International reporting has hardly been a strong feature of New
Zealand journalism. No New Zealand print news organisation has serious
international news departments or foreign correspondents with the
calibre of such overseas media as The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
It has traditionally been that way for decades. And it became much worse after the demise in 2011 of the New Zealand Press Association
news agency, which helped shape the identity of the country for 132
years and at least provided news media with foreign reporting with an
Aotearoa perspective fig leaf.
It is not even much of an aspirational objective with none of the 66 Voyager Media Awards categories recognising international reportage, unlike the Walkley Awards
in Australia that have just 34 categories but with a strong recognition
of global stories (last year’s Gold Walkley winner Mark Willacy of ABC Four Cornersreported “Killing Field” about Australian war crimes in Afghanistan).
Aspiring New Zealand international reporters head off abroad and gain postings with news agencies and broadcasters or work with media with a global mission such as Al Jazeera.
The death of Robert Parry earlier this year felt like a farewell to the age of the reporter. Parry was "a trailblazer for independent journalism", wrote Seymour Hersh, with whom he shared much in common.
Hersh revealed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the secret bombing of Cambodia, Parry exposed Iran-Contra, a drugs and gun-running conspiracy that led to the White House. In 2016, they separately produced compelling evidence that the Assad government in Syria had not used chemical weapons. They were not forgiven.
Driven from the "mainstream", Hersh must publish his work outside the United States. Parry set up his own independent news website Consortium News, where, in a final piece following a stroke, he referred to journalism's veneration of "approved opinions" while "unapproved evidence is brushed aside or disparaged regardless of its quality."
Although journalism was always a loose extension of establishment power, something has changed in recent years. Dissent tolerated when I joined a national newspaper in Britain in the 1960s has regressed to a metaphoric underground as liberal capitalism moves towards a form of corporate dictatorship. This is a seismic shift, with journalists policing the new "groupthink", as Parry called it, dispensing its myths and distractions, pursuing its enemies.
AS NEWS arrived of terror attacks in Paris that ultimately left more than 120 people dead, US President Barack Obama characterised the situation as “heartbreaking” and an assault “on all of humanity.”
But his presidential sympathy was conspicuously absent the previous day when terror attacks in Beirut left more than 40 dead. Predictably, Western media and social media were much less vocal about the slaughter in Lebanon.
The Independent's weekend front page, UK.
And while many of us are presumably aware, to some degree, of the discrepancy in value assigned to people's lives on the basis of nationality and other factors, the back-to-back massacres in Beirut and Paris served to illustrate without a doubt the fact that, when it comes down to it, “all of humanity” doesn't necessarily qualify as human.
Of course, there's more to the story than the relative dehumanisation of the Lebanese as compared with their French counterparts. There's also the prevailing notion in the West that — as far as bombs, explosions, and killings go — Lebanon is simply One of Those Places Where Such Things Happen.
The same goes for places like Iraq, to an even greater extent, which is part of the reason we don't see Obama mourning attacks on all of humanity every time he reads the news out of Baghdad.
The Melia Purosani Hotel ... venue for the AMIC 2013 media conference,
Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Photo: David Robie
IRONICALLY, while the major annual Asia-Pacific media research conference was unfolding in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta - with a final day focused on "new ethics for old media" - the national press was highlighting corporate control by media moguls.
Election organisers and Indonesia's broadcast commission have embarked on imposing tougher rules as media tycoons signal their plans to enter the presidential elections next year.
At the four-day 22nd Asian Media Information and Communication (AMIC) conference at Yogyakarta, University of Queensland head of journalism Dr Rhonda Breit, herself a qualified lawyer, criticised the ethical "invisibility" of large sections of the media.
She called on media schools to broaden journalism education and refocus on the "morality" of media, not just journalism as a profession.
Media Asia editor Dr Cherian George also called for a broader view of ethics, beyond professional codes, encompassing the responsibility of all citizens to treat journalism as a public good.
OPEN e-LETTER: Media reporting on Gaza: Nous accusons.
WHILE countries across Europe and North America commemorated military casualties of past and present wars on Armistice Day (November 11), Israel was targeting civilians. On November 12, waking up to a new week, readers at breakfast were flooded with heart rending accounts of past and current military casualties.
There was, however, no or little mention of the fact that the majority of casualties of modern day wars are civilians.
There was also hardly any mention on the morning of November 12 of military attacks on Gaza that continued throughout the weekend. A cursory scan confirms this for Canada’s CBC, the Globe and Mail, Montreal’s Gazette, and the Toronto Star. Equally, for the New York Times and for the BBC.
According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) report on Sunday, November 11, five Palestinian civilians including three children had been killed in the Gaza strip in the previous 72 hours, in addition to two Palestinian security personnel. Four of the deaths occurred as a result of Israeli military firing artillery shells on youngsters playing soccer.
