THE three major oil and gas economies - Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela - have emerged as the main stumbling block to the push by Pacific and Small Island Developing States to limit global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius at the climate negotiations in Paris.
Climate Action Network, an association of more than 100 powerful civil society groups around the world that follow the negotiations, said the three countries refused to shift their positions, citing their own vulnerabilities.
BREAKING NEWS:Historic deal praised – but criticised by Pacific commentators Pacific commentators were quick to criticise the 31-page pact dubbed the “Paris Agreement” with Fiji-based Islands Business editor Samisoni Pareti tweeting from Paris: “Not a good deal ... 2 watered down, no below 1.5, no loss n (sic) damage, God save the Pacific!"
“As you can understand the economies of Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia are dependent on fossils. Clearly what the small islands are asking for – to phase out oil and gas will affect their economies big time," said Martin Kaiser of Greenpeace.
Saudi Arabia argued that, like the small islands, it is also faced with extreme weather events like flooding, heat waves and drought.
“The small and vulnerable nations have stood their ground of 1.5 degrees in the negotiations despite the attacks by Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela," said Kaiser.
Keynote speaker and former University of the South Pacific Journalism Programme head Professor David
Robie with the FALE Storyboard Award winner for best regional
reporting, ‘Ana Uili. David and his wife, Del, donated this West Sepik storyboard for the awards. Photo: Lowen Sei/USP
Professor David Robie's speech at the University of the South Pacific 21st Anniversary Journalism Awards on 30 October 2015:
Kia ora tatou and ni sa bula vinaka,
FIRSTLY, I wish to acknowledge the people of Fiji for returning this wonderful country to democracy last year, and also to the University of the South Pacific and Dr Shailendra Singh and his team for inviting me here to speak at this 21st Anniversary Journalism Awards event. [Acknowledgements to various university and media VIPs]
As I started off these awards here at the University of the South Pacific in 1999 during an incredibly interesting and challenging time, it is a great honour to return for this event marking the 21st anniversary of the founding of the regional Pacific journalism programme.
Thus it is also an honour to be sharing the event with Monsieur Michel Djokovic, the Ambassador of France given how important French aid has been for this programme.
Publisher of Repúblika Media Limited Ricardo Morris (second from left) with University of the South Pacific journalism award
recipients. Image: USP
This is the keynote message from Repúblika publisher Ricardo Morris at the University of the South Pacific/Wansolwara journalism awards 2014.
JOURNALISM is an act of faith in the future. That’s what the American television correspondent Ann Curry wrote in a 2010 cover essay in Guideposts magazine. Journalism, she argued, should do more than inform. It should make you care.
Ann’s essay, titled "Telling Stories of Hope", marked her long-deserved promotion to co-host of NBC’s Today show. Ann describes the lure of journalism for her as “a call, an urgency” to report because she knew that doing so would “give voice to those who need to be heard".
Not only do the people affected deserve to be heard, the media-consuming public also deserved to hear about what was happening in other parts of the world because it gave us “a chance to care, and it is that empathy that offers the greatest hope".
In today’s world, with short attention spans, competing media outlets and platforms and a world of information – not all of it edifying – at ordinary people’s fingertips, journalism can still be a way to inject some hope into our world.
USP protagonists (from left): Acting journalism coordinator and journalism fellow Pat Craddock,
deputy vice-chancellor Dr Esther Williams and journalism lecturer and author
Dr Matt Thompson. Montage: Fijileaks
Café Pacific is on holiday with the publisher looking for “summer” somewhere in western Ireland. But this blog couldn’t stay on hold any longer with all the current shenanigans going on at Fiji’s University of the South Pacific.
Beleaguered journalism academics Pat Craddock, the acting regional media programme leader who is a New Zealand broadcaster and has long experience at USP and is widely respected on campus, and Australian author, educator and journalist Dr Matt Thompson, have stirred a hornet’s nest in administration circles over the past week because of their frank and defiant talking about media and freedom of speech issues in Fiji.
The controversy has stirred condemnation by Amnesty International and sparked a column by Roy Greenslade in The Guardian. In the latest statement by Craddock, published by Fijileaks, he has refused to be “silenced” by the university:
Professor Biman Prasad ... sound credentials - for democracy and a free media.
Photo: Republika Magazine
FIJI ‘new wave” political hopeful Biman Prasad, a University of the South Pacific academic and economist with some sound democratic credentials, had positive messages for the beleaguered media last weekend.
