Worlds of Journalism global research project produces NZ findings

The latest Pacific Journalism Review ... publishing for 22 years. Image: Hans Tommy/AUT

From Asia Pacific Report

NEW ZEALAND journalists are working longer hours, and feeling more pressure, both ethically and resource-wise, than they were only two years ago, a new research survey has found.

A survey of New Zealand professional journalists, published today in Pacific Journalism Review, also shows for the first time that women journalists are paid less than men, despite making up the bulk of the workforce.

The survey shows female journalists, despite predominating in the profession, are significantly disadvantaged in terms of promotion and income.

The average before tax income of all journalists was $69,400 (in 2015 dollars) but the median after-tax salary of women was 26 percent lower than that of men of equivalent rank and experience.

READ MORE: Pacific Journalism Review on the new Tuwhera platform

From 'reality' TV to the reality of documentary making - the new civic impulse

Tame Iti featured on the cover of the latest Pacific Journalism Review. Image: Jos Wheeler/The Price of Peace

THE RISE of popular factual television has threatened the key claim on “reality” of documentary practice but there is hope on the horizon in the post-documentary era, says Pacific Journalism Review in the latest edition published this week.

The October edition examines the state of documentary practice in the Asia-Pacific region and also profiles the work of many contemporary filmmakers.

“Documentary programmes on broadcast television have been progressively replaced by lavish series, formulaic docu-soaps or reality TV,” writes edition co-editor Professor Barry King in his editorial.

He adds that a “troubling implication is that post-documentary forms threaten the legitimacy and credibility of the documentary tradition as a whole.”

King notes that one symptom of this “tangible appetite can be found in the rise of citizen journalism, which, however evaluated, still answers to civic impulse”. The surveillance of authorities also boosted this eyewitness function.

Video insights into Asia-Pacific political journalism

ASYLUM SEEKERS in the Pacific, media freedom issues, post-elections Fiji, climate change, the climate of impunity in the Philippines and investigative documentaries in Timor-Leste, Australia and New Zealand were among the wide-ranging topics featured at a three-day political journalism in the Asia-Pacific conference last month.

The conference marked 20 years of publishing the research journal Pacific Journalism Review.

This video features the conference opening, video premiere Sasya Wreksono's min-doco The Life of Pacific Journalism Review, the Ampatuan massacre in the Philippines, and media freedom issues in the Pacific and Fiji. Speakers include: Walter Fraser (AUT's Head of Pacific Advancement), Sasya Wreksono (NZ/Indonesia), Del Abcede (Philippines), Barbara Dreaver (NZ/Pacific), Ricardo Morris (Fiji).

• More stories about the PJR2014 conference

New models of funding needed, say NZ investigative journalists

Pacific Media Centre's David Robie ... “We need to educate the universities."
Photo: Jamie Small/Te Waha Nui

INVESTIGATIVE journalists are calling for new models of funding to fill a gap in the industry where the private sector has failed.  

By Jamie Small of Te Waha Nui

Nicky Hager, author of The Hollow Men and Other People’s Wars, says there is not enough support for investigative journalists in countries like New Zealand.

“I hope that one day there will be a return to serious public funding for investigative journalism,” he says.

Hager says most investigative journalists do not have much industry training or support. They are often citizens who begin investigating a crime or wrongdoing and do not realise they have become a journalist.

Professor David Robie, director of AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre, believes he has an answer.

“As the mainstream media reduces its reporting skills, universities should be picking up the slack,” he says.