Moreover, 52 civilians had been wounded, of which six were women and 12 were children. (Since we began composing this text, the Palestinian death toll has risen, and continues to rise.)
Articles that do report on the killings overwhelmingly focus on the killing of Palestinian security personnel. For example, an Associated Press article published in the CBC world news on November 13, entitled Israel mulls resuming targeted killings of Gaza militants, mentions absolutely nothing of civilian deaths and injuries.
It portrays the killings as ‘targeted assassinations’. The fact that casualties have overwhelmingly been civilians indicates that Israel is not so much engaged in ‘targeted’ killings, as in ‘collective’ killings, thus once again committing the crime of collective punishment.
Another AP item on CBC news from November 12 reads Gaza rocket fire raises pressure on Israel government. It features a photo of an Israeli woman gazing on a hole in her living room ceiling. Again, no images, nor mention of the numerous bleeding casualties or corpses in Gaza. Along the same lines, a BBC headline on November 12 reads Israel hit by fresh volley of rockets from Gaza. Similar trend can be illustrated for European mainstream papers.
News items overwhelmingly focus on the rockets that have been fired from Gaza, none of which have caused human casualties. What is not in focus are the shellings and bombardments on Gaza, which have resulted in numerous severe and fatal casualties.
It doesn’t take an expert in media science to understand that what we are facing is at best shoddy and skewed reporting, and at worst wilfully dishonest manipulation of the readership.
Furthermore, articles that do mention the Palestinian casualties in Gaza consistently report that Israeli operations are in response to rockets from Gaza and to the injuring of Israeli soldiers.
However, the chronology of events of the recent flare-up began on November 5, when an innocent, apparently mentally unfit, 20-year old man, Ahmad al-Nabaheen, was shot when he wandered close to the border.
Medics had to wait for six hours to be permitted to pick him up and they suspect that he may have died because of that delay. Then, on November 8, a 13-year old boy playing football in front of his house was killed by fire from the IOF that had moved into Gazan territory with tanks as well as helicopters.
The wounding of four Israeli soldiers at the border on November 10 was therefore already part of a chain of events where Gazan civilians had been killed, and not the triggering event.
We, the signatories, have recently returned from a visit to the Gaza Strip. Some among us are now connected to Palestinians living in Gaza through social media.
For two nights in a row Palestinians in Gaza were prevented from sleeping through continued engagement of drones, F16s, and indiscriminate bombings of various targets inside the densely populated Gaza strip.
The intent of this is clearly to terrorise the population, successfully so, as we can ascertain from our friends’ reports. If it was not for Facebook postings, we would not be aware of the degree of terror felt by ordinary Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
This stands in stark contrast to the world’s awareness of terrorised and shock-treated Israeli citizens.
An extract of a report sent by a Canadian medic who happened to be in Gaza and helped out in Shifa hospital ER over the weekend says: “The wounded were all civilians with multiple puncture wounds from shrapnel: brain injuries, neck injuries, hemo-pneumo thorax, pericardial tamponade, splenic rupture, intestinal perforations, slatted limbs, traumatic amputations. All of this with no monitors, few stethoscopes, one ultrasound machine. …. Many people with serious but non life threatening injuries were sent home to be re-assessed in the morning due to the sheer volume of casualties. The penetrating shrapnel injuries were spooky. Tiny wounds with massive internal injuries. … There was very little morphine for analgesia.”
Apparently such scenes are not newsworthy for the New York Times, the CBC, or the BBC.
Bias and dishonesty with respect to the oppression of Palestinians is nothing new in Western media and has been widely documented.
Nevertheless, Israel continues its crimes against humanity with full acquiescence and financial, military, and moral support from our governments, the US, Canada and the EU.
Netanyahu is currently garnering Western diplomatic support for additional operations in Gaza, which makes us worry that another Cast Lead may be on the horizon. In fact, the very recent events are confirming such an escalation has already begun, as today’s death-count climbs.
The lack of widespread public outrage at these crimes is a direct consequence of the systematic way in which the facts are withheld and/or of the skewed way these crimes are portrayed.
We wish to express our outrage at the reprehensible media coverage of these acts in the mainstream (corporate) media. We call on journalists around the world working for corporate media outlets to refuse to be instruments of this systematic policy of disguise.
We call on citizens to inform themselves through independent media, and to voice their conscience by whichever means is accessible to them.
Hagit Borer, linguist, Queen Mary University of London (UK) Antoine Bustros, composer and writer, Montreal (Canada) Noam Chomsky, linguist, Massachussetts Institute of Technology, US David Heap, linguist, University of Western Ontario (Canada) Stephanie Kelly, linguist, University of Western Ontario (Canada) Máire Noonan, linguist, McGill University (Canada) Philippe Prévost, linguist, University of Tours (France) Verena Stresing, biochemist, University of Nantes (France) Laurie Tuller, linguist, University of Tours (France)
“Once the power has gone, many of the opponents rise to get rid of the despot,” he said. Wolff believes the fallout from the News of the World phone-hacking scandal will be devastating in the long run for the Murdoch empire.
