Fiji journalist Lice Movono talks to Café Pacific publisher David Robie while preparing interviews for her media freedom podcast for Radio Australia's Pacific Beat. IMAGE: Screenshot Café Pacific
RADIO Australia’s Pacific Beat
reports on how Fiji has fared under the draconian Media Act that
has restricted media freedom over the past decade and moves to change
the law.
There are hopes that state-endorsed media censorship will stop in
Fiji following last month’s change in government to the People’s
Alliance-led coalition.
Reported by Fiji correspondent Lice Movono, the podcast outlines former Fiji Times editor-in-chief Netani Rika’s experiences of repression under the former FijiFirst government.
It really is bizarre. After 26 months of wrangling, stakeholders’ representations and appeals by the Pacific Media Centre participants to Auckland University of Technology management, in the end the innovative unit remains in limbo.
In fact, sadly it seems like a dead end.
In my 28 years as a media educator across four institutions in four countries I have never experienced as something as blatant, destructive and lacking in transparency as this.
Six weeks after I retired as founding director of the centre last December, the PMC office in AUT’s Sir Paul Reeves building was removed by packing up all the Pacific taonga, archives, books and files supporting student projects without consulting the stakeholders.
And then the award-winning staff running the centre on a de facto basis were apparently marginalised.
As former Green Party MP Catherine Delahunty noted: “I am really shocked that a vibrant well developed centre is being treated like this - what is wrong with this institution?”
One of AUT’s Pacific research centres has been without a director since the end of last year and a lack of clarity around its future is causing division among staff and supporters. Teuila Fuatai reports for The Spinoff.
SINCE 2007, AUT’s Pacific Media Centre has built a considerable portfolio and solid reputation for its research and reporting on issues throughout the Asia Pacific region, and as a training ground for Pasifika journalists and academics.
However, a month after veteran Pacific correspondent and researcher Professor David Robie retired as director late last year, the centre was packed up without any formal notification or explanation to the remaining AUT staff members associated with it.
The move prompted a social media outcry among supporters and regional journalists, who raised concerns about the centre’s closure and the lack of communication from the university.
The new video produced by Blessen Tom and Sri Krishnamurthi for AUT's Pacific Media Centre. By Sri Krishnamurthi
“It’s a bit of a lighthouse” for vital regional news and information,
says former contributing editor Alex Perrottet summing up the value of
the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project for New Zealand and Pacific journalism.
The Radio New Zealand journalist is among seven international media
people involved in the 23-year-old project featured in a new video
released this week.
Pacific Media Watch – The Genesis
is a 15-minute mini documentary telling the story of the project
launched by two journalists at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS)
and the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) in 1996 and adopted by
Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre in 2007.
Pacific Media Watch has become a challenging professional
development opportunity for AUT postgraduate students seeking to develop
specialist skills in Asia-Pacific journalism.
Independent filmmakers fear a slow erosion of Māori and Pacific content at Television New Zealand has begun.
Their fears have emerged after the role of commissioner for Māori and Pacific programmes was removed from a full-time commissioning role in recent restructuring by TVNZ.
The move has left some within the film and television industry shocked and questioning whether it is ignorance or arrogance.
“Given that we are an increasing demographic, this seems like a mad racist move,” said Joanna Paul (Ngai te Rangi), an independent television producer who was one of the pioneers of the Māori Television Service.
“That TVNZ considers this a part-time job is arrogant and ignorant enough, but given there is more Māori and Pacific programming on air than ever before beggars belief,” Paul said.
INDONESIAN hospitality was given a rave notice this week for hosting World Press Freedom Day 2017, but it was also given a huge black mark for its “gagging” of free discussion over West Papua violations.
Four days before the WPFD event got under way, prominent Papuan journalist Victor Mambor had warned in the New Internationalist that Indonesian double standards had imposed a silence over West Papua.
Even a Papuan protest outside the Jakarta Conference Centre venue was kept at the margins, ensuring most of the 1300 journalists, media academics and communication policy makers from 90 countries were unaware of the shocking press and human rights violations that continue almost daily in the Melanesian provinces of Papua and West Papua (collectively known as West Papua).
