forest Service at 17 in 1963 as a forester cadet with a view to studying for a BSc and then forestry science.
But the same year he was selected to represent New Zealand at a World Jamboree at Marathon Bay, Greece – the site of a famous battle between the Athenians and the Persians in 490 BC.
Future options
This brought his future options to a head.
“At school I was interested in three things – writing, art and mapping/outdoors. So, that’s why I initially wanted to become a forester,” he says.
But going to Greece changed everything. He started his science degree course while working part time at the NZ Forest Service publications division at its headquarters in Wellington. He then realised he was more interested in writing.
“I realised that I didn’t want to spend my life talking with trees, even though I love trees,” he says.
At the end of the year, he became a cadet journalist at The Dominion (now the Dominion Post). Shortly after he became the youngest subeditor at the newspaper.
He later went to Auckland to work as assistant editor on Auto Age magazine, had a short stint on The New Zealand Herald as a subeditor before moving to Australia to join the Melbourne Herald.
While working there in 1968, he was strongly influenced by the student riots in Paris and took a serious interest in politics over the student protests against Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War.
Youngest editor
At 24, he became the youngest editor of a national Sunday newspaper, the Sunday Observer, which campaigned strongly against the Vietnam War.
In his mid-20s, Dr Robie migrated to Johannesburg, South Africa, and was appointed chief subeditor of the Rand Daily Mail, the country’s leading newspaper crusading against the apartheid regime.
“In South Africa, we were really pushed hard. I probably learned most of what I have learned in my career as a journalist in South Africa.
“Mainly because of the threats and experiences. I worked with a number of ‘banned’ and inspirational people, like photojournalist Peter Magubane.
“I was threatened many times and on one occasion I drove Winnie Mandela’s two daughters from their home in Soweto to a multiracial school in Swaziland because Winnie, being banned, could not travel.
“I drove the girls 360 km through roadblocks to take the children to school,” Dr Robie recalls.
Threats against journalists
The late Winnie Mandela was the wife of imprisoned anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela who became President of South Africa 1994-1999 and died in 2013. The two daughters are Zindziswa Mandela and Zenani Mandela-Diamini.
While working in South Africa, Dr Robie learned a lot of things he had never experienced in New Zealand – the vital need to campaign for social justice, threats against journalists and jailings, and the role of human rights journalism.
Subsequently, he travelled overland as a freelancer across Africa and ended up in Nairobi, Kenya. There, he worked as group features editor of the Aga Khan’s Daily Nation for a year before travelling to West Africa, Nigeria and across the Sahara Desert to Algeria and France.
In Paris, he camped in the Bois de Boulogne forest until he found a garret to live in a refurbished 17th century building in Rue St Sauveur in the heart of the city.
He worked for Agence France-Presse global news agency for three years and covered the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games when there was a black African walkout in protest about New Zealand playing rugby against white South Africa.
The Pacific Journalist 2001 … one of David Robie’s books on South Pacific media and politics. Image: USP
He says it was ironic that it took travelling to France for him to “wake up” to the Pacific right on New Zealand’s doorstep.
Foreign editor
Dr Robie returned to New Zealand in 1979 and became foreign editor on the Auckland Star. He started doing trips to the Cook Islands, New Caledonia, Tahiti, Vanuatu and elsewhere as a freelance in his holidays. He thought he might as well go fulltime freelance to do the stories he was interested in.
In 1984, he set up the Asia Pacific Network which he ran for 10 years from his home in Grey Lynn.
He became a chief correspondent for Fiji-based Islands Business news magazine covering investigative and environmental stories and decolonisation issues. He also reported for the Global South news agency Gemini, The Australian, the New Zealand Times, RNZ International and other media.
In 1985, he sailed on board the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior for 11 weeks and took part in the evacuation of islanders from Rongelap Atoll.
In early 1987, he was arrested at gunpoint near Canala, New Caledonia, for taking photographs of “nomadisation” style military camps design to intimidate Kanak villagers seeking independence.
In 1993, Dr Robie was appointed as a lecturer and head of journalism at the University of Papua New Guinea. His students published the award-winning fortnightly newspaper Uni Tavur and they covered the 1997 Sandline crisis when the military commander arrested foreign mercenaries hired by the PNG government to wage war against rebels on Bougainville in a “coup that wasn’t a coup”.