New lease of life for Pacific Media Watch

Just 11 years or so after it was founded, Pacific Media Watch has discovered a new lease of life at its new home at AUT University. Always with an eye to journalist freedom in the region - and sometimes a persistent thorn in the side of self-interested media fat cats - the voluntary media monitoring service has been relaunched as a "future proofed" dynamic digital resource. Launching the database along with the latest edition of the research journal Pacific Journalism Review, Office of Pasifika Advancement director Pauline Winter described the new media resource as invaluable for media and journalism schools. The new Pacific Media Centre took over development of the PMW service last year and has established the database as the first project on DSpace, a digital archive set up by the university's Creative Industries Research Institute (CIRI). The revamped service combines more than 5000 news reports on Pacific media freedom, ethics, education and training issues - updated daily - with a major archive of media research reports and documents, and audio and video clips. But the new database is just at the first stage of its new development. Many new improvements will come in the months ahead.
The original PMW news monitoring service was established in 1996 as a journalism partnership between the University of Technology, Sydney, and the University of Papua New Guinea. The University of the South Pacific journalism school has also been a key contributor in recent years.
PMW campaigned in support of Tongan publisher Kalafi Moala, fellow journalist Filokalafi 'Akau'ola and pro-democracy MP 'Akilisi Pohiva who were wrongfully jailed that year for contempt of Parliament.
At the launch, I paid tribute to the researchers and students involved in the centre. But I would especially like to single out Sydney television journalist Peter Cronau for his sustained work on PMW over many years - including setting up the original PMW website and Kiribati journalist Tabs Korauaba who helped work on developing files for the digital archive last year.

• Pacific Media Watch database
• Press freedom in the South Pacific - the Kalafi Moala sequel
  

Clark critical of 'personality driven' NZ media

New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has highlighted a number of faults in the national media while discussing the need for a lively press "with responsibility" in the latest Pacific Journalism Review. Among several points she raises are:

• Too many youthful journalists with energy but a limited grasp of history, geography, sociology and economics - leaving "a large gap in general knowledge".
• The lack of resources given by the media to covering international stories of "importance to New Zealand".
• The need for mainstream media to have a better understanding of cultural diversity.
• Journalists shouldn't confuse healthy scrutiny with cynicism because that undermines the political process.
• Personality driven media with journalists making themselves the centre of the story.
• The role of blogs and the tendency for journalists to make "rushed judgments".

This edition's special section of research papers from the Journalism Education Association of NZ conference at Massey University last December has been edited by my Wellington colleague Dr Grant Hannis. The journal has only just gone out to subscribers but already there has been plenty of positive feedback. Other contributors include Fortune journalist and author Bethany McLean, who exposed Enron over its gigantic scam, and Dom Post editor Tim Pankhurst over how his paper is facing the challenges of digital media. Hannis himself contributes a revealing research paper about freelance journalists. Other articles in the AUT Pacific Media Centre- published journal highlight the Maori Party and the media, bogans in West Auckland and West Papuan coverage plus a state-of-media-health report by Bill Rosenberg. And a host of good reviews are also included.

• Pacific Journalism Review
• New Zealand's freelance journalists - a research profile

News media ownership in NZ - updates

An update from Bill Rosenberg about his media ownership in New Zealand monitoring file (cartoon by Malcolm Evans from a previous PJR cover):
A revised version of my paper "News media ownership in New Zealand" is now available, which includes updates to the 15 October 2007 version, including some suggestions from readers (many thanks). The changes are outlined below.
It is available either by clicking the above link or going to the CAFCA web site. I am unlikely to release another update for at least 2-3 months. If you do not wish to be notified of future updates, please reply to this message and I will remove you from my list (with no offence taken!).
The changes from the 15 October version:

• reporting some of the findings of the 2007 survey of journalists which are relevant to ownership pressures ("Profile 2007. The big NZ journalism survey: Underpaid, under-trained, under-resourced, unsure about the future - but still idealistic", by James Hollings, Geoff Lealand, Alan Samson and Elspeth Tilley, Massey University and Waikato University, Pacific Journalism Review, September 2007, 13 (2), pp. 175-197)
• a number of further takeovers (including NZ Life and Leisure, Marlborough Media), and launches (a new give-away newspaper in Dunedin).
• Sky/Prime winning the rights to the 2010 Winter and 2012 Summer
  Olympics
• updates and detail on digital TV, including the Stratos FreeView channel
• more on Alt TV, death of the Radio Pacific name, MediaWorks pushing the boundaries, Ironbridge
• numerous minor updates and corrections

For those needing the URL, it is as follows. As I release updates, I
will simply replace the document under the same name as the latest
version - mediaown.pdf - so links do not need to be updated.