MEDIA freedom advocates and human rights activists are planning a “global action” for West Papua with demonstrations marking UNESCO world press freedom day events in Jakarta next week.
The advocates want to focus global attention on the “media blackout” long imposed by Indonesian authorities, in spite of promises to open up access to the two Melanesian provinces of Papua and West Papua adjoining independent Papua New Guinea.
Prominent UK-based West Papuan lawyer and civil rights campaigner Benny Wenda will then pay a visit to New Zealand the following week to raise awareness.
ON this day we honour Australian award-winning journalist and film
maker Mark Worth who died in West Papua on January 15, 2004 -
suspiciously just two days after the ABC announced his documentary, Land of the Morning Star, would be screened across Australia.
Many
of Mark's friends and colleagues deemed his sudden death as suspicious
and many called on the Australian government for a thorough
investigation.
Yet the Australian government predictably left any investigation up
to the Indonesian government, which buried his body so quickly that no one
was able to properly establish his cause of death, which was officially
left as mere pneumonia. His death remains an unresolved issue with
many.
Mark Worth's sudden death shocked Papuans and all involved in
Free West Papua campaigns in West Papua, PNG, Australia and the world.
Mark Worth had worked tirelessly exposing the truth about the cruel
occupation of West Papua from inside West Papua, which ultimately, many
assume was the real cause of his sudden death.
University of Papua New Guinea's Emily Matasororo ... in the background, images of heavily armed police
shortly beforethey opened fire on peaceful students. Image:" Del Abcede/PMC
SURPRISING that a conference involving some of the brightest minds in
journalism education from around the world should be ignored by New
Zealand’s local media.
The range of diversity alone at the Auckland University of Technology hosted event was appealing, but it was the heady mix of
ideas and contributions that offered an inspiring backdrop.
Topics
included strategies for teaching journalism for mobile platforms – the
latest techniques; “de-westernising” journalism education in an era of
new media genres; transmedia storytelling; teaching hospitals;
twittering, facebooking and snapchat -- digital media under the periscope;
new views on distance learning, and 21st century ethical issues in
journalism are just a representative sample of what was on offer.
Keynote speakers included Divina Frau-Meigs (Université Sorbonne
Nouvelle) with a riveting account on how "powerful journalism" makes "prime ministers jump", the
Center of Public Integrity’s Peter Bale (a New Zealander) on the need to defend press
freedom, and Tongan newspaper publisher and broadcaster who turned
“inclusivity” on its head with an inspiring “include us” appeal from the Pacific,"where we live in the biggest continent on planet Earth".
Alistar Kata's report on the visit by Amira Hass. Video: Pacific Media Centre
COINCIDING with the visit by renowned Haaretz journalist Amira Hass to New Zealand in the past couple of weeks, Al Jazeera has been running a repeat of the brilliant programme “The Architecture of Violence” in the Rebel Architecture series.
In this, architect and communicator par excellence Eyal Weizman explains how Israel has transformed urban warfare and how the techniques are used to subjugate Palestinians.
Travelling across the illegal settlements and roads of the West Bank and also along the Separation Wall, Weizman shows how the controlled use of architecture is deployed to consolidate the Israeli grip on Palestine.
"Architecture and the built environment is a kind of a slow violence,” he says.
“The occupation is an environment that was conceived to strangulate Palestinian communities, villages and towns, to create an environment that would be unliveable for the people there."
PACIFIC MEDIA WATCH’S Alistar Kata has just filed an interesting report about the virtual “shut out” of no-mining critics in Bougainville in the lead-up to the elections next month. The report was about a head-to-head interview with the Bougainville Freedom Movement’s long-time campaigner Vikki John and New Dawn FM broadcaster Aloysius Laukai, both past award winners for their contrasting roles.
John claimed the “ownership” of news websites was hampering opposition news, saying this was another form of “brainwashing” by the company that is angling for resumption of copper mining at Panguna, the mine which triggered the 10-year Bougainville civil war. However, Laukai was at great pains to reject any alleged links to the powerful Bougainville Copper Limited mining lobby.
Last month’s new mining law passed by the Autonomous Bougainville Government’s legislature last month has paved the way to makereopening of the mine possible.