In a speech to a working group of the rejuvenated National Federation Party, he handed out a few bouquets to the Fiji scribes.
Professor Prasad was at pains to acknowledge the handicaps that journalists faced in Fiji under the Media Industry Development Decree (MIDA), saying that while this remained in force, the 2014 general election in September “cannot be free and fair – period”.
And unlike many other politicians, he actually knows what he is talking about with the country’s media. In 2008, he was co-editor of a Fijian Studies academic journal with the theme “Media and democracy” in Fiji. And this followed a rare Pacific media textbook textbook Media and Development: Issues and Challenges in the Pacific Islands.
In both collaborations his partner was then USP head of journalism Shailendra Singh.
So his commitment to media freedom is sincere and well-argued.
But after eight years under this military backed regime, it is hard to think back to the days when Fiji actually had a feisty, truly independent media, arguably the best in the region.
SO it’s Scapegoat Season again at the University of the South Pacific journalism programme. Barely more than a year has elapsed since the last incumbent was dumped as head.
Dr Ian Weber ... out the USP
"revolving door".
Photo: Jay Folio blog
And now Australia-based Dr Ian Weber, a colleague of his predecessor, has shot out the “revolving door”, as Fijileaks put it. He apparently resigned the same week as the journalism classes were supposed to start for the year.
His litany of complaints about the USP establishment is much the same as many coordinators have expressed in the past, in private if not always publicly – “favouritism, lack of consultation and unethical pressure” plus general lack of support.
So what’s new? Well, this time Dr Weber has launched into an extraordinary and unfounded personal attack on his distant colleague, a local Fiji Islander who is well on the way to becoming the first Pacific Islands media educator at the regional university with a doctorate in journalism.
And Shailendra Singh, a former editor of the Fiji news magazine The Review who has put in far more of the hard yards for the benefit of Fiji and Pacific journalism over the past decade than any expatriate fly-by-nighter, is not even on the Laucala campus in Fiji.
David Robie being interviewed by Litia Ava on Fiji National University's Radio FM88.6
on "open day". Also pictured are Jessica Gounder and Wati Talebula.
Photo: Varanisese Nasilasila (FNU)
WHAT is it with the Fiji media? Or at least with many of on-the-job reporters? Bylines on slightly rehashed press releases, regularly misquoted subjects and "direct quotes" from people when the reporter isn’t even present to hear them … the list goes on.
Café Pacific publisher David Robie has just experienced more of the same with his latest conference presentations at the University of the South Pacific. At USP for a “conference within a conference” with the theme “Islands and Nations: ‘Failed states’ and the environment" at the Pacific Science Inter-congress last week.
Last time it was The Fiji Times at fault. Now it is the Fiji Sun. Reporter Rinu Shyyam correctly reported the call for a new “media morality” (without explaining the context) but the rest of her story was a garbled parody of what Robie actually said.
The problem is that reporter Shyyam has simply uplifted paraphrased comments from the media release and then reintroduced them into her story as direct quotes and made nonsense of the statements.
Dr Marc Edge ... "a caricature of colonial attitudes,"
according to some USP staff. Photo: Wansolwara
IN RESPONSE to this blog’s “Vendetta journalism” article and ousted former head of journalism Dr Marc Edge’s attack on David Robie, Café Pacific has received this anonymous feedback from inside sources, including staff and senior students, at the University of the South Pacific's Laucala Campus in Fiji:
LOOKING FOR SCAPEGOATS
FEEDBACK: No journalism lecturer in USP journalism's 25-year history had racked up as many complaints as Dr Marc Edge did - and in record time. Now, he is desperately looking for scapegoats in an attempt to salvage a tarnished academic reputation and failed USP tenure, and lashing out at his perceived enemies.
After his antics at USP, only a very “brave” university would want to touch Marc Edge, although it seems that normally he is on his best behaviour while working at developed world universities; it is in developing countries that he develops a superior, know it all, colonial attitude, which made him a laughing stock at USP.
Many at USP regarded Marc as a caricature of colonial attitudes. He made a lot of noise, created a lot of controversies and spent too much time on these. It was taking time away from teaching and affecting the students. This not only carried on for months, it only got worse. It was one of the reasons why he was asked to resign.
Dr Marc Edge at Pacific Harbour, Fiji, before he outlived his welcome.