The NOTW has been accused of hacking into the phones of celebrities, politicians and ordinary citizens - including a 13-year-old girl, Milly Dowler, who was abducted and murdered in Britain.
Rebekah Brooks, a former editor of NOTW, Britain’s biggest selling Sunday newspaper until it was sacrificed in an attempt to keep alive Murdoch’s takeover hopes to buy out the British pay TV giant BSkyB, finally resigned as News International head in Britain late last week. She has since been arrested by police for questioning and has been replaced at the helm by New Zealander Tom Mockbridge, formerly chief executive of Murdoch-owned satellite broadcaster Sky Italia.
Dow Jones chief executive Les Hinton resigned in New York and Murdoch himself has published several apologies in his various British titles in a desperate attempt at damage control.
But the biggest casualty so far has been the resignation of Britain’s top police officer Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson, head of London's Metropolitan Police Service, or Scotland Yard, who quit because of the alleged links between the police and the phone-hacking scandal. Stephenson cited the “ intense media scrutiny and the hiring of a former News Corporation tabloid editor to advise police on public relations” as a major reason for his resignation. The editor, Neil Wallis, was arrested in connection with the criminal investigation last week.
Rupert himself, at 80, should retire, and James Murdoch now has no credibility, argues Wolff. Somebody else should take the helm as soon as possible – “as long as his name is not Murdoch”.
Wolff also pointed to the “hypocrisy everywhere” over the saga: “Every week 2.7 million Britons read the salacious detail in the NOTW provided by phone hacking.”
[T]he tycoon's daughter, Elisabeth, said her brother James had "f***ed the company".
Last week Elisabeth denied she had said something similar about the ousted News International chief executive, Rebekah Brooks. But Wolff insisted on Twitter: "She said, 'James and Rebekah f***ed the company."'
Wolff said Elisabeth made the remark at a book launch for political analyst Philip Gould hosted by her husband, Matthew Freud, and the editor of the Times, James Harding.
Roy Greenslade, writing in The Guardian – the paper that exposed the phone hacking scandal and brought the empire to its knees, wrote:
Despite the decisiveness of his actions – most obviously closing the NOTW and withdrawing the BSkyB bid – a mute Murdoch no longer seemed to be master of his own fate. In a vacuum, journalists were bound to speculate, as he will have known. So the gossip swirled. And the most potent rumour was that he was about to dispose of News International itself. There was logic to the argument. If the NOTW was closed because it was toxic, then it followed that the whole division was toxic too.
Seen from the perspective of the US-based parent company, News Corporation, the Wapping outpost seemed both irrelevant and dangerous. Why not cut off the gangrenous limb to ensure the poison did not spread to News Corp's heart?
A weekend analysis by Associated Press writers Michael Liedtke and Ryan Nakashima related how the “tables have turned on Murdoch” . They wrote:
To his many enemies, Rupert Murdoch is getting his comeuppance. Murdoch's tabloid newspapers long have reveled in the misdeeds of others with salacious photos and pun-packed headlines. Now, one of the world's most powerful media executives is learning what it's like to be enveloped in his own scandal.
"There is a feeling that Murdoch has been king of the world for too long and it's about time that somebody brought him back to Earth," says Mungo MacCallum, a political journalist and commentator who once worked for a Murdoch-owned newspaper, The Australian.
But no one is calling press conferences to gloat about Murdoch's troubles. Even his bitterest media rivals are keeping quiet.
.....
CNN founder Ted Turner, who once challenged Murdoch to a boxing match in Las Vegas, was unavailable, according to a spokesman.
New York Daily News Publisher Mort Zuckerman, whose newspaper fights every day for front page dominance with the [Murdoch] Post for New York's tabloid audience also did not return a message seeking comment.
..... But the British lawmakers who have traditionally supported Murdoch rather than risk being pilloried in the pages of his newspapers no longer seem to be in his corner because their fear of retaliation is fading. He will surely face tough questions Tuesday when he appears before a Parliament committee eager to grill him about the phone hacking and bribery allegations.
"All the powerful allies that used to help him, either publicly or behind the scenes, have faded to the sidelines," says Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow at Media Matters, a liberal group that frequently criticises Fox News for what it says is biased and inaccurate reporting. "He is on his own, and he is in over his head."
Boehlert likens the crisis and widespread antipathy surrounding Murdoch to the unraveling of Richard Nixon's presidency in 1974 as details of the Watergate cover-up were revealed. Like Nixon then, Murdoch is in "free-fall mode. There is nothing he can do to stop this story," Boehlert says.
Indian troops guard the entrance to the AMIC media and globalisation conference in Hyderabad, India. Below: Assaults on the media in India featured on CBS-IBN. Photos: David Robie
BARELY had Café Pacific returned to its more tranquil Waitemata waters after the stimulating AMIC media and globalisation conference in Hyderabad, India, than Reporters Sans Frontières has issued another communique about a shocking development on the subcontinent. RSF reports that it is
... appalled to learn that the niece of a journalist based in Bulandshahr, in the northeastern state of Uttar Pradesh, was kidnapped for three days and raped by gang members, who mistook her for his daughter.
The police have arrested a member of the gang, which had reportedly threatened the journalist over his reporting and wanted to deter him from testifying in a murder case. The journalist, who reports for a TV news channel and edits a monthly called Jungsatta, has been identified only by the name of "Rizwan".
"We express our full support for Rizwan, his niece and his family," Reporters Sans Frontières said. "This barbaric violence must not go unpunished. In his reporting and the evidence he gave to the judicial authorities, he courageously fulfilled his journalistic and civic duties. The Indian authorities must now do their duty by bringing this wretched crime's perpetrators and instigators to justice and by providing the journalist and his family with effective protection."
The press freedom organisation added: "If the authorities take no measures to punish those responsible, other journalists will be afraid to continue covering criminal cases or any story remotely linked to the underworld and organised crime."
Yasin Bhatola, a known member of a Bulandshahr-based gang led by Mehboob Pandey, was arrested in New Delhi on July 1 on information provided by the Bulandshahr police. Police say Bhatola has admitted to being a member of Pandey's gang.
The Times of India quoted deputy police commissioner Arun Kampani as saying: "[Rizwan] was a witness in double murder case (. . .) in which Mehboob Pandey was an accused. Pandey and his associates threatened him with dire consequences if he continued to testify."
The abduction and rape was allegedly carried out by Pandey, Bhatola and three other members of Pandey's gang. Rizwan's family is reportedly now being protected by the Bulandshahr police.
The news of the Uttar Pradesh case has emerged just three weeks after Jyotirmoy Dey, an investigative reporter for the newspaper MidDay who specialised in covering organised crime, was gunned down by three men on 11 June in Mumbai.
After initially arresting a single suspect, police arrested seven more suspects on June 27. Mumbai joint police commissioner Himanshu Roy said they were hired by underworld don Chhota Rajan.
Dey was the second journalist to be killed this year in India. The first was Umesh Rajput, a reporter for the newspaper Nai Duniya, who was gunned down by two masked men on a motorcycle in the east-central state of Chhattisgarh on January 23.
Reporters Sans Frontières released a report on February 24 about global organised crime and the fact that it now poses one of the biggest threats to media freedom.
These events, of course, put things in perspective in the South Pacific where media freedom is a catchcry but where the risks are relatively mild in the global stakes apart from the occasional roughing up, such as in Vanuatu, and unsavoury state censorship, as in Fiji. (Incidentally, Café Pacific deplores the appalling non-sentence handed out to minister Harry Iauko for the recent assault on Daily Post publisher Marc Neil-Jones). It only takes a brief trip to India, Pakistan, Philippines - or across the border from Papua New Guinea into Indonesian-ruled West Papua - to get a rude awakening on the realities over media freedom.
The British government insists that media self-regulation itself has "failed". Many other governments are bound to share that sentiment and use the NOTW debacle as an excuse for harsher media laws.
For those in the Pacific, it is sobering to reflect on the performance of another (then and albeit tiny) Murdoch paper, The Fiji Times, during the Coalition Labour government's one year in office in Fiji after a landslide election win in 1999 and the George Speight coup in May 2000. Allegations of bias and lack of professionalism were rife at the time and much has been written since.
CROZ WALSH has picked up yet another example of media hypocrisy and bias relating to post-coup Fiji. This time an Australian Associated Press report about "honeymooners flocking to Fiji in spite of instability". And who should be the sole expert voice sought for comment? None other than "South Pacific specialist" Professor Brij Lal, a Canberra-based Fiji academic. Indeed, as a social historian yes. But couldn't the news agency also locate an economist or tourism industry specialist for balanced comment? The bias of the news item carried by Television New Zealand's website is quite marked. Read on for Croz Walsh's spin on this item:
Fiji has been picked as the best place in the world to honeymoon, after Hawaii and French Polynesia. They are apparently flocking to Fiji and overall tourist numbers are up. TVNZ reports that "this is despite the presence of a military regime which has been in power since a 2006 coup." Similar negative comment follows.
Then TVNZ ask "South Pacific specialist Professor Brij Lal" what he thought. Prof Lal is an historian who is yet to say one complimentary word about the Baininamara government. He lives in Australia. He has no specialist knowledge of tourism. And this shows. He said Fiji was a popular destination worldwide, thanks [among other things] to marketing of the bottle brand Fiji Water and Oprah Winfrey's visit. What utter .....! Fiji has been a popular tourist destination from Australia and NZ well before there was a Fiji Water brand or an Oprah Winfrey show.
This is not the first time NZTV and RNZI have sought inappropriate (but politically correct) information from Australian sources. Tourism is taught and researched in Fiji and almost all NZ universities. Why did our media not ask an expert in Fiji or New Zealand, rather than a person resident overseas with no tourism expertise? Someone with fewer negative vibes on Fiji?
One suspects these journalists have an address book of preferred sources. [Sorry, Brij. This is not a personal attack. Surely you'd agree there are more appropriate sources than you on this issue.] - Professor Crosbie Walsh on his Fiji: The way it was, is and can be blog
The four-year battle between the Fiji Times and Fiji's military backed government will soon come to a head as new media laws will force the sale of the 141-year-old paper that is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Limited.
The Media Industry Development Decree, passed in late June, stipulates that 90 percent of ownership of Fiji's media companies must be made up of Fiji citizens. While Rupert Murdoch declared US citizenship in the mid-1980s to get around foreign media ownership rules in that country, there has been no talk of the Australian-born media mogul becoming a Fiji citizen.
Thursday, August 26, marked the deadline interested parties could make bids to purchase the Fiji Times. This comes at the height of a months-long war-of-words between various Australian publications — mostly owned by Murdoch's companies — and Fiji's government. “News Limited, which owns the Fiji Times, continues to wage a hostile media campaign against Fiji, this time directly targeting the nation’s tourism industry and economy,” Fiji's Permanent Secretary for information, Sharon Smith-Johns told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat programme.
Smith-Johns specifically referred to an article by former Fiji Times editor-in-chief Rory Gibson, writing in the Murdoch-owned Brisbane Courier-Mail, comparing Fiji's present government to a “military dictatorship little better than any apartheid regime operating in South Africa's dark ages.”
Smith-Johns wondered aloud if the Australian government was behind some of the bad publicity Fiji's government has received:
Questions have been asked here, is the Australian government behind it? The Australian Government has turned around and said that it will not penalise Fiji, but obviously now News Limited certainly is. It's attacking our economy and it's attacking our tourists. It's a concerted campaign. It's not just one story, it's several stories that have been run in quite a few different papers.
Bloggers who cover Fiji (and their commentors) wonder whether Fiji's military government will weather the poor public relations storm by forcing the sale of such a well-known newspaper.
Imagine the adverse publicity that will occur if the dictatorship actually does force the Fiji Times to close. There would be headlines in all the newspapers in both Australia and New Zealand. The credibility of the dictatorship would be severely damaged.Can the dictatorship actually afford that damage? Is the dictatorship so blind as to be unaware of the consequences?
The battle between government and media behemoth also spurs a debate on the often inflamed coverage of Fiji in the mainstream press around the Pacific. The Fiji Democracy Now blog complains that Smith-John's words are also inflamatory:
But we cannot let the latest public pronouncement get away, which asks us to believe that, somehow, Rupert Murdoch’s vast media empire, News Ltd, has become a “tool” of the Australian government. The mouthpiece states: “It begs the question that most in Fiji are asking. Is the Australian government using News Limited as a tool to punish Fiji and cripple our economy?” Wow! Has anyone told Rupert that his multi-billion dollar company is actually the PR lackey of the Aussie government?
A commenter to the blog Fiji: The Way It Was, Is and Can Be defends Smith-Johns, but points out that objective reporting and Fiji's future is more important than the current tussle:
[Smith-Johns is] saying the articles are deeply biased and could impact negatively on tourism which employs many thousands of Fiji citizens.One looks to the mainstream media for information, balance and objectivity but with almost all News Ltd articles (and indeed most other foreign media reports) on Fiji, this has generally not been the case. Rory's piece is hyperbole, not journalism as I know it.This is not about whether you or I support or oppose the 2006; it's about trying to understand the situation and help it move forward for the benefit of all Fiji citizens.
- 7018 Pacific Media Watch
Michael Hartsell is a regular contributor on Fiji issues to Global Voices. Link to his original GV article here.
RADIO NZ reports that the Fiji government will soon sign an agreement with Fiji TV for a government channel to broadcast from two to seven hours a week. Government also plans to sign an agreement with the Fiji Sun to include a 12-page weekly report on government policies and programmes. A new media law decree is also likely to be introduced when the emergency regulations expire next month.
Government stands internationally condemned for its "infamous" emergency regulations -- and restrictions on "media freedom" that were the main purpose of the regulations. Pacific Freedom Forum (PFF) would even like to see the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) remove its offices from Suva because of current press censorship.
There is no question that, in normal circumstances, the media should be free, and no question either that in all circumstances the media should publish fair, honest, informed and balanced reports. Anything less is media negligence, media licence or sheer propaganda, not media freedom. It is not enough for people within the media to protest. Freedom has to be earned. Others, outside the media, will decide where the pendulum rests between "freedom" and "licence."
My crude "contents analysis" of the Fiji media since my blog started is that it often fell short of its stated goals. Its idea of balance, as stated in earlier posts, was usually to publish one statement from the government and one each from up to five government opponents, making the tally not 1:1 but 1:5. Its selection of news was also biased, focusing far more frequently on what someone said government got wrong than on what the government was trying to do.
While not in agreement, I have some sympathy, therefore, for Permanent Secretary of Information Lt. Col. Neumi Leweni when he said: “If I was given the choice, I’d leave [the censorship controls] there for the next five years, ” thereby making it clear that Fiji media should not expect to go back to reporting the "irresponsible" way they did prior to April 10 when the Public Emergency Regulations were enacted. He said the controls would be lifted if media organizations agreed to willingly follow the direction that was being set by his ministry.
While this may seem Orwellian and outright draconian, Leweni does have a point. Much reporting, he said:
constantly focused on the negative ... [and] carried one-sided and sensationalised stories in its coverage of politics, crime and most other events.
The government’s position is you feed the public with bad things and it registers. In some instances it could lead to people doing whatever is being published. You’d be surprised if you asked the police for statistics on people breaking the law. They’ll tell you it’s dropped tremendously in the past month. It’s to do partly with the media. You feed the public good things and shape public perception with positive things, they will react accordingly. When you dish out negative issues and a lot of other things like crime, etc, it gets to people and in the end they produce those sorts of activities themselves.
From my discussions with people on the streets, they actually appreciate the news more now with a lot of positive issues being addressed ... and it’s also come from government departments that they’re now getting calls from reporters on positive stories whereas before, a lot of them were reluctant to answer questions because it was based mostly on negative issues.
It [is said] bad news sells [but] the media is still selling their newspapers....and there are a lot more positive issues being addressed in the media now.
Professor Crosbie Walsh is a former director of the Institute of Development Studies at Massey University, New Zealand. He lived in Fiji for five years and built up the Development Studies programme at the University of the South Pacific. His research interest is as a population and development geographer and in globalisation.
THE RECENT Media7 programme on Fiji has brought the local chooks out of the woodwork since it was rebroadcast on both ABC's On the Mat and Fiji TV's Close Up programmes. Sadly, a handful of the scribes have lined up on race and cultural affiliation grounds rather than reasoned arguments. A couple even made their snap judgments before watching (or hearing) the programme. Some have taken the cue from that fundamentalist politician of the right Mere Samisoni, who fired off a diatribe to Fiji Television:
So literally the power of the majority of the Fijian population who make up 57% of the general population, has been "stolen by gazetted legislation by this IR [illegal regime]" yet this principle was not even touched on by the [Media7] debate or your follow up comments for the illegally removed government and multi-party cabinet which offered legitimacy and hope to a multicultural society.
The debate legitimised the power of the gun and that might is right.
Excuse me? The programme did nothing of the sort. None of the panelists spoke in support of a military regime or against democracy. The case was actually made for more understanding of the Fiji plight, and in support of a more considered and compassionate response politically from New Zealand instead of knee-jerk actions. And also for less media bias. Having worked as a journalist and as a media educator in many countries globally and having also lived in Fiji at the time of the deposed Qarase government, I would have to describe that administration as the most fundamentally racist, corrupt and opportunist I have ever experienced. And yet this is the sort of "democracy" that some media people remain starry eyed over. Fortunately, there have been more comments from Fiji journalists favourable to the Media7 debate and who actually listened or watched.
One example:
I commend you on your unbiased views and opinion on the current situation in Fiji. It was replayed for Fiji viewers on Close Up at Fiji One. Good on you.
And another - at length:
The short-sightedness of the New Zealand/Australian governments will be detrimental for a solution in Fiji. It's been two years - and if confrontational diplomacy hasn't worked so far, it won't in future. It's time for the NZ/Australian media to realise this - and more importantly, make sure that their public do so too. The government will soon follow. And so will progress on getting Fiji back to democracy.
What the region needs right now is a Pacific statesman - Sir Michael Somare is doing his bit but the Samoan PM isn't doing anyone any favours with his outbursts. This is a time when thinking outside the proverbial box is so important.
Fiji is different and will always be different from other Pacific Islands nations. So a different approach and solution is required. If the regional leaders are going to place great hurdles along the way, Fiji will only stumble. Ease the sanctions, allow people with knowledge and experience to help move Fiji forward. I think if Fiji fails to move towards a sustainable democratic process in the next year or so, it will be as much a failure on the part of the Pacific Island leaders, as it will be that of [Voreqe] Bainimarama and his IG.
I was happy to see some of these themes emerge in the discussion from the panelists on the Media7 programme. Hopefully it has woken up some more journalists and politicians.