Comments are, as always, welcome.
Bill Rosenberg

Bill Rosenberg's evolving media ownership file at CAFCA

NZ's Pacific minister praises AUT over Pasifika boost

Opening AUT University's new Pacific Media Centre officially last week, NZ Associate Minister for Pacific Island Affairs Luamanuvao Winnie Laban was full of praise for the university's diversity media initiatives. She says AUT has "stepped up to the plate" to take the lead in the sector. She acknowledged the efforts being made in media research and curriculum development and challenged other j-schools, media and universities to follow a similar path. AUT has:

• supported local industry group Pacific Islands Media Association (PIMA) since it was established in 2001;
• published the research journal Pacific Journalism Review - NZ's only such journal;
• sponsored scholarships for Pasifika undergraduate and postgraduate media students (nine so far - half of them already working in the media industry);
• established a new postgraduate Asia-Pacific journalism paper this year - the country's first;
• initiated international scholarships in Beijing, Jakarta and the Pacific; and
• provided impetus for Maori, Pasifika and other NZ media research.

Says Laban: "This centre demonstrates commitment to our cultural diversity, but also to critical thinking and the pursuit of excellence." Pictured: Luamanuvao and PMC director David Robie at the unveiling of the PMC plaque. Photo: Alan Koon.

• Minister's full speech
• PMC slideshow
• AUT media release

Fiji regime rapped over blogger flak

While regime chief Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama and the vexed Fiji question irritates a couple of pale southern neighbours at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga this week, Pacific Journalism Review has published an insightful inquiry into the post-coup blogging issue. And the regime has landed itself on hot coals. Sophie Foster, a onetime editor of the now defunct Pacific Islands Monthly and a former senior editorial hand at The Fiji Times, reckons the military is partly responsible for the number of political blogs that have expanded the media landscape in Fiji since the fourth coup last December. She says blogs have flourished because of the military squeeze on dissenting opinion. Sophie is now a postgraduate student in Pacific media studies at the University of the South Pacific in Suva and she is clearly making good use of her research time.
In her PJR paper, Sophie says that while some blog content was racist, defamatory, provocative and irresponsible, the argument for a free, responsible press has also been also strengthened as an option worth maintaining in any society. This edition of PJR has been produced jointly by the USP journalism programme and AUT University's Pacific Media Centre. PJR cover cartoon by top Kiwi cartoonist Malcolm Evans.
Incidentally, in the latest Reporters Sans Frontieres world press freedom index, bloggers are reported to be threatened as much as in international media.

• Voreqe no 'leper'
• Military blamed over blogs
• Bainimarama: People's charter could remove government
• Stand up to Oz, NZ 'bullying', says Labour
• Fiji Daily Post's report on the blogs - lifted by the newspaper verbatim from Pacific Media Watch (two days earlier)/Pacific Media Centre (four days earlier) without acknowledgement
• Sophie's actual article at Pacific Journalism Review
• Doubt hangs heavy over Fiji election

New NZ survey exposes disgruntled journos

A survey of more than 500 New Zealand journalists has revealed marked unhappiness about levels of pay, resourcing and training, reports the Pacific Media Centre. The “Big Journalism 2007” survey found that, while many individual journalists are very satisfied with aspects of their jobs, overall most want improvements in (respectively) pay, support, mentoring and staffing levels.They want more opportunity for discussion and input into ethical and professional issues such as sensationalism, more guidance on how to cope with commercial and advertising pressures, and more time and resources to pursue investigations. The survey, titled "Under-paid, under-trained, under-resourced, unsure about the future - but still idealistic", published in the latest Pacific Journalism Review, is the first to ask NZ journalists what they think about a variety of topics such as quality of news coverage and their ethics and standards.
The survey revealed a generally ethical stance among journalists, with most agreeing that NZ journalists do not omit or distort relevant facts, and that stories are based on journalistic rather than political or commercial values. Asked to rate the quality of NZ news coverage, journalists rated sports coverage the highest, while foreign coverage got the lowest rating, at slightly below average.
The survey was conducted jointly by Massey University lecturers James Hollings, Alan Samson and Dr Elspeth Tilley, and Waikato University associate professor Geoff Lealand. It builds on Dr Lealand's previous surveys of NZ journalists.
The old and the new journos, according to cartoonist Malcolm Evans.

• Contact: James Hollings
• Journalists want changes to training and pay, research shows
• Pacific Journalism Review