A POSTING from Marc Edge to Café Pacific. Marc who? Oh, the Canadian guy who recently headed the University of the South Pacific journalism programme and who self-destructed mid-way through his contract. And now he publishes the vengeful blog Fiji Media Bores (Wars). This is what he says in response to the Café Pacific article:
It will be obvious to all with the posting of this entry exactly what side David Robie is on. If I had any illusions that this comment would be posted (Robie controls comments closely) [A LIE] I would go on and on about how Robie has been not just complicit but a driving force in the smear campaign against me [ANOTHER LIE]. There are several reasons for this, from what I can tell. He couldn't stand the fact there was a media scholar in the region of equal or greater standing to himself who didn't assign his textbook [NARCISSISM] . He couldn't stand the fact that I didn't submit articles to his B-ranked journal [ANOTHER LIE]. But most of all, he didn't like anyone contradicting his theory that Fiji media have been to blame for the country's endless coups (instead the lack of rule of law is) and his support for media suppression there [YET ANOTHER LIE]. I was going to save this for the book, David. I had a whole chapter mapped out -- Pacific Media Puppetmaster. Now I guess I'll have to blog about it. Your choice.
Marc, sour grapes. Café Pacific says if you paid more attention to running a journalism programme and developing student journalists instead of indulging in conspiracy theories, paranoia, misrepresentations and bitterly attacking journalists, media academics and students around the region, you might have lasted the distance. Your smear allegation is untrue, along with the rest of your puerile claims - and just further laughable evidence of your credibility problem.
Marc's cheap shot characterisation of David Robie's media philosophy is distorted and wrong. Anybody interested in his actual views on "coups, media and human rights" should read this or watch this video. This blog is dedicated to media freedom and watchdog journalism and it has always been opposed to all coups and military-backed regimes in Fiji. Real journalists write about issues, not indulge in petty and nasty personal attacks, which comprise the bulk of Edge's blog content.
Former USP journalism head Dr Marc Edge "on edge" at a Media and Democracy
symposium in Suva last September. Photo: Café Pacific
IN RECENT weeks, the Fiji blogosphere has run hot over attempts by the ousted former head of journalism of the University of the South Pacific, Dr Marc Edge, a self-styled “counterpropagandist”, to portray himself as some kind of martyr for the Fiji media freedom cause. His claims peaked with an allegation that he “feared my safety was in jeopardy” in a curiously lop-sided Radio Australia interview with journalist Bruce Hill.
However, Café Pacific today exposes another side of the story. It had been an open secret for months at USP and in media education circles around the Pacific that Dr Edge was on the way out after the shortest tenure ever of any expatriate journalism coordinator – barely serving half of a three-year contract. He was dumped after sustained and embarrassing complaints by students, colleagues and media academics in at least two other Pacific Islands Forum countries. The situation had become untenable for the Canadian lecturer as he was perceived to be “waging war” on his students. Initially, he was “relieved” of his position as acting head of journalism with a humiliating public statement by USP management on November 14 and then he was gone from the faculty staff by Christmas.
Part of the USP statement about Dr Edge's "demotion" on November 14, 2012.
But there was no inkling of any of this in Bruce Hill’s Radio Australia interview on January 25. (Although Hill did ask Edge whether he had been dismissed or resigned and got a "cannot comment" reply). Nor did Hill put the obvious question to Edge about why he had used the Fiji Media Tribunal mechanism to file a controversial complaint against a local media organisation that he had been accusing of practising “self-censorship” – conveniently using the very Media Industry Development Decree he had been condemning for months. Edge blamed his demise at USP solely on the military-backed regime and Qorvis Communications, a US-based media spin company contracted to the Suva government, and ignored the journalism programme wreckage - his legacy:
SO WANSOLWARA finally has its own new-look Facebook page (three days old), with a revival of its online edition coming along soon (promised for a good while now). Excellent move. The original Pacific Journalism Online website student team at USP scooped the pool in the Journalism Education Association (JEA) awards that year and were treated to a standing ovation at Moolaabaa, Queensland, for their coverage of the George Speight putsch in May 2000. International journalism standards? Yes, they started way back - far more than a decade ago. Pity the USP journalism website slipped into disuse in March 2007. But good to see an online version of Wansolwara finally returning alongside its newspaper edition, printed by the Fiji Sun. Congratulations Sherita and Sheenal Sharma and their team.
