Professor David Robie has a passion for the Asia-Pacific region. A journalist for more than 40 years, David has reported on postcolonial coups, indigenous struggles for independence and environmental and developmental issues in the Asia-Pacific. He retired from AUT University in December 2020.
Pacific media should ‘bear witness’ to human rights violations, says Robie
Human Rights and Social Development
A prominent journalist and founding director of Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre, Professor David Robie, has shared his experience of human rights coverage in the region as a media person.
He stressed the news media role as watchdogs at a Human Rights and Media Forum held in Nadi, Fiji, on 13–15 April 2016. Professor Robie was chief guest.
Senior journalists and government communication officers from 13 Pacific countries participated in the forum, which had the theme: Enhancing a human rights-based approach to news reporting.
“Human rights-oriented journalism is more focused on global rather than on selective reporting, with an emphasis on the vulnerable and empowerment for the affected and marginalised people — a voice for the voiceless,” Dr Robie said.
After the forum, he said in an interview: “Journalists ought to be human rights defenders and bear witness to Pacific human rights violations.
“This forum was remarkably successful in providing the tools for a wide range of Pacific media people to bring accountability to offenders against human rights.
“I congratulate the Pacific Community’s Regional Rights Resource Team (RRRT) on organising this important forum.”
Vital media role
The forum, which was supported by the Australian government and European Union, released an outcomes document, reaffirming the vital role the media play in recognising the importance of strengthening news reporting, using a human rights-based approach.
The outcomes document also acknowledges the importance of building a strong relationship between government communication personnel and journalists in sharing information and the roles they play in disseminating information.
This document is being formatted into a poster for newsrooms in the region.
Romulo Nayacalevu, SPC’s Human Rights Adviser, said: “The media have a powerful voice in highlighting human rights issues and concerns, and this workshop provides the opportunity for journalists to dialogue on human rights and the media.
“SPC is delighted to work closely with the Pacific media to support their work in human rights reporting and we are excited about the outcomes document, which provides them with tips on how to do that.”
Giving a Pacific journalist’s perspective, Stanley Simpson, managing director of Business Melanesia Ltd, stressed that journalists in the region were frequently victims of human rights abuses while reporting on human rights in the region.
“Pacific journalists are often young and almost always broke, some have very little life experience, they are underpaid and overworked, they get threatened and intimidated regularly, and they endure a high pressure environment.
‘Instruments of change’
“People like to see journalists as instruments of change, but sometimes journalists just feel that they are being used by different sides with different agendas.
“So often they are going through the day-to-day slog of getting a newspaper or news bulletin out — it is easy to forget that they have the potential to influence change.
“It is important that this is addressed and journalists understand their roles as agents of change,” he said.
Belinda Kora, news director of Papua New Guinea FM, agreed that journalists could influence change but their reporting must be responsible.
“I keep reminding my reporters that when it comes to reporting about human rights, if your story does not impact on the lives of victims or anyone else for that matter, you are only taking up space,” Kora said.
She added that, importantly, journalists needed to know their rights to be able to report responsibly.
“How can we journalists in the region report effectively if we don’t know our rights?” Kora asked.
Pacific aspirations
The three-day forum strengthened media capacity in rights-based reporting to reflect the aspirations of Pacific Island communities for equality, development and social justice, said RRRT team leader Nicol Cave.
Marian Kupu of Tonga’s Broadcom Broadcasting Limited said: “I found the three-day forum very encouraging because I learnt about my country’s human rights commitments and I see my role as a journalist to report on the gaps in order to encourage decision makers to prioritise and address the issues.”
“Giving voice to the voiceless” and “championing the rights of all peoples” were key messages highlighted at the forum.
The forum was organised by the Regional Rights Resource Team (RRRT) of the Pacific Community in partnership with the Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (Pacmas), the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and the journalism programme of the University of the South Pacific.
Republished from the RRRT website.
David Robie: A future in Pacific journalism in the age of ‘media phobia’
KEYNOTE ADDRESS 2018: By David Robie
Kia Ora Tatou and Ni Sa Bula,
For many of you millennials, you’re graduating and entering a Brave New World of Journalism . . .
Embarking on a professional journalism career that is changing technologies at the speed of light, and facing a future full of treacherous quicksands like never before.
When I started in journalism, as a fresh 18-year-old in 1964 it was the year after President Kennedy was assassinated and I naively thought my hopeful world had ended, Beatlemania was in overdrive and New Zealand had been sucked into the Vietnam War.
And my journalism career actually started four years before the University of the South Pacific was founded in 1968.
Being a journalist was much simpler back then — as a young cadet on the capital city Wellington’s Dominion daily newspaper, I found the choices were straight forward.
Did we want to be a print, radio or television journalist? The internet was unheard of then – it took a further 15 years before the rudimentary “network of networks” emerged, and then another seven before computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and complicated journalism.
The first rule for interviewing, aspiring journalists were told in newsrooms — and also in a 1965 book called The Journalist’s Craft that I rediscovered on my bookshelves the other day — was to pick the right source. Rely on sources who were trustworthy and well-informed.
Second rule: ‘Get the truth’
This was long before Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post made “deep throat’ famous in their Watergate investigation in 1972.
The second rule was: make sure you get the truth, the whole truth and nothing but…
We were told that we really needed to get a sense of when a woman or a man is telling the truth.
This, of course, fed into the third rule, which was: talk to the interviewee face to face.
Drummed into us was accuracy, speed, fairness and balance. Many of my days were spent on the wharves of Wellington Harbour painstakingly taking the details of the shipping news, or reporting accidents.
The whole idea was accuracy, accuracy, accuracy. And what a drumming we experienced from a crusty news editor calling us out when we made the slightest mistake.
If we survived this grueling baptism of fire, then we were bumped up from a cadet to a real journalist.
Fewer risks to journalists
There were fewer risks to journalists in those days – a few nasty complaints here and there, lack of cooperation from the public, and a possible defamation case if we didn’t know our media law.
It wasn’t until I went to South Africa in 1970 — the then white-minority ruled country that jailed one of the great leaders of our times, Nelson Mandela — that I personally learned how risky it could be being a journalist.
Jailings, assaults and banning orders were commonplace. One of my colleagues, banned then exiled Peter Magubane, a brilliant photographer, was one of my earlier influences with his courage and dedication.
However, today the world is a very different place. It is basically really hostile against journalists in many countries and it continues to get worse.
Today assassinations, murders — especially the killing of those involved in investigating corruption — kidnappings, hostage taking are increasingly the norm.
And being targeted by vicious trolls, often with death threats, is a media fact of life these days.
In its 2018 World Press Freedom Index annual report, the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without borders (RSF), declared that journalists faced more hatred this year than last year, not only in authoritarian countries but also increasingly in countries with democratically elected leaders.
Unleashing of hatred
RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said in a statement:
“The unleashing of hatred towards journalists is one of the worst threats to democracies.
“Political leaders who fuel loathing for reporters bear heavy responsibility because they undermine the concept of public debate based on facts instead of propaganda.
“To dispute the legitimacy of journalism today is to play with extremely dangerous political fire.”
Fifty seven journalists have been killed so far in 2018, plus 10 citizen journalists for a total of 67; 155 journalists have been imprisoned, with a further 142 citizen journalists jailed — a total of 297.
In July, it was my privilege to be in Paris for a strategic consultation of Asia-Pacific media freedom advocates in my capacity as Pacific Media Centre director and Pacific Media Watch freedom project convenor. Much of the blame for this “press hatred” was heaped at that summit on some of today’s political leaders.
We all know about US President Trump’s “media-phobia” and how he has graduated from branding mainstream media and much of what they publish or broadcast as “fake news” to declaring them “enemies of the people” — a term once used by Joseph Stalin.
#FIGHTFAKENEWS Video: Reporters Without Borders
Toying with ‘press hatred’
However, there are many leaders in so-called democracies with an even worse record of toying with “press hatred”.
Take for example, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, who is merely two years into his five-year term of office and he has unleashed a “war on drugs” killing machine that is alleged to have murdered between some 7,000 and 12,000 suspects — most of them extrajudicial killings.
He was pictured in the media cradling a high-powered rifle and he admits that he started carrying a gun recently — not to protect himself because he has plenty of security guards, but to challenge a critical senator to a draw “Wild West” style.
Instead, he simply had the senator arrested on trumped up charges.
Duterte has frequently berated the media and spiced up his attacks with threats such as this chilling message he gave casually at a press conference:
“Just because you’re a journalist, you’re not exempted from assassination, if you are a son of a bitch. Free speech won’t save you.”
High Filipino death rate
The death rate among radio journalists, in particular those investigating corruption and human rights violations, has traditionally been high in the Philippines.
In the Czech Republic late last year, President Miloš Zeman staged a macabre media conference stunt. He angered the press when he brandished a dummy Kalashnikov AK47 with the words “for journalists” carved into the woodstock at the October press conference in Prague, and with a bottle of alcohol attached instead of an ammunition clip.
In Slovakia, then Prime Minister Robert Fico called journalists “filthy anti-Slovak prostitutes” and “idiotic hyenas”.
A Slovak reporter, Ján Kuciak, was shot dead in his home in February, just four months after another European journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia of Malta who was investigating corruption, was killed by a targeted car-bombing.
Last week, a 30-year-old Bulgarian investigative journalist, Viktoria Marinova, was murdered. Police said the television current affairs host investigating corruption had been raped, beaten and then strangled.
Most of the media killings are done with impunity.
Outrage over Jamal Khashoggi
And then the world has been outraged by the disappearance and shocking murder of respected Saudi Arabian journalist and editor Jamal Khashoggi by a state “hit squad” of 15 men inside his own country’s consulate in Istanbul. He went into the consulate on October 2 and never came out.
The exact circumstances of what happened are still unravelling daily, but a Turkish newspaper reports that the journalist’s smartwatch captured audio of his gruesome killing.
Covering the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi. Video: Al Jazeera’s Listening Post
Condemning the brutal act, United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, expressed fears that enforced media disappearances are set to become the “new normal”.
While such ghastly fates for journalists may seem remote here in the Pacific, we have plenty of attacks on media freedom to contend with in our own backyard. And trolls in the Pacific and state threats to internet freedom are rife.
The detention of Television New Zealand’s Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver for four hours by police in Nauru at last month’s Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Summit while attempting to interview refugees is just one example of such attempts to shut down truth-seeking.
Among the many protests, Amnesty International said:
“Whether it happens in Myanmar, Iran or right here in the Pacific, detaining journalists for doing their jobs is wrong. Freedom of the press is fundamental to a just society. Barbara Dreaver is a respected journalist with a long history of covering important stories across the Pacific.
“Amnesty International’s research on Nauru showed that the conditions for people who have been banished there by Australia amount to torture under international law. Children are self-harming and Googling how to kill themselves. That cannot be swept under the carpet and it won’t go away by enforcing draconian limits to media freedom.”
Pacific journalists persecuted
Journalists in the Pacific have frequently been persecuted by smallminded politicians with scant regard for the role of the media, such as led to the failed sedition case against The Fiji Times.
The media play a critical role in exposing abuses of power, such as Bryan Kramer’s The Kramer Report in exposing the 40 Maserati luxury car APEC scandal in Papua New Guinea last week.
In this year’s World Media Freedom Day speech warning about the “creeping criminalisation” of journalism, the new UNESCO chair of journalism Professor Peter Greste at the University of Queensland, asked:
“If we appear to be heading into journalism’s long, dark night, when did the sun start to disappear? Although the statistics jump around a little, there appears to be a clear turning point: in 2003, when the numbers of journalists killed and imprisoned started to climb from the historic lows of the late ’90s, to the record levels of the present.
“Although coincidence is not the same as causation, it seems hard to escape the notion that the War on Terror that President George W. Bush launched after 9/11 had something to do with it.”
‘Journalism is not a crime’
Peter Greste himself, and his two colleagues paid a heavy price for their truth-seeking during the post Arab Spring upheaval in Egypt — being jailed for 400 days on trumped up terrorism charges for doing their job. His media organisation, Al Jazeera, and rival media groups teamed up to wage their global “Journalism is not a crime” campaign.
Now that I have done my best to talk you out of journalism by stressing the growing global dangers, I want to draw attention to some of the many reasons why journalism is critically important and why you should be congratulated for taking up this career.
Next month, Fiji is facing a critically important general election, the second since the return of democracy in your country in 2014. And many of you graduating journalists will be involved.
Governments in Fiji and the Pacific should remember journalists are guardians of democracy and they have an important role to play in ensuring the legitimacy of both the vote and the result, especially in a country such as this which has been emerging from many years of political crisis.
But it is important that journalists play their part too with responsibilities as well as rights. Along with the right to provide information without fear or favour, and free from pressure or threats, you have a duty to provide voters with accurate, objective and constructive information.
The University of the South Pacific has a proud record of journalism education in the region stretching back ironically to the year of the inaugural coups, in 1987. First there was a Certificate programme, founded by Dr Murray Masterton (who has sadly passed away) and later Diploma and Degree qualifications followed with a programme founded by François Turmel and Dr Philip Cass with French Embassy aid.
Looking back with pride
It is with pride that I can look back at my five years with USP bridging the start of the Millennium. 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.
When I look at the outstanding achievements in the years since then with current Journalism Coordinator Dr Shailendra Singh and his colleagues Eliki Drugunalevu and Geraldine Panapasa, it is with some pleasure.
And USP should be rightly delighted with one of the major success journalism programmes of the Asia-Pacific region.
Wansolwara newspaper, which celebrated two decades of publishing in 2016, has been a tremendous success. Not many journalism school publications have such sustained longevity and have won so many international awards.
Innovation has been the name of the game, such as this climate change joint digital storytelling project with E-Pop and France 24 media. At AUT we have been proud to be partners with USP with our own Bearing Witness and other projects stretching back for two decades.
Pacific whistleblowers
Finally, I would like pay tribute to two of the whistleblowers and journalists in the Pacific and who should inspire you in your journalism career.
Firstly, Iranian-born Behrouz Boochani, the refugee journalist, documentary maker and poet who pricked the Australian conscience about the terrible human rights violations against asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru.
He has reminded Canberra that Australia needs to regain a moral compass.
And activist lawyer communicator Joe Moses, who campaigned tirelessly for the rights of the villagers of Paga Hill in Port Moresby. These people were forced out of their homes in defiance of a Supreme Court order to make way for the luxury development for next month’s APEC summit.
Be inspired by them and the foundations of human rights journalism and contribute to your communities and countries. Don’t be seduced by a fast foods diet of distortion and propaganda.
Be courageous and committed, be true to your quest for the truth.
Keynote address by Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie at The University of the South Pacific Journalism Awards,19 October 2018, celebrating 50 years of the university’s existence. First published by the PMC here.
References
Cooke, H. (2018, September 4). TVNZ reporter Barbara Dreaver released after being detained in Nauru. Stuff. Retrieved from https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/106822330/tvnz-reporter-barbara-dreaver-reportedly-detained-in-nauru
Greste, P. (2018). The creeping criminalization of journalism. MEAA World Press Freedom Day address. Retrieved from https://pressfreedom.org.au/the-creeping-criminalisation-of-journalism-53d1639c3ecb
International Federation of Journalists (2018, May). Criminalising journalism: The MEAA report into the state of press freedom in Australia. Retrieved from https://www.meaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/PF_report_2018_cover_FINAL2.jpg
Inquirer Mindanao (2017, September 8). Why Duterte carries a gun these days. Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved from https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/929029/philippine-news-updates-president-duterte-antonio-trillanes-iv-angelo-reyes
Peacock, C. (2018, May 6). Peter Greste: Solidarity and standards. Retrieved from https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018643318/peter-greste-solidarity-and-standards
Reporters Without Borders (2017, October 26). Czech President threatens journalists with mock Kalashnikov. Retrieved from https://rsf.org/en/news/czech-republic-czech-president-threatens-journalists-mock-kalashnikov
Reporters Without Borders (2018, May 1). RSF Index 2018: Hatred of journalism threatens democracies. Retrieved from https://rsf.org/en/rsf-index-2018-hatred-journalism-threatens-democracies
Revill, L., & Roderick, C. (Eds.) (1965). The journalist’s craft. The Australian Journalists’ Association. Sydney, NSW: Angus & Robertson.
Robie, D. (2018, July 10). ‘Sick joke’, threats cited in Asia-Pacific declining media freedom summit. Asia Pacific Report. Retrieved from https://asiapacificreport.nz/2018/07/10/sick-joke-threats-cited-in-asia-pacific-declining-media-freedom-summit/
Robie, D. (2004). Mekim Nius: South Pacific media, politics and education. Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific Book Centre.
Toboni, G. (2017, June 6). It’s super dangerous to be a journalist in the Philippines. Vice Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en_nz/article/mbqkmb/its-super-dangerous-to-be-a-journalist-in-the-philippines-v24n5
531pi’s Ma’a Brian Sagala talks nuclear-free Pacific with David Robie
Pacific Media Watch
Radio 531pi Breakfast Talanoa host Ma’a Brian Sagala talks about the Rarotonga Treaty with Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie.
The treaty ushered in the Nuclear Free Pacific Zone 33 years ago, which predated NZ’s own nuclear-free law.
Dr Robie also talks about the Rainbow Warrior’s humanitarian voyage to Rongelap to help the islanders move to another home across the Pacific Ocean.
He is the author of the book Eyes of Fire about French and US nuclear testing in the Pacific.
More information: eyes-of-fire.littleisland.co.nz
Asia Pacific Report: A New Zealand nonprofit journalism model for campus-based social justice media
By David Robie
For 13 years (2007-2020), the Pacific Media Centre research and publication unit at Auckland University of Technology published journalism with an “activist” edge to its style of reportage raising issues of social justice in New Zealand’s regional backyard.
It achieved this through partnerships with progressive sections of news media and a non-profit model of critical and challenging assignments for postgraduate students in the context of coups, civil war, climate change, human rights, sustainable development and neo-colonialism.
An earlier Pacific Scoop venture (2009-2015) morphed into an innovative venture for the digital era, Asia Pacific Report (APR) (http://asiapacificreport.nz/), launched in January 2016. Amid the current global climate of controversy over ‘fake news’ and a ‘war on truth’ and declining credibility among some mainstream media, the APR project has demonstrated on many occasions the value of independent niche media questioning and challenging mainstream agendas.
In this article, a series of case studies examines how the collective experience of citizen journalism, digital engagement and an innovative public empowerment journalism course can develop a unique online publication. The article traverses some of the region’s thorny political and social issues — including the controversial police shootings of students in Papua New Guinea in June 2016.
- Read the full research article at Ikat: The Indonesian Journal of Southeast Asian Studies
https://doi.org/10.22146/ikat.v2i1.37395
Pacific media freedom under greater attack than ever
By Samisoni Pareti in Suva
With the trial of three newspaper executives underway in Fiji in May on charges of sedition, the assault of a newspaper journalist in Papua New Guinea, the removal of the general manager and her news manager at the Tonga Broadcasting Commission and the re-introduction of libel laws in Samoa, press freedom is coming under severe attacks in all regions of the Pacific.
A survey by Islands Business reveal disturbing signs to silence or control the work of independent and free media in the islands, with most of these attacks orchestrated by public agencies.
Equally alarming is the absence of a public outcry or condemnation from the media and the general public alike.
Long-time Pacific media commentator and journalist now director of the Auckland-based Pacific Media Centre and convenor of Pacific Media Watch, Professor David Robie believes media freedom in the Pacific has never been as under severe stress as it is today.
“Ironically, in this digital era of social media and with a multitude of alternative and independent information sources and platforms available, mainstream media has faced a decline in media freedom,” he told Islands Business.
Notably two of the Pacific countries with the largest and strongest media industries, Fiji and Papua New Guinea, have faced a steady “chilling” in their discourse.
Increasingly in PNG, for example, the public and journalists themselves are turning to independent and respected blogs for trusted and “real” information, he says.
“There is a mainstream media silence on many issues, especially the under-reporting of social justice issues, the plight of refugees after closure of the Manus detention centre, climate change, and West Papua.”
Samisoni Pareti is an Islands Business editor. Republished with permission.
Media freedom under attack in the Pacific
By Samisoni Pareti in Suva
With the trial of three newspaper executives underway in Fiji in May on charges of sedition, the assault of a newspaper journalist in Papua New Guinea, the removal of the general manager and her news manager at the Tonga Broadcasting Commission and the re-introduction of libel laws in Samoa, press freedom is coming under severe attacks in all regions of the Pacific.
A survey by Islands Business reveals disturbing signs to silence or control the work of independent and free media in the islands, with most of these attacks orchestrated by public agencies. Equally alarming is the absence of a public outcry or condemnation from the media and the general public alike.
Long-time Pacific media commentator and journalist, now director of the Auckland-based Pacific Media Centre and convenor of Pacific Media Watch, Professor David Robie believes media freedom in the Pacific has never been under such severe stress as it is today.
“Ironically, in this digital era of social media and with a multitude of alternative and independent information sources and platforms available, mainstream media has faced a decline in media freedom,” he says.
“Notably two of the Pacific countries with the largest and strongest media industries,Fiji and Papua New Guinea, have faced a steady ‘chilling’ in their discourse. Increasingly in PNG, for example, the public and journalists themselves are turning to independent and respected blogs for trusted and ‘real’ information.
“There is a mainstream media silence on many issues, especially the under-reporting of social justice issues, the plight of refugees after closure of the Manus detention centre, climate change, and West Papua.”
Facebook still censors West Papua photo – ‘nudity’ or politics?
Facebook has censored a West Papuan image by a Vanuatu-based photojournalist for the second time in less than four days — this time “within one minute” after the photograph was posted.
Port Vila resident Ben Bohane has specialised in Melanesian, kastom (custom) and conflict photography for more than two decades. He runs the agency Wakaphotos and is the author of the book The Black Islands: Spirit and War in Melanesia.
Last weekend, a two-page feature spread authored by him about a perceived threat to the region’s stability because of Indonesian political influence in the Melanesian Spearhead Group was published by the Vanuatu Daily Post under the headline “Caught in a pincer”.
- READ MORE: The Vanuatu Daily Post feature and photo that sparked the fuss
Massive cyber attack targets West Papuan independence media
The article was subsequently republished in Asia Pacific Report on Monday under the headline “China? No, let’s face the elephant in the Pacific room”,
Facebook alerts on the Vanuatu Daily Post, Asia Pacific Report, Pacific Media Centre along with Ben Bohane and PMC director Professor David Robie’s newsfeeds were removed with blocks saying the featured image had “violated community standards”.
The Bohane image taken in 1995 showed an armed OPM (Free West Papua) guerilla and several other men wearing traditional nambas (protective sheaths).
The photo has previously appeared in The Black Islands and other outlets, and can be seen in a 2006 Bohane photoessay at Pacific Journalism Review.
Facebook ‘test’
Bohane today carried out a Facebook “test” by posting his OPM image again.
He told Pacific Media Watch that within one minute he was “notified that the content has been removed and I am now banned from posting anything on FB for 24 hours”.
Bohane wrote on his Facebook page:
“Facebook seems to be censoring West Papuan images of mine used in news stories, saying they don’t meet ‘Community Standards’ because of “nudity”.
“Either that or the Indonesian government is reporting the images to be removed because they don’t want Papuan resistance photos spread on the web.
“Memo to Facebook – this is how Papuans live! Your ‘Community Standards’ obviously don’t include Melanesian culture.
“I have sent FB messages to complain, as have some regional news media outlets, and am posting images here as a test to see if they will be removed again and the problem persists….”
Flashback to the 1968 My Lai massacre: ‘Something dark and bloody’
By David Robie, originally published at Café Pacific blog
The Melbourne Sunday Observer — the original newspaper of that name which campaigned against Australian involvement as a US surrogate in the Vietnam War — published photographs of the My Lai massacre in December 1969.
It was prosecuted for “obscenity” for reporting the atrocity but the charge was later dropped.
Michael Cannon was editor and David Robie chief subeditor at the time (and later the editor). The photographs were published by arrangement with Life Magazine and were later shown to Federal MPs in an attempt to change Australian government support for the war.
The photographs were published during a period when newspapers in Australia rarely published pictures of bodies, and certainly not as victims of “atrocities” by “our side”. This website has a small selection of the photographs published by the Observer.
The Sunday Observer was the springboard for the launching of Nation Review in 1970:
From David Robie’s Instagram account, 16 March 2018:
One of the most horrendous acts of the Vietnam War remembered today — the My Lai massacre on 16 March 1968. US troops slaughtered 504 unarmed civilians in Son My village. Many women were gang raped and their mutilated bodies dumped on the roadside and in the ricefields. Covered up by the US authorities for a year. Charges finally laid against 26 soldiers. Only one, Lieutenant William Calley, was sentenced to life, but he only served 3 years under house arrest.
I was chief subeditor of the Melbourne Sunday Observer at the time and we published several of witness military photographer Ron Haeberle’s photos as evidence.
The War You Don’t See, a documentary by John Pilger Video:FilmIsNow
Excerpt from the Sunday Observer, 14 December 1969:
© Photographs by Ronald Haeberle
My Lai was one of nine hamlets clustered near the village of Song My, a name sometimes used also for the hamlets. GIs called the area “Pinkville” because it was coloured rose on their military maps and because the area had long been known as Viet Cong territory.
The “Bloodbath” image is the cover of the Sunday Observer
reportage of the exposé, 14 December 1969.
The action at My Lai received only a passing mention at the weekly Saigon briefing in March of 1968. Elements of an American division had made contact with the enemy near Quang Ngai city and had killed 128 Viet Cong. There were a few rumours of civilian deaths, but when the US Army looked into them — a month after the incident — it found nothing to warrant disciplinary measures.
The matter might have ended there except for a former GI, Ron Ridenhour, now a Californian university student. After hearing about My Lai from former comrades, he wrote letters to congressmen warning that “something dark and bloody” had taken place.
Now an officer, Lieutenant William Calley, has been charged with murder of “an unknown number of Oriental human beings” at My Lai, and 24 other men of C Company, First Battalion, 20th Infantry, are under investigation. The world is demanding to know what happened at My Lai, who ordered it, and whether or not US troops have committed similar acts in Vietnam.
Because of the court-martial, the Army will say little. The South Vietnamese government, which has conducted its own investigation, says that My Lai was “an act of war” and that any talk of atrocities is just Viet Cong propaganda.
This is not true.
The pictures published in this newspaper by Ronald Haeberle, an Army photographer who covered the massacre, and reports in the past three weeks confirm a story of indisputable horror — the deliberate slaughter of old men, women, children and babies.
Eyewitness reports indicate that the American troops encountered little — if any — hostile fire, found virtually no enemy soldiers in the village and suffered only one casualty — a self-inflicted wound. The people of My Lai were simply gunned down.
‘Frightful violation’
“The My Lai massacre represented a frightful violation of the principle of humaneness. To tell as much of the truth as was then available about that violation, and to make sure at the same time that the accused Lieutenant William Calley would be treated justly, required extraordinary care by a journalist. More than a mere set of court-martial papers needed to be inspected. Calley needed to be found and interviewed.
“In acting on that judgement, journalist Seymour Hersh used many standard reportorial techniques and several ingenious ones. Passive deception, allowing persons on the military base [Fort Benning] to make their own most natural inference as to his identity, could be defended so long as it did no avoidable harm — that is, so long as it did not risk injustice or unfairness to innocents caught up in Hersh’s quest for Calley.
“can be argued that Hersh allowed his key source, Jerry, to make his own decision to obtain Calley’s file. But, in fact, Hersh appears to have actively created a situation in which Jerry, already a busted private, risked further penalty to himself unless he cooperated. Having made an authoritative entrance demanding Jerry’s presence, Hersh met with Jerry outside, ‘and told him what I wanted’.”
- On the ethical dilemmas involved in Hersh’s investigation to gain access to Calley’s file and to expose the truth about the massacre, from Edmund Lambeth‘s Committed Journalism: An Ethic for the Profession, Indiana University Press, 1986, 1992.
David Blackall adds:
Helicopter pilot intervened for victims
The horror only began to die down when army helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson Jr landed between the soldiers and the villagers, threatening to fire at the troops. After taking off again, the pilot witnessed soldiers chasing civilians and landed the helicopter between them. He evacuated the villagers and returned to the scene to search for survivors. Thompson also told his superiors about the massacre, and the order was sent back to “knock off the killing”.“After the shooting was over, the soldiers went and were eating their lunch, really literally next to the ditch, next to the bodies. And that’s how disconnected you get,” Seymour Hersh, the investigative reporter who uncovered the story, said on Democracy Now.
Despite Thompson filing a report, a military investigation found there had been no massacre. Captain Ernest Medina, who had ordered the soldiers to be aggressive in their operations, told superiors the unit had killed lots of VC fighters.
- Heart of Darkness – Al Jazeera 2008
- Calley apologises for massacre – Democracy Now 2009
- My Lai massacre – the day US military slaughtered a village and tried to cover it up – RT 2018
- David Blackall talks to David Robie on Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face, My Lai and human rights in Asia-Pacific – Asia Pacific Media Educator 2015 ( p. 334)
Coups, globalisation and Fiji’s reset structures of ‘democracy’
REVIEWS: David Robie, editor of Pacific Journalism Review
When Commodore (now rear admiral retired and an elected prime minister) Voreqe Bainimarama staged Fiji’s fourth “coup to end all coups” on 5 December 2006, it was widely misunderstood, misinterpreted and misrepresented by a legion of politicians, foreign affairs officials, journalists and even some historians.
A chorus of voices continually argued for the restoration of “democracy” – not only the flawed version of democracy that had persisted in various forms since independence from colonial Britain in 1970, but specifically the arguably illegal and unconstitutional government of merchant banker Laisenia Qarase that had been installed on the coattails of the third (attempted) coup in 2000.
Yet in spite of superficial appearances, Bainimarama’s 2006 coup contrasted sharply with its predecessors.
Bainimarama attempted to dodge the mistakes made by Sitiveni Rabuka after he carried out both of Fiji’s first two coups in 1987 while retaining the structures of power.
Instead, notes New Zealand historian Robbie Robertson who lived in Fiji for many years, Bainimarama “began to transform elements of Fiji: Taukei deference to tradition, the provision of golden eggs to sustain the old [chiefly] elite, the power enjoyed by the media and judiciary, rural neglect and infrastructural inertia” (p. 314). But that wasn’t all.
[H]e brazenly navigated international hostility to his illegal regime. Then, having accepted an independent process for developing a new constitution, he rejected its outcome, fearing it threatened his hold on power and would restore much of what he had undone. (Ibid.)
Bainimarama reset electoral rules, abolished communalism in order to pull the rug from under the old chiefly elite, and provided the first non-communal foundation for voting in Fiji.
Landslide victory
Then he was voted in as legal prime minister of Fiji with an overwhelming personal majority and a landslide victory for his fledgling FijiFirst Party in September 2014. He left his critics in Australia and New Zealand floundering in his wake.
Robertson is well-qualified to write this well-timed book, The General’s Goose: Fiji’s Tale of Contemporary Misadventure, with Bainimarama due to be tested again this year with another election. He is a former history lecturer at the Suva-based regional University of the South Pacific at the time of Rabuka’s original coups (when I first met him).
He and his journalist wife Akosita Tamanisau wrote a definitive account of the 1987 events and the ousting of Dr Timoci Bavadra’s visionary and multiracial Fiji Labour Party-led government, Fiji: Shattered Coups (1988), ultimately leading to his expulsion from Fiji by the Rabuka regime. He also followed this up with Government by the Gun (2001) on the 2000 coup, and other titles.
Robertson later returned to Fiji as professor of Development Studies at USP and he has also been professor and head of Arts and Social Sciences at James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, as well as holding posts at La Trobe University, the Australian National University and the University of Otago.
He has published widely on globalisation. He is thus able to bring a unique perspective on Fiji over three decades and is currently professor and dean of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne.
Since 2006, Fiji has slipped steadily away from Australian and New Zealand influence, as outlined by Robertson. However, this is a state of affairs blamed by Bainimarama on Canberra and Wellington for their failed and blind policies.
Ever since the 2014 election, Bainimarama has maintained a “hardline” on the Pacific’s political architecture through his Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) alternative to the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), and on the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) Plus trade deal.
‘Turned their backs’
While in Brisbane for an international conference in 2015, Bainimarama took the opportunity to remind his audience that Australia and New Zealand “as traditional friends had turned their backs on Fiji”. He added:
How much sooner we might have been able to return Fiji to parliamentary rule if we hadn’t expended so much effort on simply surviving … defending the status quo in Fiji was indefensible, intellectually and morally (p. 294).
For the first time in Fiji’s history, Bainimarama steered the country closer to a “standard model of liberal democracy” and away from the British colonial and race-based legacy.
“Government still remained the familiar goose,” writes Robertson, “but this time, its golden eggs were distributed more evenly than before”. The author attributes this to “bypassing chiefly hands” for tribal land lease monies, through welfare and educational programmes no longer race-bound, and through bold rural public road, water and electrification projects.
Admittedly, argues Robertson, like Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara (Fiji’s prime minister at independence and later president), Rabuka and Qarase, “Bainimarama had cronies and the military continues to benefit excessively from his ascendancy”. Nevertheless, Bainimarama’s “outstanding controversial achievement remains undoubtedly his rebooting of Fiji’s operating system in 2013”.
Robertson’s scholarship is meticulous and drawn from an impressive range of sources, including his own work over more than three decades. One of the features of his latest book are his analysis of former British SAS Warrant Officer Lisoni Ligairi and the role of the First Meridian Squadron (renamed in 1999 from the “coup proof” Counter Revolutionary Warfare Unit – CRWU), and the “public face” of Coup 3, businessman George Speight, now serving a life sentence in prison for treason.
His reflections on and interpretations of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces Board of Inquiry (known as BoI) into the May 2000 coup are also extremely valuable. Much of this has never before been available in an annotated and tested published form, although it is available as full transcripts on the “Truth for Fiji” website.
‘Overlapping conspiracies’
As Robertson recalls, by mid-May, “there were many overlapping conspiracies afoot … Within the kava-infused wheels within wheels, coup whispers gained volume”. Ligairi’s role was pivotal but BoI put most of the blame for the coup on the RFMF for “allowing” one man so much power, especially one it considered ill-equipped to be a director and planner’ (p. 140).
The BoI testimony about the November 2000 CRWU mutiny before Bainimarama escaped with his life through a cassava patch, also fed into Robertson’s account, although he admits Colonel Jone Baledrokadroka’s ANU doctoral thesis is the best account on the topic, “Sacred King and Warrior Chief: The role of the military in Fiji politics”.
It was a bloody and confused affair, led by the once loyal [Captain Shane] Stevens, 40 CRWU soldiers, many reportedly intoxicated, seized weapons and took over the Officers Mess, Bainimarama’s office and administration complex, the national operations centre and the armoury in the early afternoon. They wanted hostages; above all they wanted Bainimarama. (p. 164)
The book is divided into four lengthy chapters plus an Introduction and Conclusion – 1. The Challenge of Inheritance about the flawed colonial legacy, 2. The Great Turning on Rabuka’s 1987 coups and the Taukei indigenous supremacy constitution, 3. Redux: The Season for Coups on Speight’s attempted (and partially successful) 2000 coup, and 4. Plus ça Change …? on Bainimarama’s political “reset”. (The Bainimarama success in outflanking his Pacific critics is perhaps best represented by his diplomatic success in co-hosting the “Pacific” global climate change summit in Bonn in 2017.)
One drawback from a journalism perspective is the less than compelling assessment of the role of the media over the period, considering the various controversies that dogged each coup, especially the Speight one when accusations were made against some journalists as having been too close to the coup makers.
One of Fiji’s best journalists and editors, arguably the outstanding investigative reporter of his era, Jo Nata, publisher of the Weekender, sided with Speight as a “media minder” and was jailed for treason.
However, while Robertson in several places acknowledges Nata’s place in Fiji as a journalist, there is no real examination of his role as journalist-turned-coup-propagandist. This ought to be a case study.
Robertson noted how Nata’s Weekender exposed “morality issues” in Rabuka’s cabinet in 1994 without naming names. The Review news and business magazine followed up with a full report in the April edition that year, naming a prominent female journalist who was sleeping with the post-coup prime minister, produced a love child and who still works for The Fiji Times today (p. 118).
Nata then promised a special issue on the 21 women Rabuka had had affairs with since stepping down from the military. However, after Police Commissioner Isikia Savua spoke to him, the issue never appeared. (A full account is in Pacific Journalism Review – The Review, 1994).
NBF debacle
Elsewhere in the book is an outline of the National Bank of Fiji (NBF) debacle that erupted when an audit was leaked to the media: “In fact, the press, particularly The Fiji Times and The Review, were pivotal in exposing the scandal.” Robertson added:
The Review had earlier been threatened with deregistration over its publication of Rabuka’s affair[s] in 1994; now both papers were threatened with Malaysian-style licensing laws to ensure that they remained respectful of Pacific cultural sensitivities and did not denigrate Fijian business acumen. (p. 121)
The bank collapsed in late 1995 owing more than $220 million or nearly 9 percent of Fiji’s GDP – an example of the nepotism, corruption and poor public administration that worsened in Fiji after Rabuka’s coups.
On Coup 1, Robertson recalls how apart from Rabuka’s masked soldiers inside Parliament, “other teams fanned out across the city to seize control of telecommunication power authorities, media outlets and the Government Buildings” (p. 65).
But there is little reflective detail about Rabuka’s “seduction” of the Fiji and international journalists, or how after closing down the two daily newspapers, the neocolonial Fiji Times reopened while the original Fiji Sun opted to close down rather than publish under a military-backed regime.
About Coup 3, Robertson recalls “[Speight] was articulate and comfortable with the media – too comfortable, according to some journalists. They felt that this intimate media presence ‘aided the rebel leader’s propaganda fire … gave him political fuel’. They were not alone’ (p. 154) (see Robie, 2001).
On the introduction of the 2010 Fiji Media Industry Development Decree, which still casts a shadow over the country and is mainly responsible for the lowest Pacific “partly free” rankings in the global media freedom indexes, Robertson notes how it was “Singapore-inspired”. The decree “came out in early April 2010 for discussion and mandated that all media organisations had to be 90 percent locally owned. The implication for the News Corporation Fiji Times and for the 51 percent Australian-owned Daily Post were obvious” (p. 254).
The Fiji Times was bought by Mahendra Patel, long-standing director and owner of the Motibhai trading group. (He was later jailed for a year for “abuse of office” while chair of Post Fiji.) The Daily Post was closed down.
Facing a long history of harassment by various post-coup administrations (including a $100,000 fine in January 2009 for publishing a letter describing the judiciary as corrupt, and deportations of publishers), The Fiji Times is heading into this year’s elections facing a trial for alleged “sedition” confronting the newspaper.
In spite of my criticism of limitations on media content, The General’s Goose is an excellent book and should be mandatory background reading for any journalist covering South Pacific affairs, especially those likely to be involved in coverage of this year’s general election in Fiji.
- The General’s Goose: Fiji’s Tale of Contemporary Misadventure, by Robbie Robertson. Canberra: Australian National University. 2017. 366 pages. ISBN 9781760461270.
References
Baledrokadroka, J. (2012). The sacred king and warrior chief: The role of the military in Fiji politics. Unpublished doctoral thesis. Canberra: Australian National University.
Robertson, R., & Sutherland, W. (2001). Government by the gun: The unfinished business of Fiji’s 2000 coup. Sydney & London: Pluto Press & Zed Books.
Robertson, R., & Tamanisau, A. (1988). Fiji: Shattered coups. Sydney: Pluto Press.
Robie, D. (2001). Coup coup land: The press and the putsch in Fiji. Asia Pacific Media Educator, 10, 149-161. See also for an extensive media coverage examination of the 1987 Rabuka coups: Robie, D. (1989). Blood on their banner: Nationalist struggles in the South Pacific. London: Zed Books; 2006 coup and 2014 elections: Robie, D. (2016). ‘Unfree and unfair’?: Media intimidation in Fiji’s 2014 elections. In Ratuva, S., & Lawson, S. (Eds.), The people have spoken: The 2014 elections in Fiji. Canberra: ANU Press.
The Review (1994). Rabuka and the reporter. Pacific Journalism Review, 1(1), 20-22.