“No, we have no links and that’s why we have put up heaps of stories and cover events such as the mining forums,” Laukai told Kata. “There must be some confusion with us and another Bougainville news website.”
He was probably referring to Bougainville24 news website, which is produced by Bougainville Copper Ltd. But that isn’t the end of the story.
According to the European Shareholders of BCL, they have been backing New Dawn FM and have promoted an appeal to channel funds to the community broadcaster, founded with UNESCO support in 2008.
A link to this was revealed in a posting on the Pacific Media Centre website today, which referred to ABG and Bougainville Copper Foundation funding for New Dawn. The European Shareholders webpage goes like this:
The European Shareholders of Bougainville Copper New Dawn appeal.
RADIO NEW DAWN NEEDS YOU! Radio New Dawn on Bougainville has been founded a couple of years ago. It is the first free network made by Bougainvilleans for Bougainvilleans. At the present, the radio station is in threat of shutting down.
Small revenues from local businesses and the Autonomous Bougainville Government cannot guarantee its existence. Bankruptcy would be fatal.
Radio New Dawn is the only genuine voice of Bougainville compared to all other media who report from PNG’s capital Port Moresby – some 1000 kilometres away.
Aloysius Laukai, manager and chief editor, [has] been honored for his work in the past. But honors alone cannot assure the broadcaster’s survival. The ESBC appreciate a lot [of] the crew’s information work. After years of uncertainty during the Bougainville crisis, Radio New Dawn created a new public awareness and self-confidence on the island.
Therefore, the European Shareholders of Bougainville Copper (ESBC) are proud of supporting this shining project. This is in the interest of locals and all those from abroad who benefit from Radio New Dawn’s internet blog that updates information on the positive development in Bougainville. Financial funding will be highly welcome.
Late last year, on October 7, the BCL mining website announced that New Dawn FM had turned to modern mobile phone apps and social media to cover news in remote parts of Bougainville region.
“Station manager Aloysius Laukai now has 15 staff members working under him as the team seek to build awareness on the biggest issues affecting Bougainville,” reported the BCL website.
“Laukai and his reporters use WhatsApp and Viber, cross-platform mobile apps, to exchange information and file stories.”
It was also reported that a radio infrastructure upgrade was being funded to enable FM coverage across the whole region. Who was paying the bills? “Jointly funded by the Autonomous Bougainville Government and the Bougainville Copper Foundation," said the BCL website.
Bougainville's two-week regional elections next month begin on May 11.
Mads Anneberg's profile on Ricardo Morris and Repúblika.
THREE STUDENTS from AUT University covered Fiji's historic “from dictatorship to democracy” general election this month.
While the election arguably legitimised Voreqe Bainimarama’s so-called 2006 “coup to end all coups”, the students performed something of a coup themselves.
Not only were they providing the first ever comprehensive coverage of a Pacific national election by a New Zealand journalism school, but their reportage was far superior to much of the Kiwi media that was ill-prepared for the occasion.
In fact, some were unashamedly parachute journos covering a complex event on September 17 that was overshadowed by New Zealand’s own election three days later.
All three students were reporting as a “package” for Pacific Scoop, the course outlet for AUT’s postgraduate Asia-Pacific Journalism course run by the Pacific Media Centre. But while two were on the ground in Fiji, the third was an “anchor” - monitoring, writing and editing stories to provide an overall contextualised story.
Two arrested French journalists, Thomas Dandois (centre) and Valentine
Bourrat (left), from Franco-German
television channel Arte, are
photographed with an unidentified Indonesian immigration official in
Jayapura in Papua province last week. Image: AsiaOne
RECENT claims by Indonesian authorities that there was a fresh “open door” policy over inquisitive journalists wanting to enter West Papua and report “on the level” have turned out to be false.
Hopeful signs through insightful reports (long with intelligence minders) by SBS Dateline’s Mark Davis, Michael Bachelard of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald’s Jakarta bureau and AAP’s Karlis Salna that the Indonesian government had indeed seen the light – or at least was having a serious rethink – have turned out to be nothing but a mirage.
In the latest July/August edition of The Walkley Magazine, a Bachelard article featured “Opening the doors to West Papua” about his experience in January 2013 as “the first foreign reporter (excluding travel writers) to be given entry for about 12 months, and the first Australian for significantly longer”. He wrote rather prematurely:
“I hope the Indonesian government sees that these stories have not caused the sky to fall in, because only then will they open up West Papua. Then perhaps, reporting there can become just like any other part of my job.”
However, the detention of two French journalists – who are facing charges of “treason” and “immigration crime” – and a West Papuan tribal leader early last month has made a mockery of the new Indonesian policy.
Torture of the captured Fiji fugitive being filmed on mobile phones.
Photo: Pacific Media Watch/Freeze frame from video
A MULTIMEDIA news report series about the torture of a fugitive prisoner and his suspected accomplice by Fiji prison officers has won a Pacific Media Watch editor a coveted international prize in trauma journalism.
Daniel Drageset, a Norwegian journalist interned at the Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and a postgraduate student in the School of Communication Studies, won the Dart Asia-Pacific Centre for Journalism and Trauma Prize for reporting on violence, disaster or trauma in society at the 2013 Ossie Awards for student journalism in Mooloolaba, Queensland, this week.
Drageset has been contributing editor of the PMC’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project for the past year, and has also been a student intern editor on the associated independent Pacific Scoop news website.
Judge Cait McMahon, director of Melbourne's Dart Asia-Pacific Centre, said Drageset’s winning Fiji entry had showed an “impressive investigation into alleged police torture”.
“Daniel had to straddle important ethical issues and clarify potential bias of sources to produce an impressive piece of reporting,” she said.
CLIMATE CHANGE is top of the agendain Majuro as the Pacific Islands Forum meets for the 44th time.
The Marshall Islands is calling for strong committed action on preventing and responding to climate change, as it welcomes delegates from 16 member states (minus suspended Fiji) to the renewable village that will play host to the next four days of talks.
Marshall Islands Forum Minister Phillip Muller said the Majuro Declaration was about “tangible action” rather than a “you-go-first” approach to climate policy.
“In the Pacific, we cannot afford to wait. We want the Forum to set the stage for a new, bolder approach,” he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in June.
“We call on not just governments but also intergovernmental organisations, the private sector and civil society to sign on to our declaration with their own measurable commitments aimed at averting a climate catastrophe.”
An interview with David Robie on the Pacific at the Protest and Media conference in London. Video report by Sumy Sadurni
'The woman in red'. Photo: Clip from vimeo.com video
THE SO-CALLED “woman in red” became a reluctant icon of a people’s revolt in Turkey this month.
Ceyola Sungur, an academic at Istanbul’s Technical University, was projected into instant global fame because of media images of her being blasted at point blank-range with pepper spray by security police.
Dressed in a red summer dress, the unarmed and defenceless woman’s defiance in the face of state assaults on protesters demonstrating over plans to remove the city’s central Gezi Park adjoining Taksim Square to make way for mega property development has become an iconic symbol of resistance.
“There are a lot of people who were at the park and they were also tear-gassed,” the uncomfortable heroine told Turkey’s TV24. “There’s no difference between them and me.”
While the protests raged on amid concerns among many Turkish women that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan plans a major roll back of women’s rights, Turkish issues were among the many being explored at an international “protest and media” conference in London, jointly organised by the University of Westminster’s Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) and the British Journalism Review.
New Zealand Labour MPs Louisa Wall and Kris Fa'afoi, a former
journalist, speaking about the Marriage Amendment Bill and Pacific
culture in Parliament. The bill, designed to amend the 1955 Marriage Act
to enable gay couples to marry, decisively passed its third reading.
The MPs also spoke at this week's Pacific Parliament and Politics Forum
in Wellington. Video: Tagata Pasifika/NZ Parliament
GOVERNMENT and opposition MPs and NGO representatives from 18 countries made a significant commitment to gender equality and sustainable development last weekend, but the forum received limited coverage from New Zealand and international media.
Barred West Papuan leader Benny Wenda with
PMC journalist Henry Yamo.
Image: Del Abcede/PMC
More than 70 delegates from across the Pacific were in Wellington for the Pacific Parliamentary and Political Leaders Forum, including New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister Bill English and other National, Labour, Green and independent MPs.
Delegates agreed on the need for greater action around gender equality, climate change and healthcare - but overwhelmingly rejected a push from the World Bank to free up trade conditions and deregulate economies.
NZAid invested $330,000 in the forum - the first of its kind in New Zealand history - but media coverage was scarce.
A graphic from the Danish tabloid BT featuring Marie Krarup. The headline reads:
"'Doubts cast on Māori-Marie's penis story", referring to the MP's
comments about carvings in a visit to the Navy's marae. Source: PMW
THE RIGHTWING Danish MP who stirred an upheaval Down Under with her attack on taha Māori – traditional rituals and protocols that are basic to everyday life in Aotearoa/New Zealand – barely seems to have any understanding of the country she visited last month.
But underneath all the defensive bleatings from the PC brigade this week in response to Marie Krarup’s misguided criticisms of a “grotesque” powhiri with “half-naked” men poking out their tongues published in the tabloid BT, her arguably more damaging condemnation of New Zealand’s "humanitarian" military seems to have largely gone unnoticed by mainstream media.
Clearly Krarup had no idea that she was being given a great honour with a cultural welcome that has a history going back centuries. And several "embarrassed" Danes have written to PMC and Pacific Scoop criticising Krarup over her views.
Although Krarup might seem a minor political player, being the defence spokesperson for the third-ranked party Danish People’s Party ( a mere 12.3 percent of the votes in the 2011 election), which has extremist views against migrants (especially Muslim), she was in fact a member of the six-strong Danish Committee on Defence visiting parliamentary group.
Pacific Media Watch's Daniel Drageset and Karen MacKenzie interview
photographer John Miller at the AUT seminar. Image: Del Abcede/PMC
JOHN MILLER is an extraordinary icon in New Zealand activist and social justice circles. Not only has he as a photographer captured in striking images many of the most critical social movements in Aotearoa, from the Nga Tamatoa struggles from 1971 and the hikoi to the 1981 anti-apartheid Springbok tour protests that polarised the nation to the 1980-90s Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement, he is also something of a walking encylopaedia who can tell an intriguing story about almost every individual in his pictures. He has a prodigious memory.
Fiji Times editor Fred Wesley talking in the Media Freedom in the Pacific documentary. Image: Café Pacific
THREATS to the media have got a strong airing in a new 23-minute documentary, Media Freedom on the Pacific, from the University of the South Pacific journalism programme.
Funded by the International Federation of Journalists and initiated by the Pacific Freedom Forum, the USP crew has interviewed many editors, journalists, media advocates and educators around the region, including PFF’s coordinator Lisa Williams-Lahari, Pacific Media Watch co-founder and Café Pacific publisher David Robie, Fiji Times editor Fres Wesley, Vanuatu Independent’s Hilaire Bule, Taimi ‘o Tonga’s publisher Kalafi Moala, Savali’s Tupuola Terry Tevita of Samoa, Blaire Philips of Oceania TV in Palau, NBC’s Janet Kwalahu of Papua New Guinea, investigative journalist Haivetia Kivia of the PNG Post-Courier, Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) president Moses Stevens and Vanuatu Media Association president Evelyne Toa.
The programme also features what was believed to be the last major media interview with veteran Solomon Star publisher John Lamani before he died last year.
All the interviews were conducted at PINA's Second Pacific Media Industry Summit at Pacific Harbour, Fiji, last March.
The programme was directed and produced by US television media educator Don Pollock, scripted by Pollock and Sorariba Nash, edited and narrated by USP’s Radio Pasifik manager Semi Francis with interviews by Pollock and Radio Djiido’s Magalie Tingal.
The documentary complements an eight-minute video on Pacific media freedom made by the Pacific Media Centre for UNESCO World Press Freedom Day and shown at a New Zealand seminar and in Fiji in 2012.
Student journalist Jordan Puati interviewed New Zealand-based Pacific Islands Media Association (PIMA) chair Iulia Leilua, TVNZ Tagata Pasifika reporter John Pulu and Pacific Media Watch editor Alex Perrottet.
The programme was directed by Danni Mulrennan and produced by the PMC's David Robie.
A high resolution version of the USP video can be obtained by contacting Semi Francis.