PJR launched
While at UPNG, Dr Robie launched Pacific Journalism Review, the only specialised research journal to investigate media issues in the South Pacific, Asia-Pacific, Australia, and New Zealand.
As a journalist and journalism educator, he raises concern that “most media organisations send someone to cover a particular event – they go in and they come out. Quickly. It is parachute journalism. Unfortunately, it is not a good way to cover things.
“Often journalists who work on a parachute basis don’t have enough background. They don’t have enough information or the sources to get a deeper understanding of the complex nuances,” he says.
After serving Papua New Guinea as a journalism educator for more than five years, he shifted to the University of South Pacific in Fiji.
In 1998, Dr Robie began his new journey as head of USP’s journalism department. He was teaching while actively writing news articles, academic journal articles, and books.
“One of the lessons I learned as a journalism educator is that a journalism project is the best way to learn,” he says.
He cites the George Speight attempted coup in Fiji in May 2000 when his students covered downtown riots in Suva, the seizure of the elected government in Parliament at gunpoint by Speight’s renegade soldiers, and a protracted siege as an example.
The PMC Project – A short documentary by Alistar Kata. Video: PMC
Crisis website updates
The students updated their website Pacific Journalism Online several times daily at a time when the mainstream newspapers did not have websites and they produced the Wansolwara newspaper that the university tried to confiscate.
“What we were doing was contributing to empowerment. To me, empowerment is really important. It isn’t just about writing a good story, and things like that. But empowering giving people the information that they need to make decisions in a democracy,” he says.
Dr Robie also gained his PhD in history/politics from the University of the South Pacific. After serving the country for five years, he moved back to New Zealand.
Since 2002, Dr Robie has worked at AUT and became director of the Pacific Media Centre in 2007 and remained editor of Pacific Journalism Review.
West Papuan students sing Tanah Papua in honour of PMC director Professor David Robie earlier this month. Image: PMC
He became an associate professor in 2005 and a professor in 2012. During his academic career, Professor Robie gained a number of awards nationally and internationally, including the 2015 AMIC Asia Communication Award in Dubai, Vice-Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2011, the PIMA Special Award for Contribution to Pacific journalism in 2011 and the PIMA Pacific Media Freedom award in 2005.
Dr Robie was also an Australian Press Council fellow in 1999, and has been on the editorial boards of Asia-Pacific Media Educator, Australian Journalism Review, Fijian Studies, Global Media Journal and Pacific Ecologist.
He is currently the New Zealand representative of the Asian Media, Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) and a life member. He is also editor and publisher of Asia Pacific Report, and his books are listed at NZ Pen.
One thing can be sure. Social justice will remain high on his ongoing agenda.
Laurens Ikinia is a Papuan Masters in Communication Studies student at Auckland University of Technology who has been studying journalism. He is on an internship with AUT’s Pacific Media Centre.
Del Abcede, Dr David Robie and Tagata Pasifika's John Pulu at the last PMC public seminar in December 2020 . . . their contributions to AUT will be sorely missed. Image: Tagata Pasifika/APR
By Crosbie Walsh
The highlights of a symposium at the Pacific Media Centre of the Auckland University of Technology on 1 December 2020 — West Papua Independence Day — were the numerous accolades paid to PMC director Professor David Robie and Del Abcede, who are retiring at the end of the year.
David has lived in the Pacific, been involved in Pacific human rights and media freedom issues and taught journalism to Pacific Islanders and others for 40 years. He will be a hard man to replace.
He was aboard Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour in 1985 shortly before it was sunk by French saboteurs (Opération Satanique). The Warrior had been on its way to a protest against a planned French nuclear test in Moruroa.
And he was close at hand when French “state-backed terrorism” also targeted independence leaders in New Caledonia and French Polynesia.
David has actively criticised the Indonesian government for the ruthlessness of its attacks on the West Papuan independence movement, the Philippines government for the murder of journalists and has protested against media suppression in Tonga, Samoa and Fiji.
From 1993-97 David headed the journalism programme at the University of Papua New Guinea, where he also launched Pacific Journalism Review (the latest issue has papers on climate change and the pandemic) and Pacific Media Watch.
Sri Krishnamurthi’s short documentary about Pacific Media Watch.