Wansolwara has been publishing for 17 years now. Has any other Pacific (or NZ) journalism school matched that? Never. (I notice the newspaper has recently dropped the list of international awards it has won - too much "global" evidence for some?) Radio Pasifik has a strong history too and great to see the revival there with Semi Francis and his team.
It is also great to see the USP Journalism students and graduates bag prizes in the Development Asia Environment Awards. Well done - and especially Fiji TV team leader Anish Chand! (Even though this belated praise actually refers to awards in 2010).
A story about a frothy debate over the state of journalism education at USP compiled by the Pacific Media Centre team while recently in Suva for the Media and Democracy in the Pacific conference seems to have stirred some region-wide interest. It was picked up by other media, including the Fiji Sun. Here it is for those who missed out:
By Pacific Media Watch contributing editor Alex Perrottetin Suva
JOURNALISM educators in the Pacific have called for more and better industry incentives and collaboration with journalism schools as a way of improving reporting standards.
A robust debate at the University of the South Pacific among experienced journalism educators revealed that improving the quality of education was an ongoing task.
But it could be helped if journalists had some motivation to stay in the job, instead of moving to higher paid global NGOs.
Lack of experience
A former head of journalism at USP and current PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, Shailendra Singh, said he observed a “plethora of writing” and a “diversity of views” in the Australian media that was lacking in Fiji.
“In Australia, there are bald-headed and pot-bellied journalists. Fiji doesn’t see that due to a high turnover of staff,” he said.
Radio Pasifik's new look studio
with presenter Kirry Veikoso.
Photo: David Robie
USP's Radio Pasifik manager Semi Francis confirmed that media organisations in Fiji employed students straight from school, overlooking university graduates.
Lecturer Misa Vicky Lepou from the National University of Samoa, and a onetime graduate from USP, said it was the same in Samoa.
She confirmed there were many schoolleavers in journalism competing with graduates, and their "substandard work" was noticeable. She said the industry still criticised the journalism school for the poor level of journalism among young reporters.
Improving standards
Dr Marc Edge, current head of journalism at USP, said he was there to “increase the standard of journalism not just in Fiji, but across the Pacific”.
“It needs to improve. Grammar, subject-verb agreement, style, little things like this need to improve considerably,” he said, adding that he too was still learning about the region, having arrived from Canada fairly recently.
He said low staffing at USP in recent years had not helped.
However, Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie responded that the journalism schools at USP and at the University of Papua New Guinea had achieved a lot on the international stage, particularly with USP’s success with the award-winning newspaper Wansolwara.
“At that stage in the 1990s, no New Zealand journalism course had a regular newspaper. We [at AUT University] do have today Te Waha Nui, which I started with a colleague after I came from USP, on the basis of the experience at USP.
“So I think it is hats off to USP - and UPNG in the past - and so on. Wansolwara has received quite a lot of awards. This paper [he waved a copy of Te Waha Nui] has also been an award-winning paper, but it hasn’t won nearly as many awards as Wansolwara.”
Commercial reality
Dr Robie also pointed out that Wansolwara integrated the "commercial reality" of producing a paper, unlike most other journalism schools, which were typically funded by the university or school.
“So students don’t get that broader picture of the economic reality and the difficulties producing a newspaper but Wansolwara does.”
Singh was also concerned to point out that there was much hard work done on the paper in previous years, which had continued under the work of former Fiji Times journalist Irene Manueli.
“The person working day and night on Wansolwara is Irene Manueli. Is she here, has she been acknowledged?”
A resounding round of applause broke out.
Dr Edge remained optimistic about the quality of future USP graduates.
“The first-year students we have this year are incredibly bright. They are as bright as any students I have taught anywhere in the world,” he said.
“And I believe with the kind of training and education they are going to get in the next three years we’ll soon be graduating students of great passion and depth.”
But Singh reminded Dr Edge that there had been great achievements in the past.
“It is not year zero, and you need to understand the local context ... If you come with the wrong attitude you put a lot of people off, and then it’s a very bad start.”
Room for improvement
Professor Robie also said Australia and New Zealand could learn from USP, as its internship period was six weeks, while AUT internships were only two weeks and far too short.
He said journalism schools needed to train students in an ever-increasing range of complex skills.
“One of the things we like to look for in graduates is the range of skills and the capability, because the media industry is changing at such a pace… they have to be incredibly flexible.”
He spoke about giving students practice in real reporting of "live" events against deadline pressure such as AUT's Pacific Media Centre has done with the Pacific Scoop coverage of the Pacific Islands Forum in the last three years.
“It surprises me that no other journalism school anywhere in the region covers the forum, because you’ve got an opportunity there of such a range of issues and the politicians in one place, the NGOs and so on - so it’s an enormously beneficial training environment for any journalism school.”
He said AUT was focusing on producing “well-rounded graduates with critical thinking skills, strong exposure to business, economics, environment, government, history, politics, human rights and culture.
“And education is so vitally important in that process, just simply being trained in a newsroom is not enough. It’s a combination of the industry and journalism schools.”
In the Fijian context, Singh said there was a need to distinguish between responsible journalism and self-censorship, which was of growing concern in Fiji.
“More cautious, more responsible and more circumspect, doesn’t mean self-censorship,” he said.
Dr Edge said USP was looking to begin a postgraduate diploma in digital journalism in the near future, as well as an option to undertake a master’s degree.
In past years, USP had a postgraduate journalism programme and there have been graduates but this was dropped two years ago because of USP funding cuts.
Alex Perrottet is contributing editor of Pacific Media Watch. He was at the USP symposium as both a a reporter and as a research paper presenter.
RAMPANT SELF-CENSORSHIP in action? It was astonishing to see a Media and Democracy symposium at the University of the South Pacific – which raised the tempo of “quality” journalism debate in post-coup Fiji by quantum leaps – being ignored over substantive issues while the regime’s chief media official was splashed across both daily front pages.
Keynote speaker Professor Robert Hackett, a world-renowned Canadian authority on peace journalism and “alternative” journalism models, was not even reported. Instead, the news was Permanent Secretary for Information Sharon Smith-Johns saying “rise to the challenge” and take advantage of the lifting of censorship. But while the local media duly splashed this message, few local journalists actually engaged with the challenging ideas canvased at the conference.
Speaking to some of the young journos on hand, Café Pacific certainly had the impression that they were not experienced enough or well-equipped to cope with fundamental questions challenging the news media. Countries as diverse as Britain, Australia and New Zealand are pre-occupied with rebuilding public trust in the media – and strategies for doing this - in the wake of the Leveson Inquiry triggered by the “hackgate” scandal that closed Murdoch’s big-selling tabloid News of the World and has led to prosecutions of several journalists and media personalities.
But the local Fiji journalists seemed immune from this and not familiar with global debates about the future of journalism. A critical conference opening speech by USP Deputy Vice-Chancellor Esther Williams savaged the Fiji media (front page in the journalism student newspaper Wansolwara), complaining about reports “riddled with editorial mistakes”, drew defensive retorts from local scribes.
Yet the interesting research and analysis about Fiji and Pacific media presented at the symposium was covered in a very superficial manner, if reported at all. Fiji Television produced an atrocious Close-Up programme about the symposium by Myron Williams - not in the same class of the Geoffrey Smith special report about the Pacific Media Summit run by PINA earlier this year. Even Radio Australia and Radio NZ International (usually reliable) failed their audience on coverage. Readers need to go to Pacific Scoop or Pacific Media Watch for independent and informed and reportage.
The most insightful preliminary article was actually an offshore blog column on Grubsheet by Fiji-born journalist Graham Davis who wasn't actually even there (and should have been invited). While this mainly dealt with behind-the-scenes tensions leading into the conference, it at least raised some of the core philosophical issues facing the future of regional media. Such issues included what models of journalism might be best suited for Fiji and the Pacific – an unbridled “publish and be damned” Anglo-American approach, or something more subtle but equally robust such as a range of journalism models grouped under the label “deliberative journalism”. “Deliberative” models – as deconstructed by the Pacific Media Centre’s Professor David Robie, are essentially those more suited to citizen empowerment for a better democracy – include those such as public journalism, alternative journalism, critical development journalism, peace journalism and human rights journalism. None of these models are “soft” or core journalism values, but add a wider range of skills as well.
Bob Hackett, co-editor of a recent book called Expanding Peace Journalism – comparative and critical approaches, deserved serious attention by the local media. His speech will eventually be published in Pacific Journalism Review. He spoke about what kind of journalism a democratic society needs, if it wants democratic governance to be stable and sustainable. Depending on which rationale for democracy is key – “protection or development” – there are “different models of democracy, each with different expectations of how journalism should function, what their ethical pronciples and practices should be and what legal framework best supports it”. He considered three models, in particular:
1. Market liberalism – the “free market” model in Fiji (as it used to be) shared with Australia and NZ: “Democracy is seen not as an end in itself, but as normally the best institutional arrangement to maintain political stability and a liberal political culture characterised by individual rights and choice.” The media serves as a watchdog on government power. 2. “Public sphere” liberalism – “prioritises the role of the media in facilitating or even constituting a public sphere so that public opinion can be formed”. The independent watchdog role continues, but a higher value is placed on popular participation. 3. “Radical democracy” and a political economy critique – “radical democrats seek not to just reinvigorate an existing system of representative democracy, or to ensure quality of legal and political rights for everybody. They also prize direct participation by people in making the decisions that affect their lives and approximate equality in wealth and power.” The watchdog media role is endorsed, but greater emphasis is placed on social change and popular mobilisation against social injustices.
During the conference, the excellent new USP documentary on media freedom in the Pacific, made in association with the International Federation of Journalists (and directed by Don Pollock), was also screened. And there were feisty debates about media freedom and journalism education.
The local media partially redeemed itself a week later with the Fiji Sun republishing a symposium overview by the Pacific Media Centre team on Pacific Scoop and the Fiji Times running a short (900 word) extract from David Robie's 8400 word paper about "deliberative" journalism and media models. Perhaps they read this blog? But Café Pacific wonders why no local scribes present at the conference produced a reflective overview article.
Fiji's Permanent Secretary for Information Sharon Smith-Johns (speaking) and USP Deputy Vice-Chancellor Dr Esther Williams at last week's media and democracy forum. Photo: USP
Another positive outcome from PINA ... work on a new Pacific media freedom documentary by the University of the South Pacific. Pictured: Director Don Pollock, Radio Djiido's Magalie Tingal and Samoa Savali editor Tupuola Terry Tavita. Photo: David Robie
AFTER THE furore over contrasting views on PINA 2012 and a season of personal insults and attacks, here is a calm and welcome voice of reason:
So congratulations to all our media colleagues who made it to PINA 2012.
To most of us the Pacific is home, this is where our bread and butter is so it is in our hands to either move the Pacific media forward or kill it with our bare hands. I am not for the latter!
There are some among us who are in the Pacific just to make money so I can excuse them for lacking the passion for the Pacific media.
I really do not care if it is PINA or PASIMA - as long they work on uniting the Pacific media and practitioners, train them, fight to give us better pay and to me that was the clear message coming out of PINA. And I must congratulate PINA for moving in that direction.
Vinaka and meitaki atupaka all. Ulamila Kurai Wragg
AN EXCERPT from a documentary about the original Fiji coup led by Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka on 14 May 1987. It was made by University of the South Pacific journalism students a decade later. In 1997, Patrick Craddock, a former Radio New Zealand producer, was working at USP in Suva with François Turmel, a former BBC journalist who established the the Fiji-based regional journalism training programme with French support. As part of an exercise in documentary making, the students collected audio interviews with people who had experienced the 1987 coup in Suva.
Interviewees included Sam Thompson, news editor of FM96 radio who broke the story about the coup; a radio journalist at Radio Fiji; Dr Tupeni Baba, a politician in the Fiji Labour Party-led coalition government of Dr Timoci Bavadra; the police chief appointed by Rabuka, students, staff of USP and people attending an NGO workshop.
At the time, none of the participants wanted to be identified by name with this documentary and no names were included in the production details. The documentary was seen as an exercise for USP journalism students and was never broadcast. Most audio interviews were done on location. The programme is now a small part of the history of the period.
Producer: Patrick Craddock, USP Media Centre.
Picture: Sitiveni Rabuka on 14 May 1987. Photo: Fiji Times
IN A couple of months, it will be a decade since the University of the South Pacific student journalism students staged their own internet coup with award-winning coverage of the George Speight “attempted” coup in Fiji on 19 May 2000. While renegade businessman Speight and his journalist offsider, Jo Nata, were eventually scapegoated into prison for treason, the politically acceptable face of the Speight coup, Laisenia Qarase, consolidated his power from caretaker leader to elected prime minister – twice. But, as we know, Qarase was no paragon of democracy and was subsequently ousted by a coup by the military’s Commodore Voreqe Baimimarama in December 2006. Many of the group of students who covered the Speight coup for Pacific Journalism Online and Wansolwara and won a string of awards from the Journalism Education Association in Mooloolaba, Queensland, that year have gone on to bigger and better things. