'I'll not be intimidated ... by cowards,' says Fiji death threat journalist

Fiji Sun's Jyoti Pratibha ...death threats via fake Facebook profiles. Image: Pacific Scoop

THE PARIS-based media freedom advocacy organisation Reporters Sans Frontières and the Pacific Media Centre have condemned threats and intimidation against political reporters covering Fiji’s first parliamentary election campaign since the  2006 coup.

Pacific Media Watch reports from Paris:

Two women journalists – Vosita Kotowasawasa of the Fiji Broadcasting Corporation (FBC) and Jyoti Pratibha of the Fiji Sun newspaper – received death threats on Tuesday over their previous day’s coverage of the cancellation of a live TV debate between the leading contenders for the post of prime minister.

According to Pacific Scoop, a news website affiliated with the Pacific Media Centre, Kotowasawasa received several threatening phone calls while Pratibha was threatened via fake Facebook user profiles.

Both had covered the previous day’s last-minute decision by Ro Teimumu Vuikaba Kepa, the Roko Tui Dreketi and head of the Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA), to pull out of the debate with interim Prime Minister Josaia Voreqe “Frank” Bainimarama.

Sabre-rattling over the Fiji Times, but what about the Fiji Sun?

Déjà vu: Fiji Times picture of lawyer Richard Naidu (left) and then acting publisher
Rex Gardner outside court at the 2009 contempt case judgment in Suva.

OPINION: By Charlie Charters

PERHAPS I am a discordant voice among those willing to cheer the Fiji Times into the ground over this month's judicial controversy. But I am intrigued to know where is the judicial outrage, contempt of court proceedings, government sabre-rattling etc. over this Fiji Sun case, which I understand is still outstanding?: Court report contains errors

Read through the whole list of complaints that Christopher Pryde makes – four detailed complaints of basic "gross" errors of fact and two complaints relating to "impressions given" about the competency and professionalism of the Director Public Prosecutions (DPP).

Now close your eyes and imagine that The Fiji Times had made those same mistakes. See what I mean?

In the 2008 instance, the Fiji Times pleaded guilty after publishing a letter on October 22 that was critical of the judiciary. The FT wrote a fulsome and contrite apology, and pleaded guilty in court, but received substantial fines and one suspended jail sentence ("extraordinarily harsh for what some might regard as fairly mild criticism" - journalism professor David Robie on Café Pacific).

Social media and the ANZAC press on Fiji

A BELATED posting of a presentation at the recent PINA Pacific Media Summit in Pacific Harbour that took a swipe at the Australian and New Zealand media coverage on Fiji. This was part of a panel discussing social media and credibility:

By  Leone Cabenatabua, publications manager of the Fiji Sun

Should the public believe social media content? That choice rests with the individual.

However, for us in the news media, we should always show responsibility when it comes to using social media content in our stories.

It’s sad to note that prominent Australian and New Zealand media outlets have sensationalised issues about Fiji based on content that are written by faceless cowards.

These are posted in anti-Fiji blog sites like Coup 4.5. For example, if you believed Coup 4.5: 

• ... Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimara is so unwell he cannot walk properly. Yet there he was leading his men and women on a four-hour route march just recently. You saw him yourself last night.
• If you believe Coup 4.5, our Attorney-General has been arrested and held incommunicado at Queen Elizabeth Barracks ... yet a simple check would have found that he was at home catching up on sleep after non-stop work trip through through different time zones.
• What makes it worse is the fact that these media outlets we in the Pacific Islands once looked up to, make no apparent efforts whatsoever to verify  allegations made on such blog sites.
• Some even reported Commodore Bainimarama was dead … based solely on a discredited anonymous blog site. Commodore Bainimarama was in fact on a trip to China to promote Chinese investment in Fiji.

Where have their media ethics gone to report such nonsense from such discredited blog sites?

All these allegations come from people who are out to fulfill their own agendas. They do not have the interest of the nation at heart.
 
This senseless type of reporting has a huge negative impact on a nation, especially its citizens who are the innocent victims.

It’s a different story when we have prominent academics like Pacific Media Centre's Dr David Robie who have written good analytical pieces for us to ponder on and share ideas of our progress from it.

Or to have blog sites like the ones written by Dr Crosbie Walsh.

In my experience through our numerous exchange of emails and phone calls, he makes it his business that whatever he puts down is accurate information- nothing else.

Again, I’ve nothing against social media or whether people want to believe in its content or not.

There are many good uses for social media.

But as journalists we must be more professional and more responsible than some of those who use social media to spread misinformation.

We should know better than to just report the claims of an anonymous blog site run by faceless people promoting disinformation and racial hatred.

Unfortunately, some  in Australia and New Zealand seem more interested in discrediting Fiji than getting it right.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is my ten cents worth on social media.

• Bloggers slammed for misinformation
• Call for independent media

When violence threatens - Grubsheet under attack

Fiji Sun March 14 front page.

By Graham Davis

GRUBSHEET'S burgeoning number of opinion pieces on Fiji are largely designed to counter what we regard as the continuing failure of the mainstream regional media to come to grips with the reality of events there. They’re especially aimed at an Australian audience, to highlight what we regard as the folly of Canberra having turned its back on Fiji since Frank Bainimarama’s coup five years ago.

A lot of these pieces are picked up by the mainstream media – The Australian and Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, for instance – or disseminated to a wider regional and global audience through the Pacific Scoop service of the Auckland University of Technology and Pacific Islands Report from the East-West Centre in Hawaii. Some are written as news stories but most are shamelessly opinionated, strong expressions of our own views based not only on on a life-long association with Fiji but having reported political events there for the mainstream media since before the first coup in 1987.

The problem arises when these articles are picked up and republished in Fiji, a country where the separation of news and opinion in the mainstream media doesn’t have a strong tradition. And so it was last week, when the Fiji Sun published a Grubsheet opinion posting on its front page that would have looked very much like news to local eyes. It provoked a wave of outrage, not least from the subject of that article – Laisenia Qarase, the man Frank Bainimarama deposed in his 2006 coup.

As readers can see for themselves in our own comments section, Qarase has gone on the attack against Grubsheet, accusing us of distortion, disregarding the facts and attempting to “crucify” him and his party – the SDL. He’s particularly aggrieved that we’ve accused him of pursuing racist policies in government. As readers can also note for themselves, we stand by that accusation.

But we can also sympathise with Qarase that an article on a humble Australian blog site can so dramatically become part of the domestic political debate in Fiji. If any proof were needed of the power of the internet to amplify the smallest voice, then this is it.

Qarase is not only entitled to defend himself but Grubsheet is delighted that he can now do so fully in the Fiji media for the first time in a long time. The Bainimarama government has lifted censorship and a full-blown debate has erupted about the impending discussions on a new constitution and the unilateral abolition of the Great Council of Chiefs. This is how it should be. It’s also Grubsheet’s view that if Laisenia Qarase intends to stand in the promised elections in 2014, his record in government is also a legitimate subject for debate.

Against all evidence to the contrary, he’s now running the line that the SDL has always been a "multiracial party", didn’t disadvantage other citizens in government and that he’s never believed in indigenous paramountcy. Every village pig in Fiji has suddenly sprouted wings and set off over a moonlit lagoon. But again, Qarase is entitled to put his case. And we’re entitled to put ours.

What is not acceptable are the threats to Grubsheet’s personal safety by Qarase’s supporters. These have come via the main anti-government blog site, Coup 4.5, which has been in our sights before for publishing blatantly racist content against the Indo-Fijian minority. These are “journalists” based abroad who not only routinely censor comments they don’t agree with but now facilitate threats of violence against people they don’t agree with. Here’s the first instance, when Coup 4.5 reported Laisenia Qarase’s first press release in response to the original Grubsheet article ...

Read the attacks and response on the Grubsheet blog.

For Laisenia Qarase, the real enemy isn’t Grubsheet. The real enemy is the cancer of intimidation and racism in his own ranks.

Don't let the numbers get in the way of a good story, Fiji Sun

MORE from Croz Walsh, this time a scolding for the Fiji Sun for doing a hack job on an "exodus" of doctors. And more evidence on how many Pacific journalists - all over the globe, for that matter - are challenged when it comes to numeracy. Walsh writes the "botched figures" items:

You can't altogether blame the moderate anti-government blog Fiji Today for getting its facts wrong when it reported: "Recent statistics released by the Ministry of Health shows that out of the 850 trained doctors in the country 400 have left for greener pastures last year." They were merely quoting the Fiji Sun. But they said this equated to more than one doctor per day and really rubbed it in by adding "Good one, Frank. You are building a better Fiji." Click on both hyperlinks above to check that I've got this right, and then read on...

The figures they cite are completely wrong, and the journalists responsible have no good excuse because they should immediately have queried obviously suspicious figures and because there were quick ways to do so. I looked at the figures and thought 850 trained doctors? Fiji only has 8000 teachers and they can't possibly outnumber doctors by only 10:1.

So I checked the Bureau of Statistics website that showed there were only 416 doctors in 2009, and as a further check I consulted the Ministry of Health's website. Their Strategic Plan for 2011 states that it aims to maintain the number of doctors at 54 per 100,000 population. This would give 480 (not 850) doctors in an estimated 2010 population of 888,000. So the Fiji Sun and Fiji Today are way off the mark.

And then, incredibly, they made a second error by saying the loss of 400 doctors occurred in one year, when the figure is for the past 10 to 15 years, that gives a loss of between 40 to 27 doctors a year. Still a large number but locally graduating doctors and overseas recruitment should make up much of the loss.

I hope the Fiji Sun and Fiji Today editors blush with shame.

And give their reporters and subs an in-house statistics workshop.

• Croz Walsh on Fiji
  
• Fiji Sun

Back to the future at the Fiji Times – and it just might work

THE DOOMSDAY brigade is quickly at it again with its tenacious state gagging scenario at the Fiji Times. Media voices trot out the same tired old media freedom clichés about the fate of the ex-News Ltd newspaper that did so much to dig its own grave. Café Pacific prefers to keep an open mind and see what Motibhai’s new publisher, Dallas Swinstead, can produce. Give him time. A breath of fresh air and a strategic rethink of how to go about being an effective newspaper faced with the reality of a military-backed authoritarian regime. A real challenge.

Murdoch's previous News Ltd managers at the FT failed to get to grips with reality in Fiji. The combination of ownership by a Fiji company headed by astute businessman "Mac" Patel, who had long experience at the newspaper as a director, and a trusted publisher, who already had a track record as an innovative chief executive at the helm for four years – albeit during more relaxed times – could yet turn out to be a winner.

And if the Fiji Times succeeds in negotiating the media decree minefield and staying afloat with its long-lost integrity restored, then chalk that up as a media freedom success. If the newspaper learns from its past divisive mistakes, then even better. This outcome is vastly preferable to the News Ltd debacle that brought the newspaper to the brink of closure. Netani Rika and Margaret Wise are synonymous with that partisan era of questionable ethics. Rika "sacrificed" his job for the good of the company. But the rot had actually set in long before the George Speight attempted coup in May 2000.

The International Federation of Journalists voiced concern for the future of “critical and independent media” in Fiji, with secretary-general Aidan White saying: “The regime-imposed pressures on the Fiji Times risk silencing anyone who dares to stand up to defend independent media for the people of Fiji.” The Pacific Freedom Forum is concerned about “increasing confusion” as spin and silence reigns with a new Fiji clampdown. The regime friendly rival Fiji Sun reported the Fiji Times newsroom in a turmoil. Veteran columnist Seona Smiles says the resignation of Rika and the uncertainty over deputy editor Sophie Foster is a “great loss” to the newspaper.

For people to have to leave a job that they are both competent at, for political reasons, is always difficult. And both Netani Rika and Sophie Foster remained very staunch and true to journalistic ethics, throughout the recent period of political crisis.

However, in spite of all the hype and spin by both the regime and some media freedom opportunists, when a new broom is brought into a newspaper with change of ownership, it is normal for a change of editor and top editorial management. Café Pacific publisher David Robie flagged an editorial reshuffle in an interview with Radio NZ International’s Mediawatch programme last Sunday. Pacific Media Watch's Alex Perrottet reported the interview, quoting Dr Robie as saying that the Fiji Times was “going back to the future”:

As the dust settles, they may well look at another editor who would probably be more in tune with what Dallas Swinstead is going to try and do …

He is likely to take a more diplomatic approach to the regime than his immediate predecessors. But I certainly don’t think he is going to be kowtowing to the regime. He has made some quite strong comments since he has been appointed.

But whether Fred Wesley is the right choice as acting editor-in-chief is another matter. Swinstead himself confirmed that he would be trying to “rebuild the relationship” with the regime in an interview with Fiji Broadcasting Corporation news director Stan Simpson:

Yes, we are changing direction. Having watched News Ltd perish in this country, there’s no sense in committing suicide – even with a local-owned replacement. There is no doubt that The Fiji Times cannot be antagonistic to the government. What on earth does it prove? But we will ask questions in a fair and balanced way because we will be helping to bring the people to the government.

Picture: How the old Fiji Times looked in 1974 - before Dallas Swinstead revamped the paper during his first stint as publisher for four years, 1976-1980. Photo: Fiji Times

• New direction for Fiji Times - Dallas Swinstead interview with FBC's Stan Simpson
• Full text of the interview - only on the Pacific Media Centre niusblog
• Rowan Callick on Fiji's 'invisible gentler face'
• Listen to Radio NZI’s Mediawatch interview with David Robie on Fiji [@22m08s]

Motibhai’s new broom brushes off the 'dumb questions'

DALLAS SWINSTEAD, Motibhai’s new broom as publisher of the 141-year-old Fiji Times, didn’t waste any time setting the benchmark this week at his old paper. He has returned to Fiji with an open mind. He says he remains committed to good journalism and wants to rebuild the newspaper into the fine publication it has been. But he will also be “pragmatic” about the military-backed regime.

Swinstead believes there are more subtle and strategic ways of achieving success at the newspaper than pointless confrontation that killed the paper off for News Ltd: "What’s the point in having a newspaper shut down?” he asked Geraldine Coutts in an interview with Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat this week.

Thankfully, Fiji’s oldest and most influential newspaper survived the doomsday predictions with the enforced sale. Some journalists seem to think that it is a badge of honour to be kicked out of a country or for their title to be closed down. The ultimate censure. And the price then is enforced silence or rumour mongering for the citizens. Everybody loses.

After such an important contribution to the country from humble beginnings in Levuka in 1869 and to the building of a society both before and post-independence, it would have been “unthinkable” for the Times not to continue, as Motibhai’s board chairman Mahendra “Mac” Patel put it. Patel knew Swinstead from his first term as Fiji Times publisher (when he was very innovative) for four years until 1980, long before Sitiveni Rabuka’s twin coups threw Fiji into a downward spiral. Swinstead has a diplomatic streak and he may prove to be more adept at negotiating an “open space” with the regime than his predecessors.

It is early days yet, and for the moment Swinstead is saddled with the same editor-in-chief, Netani Rika, who is very unpopular with the regime. Will he remain for the long haul? Unlikely.

The handover at The Fiji Times in Suva this week was fairly upbeat with optimistic rhetoric from both the outgoing owner, News Ltd’s chairman and chief executive John Hartigan, and the new owner, Motibhai's “Mac” Patel. Hartigan said: “Today is a very emotional day for me, for a lot of people in our country and elsewhere; we didn't want to sell the paper.” Patel said: "Fiji without the Fiji Times is unthinkable. Motibhai's acquisition is for the people of Fiji."

Swinstead gave some hints on his editorial philosophy for the challenging times ahead in the Pacific Beat interview - and he brushed off what he branded as a “dumb question” or two from Coutts.

Explaining his views, Swinstead told Coutts: “I understand the values and the responsibility enjoying the right to free speech and the cost of putting my foot in my mouth. So there are two ways to go here. One is to demand free speech and you can ask News Ltd about that. And the other is to try to work with the local ownership, with the people and with the government to get this country to where it wants to be. Now it sounds a bit precious, but that's the reality and I am a pragmatist."

Coutts responded that she wasn’t “quite sure what that actually says” and asked again whether he supported a status quo approach or a free press:

SWINSTEAD: No, what I said is that I understand free speech better than most and I understand its value, but here it is not possible under some circumstances. What you have to understand is that 95 percent of our paper - whether it is Fijians, Indians and whatever - is happening here. It's sport results, it's commerce … the whole thing. And inevitably there are going to be stories that will cause the government embarrassment and I hope to be able to find a way to negotiate with good people down there and people here who are somehow or other able to keep some conversation going. I make no promises, and if we have to close our mouths or be shut down, I have no option but to walk around it. Now that's pretty simple.

COUTTS: So if you get a directive not to do a certain story, you will abide by that?

SWINSTEAD: I beg your pardon?

COUTTS: If you get a directive from the government or the censors not to do a story that you think is important and in the public interest, you'll sit it on it yourself? You'll choose to do that? You'll censor yourself?

SWINSTEAD: Well, with respect to you, that is a pretty dumb question. Of course, I will. What's the point in having a newspaper shut down?

COUTTS: Well then going back to the original question, what is freedom of speech?

SWINSTEAD: Freedom of speech - my original answer was my parents gave me a pretty fair idea of what you can say and get away with, and when you stepped out of line and they ran the show they knocked you over. So, I mean, I don't like that happening. I am tenacious, but I am a good mediator and a facilitator, and I will be trying to talk to people in government to lead them to understand how valuable a free and open press is. But look, it is a developing country with lots of problems and I am sympathetic to them and I am not angry about censorship or anything else. That's life.

Fiji Village.com picked up on this interview and presented it as Swinstead “clearing the air” on Fiji. The radio station’s website said he would “keep the channels of communication open” with the regime. Fiji Village is part of the Communications Fiji group, which is another key media group with a powerful Gujerati business stake (Hari Punja) along with The Fiji Times (Motibhai) and the Fiji Sun (C. J. Patel).

Good luck to the new team at The Fiji Times. They’ll need it. At least Fiji will still be blessed with a choice of daily newspapers. The third daily – the Daily Post, with a substantial indigenous Fijian shareholding, is already a casualty of the censorship climate and struggling economy.

Pictured: Dallas Swinstead (Photo: Fiji Times)

Returning Fiji Times publisher to negotiate a different Fiji
New Fiji Times publisher clears the air
How the Pacific Murdoch times are changing
Ex-Fiji Times publisher named as Motibhai's new man at helm
Motibhai wins race for the Fiji Times
Fiji: The best of the Times - Vijendra Kumar

How the Pacific Murdoch times are changing

APART from a banner headline in The Fiji Times, “Motibhai buys Times,” on a front page story bylined by a local reporter but based on a News Ltd handout, the enforced sale of the country’s oldest newspaper has been remarkably under reported.

No serious analysis, no editorials and certainly no backgrounder. Another sign of the times post-censorship. Even the Fiji Times itself did not remark editorially about the sale of the 141-year-old paper.

Australia-based News Ltd is bailing out completely. Once the regulatory niceties have been done by September 22, it will be goodbye Rupert Murdoch in Fiji. Speculation by the Fiji Sun that the company’s valuable downtown Suva real estate holdings had not been sold has proved wrong.

Fiji Times managing editor Anne Fussell had a letter published in the Sun at the weekend saying a statement by the newspaper that Fussell had told senior Times staff that “real estate is not included in the sale” was a “complete fabrication”.

“The inevitable result of writing a story which has written this untruth is that the headline is also a misleading untruth,” Fussell wrote.

“In fact, the real estate is included in the sale.”

The Fiji Sun replied with an editor’s note saying the report (not published in the online edition) was “based on information provided by Fiji Times staff following a meeting there”. The paper also pointed out that it had since reported that Motibhai had bought all the property, “including the executive house occupied by Ms Fussell”.

Stack of letters
The Fiji Times ran a stack of letters congratulating the Motibhai group for “keeping it in the family” and buying out the FT. (All media companies were forced by the regime to divest at least 90 percent of the shareholding to local owners by September 28, or face being deregistered under the new Media Industry Development Decree. The Fiji Times group, the only completely foreign owned media company in Fiji, is selling up completely).

One letter praised Motibhai’s “courageous step” and saving “a couple of thousand jobs”.

“With modern technology, a lot of print news companies in the USA are on the brink of closing down and becoming history.

“To name a few newspapers that are fighting for their survival – The New York Times, Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

“The newspapers have been around for ages and during their peak were read not only in the US, but also abroad.”

Another letter said: “The Motibhai Group [has] a proven track record of how they’re able to transform businesses they acquire into household brand names and I know they will do the same with our oldest daily, The Fiji Times.”

But there was no debate – amid the censorship climate – of the implications of both Fiji’s two national daily newspapers being owned by rival Gujerati business chains. Or any discussion about the future of the editor, outspoken regime critic Netani Rika and senior editorial staff. For 141 years until now, The Fiji Times, for all its flaws, has been owned by dedicated newspaper publishing interests. News Ltd bought the Fiji Times and the (now closed) Pacific Islands Monthly from the Herald and Weekly Times group, which had in turn bought the publications from the Wilke Group.

Market slump
It is easy to see how the Fiji Times has slumped from its once totally dominant market share: Starved of Fiji government advertising, the weekend Fiji Times only totaled 80 pages. But its regime-fawning competitor, Fiji Sun, had 128 pages plus a 30-page glossy Showtime/Garam Masala magazine liftout.

Already, the Malaysian-owned National in Papua New Guinea had long ago taken over from the mostly Australian-owned newspaper Post-Courier - now the only Murdoch outpost in the islands - as the leading circulation daily.

Australian newspaper publishers have been knocked off their perch in the Pacific. How times are changing.

Pictured: The Fiji Times publishing stable; editor-in-chief Netani Rika; and staff celebrating at the 140th birthday party in Suva. Photo: Brisbane Times.

• Motibhai wins race for the Fiji Times
• Motibhai buys Times
• It's official - Motibhai group buys out the Fiji Times

Motibhai wins race for the Fiji Times

SO the word is out after the smokescreen for the past few days has finally lifted: Motibhai is buying out the Fiji Times group.

This is an astute business coup by Mahendra Motibhai Patel, who heads the Motibhai and Company Ltd group. It will give him a powerful weapon to fight arch rival C. J. Patel, who owns the controlling interest in the Fiji Sun.

But in spite of the positive spin put on the deal by both the Rupert Murdoch camp’s News Ltd and Motibhai, it isn’t a good thing for Fiji journalism.

Both the C. J. Patel-owned Fiji Sun, which already cosies up to the military backed regime, and the Motibhai-dominated “new order” Fiji Times will too busy concentrating on getting a good business edge than worrying about quality journalism in an ailing post-coup economy.

A free press in Fiji is still at the end of a long dark tunnel.

Since censorship was imposed after the April 2009 abrogation of the Fiji constitution and then the imposition of the Fiji Media Industry Development Decree, Fiji Times advertising revenue has slumped.

But from the News Ltd perspective, at least Motibhai has a good understanding of the ethos of the 141-year-old Fiji Times. He has previously served on the board of the Fiji Times as a non-executive director.

It is a mystery why the Fiji Times did not divest a significant slice of its shareholding to local ownership some years ago, as News Ltd did with its Papua New Guinea newspaper company, South Pacific Post Ltd. It might have headed off this crunch time with the Bainimarama regime had it done so.

Instead it is now forced to sell up 90 percent of its shareholding to the Motibhai group to ensure that it complies with the 10 percent foreign shareholding limit under the terms of the decree.

News Ltd confirmed it is selling Pacific Publications (Fiji) Limited, parent company of the publisher of the Fiji Times, for an undisclosed sum in a statement. The sale is subject to final regulatory approval by the Fiji Commerce Commission with the expected wrap-up date for the sale due on September 22 – six days before the final decree deadline.

News Limited's chairman and chief executive John Hartigan was quoted as saying: "The sale to Motibhai represents the best possible outcome for the staff, advertisers and readers of the Fiji Times …

"Motibhai will be very good custodians of the newspaper and as shareholders they will be committed to the future of the Fiji Times.

Hartigan also thanked the directors and staff of the Fiji Times for their "hard work and loyalty" and for their "personal as well as professional commitment to the organisation".

A Motibhai Group statement said:"We understand the importance of history. The Fiji Times is 141 years old and Motibhai has been operating for 80 years.

"Together we will take the Fiji Times to new levels of success as we have done with our other major investments.

New team
Mahendra Patel told the Fiji Sun that a new management team would be named on September 22.

It is not immediately clear whether the Fiji Times real estate is part of the sale. The News Ltd statement did not give any indication but a Fiji Sun report today said it was believed the sale would “exclude the valuable property” in downtown Suva.

Fiji Times publisher Anne Fussell, who is expected to return to Australia soon, was reported to have told senior staff that “real estate is not included in the sale”.

“The sprawling Fiji Times headquarters in Suva fronts on to Victoria Pde, Butt St and Gordon St,” said the Sun. This area also includes the Fiji Times press.

But few staff had any idea about the fate of the newspaper. Just today, hours before the News Ltd announcement, popular Fiji Times columnist Seona Smiles made a plea for the survival of the newspaper at a global creativity and climate change conference at the University of the South Pacific.

And now, who will be the new Fiji Times editor?

Picture: Fiji Times vendor Salesh Chand outside the newspaper office in Suva today. Photo: David Robie

The sale news on the Fiji Times website

Running out of patience with the Murdoch media camp

REPUBLISHED from the Fiji Sun. Food for thought, especially when the Sun was singled out by The Australian. News Ltd's own title, The Fiji Times, also gave "saturation coverage" to the charges. It carried a half page photo. FT is hardly a pro-government newspaper. "Callick is being rather selective," as a prominent media watcher from Fiji has indicated to Café Pacific:

The viewpoint on Fiji The Australian won't print

A riposte to two articles by Pacific correspondent Rowan Callick in The Australian newspaper, like the Fiji Times owned by Australia's News Limited. They were submitted to the newspaper [by an academic with specialist knowledge on Fiji] but not acknowledged or printed, he says.

Reading Pacific correspondent Rowan Callick's two articles on Fiji (Weekend Australian, 24/5/ July), one readily understands why Frank Bainimarama has run out of patience with the Australian media and Murdoch press in particular.

I confine myself mainly to Callick's piece in "The Nation" section.

First: the fact three former Fiji PMs have "been penalised" since Bainimarama took control in 2006 is not evidence of itself of judicial malpractice.

In his other article, in the "Focus" section, Callick refers to a general history of poor leadership in the Pacific.

In which case, is it not at least possible that three former PM's of Fiji do have possibly valid allegations to answer for?

Second: Callick says Chaudhry's recent court appearance got "saturation coverage from the regime's propaganda outlets".

Really?

For most here, including myself, it came somewhat unexpectedly.

For though it was the front page story in the pro-Bainimarama Sun newspaper, it was reported without frills.

(Editor's note: Mr Chaudhry denied all the charges against him and is contesting them in court).

Third: Callick quotes (Australian) Foreign Affairs Minister Steven Smith's spokesperson as saying Chaudhry's arrest was "of concern".

That it had "obvious political implications". That Foreign Affairs would "be watching this case closely". News? More to the point there's no allowance here for the possibility that Chaudhry might just have something to answer for.

Nothing but the bleeding obvious, either, in Foreign Affairs saying the case held out "political implications".

Not allowing for the fact, perhaps, just perhaps, however remote, that these very serious allegations may have already had "political implications" for governance and the rule-of-law in Fiji.

Fourth: Callick cites Amnesty International for the government's dismissal of judges and magistrates. Fair enough. Such removal is of concern. But so too is how sections of the judiciary, during former P.M. Qarase's tenure, succumbed to political pressures. Most notably, by releasing early from goal, men sentenced for conspiring with George Speight (and others unnamed or involved in politics) in the 2000 coup.

No mention was made of either of those in the police in 2000, along with mutinous army units, who made the coup possible. Nor any reference to those others in the military who later almost succeeded in assassinating Bainimarama for what his clean-up might reveal.

One must acknowledge that Bainimarama breached the rule of law in December 2006. To hold however, as Callick does, that Bainimarama's "authorities have no respect for the rule of law" today is, to say the least, simplistic. It overlooks the Qarase government's own disregard for the rule of law and the threat to social order certain of his policies favouring the indigenous presented.

The military takeover of any elected government always falls somewhere between "unfortunate" and "disastrous". But when elections are based not on the principle of one-person-one-vote, but on communal grounds, and one of those communities - itaukei or ethnic Fijian - has superior numbers who are then promised favoured treatment, and are incited to bully, burn, and expel Indians and their property then, I suggest, the usurpation of "democracy" ranks at the 'unfortunate' end of the spectrum.

Fifth: Callick says the Fiji government has stopped Rabuka's pension to shut him up.

He doesn't mention that it revoked that decision and that Rabuka has been publicly contrite and supportive of Bainimarama.

Sixth: We are told Chaudhry describes Bainimarama as "autocratic and dictatorial".

There's no mention of the fact that some people in Fiji (rightly or wrongly) condemn Chaudhry for his own arrogant and insensitive, some would say self-serving, leadership.

First as a unionist parliamentarian and then as Prime Minister: the kind of behaviour unhelpful to the creation of civil society.

Callick also forgets that Fiji's universally esteemed first Prime Minister, the late Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, sometimes spoke of the need for "benign dictatorship" in Fiji in the post-independence years. It was deemed compatible with traditional authority and useful to the creation of his own brand of multiculturalism. I don't recall any foreign powers objecting then.

As best I can judge, and it is impossible to be sure, right now most Fijians (the government, by the way, recently declared an end to ethnic labels: all its citizens are "Fijians") regard Bainimarama not as a malign dictator, the kind Canberra and Wellington would have us see. Rather they see him as the right man in the right place, a harbinger of hope.

Seventh: Callick is right to say Bainimarama's recent "Engaging Fiji" meeting, in Fiji, with the Melanesian Spearhead Group - Plus, was a "public relations coup". But it wasn't seen as "tumultuous" here.

Furthermore, it was arguably a victory not just for Bainimarama personally, or even the MSG but also for that rather - forgotten concept - "the Pacific Way", minus of course Samoa, Niue and the Cook Islands which are desperately dependent on New Zealand.

Like Bainimarama's Fiji, the "Pacific Way" is imperfect but until politicos, foreign affairs journalists, diplomats, and policy advisors get their heads into the history and lived-reality of culture in the South Pacific, folk in Australia and NZ will go on being subject to the myopia and entrenched views their professions seem to involve.

Lastly, Australia and NZ's call for quick elections is dangerous folly.

They would bring a return of the political and economic opportunists, impelled to stir up ethnic fears via the bogey and lies of problematic "race".

The result would be social mayhem on a greater scale than has yet been seen.

Exodus and claims to asylum would follow. It is a scenario that the two Tasman neighbours seem intent on ignoring. Exactly why is another matter.

The duty of any state, Michael White wrote recently in The Guardian Weekly (18 June 2010), is first to protect its people from hostile foreign powers, and second to ensure internal social order: the sort of stability, harmony, and peace-of-mind most in Fiji are presently grateful for.

Dr Christopher Griffin describes himself as a student of Fiji society for 35 years. He originally taught sociology at the University of the South Pacific, Suva, and till recently social anthropology at Edith Cowan University in Australia, where he is today an Honorary Senior Fellow.

The viewpoint on Fiji the Australian won't print

Fiji Times 'buy out' - who are the jackals?

THE jackals are circling around the great Fiji Times carve-up, but no serious contenders have so far emerged. The Australian news group, wholly owned by News Limited, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's US-based News Corp, is still hoping for a reprieve. Although the military-backed regime is insistent that the newspaper must be ready to divest 90 percent of its shareholding to local Fiji interests when the draft media decree becomes law, Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum says there is no need for the country's largest and most influential newspaper to "close down".

Sections of the draft Fiji Media Industry Development Decree 2010 relating to media ownership include:

s36(1): In every media organisation -

(a) in the case of a company, all the directors and in the case of any other legal entity, partnership, joint venture and of an individual, any person or persons holding analogous powers shall respectively be citizens of Fiji permanently residing in Fiji;

(b) up to 10 percent of the beneficial ownership of any share or shares in a company or any interest in the nature of ownership, partial or total, of any other person holding any interest in a media organisation may be owned by foreign persons, but at least 90 percent of the beneficial ownership of any shares or shares in a company or any interest in the nature of ownership, partial or total, of any person holding any interest in a media organisation must be owned by citizens of Fiji permanently residing in Fiji, whether any such interests subsist at the present time or are sought with a view to future ownership.

A key Fiji entrepreneur, Mahendra Patel, has scoffed at rumours linking him to a buy-out of the Fiji Times:

A prominent businessman has denied rumours that his company is interested in leading a buyout of Fiji Times shares. Mahendra Patel, of Motibhai & Co Limited, laughed off rumours that the company was interested in the newspaper.

Speaking from his Nadi office yesterday, Mr Patel said the rumours were news to them.

“We did not even know that Fiji Times was on sale,” he said when queried about the rumours.

“We are not interested and there have been no negotiations whatsoever.”

Australian newspaper company News Limited owns the Fiji Times.

However, under the draft of the Media Industry Development Decree, 90 per cent of such ownership must be held by local interests.

Meanwhile, the Fiji Sun, which editorially takes an opposing view to the Fiji Times and is seen as being more pragmatic and accommodating to the regime, has condemned the Samoan prime minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, over an "erratic" attack on regime leader Voreqe Bainimarama.

A message should be sent to Tuilaepa not to waste his time commenting on issues about Fiji...

Tuilaepa talks about democracy. Yet he ruthlessly presides over the closest thing in the Pacific Islands to a one-party state.

It takes a brave person in Samoa to take on Tuilaepa’s party machine. Tuilaepa talks about media freedom.

Yet he shamelessly presides over some of the most draconian media laws in the Pacific Islands.

They constantly threaten freedom of expression in Samoa.

In fact, Tuilaepa still has much to learn, especially about leadership in the region.

Tuilaepa would do well to learn from prime ministers like Papua New Guinea’s Sir Michael Somare, Vanuatu’s Edward Natapei and the Solomon Islands’ Dr Derek Sikua ...

• The Fiji Sun editorial in full
  
• Samoan PM's comments on Pacific Scoop
• Earlier Cafe Pacific posting
  

'Camouflaged censorship' in Fiji and PINA's silence

THE SILENCE is deafening from the Suva-based Pacific Islands News Association - once the undisputed champion of media freedom in the region. Not a beep over the implications of the draconian Media Industry Development Decree in Fiji. Behind the scenes, there are many disgruntled Pacific journalists who are bitterly disappointed at the donor-funded body's failure to show leadership. For many, the refusal of the PINA to relocate from Suva to another Pacific capital has seriously compromised the regional organisation.

While Global Voices Online has compiled another good overview of cyberspace responses and the Pacific Media Centre condemned the 'draconian and punitive' draft decree, media report that PINA is still adopting a wait-and-see approach. The decree will impose tight restrictions on foreign media ownership which will hit the Rupert Murdoch News Ltd-owned Fiji Times hard - and perhaps even lead to the demise of the country's oldest and most influential newspaper. But it will also impact on the Fiji Sun (expatriate directors) and the Daily Post (majority Australian shareholding). Ten percent foreign ownership of "beneficial" shares is the limit.

But it is also not clear what will happen to the PINA whose Suva-based news service Pacnews is not Fiji-owned. Suva-based manager Matai Akauola, who recently admitted being hampered by censorship, says it is too early to adopt a strong position. He told Radio New Zealand International:

PINA would like to try to meet with its members, like Fiji TV, Fiji Times, Fiji Sun before we could come to a conclusion on how we see this media decree. You could just gather from the meeting that they have their own point of view, so it would be good to sit down one-on-one with the various organisations.

Last week, PINA vice-president, John Woods, broke ranks and called for the organisation to relocate. He also strongly criticised PINA for "kowtowing to the Fiji censors", saying this was contrary to what the organisation stood for - freedom of expression.

A SWOT analysis of PINA staying in Suva, compiled by by outspoken Avaiki Nius editor Jason Brown, reads:

Strengths: strong familiarity with regional centre and diplomatic community in Suva

Weaknesses: extensive evidence of regional positions going mainly to Fiji residents, leading to a failure in transparency and accountability to those members outside Fiji

Opportunities: playing a significant and enduring role in helping Fiji return to normalcy, facilitating effective regionalism

Threats: continued censorship and Fiji-centric approach to regionalism, possible ouster due to law changes

But the most insightful comments come from a colleague on the ground in Suva:

The draft Fiji Media Decree adds further fuel, I believe, to the PINA debate. While PINA is a professional organisation, the Pacnews service is a news (media) service which admittedly, is regional in focus and regional in ownership (through PINA). It is, nevertheless, a media service.

How will Pacnews be viewed by the interim regime - as a "foreign-owned" entity? Given the decree's requirement that Fiji-based media organisations/entities be 90 percent Fiji-owned and that all directors be resident Fiji nationals there are indeed questions PINA will, sadly, now have to address with regards to Pacnews' future.

If, the interim regime makes an exception for PINA/Pacnews - again, sadly, this will only further fuel the accusations that PINA is "accommodating" towards the interim government. Some interesting times ahead with some difficult decisions to be made!!!

It will definitely be interesting to see which way the Fiji Times goes - toe the line and accept the 10 percent shareholding; sell their Fiji flagship (maybe to Fiji Sun?); or close down and have all their equipment shipped abroad to expand/improve one of News Corp's other newspapers? (What are the chances that the interim-regime will back down and accept a 49 percent foreign ownership?? Any one for bets??)

It's also interesting to see Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum arguing the Fourth Estate debate in favour of media organistaions when his own interim regime and most other governments tend to dismiss the media's "fourth estate" role. It is also a great pity that most of his arguments about the Fiji Times ownership is to do with the fact that the newspaper has not given the interim regime the recognition/legitimacy it feels it deserves. Media organisations are business entities - just like other commercial organisations.

If you are going to argue loyalty to a country (more so to an unelected government in this case) where do you draw the line? What about other foreign owned companies in Fiji? Already, we have the Reserve Bank of Fiji leaning on Fiji-based but mostly foreign-owned banks to be "culturally conscious" of the needs of Fiji's people. What next, - demand that Fiji-based but foreign-owned companies declare their loyalty to the government of the day?

Interesting that mention is made of plagiarism but there is no acknowledgement in the draft that the Code of Ethics is an almost complete "lift-out" from the Fiji Media Council!! In all this, there are some good aspects to the decree but by and large, it simply continues (although in camouflaged form) the censorship the interim regime has put in place.

To media freedom.....

• Draconian draft Fiji media law triggers news group protests
• Fiji media digests tough crackdown - TVNZ video
• Fiji draft media decree draconian and punitive
  

PFF makes a blue with the Fiji regime's propaganda

MEDIA lobby group Pacific Freedom Forum shot itself in the foot this week with an over-the-top media release shorn of its usual measured tone. Aghast at the Fiji Attorney-General being given an “unchallenged” platform at the University of the South Pacific’s regional journalism programme to peddle the regime’s usual spin, the PFF fired off a media missile claiming that Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum had “erased his own credibility with ‘delusional’ notions that Fiji has a free media”. What’s new?

The tone of this media release was along the lines of let’s fight censorship with censorship. In fact, the PFF itself lost some credibility with this latest release. The backroom scribes need to brush up on their Voltaire.

Also, there was a touch of disinformation in the release as well while praising the Fiji Times' “award-winning free speech campaign as announced on Friday night in Australia”. Café Pacific points out that this was an in-house award by Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd group (he was even there for the occasion). This was not disclosed by PFF.

Also, it is interesting to see that PFF has little to say about the strategies of the two other Fiji dailies, the Fiji Sun and Daily Post – both very different from the Fiji Times, and some would say more focused on rebuilding the Fiji of tomorrow than playing the pathetic Australian and NZ interventionists’ card. Well, of course – the FT group is Australian owned.

A former Fiji Daily Post publisher, Ranjit Singh, who holds rather pungent views on the Fiji news media noted - while sarcastically commenting on the “prestigious award”:

The question that has been bugging me, and I suppose other like-thinking people, is this: Had the Fiji media been more responsible, more impartial, more balanced, more ‘outrageous’ [whatever he means by this] and more questioning in raising the issues of poor governance practised by Laisenia Qarase and his SDL government, would we have been able to avert the December 2006 takeover by Bainimarama?

Probably not. But that still doesn’t soften the case for a more balanced media. The recent publication of the "media and democracy" edition of Fijian Studies, the journal published by the Fiji Institute of Technology director Dr Ganesh Chand, canvassed many of the issues of media balance and quality over two decades of coup culture and poses fundamental questions of what has been learned by the media during that period. (The edition was edited by two USP staff - economics professor Biman Prasad and head of journalism Shailendra Singh). Some 26 contributors with wide-ranging research and views (including a senior Fiji Times staffer) provided in-depth fodder for the debate. Many journalists were on hand for the launch. Yet the Fiji media picked up on virtually none of it.

This volume, in fact, lays bare the Fiji media’s shortcomings – and strengths, but also contains much of the ammunition needed to challenge the AG’s rigid regime view of the news industry.

Café Pacific reckons Khaiyum’s host for the seminar, USP journalism, should take a bow for the activities it has been promoting in spite of Fiji's climate of censorship and self-censorship. The news on the ground was that some gutsy questions were asked by several of the student journalists – and also other media people present – but Pacific Scoop’s reporter on the spot, Nanise Nawalowao, didn't pick up on some of these in her story. According to staff:

Unfortunately, the AG seminar was confirmed just two days before the event and we did not have time for the best briefing with students. We are always training and urging students to challenge speakers.

An important point that commentators often naively overlook is that university students are just making a career start – they haven’t been around the traps like them. Students are often 10 to 20 years younger and nowhere near as experienced or mature as they may be. Pacific Islanders are often reluctant to question those in authority. It is often a reality in the Pacific media industry - and many a news conference.

But at least USP is actually engaging with all sides and trying to build up some balanced expertise among tomorrow’s journos. The university’s journalism programme has organised several seminars this year - and many over the years - including during the launch of Fijian Studies and one by this year’s PINA media award winners from Port Vila.

In just a few weeks, USP has staged three seminars on the media in spite of state censorship.

USP journalism has been more actively drumming up media debates than any other organisation - not just this year, but over the years. In fact, there has been more public discussion about the media in Fiji than in any other Pacific country, largely due to USP journalism efforts – even under the shadow of a coup.

A challenge lies there for other media sectors and Pacific journalists.

• 'Think outside the box', Fiji's AG tells journalists
• Pacific Freedom Forum