From 1998 to 2002 he was head of journalism at the University of the South Pacific in Suva. He joined Auckland University of Technology in 2002 and pioneered the Pacific Media Centre and had been its director ever since.
Students are not known for their accolades, especially for teachers who are leaving, but then many teachers do not inspire their students as David does.
His own inspiration comes from using his head and passionately believing in what he is doing.
Del Abcede spoke on behalf of the West Papuan students, declaring, “I will say the things they cannot say because it puts them at risk”.
She appealed for more support from New Zealand and Pacific countries for the West Papuan self-determination cause.
Dr Crosbie Walsh was the foundation professor of development studies at both Massey University in Aotearoa New Zealand and the University of the South Pacific. He publishes a blog on Fiji and Pacific affairs where this article was first published and it was republished by the PNG Attitude blog of Keith Jackson.
In November 2020, when Joe Biden finally ushered in his presidency pledges amid the narrow triumph in the swing state of Pennsylvania, he wasted no time in adding to his modest twitter output, just like his predecessor Donald Trump.
Three days earlier, the President-elect had fired off a tweet to renew a promise that the United States would rejoin the 2015 Paris Agreement, marking the end of a four-year assault on climate protections under Trump’s leadership.
Ironically, the tweet was on the very day that the Trump Administration officially abandoned the Paris Climate Accord (Farand & Gerretsen, 2020).
“And in exactly 77 days,” he tweeted, “a Biden administration will rejoin it.”
The Paris Agreement requires all countries to present new or improved climate targets to the UN. As the world’s second highest greenhouse gases emitter (after China), the US is critical to meeting the Paris of limiting the global heating “well below 2degC ” and to target even lower to 1.5degC.
Elected on the most ambitious climate platform ever presented by a presidential candidate (and gaining more than 77 million votes, the most ever), Biden pledged a US$2 trillion “clean air revolution”. The journey ahead will be rocky and frustrating. The remnants of Trumpism and an obstructive outgoing administration will provide many barriers.
The November 2020 edition of Pacific Journalism Review.
It has a strong commitment to human rights and environmental studies in a media and journalism context.
However, the current climate and health challenges are being addressed against the backdrop of a so-called post-truth world that is playing out in the Asia-Pacific region as critically as elsewhere, including the US.
Issues of conspiracy theories, disinformation and hoaxes had such an impact on the fringes of the New Zealand election in October that commentators such as RNZ Mediawatch’s Colin Peacock were driven to ask: “Should we fear fake news in our politics?”
Based on the experience of the US elections in 2016 and beyond and the Brexit debacle and an avalanche of “fake news” in later ballots in Australia, France and other countries, concerns were high. As it turned out, “fears that foreign political consultants and fringe parties would turn Facebook followers and fake news in the [New Zealand] election proved unfounded” (Peacock, 2020).
However, while New Zealand’s major parties also “mostly ran a clean game online”, Peacock pointed to the online misinformation that was mostly about COVID-19 and to New Zealand research linked to the Digital Election Campaigning Worldwide project with warnings about the future risks.
Four years in the White House by a president globally regarded as a serial liar has “accelerated the drift towards post-truth, and the media is shackled to that acceleration”, writes Guardian political editor Katharine Murphy, who has raised critical questions about the role and responsibilities of journalists and journalism when dealing with fact-checking and known untruths.
In response to major networks pulling the plug on a presidential “florid fantasy” about fake votes and fake polls in the wake of the US election, she had this to say:
“Faced with this reality—a lying, dangerous demagogue openly hostile to political conventions and democratic norms—media outlets face difficult choices. Do networks refuse to broadcast the lies? Do media outlets disrupt the tirades with live fact-checking? Broadcast the news (and a president speaking meets the news test) without interruption, but put straps at the bottom of the screen alerting viewers to form their own conclusions?” (Murphy, 2020)
As she says, “puncturing self-serving propaganda” is the primary duty of serious journalists.
Over the past 26 years, Pacific Journalism Review has done its fair share of “puncturing” and bringing critical issues before our media fraternity, both through more than 1000 research articles published, and its range of critical reviews and actual journalism (especially through our “Frontline” section pioneered by Wendy Bacon).
Founded at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1994, the journal has also had a five-year stint at the University of the South Pacific, but its longest home has been 18 years at Auckland University of Technology.
In the wake of our 20th anniversary celebration at AUT six years ago, colleague and friend Lee Duffield wrote a reflective article for our birthday edition in which he concluded that PJR had always emphasised its “regional identity”. PJR has been, he added, dedicated to:
“Adopting its own ‘Pacific’ style of discourse and inquiry, [f]or 20 years it has been focused on Pacific issues, for and by people and institutions of the region—while always open to linkages and inputs from major global centres.” (Duffield, 2015).
The Life of Pacific Journalism Review. Video: Sasya Wreksono
As this has been a transitional and final edition for me as founding editor at the helm and in the “frontline”, it is an opportunity to thank and acknowledge many people who have contributed and shared with me on this waka voyage. Some of them are featured in a 2014 birthday cartoon by Malcolm Evans — at the head of this article — and others have joined since or been involved earlier.
First, Philip Cass, who is taking over as editor. I am delighted that Philip is taking on this challenge as he was with us as a wantok from Wewak, Papua New Guinea, contributing right from the beginning in Port Moresby. He has also been a dedicated and voluntary reviews editor and associate editor for the past seven years.
Del Abcede has been the designer since the embryonic Pacific Media Centre was launched in 2007 and took over as the publishing “umbrella” from AUT’s School of Communication Studies. She has carried the burden and stress of hours and nights of endless layouts to meet the never-ending deadlines.
A tribute to mentors Wendy Bacon, Chris Nash, Trevor Cullen, Mark Pearson, Pat Craddock, Lee Duffield and Shailendra Singh. They are all in the cartoon. So too are Campion Ohasio, Ben Bohane, Allison Oosterman, John Miller, Tui O’Sullivan, Kevin Upton, Barry King and cartoonist Evans is riding a dolphin.
Not pictured in the cartoon are others who have contributed in various editorial roles such as Khairiah A. Rahman, Peter Cronau, Nicole Gooch, Camille Nakhid, Heather Devere, Jim Marbrook, Joseph Fernandez, Evangelia Papoutsaki, Susan O’Rourke Alan Samson, Murray Horton, Linnea Eltés, Eric Loo, Ian Richards, John Henningham, Martin Hadlow, Sandra Kailahi, Alex Wake, Kayt Davies, James Hollings, Danilo Arao, Sasya Wreksono, Kalafi Moala, Crispin Maslog, Ramon Tuazon, Daya Kishan Thussu, Fernando Sepe Jr, Mariquit Almario-Gonzales, Belinda Lopez, Johnny Blades, Ian Stuart, Alex Perrottet, Sitiveni Ratuva, Faith Valencia-Forrester, Kasun Ubayasiri, Alan Robson, Angela Romano, Katheryn Bowd, Hermin Indah Wahyuni, Andi Fitrah, Vissia Ita Yulianto, Victor Mambor, Scott MacWilliam, Tony Clear, and also our manager Edelita Clark.
Plus our Tuwhera digital support team Luqman Hayes and Donna Coventry. Thank you all (and anybody I have inadvertently overlooked) for the contribution over the years, as a journal like this relies on considerable teamwork and an enormous amount of voluntary input.
Part of the Pacific Journalism Review story has been told in a YouTube video by AUT screen production graduate Sasya Wreksono (2014), who interviewed several of our contributors and editors on both sides of the Tasman.
At the time of our 20th anniversary, I wrote what I will echo today in that over our more than two decades “we have achieved precisely what we set out to do, being a critical conscience of Asia-Pacific socio-political and development dilemmas”.
Tenk yu tumas … lukim yu, Philip, and good luck to you and your future crew
for the media waka journey ahead.
This is an extract from the final editorial of founding editor David Robie’s 26 years at the helm of Pacific Journalism Review. The full editorial can be read at the PJR website here. since this edition was published, PJR has continued as an independent NGO, Asia Pacific Media Network.
References
Duffield, L. (2015). Pacific Journalism Review: Twenty years on the front line of regional identity and freedom. Pacific Journalism Review: Te Koakoa, 21(1), 18-33. https://doi.org/10.24135/pjr.v21i1.145
The “breach of community standards” warning I also received on my FB page was unacceptable, but surely a mistake?
However, with subsequent protests by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) media freedom watchdog and the Sydney office of the Asia-Pacific branch of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the world’s largest journalist organisation with more than 600,000 members in 187 countries, falling on deaf ears, I started wondering about the political implications of this censorship.
The removed item was purportedly because of “nudity” in a photograph published by IFJ of a protest in the West Papuan capital Jayapura in August last year during the Papuan Uprising against Indonesian racism and oppression that began in Surabaya, Java.
The RSF screengrab on its “censored” by Facebook story. Image: PMC/FB
The Facebook “warning” over the blocked West Papua news item. Photo: PMC Screenshot
The two protesters in the front of the march were partially naked except for the Papuan koteka (penis gourd), as traditionally worn by males in the highlands.
As I wrote at the time when communicating with RSF:
“Anybody with common sense would see that the photograph in question was not ’nudity’ in the community standards sense of Facebook’s guidelines. This was a media freedom item and the news picture shows a student protest against racism in Jayapura on August 19, 2019.
“Two apparently naked men are wearing traditional koteka (penis gourds) as normally worn in the Papuan highlands. It is a strong cultural protest against Indonesian repression and crackdowns on media. Clearly the Facebook algorithms are arbitrary and lacking in cultural balance.
“Also, there is no proper process to challenge or appeal against such arbitrary rulings.
Using the flawed FB online system to file a challenge in this arbitrary ruling three times on August 7, I ended up with a reply that said: ‘We have fewer reviewers [to consider the appeal] available right now because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak’.”
The cover of the July edition of Pacific Journalism Review.
Two letters unanswered
My two letters to Mia Garrick on August 10 and 11 went unanswered.
RSF’s Asia-Pacific director Daniel Bastard wrote to her on August 11, saying: “Since it is a press freedom issue, we plan to publish a short statement to ask for the end of this censorship. Beforehand, I’m enquiring about your view and take on this case.”
The IFJ followed up on August 14, two days after their original FB posting had also been removed, with a letter by their Asia-Pacific project manager Melanie Morrison, who described the FB the censorship as a “cruel irony”:
“As a press freedom organisation, the IFJ strongly condemns the removal of posts on spurious grounds. Such an action amounts to censorship.
“West Papua is subjected to a virtual media blackout. Access to the [Indonesian-ruled] restive province is restricted and one of the only ways to get information out is through social media.
“The photographer, Gusti Tanati, is based in West Papua and is no stranger to operating with harsh restrictions. To have his photos censored, along with an article that points to the increasingly hostile media environment in West Papua, is a cruel irony.”
Hinting at the political overtones, Morrison also noted that if Facebook was made aware of this photo by a complaint made by a Facebook user, “it is highly likely that the complainant objects to any coverage of West Papua that may be critical of the repressive situation in the province”.
She added that “understanding the background to this ongoing censorship is critical”.
Tracking truth and disinformation
Listening to journalist and forensic online researcher Benjamin Strick in an interview with RNZ’s Kim Hill last Saturday about “tracking truth” and exposing disinformation prompted me to revive this FB censorship issue.
In 2018, Strick was part of a Peabody Award-winning BBC investigative team that exposed the soldier-killers of two mothers and their children in Cameroon – The Anatomy of a Killing.
But I was alerted by his discussion of his investigation last year of the Indonesian crackdown and disinformation campaign coinciding with the Papua Uprising.
Discussing “collaborative journalism” and the West Papuan conflict with Kim Hill, he said: “The war is really online.”
He became interested in the “resurgence” or pro-independence sentiment and racial tension after incidents when some Javanese students branded West Papuans as “monkeys” and with other extreme abuse, which sparked a series of protests from Jayapura to Jakarta.
“I was investigating this thinking that it was going to be another mass human rights crime committed in West Papua,” he recalls. “But instead, when the internet was off and I was searching online, I was seeing these tourism commercials about West Papua and I was also seeing these videos on Twitter and Facebook about the great work the Indonesian government was doing for the people of West Papua.
“And they were using these hashtags #westpapuagenocide and #freewestpapua. I thought to myself this has got nothing to do with genocide, providing tourism in this context.”
‘Hashtag hijacking’
This is a process known as “hashtag hijacking”.
Strick’s research exposed hundreds of bogus sites sending our masses of scheduled “bots” – automated accounts – and were traced back to a Indonesian public relations agency InsightID linked to the government.
Recently, I was engaged with a high ranking Indonesian Foreign Affairs official, Director of the European affairs Sade Bimantara, in a webinar hosted by Tabloid Jubi journalist Victor Mambor when we talked about web-based disinformation.
Papuan bots orchestrated from Jakarta. Image: PMC screenshot of BBC
However, my experience of this disinformation has been overwhelmingly linked to Indonesian trolls, and even our Pacific Media Centre Facebook page has been targeted by such attacks.
“The Twitter accounts were all using fake or stolen profile photos, including images of K-pop stars or random people, and were clearly not functioning as ‘real’ people do on social media.
“This led to the discovery of a network of automated fake accounts spread across at least four social media platforms and numerous websites.”
In February 2019, Reuters had earlier reported Facebook removing “hundreds of Indonesian accounts, pages and groups from its social network” after discovering they were linked to an online group called Saracen.
This syndicate had been identified in 2016 and police had arrested three of its members on suspicion of being being paid to “spread incendiary material online” through social media.
For the moment, we would be delighted if Facebook would remove the block on our shared items and not censor future dispatches or genuine human rights news items about West Papua.
The truth deserves to be told.
POSTSCRIPT: Since this article was published, I have been contacted by Miranda Sissons, Facebook’s director of human rights product policy, apologising for the “frustrations” and lack of a response.
“Covid has had a huge impact on our content moderation capacity (see for example here). We are prioritising appeals capacity according to severity of harm (eg suicide and self injury or child endangerment),” she wrote.
“We’re also using guidance from the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights to prioritise according to scale, severity, and remediability of human rights violations.”
She has put me in touch with people who I understand will sort out the problem.
Facebook’s algorithms censorship message on a West Papua article. Image: Asia Pacific Report/RSF
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on Facebook to restore an article that was censored for violating its rules on nudity and urges the social media platform to be more transparent and responsible about respect for the free flow of information.
“Your post goes against our community standards on nudity or sexual activity” — this was the terse message that Professor David Robie, the head of the Auckland-based Pacific Media Centre, RSF’s Oceania partner, received from Facebook whenever he tried to share an article about press freedom in Melanesia, especially the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua.
Facebook’s algorithms censored it because, according to an automatic message sent to Dr Robie, “some audiences are sensitive to different things when it comes to nudity.”
The closest thing to nudity in the IFJ article was a photo of an anti-racism protest by Papua students showing two of the participants in traditional highland costume — consisting of necklaces and penis sheaths.
Tyranny “Anybody with common sense would see that the photograph in question was not ’nudity’ in the community standards sense of Facebook’s guidelines,” Dr Robie said, condemning the “tyranny” of the platform’s algorithms.
A former journalist himself as well as an academic, Dr Robie tried to report the mistake to Facebook three times on August 7, without success.
“There is no proper process to challenge or appeal against such arbitrary rulings,” he said,
RSF contacted Mia Garlick, the person responsible for Australian and New Zealand policy at Facebook, to get her position on this issue, but had not received any substantive response at the time of writing.
“This utterly absurd case of censorship shows the degree to which Facebook’s arbitrary algorithms pose serious threats to the free flow of information and, by extension, to press freedom,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk.
“As Facebook has imposed itself as a leading conveyor of news and information and, as such, is bound by the requirements of responsibility and transparency, we call on its regional desk to immediately lift the censorship on this article.”
Exploiting algorithms This is not the first time that Facebook has censored content about the rights of Indonesia’s Papuan population on “nudity” grounds.
In April 2018, it deleted a Vanuatu Daily Post article because it was accompanied by a photo of Papuan warriors in traditional costume taken by the Australian photographer Ben Bohane in 1995.
Pro-Indonesia trolls and fake Facebook accounts are known to report this kind of photo to Facebook, exploiting its algorithms to get content they dislike censored.
When pro-independence demonstrations erupted in August 2019, the Indonesian authorities imposed an internet blackout on the region, preventing journalists from covering the protests.
Facebook’s algorithms censored the International Federation of Journalists article because, according to an automatic message sent to Dr Robie, “some audiences are sensitive to different things when it comes to nudity”. Montage: RSF