Café Pacific wonders why the revealing segment shown at the start of the Media7 item was culled out of both the sanitised On the Mat and Close Up versions. In the case of Close Up, a comment by presenter Russell Brown about Fiji's leaders as sometimes being presented by media as "self-serving and thuggish" was thought too likely to spark off a new round of regime intimidation. So discretion won out.
CROZ WALSH fired Café Pacific a copy of his letter in the latest Listener. He takes a potshot or two at Kiwi politicians, diplomats and journalists who "wittingly or unwittingly continue to misrepresent the Fiji situation". Like Croz, I am no defender of this military regime, but many in New Zealand (and Oz) need to take off their blinkers and not be so naive about Fiji post-coup realities. The indiscriminate application of NZ's travel ban is a farce and does little to contribute to a return to democracy. Fairly fundamental changes are needed in Fiji (including the electoral system requiring all MPs to gain cross-cultural support), and trying to bulldoze Fiji down a path towards the so-called BB (before Bainimarama) "democracy" - such as the regime presided over by Laisenia Qarase - is futile and would be disastrous. Croz Walsh, a respected former leading University of the South Pacific academic and now adjunct professor, writes:
I’m not an avid supporter of the Fiji 2006 military takeover or the far-from-democratic regime it displaced. I’m even less a supporter of New Zealand politicians, diplomats and journalists who wittingly or unwittingly continue to misrepresent the Fiji situation. My credentials? Fifty years of study, research and writing; 16 years of work and residence in the Pacific, eight of them in Fiji.
The current diplomatic crisis should cause us to ask what our Government still hopes to achieve, two years after the military takeover, by the indiscriminate application of its travel ban? The young goalkeeper whose fiancé was the daughter an army officer was not closely linked to the regime. Neither is the daughter of the former Permanent Secretary of Health, or the son of the Permanent Secretary to the President. No one questions the President’s legitimacy and his secretary is a career public servant appointed in 2004, two years before the military takeover.
The Fiji Interim Government was not asking that the travel ban be removed, as the New Zealand public has been informed; only that it not be applied indiscriminately. Our High Commissioner was expelled for more than the travel bans: Wellington allowed her to engage freely with the regime opponents but not in any meaningful way with the Interim Government. Similar reasons explain TV reporter Barbara Dreaver’s expulsion. Her Fiji interviews have been very one-sided. And TV’s continuing use of two-year-old film footage of armed soldiers patrolling Suva’s streets is a little more than innocently deceptive.
It is the responsibility of the media to be informed and fair-minded. They should report that the Interim Government intends to end widespread corruption, check extreme Fijian nationalism and religious fundamentalism, counter laws and practices which discriminate against non-Fijians, check alleged election irregularities, and devise an election system which guarantees these undemocratic practices will not be repeated. And we should be told what its opponents say about these claims. It is reported that the Interim Government has taken no steps towards parliamentary elections. This is not true. We should be informed of these steps, and left to decide for ourselves whether they are genuine or not.
More of the same will not help resolve the Fiji crisis. Fiji is a deeply fractured society with “goodies” and “baddies” in each of its many camps. Its leaders must resolve the situation in the Pacific way, by dialogue and, hopefully, consensus. We can assist this process by adopting a critical but even-handed manner, and demonstrate that we do indeed have some idea of Pacific ways, or we can continue to demonstrate what some see as arrogance and others as an abysmal ignorance of Pacific mores.
I would urge the new government to discard our former PM’s ideological blinkers, and take a new look at what we can do to assist Fiji along the path towards a more inclusive democracy.
Crosbie Walsh Adjunct Professor University of the South Pacific
We do indeed need a fairer and more balanced media coverage of Fiji - and far more rigorous criticism of the NZ Government's handling of policies.
FIJI'S regime, albeit "legal" nowadays, is pressing ahead with its controversial media law "promulgation". It will have a draft amalgation of media laws on the table by next month. Naturally, the local news media are back on the warpath. They are trying to broker some consultation before this media law gets too far down the track. Unfortunately, while the media has been quick to use its power, newsprint, airwaves and cyberspace to air its self-interested views, it hasn't done anywhere such a good job about canvassing the views of civil society and those who are so critical. Why are other stakeholders so intent on seeing the media perform better? Perhaps if the media had done something more proactive about getting its house in order - a bit like the NZ Press Council did with its first independent review in 30 years in 2007 - the stand-off wouldn't have got to this stage. A few quick words from Peni Moore, one of the civil society advocates commissioned to review the media (separately from the Jim Anthony fiasco), in her conclusion for the People's Charter:
To say the media was angry [over the Anthony report] is to understate their point of view. Radio, TV, newspapers and magazine editors and executives voiced their indignation, anger and disappointment at the report. Perhaps the Fiji TV best summarised the many media points of view, saying, that the FHRC seems to share the concern of all political parties and leaders that have been at the helm of power to have “controls that will weaken and severely dilute the rights of the media and individuals as enshrined in the 1997 Constitution”. Fiji TV said that Anthony Report did not provide specifics on how the media have failed to meet their obligations, and said there is a tendency to heap most of the blame for Fiji’s political problem on the media. “This is quite unfair and below the belt”, commenting that media cannot allow themselves to be mouthpieces of the government, politicians and political parties. As a panacea or cure or stimulant toward improving media standards, the National Committee for Building a Better Fiji (NCBBF) recommended a number of changes which included the establishing of the Media Tribunal, that legislation to be enacted to ensure the development and regulation of professional standards of journalism and a levy to be raised to cover the costs.
This, surely, is a pointer to where the promulgation is heading. Ironically, just yesterday Fiji Media Council chief Daryl Tarte reckoned that "self-censorship" had been declining in Fiji. Also yesterday, the Fiji Times admitted it was in contempt over publishing a letter chastising the High Court over its controversial ruling about the legality of the regime.
The New Zealand Herald is eating humble pie over its vigorous "democracy under attack" campaign against the passing of the Electoral Finance Act late last year. Today it was forced to run a brief front page item on the front page acknowledging that it had been rapped by the NZ Press Council over two of its editorials that misrepresented the curb on electoral campaign funding (but with fuller coverage of the adjudication inside). A complaint by the Coalition for Open Government against the Herald editorials of 4 December and 20 November 2007 has been upheld. As Victoria University law lecturer and author Steven Price, who brought the campaign on behalf of the coalition, notes on his Media Law Journal: "The Herald fulminated that the bill would require anyone wanting to spend any of their own money electioneering to register with the Electoral Commission. That seemed to grossly restrict everyone’s political free speech - an impression underscored by the subhead 'Speak now or next year hold your peace'. But it wasn’t true. Only those who want to spend more than $12,000 electioneering (or $1000 in an electorate) need to register. Still, much better for the Herald’s campaign to brush over the fact that this would only affect a small number of wealthy people and organisations. "Most irritating Herald argument: its mistake didn’t really matter as “it does not undermine our general view of the shortcomings of this bill.” Well, bully for the Herald. But one might have hoped that they would have felt embarrassed to advance this as a justification for failing to publish accurate information and let readers make up their own minds."
One of my Fiji journo colleagues has brought to Cafe Pacific's attention a few interesting letters on the Fiji Times Online website. An extract from one, headed Media bias, contrasted the lack of zeal in the investigative stakes when Qarase was in power compared with the Chaudhry expose: "Yet here we have our deposed Prime Minister (Laisenia Qarase) charged with crimes during his tenure with FHL. Why does the media not investigate Mr Qarase's case further? It's been discussed in all sectors in the House of Representatives since early 1990s yet the media has done little to report this to the public. I challenge the media to show what investigative reporting they have done so far with Mr Qarase's case or other cases such as Fiji Water."
Signed by Robert Rounds, of Lautoka.
An editorial response from the FT: "Mr Qarase's case is before the courts and we cannot report on it at this stage. We welcome information from the public which will help us with our investigations."
A bit more investigative probing at the time would have been helpful!
Another reader took a blast at ther local reporting and wondered why the coverage of the commission against corruption wasn't getting a better run.
"I NOTE the call for more responsibility in the media. On a visit to Fiji, I must say I was shocked to see the newspapers taking an obvious bias against the interim Government. Of course this administration has made mistakes (what government hasn't?) but it faces a constant chipping away by the press in particular Surely the good things to come out of the interim Government such as the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC) are worthy enough to note. Responsibility in the media must include the exercise of discretion when to print and when not to print a story. Just one week's reading of this long-time journal's output provides irrefutable evidence that your editorial board has never read the book on discretion." Paul K. Madigan Hong Kong
National crisis "YOUR FrontPage headline (FT 12/2) alleges that the National Council for Building a Better Fiji is in a crisis. We have many crisis in Fiji serious crime, poverty where more than one third of the population are struggling to survive below the poverty line, in schools with 10 per cent of our children not attending classes, lack of confidence in an economy on the decline and many others on the same scale of seriousness. A difference of views between two national council members, even if expressed very robustly, will not register on the same scale. This is by comparison, a crisis in a tea cup. The national council, from the outset when it first met on January 16, encourages robust debate. Its members will not be frightened by a bit of honest emotion over a matter that may, in the end, be easily resolved by a quiet conversation and constructive dialogue. They keep a sense of proportion in their discussions about what is really important and what is not. The national council, at the least, deserves a sense of proportion and fair reporting from journalists and the mainstream media. In the report, the headline and contents of your first paragraph [don't] show any relationship to the rest of the news. The story was about a certain business deal and had nothing to do with the national council." John Samy
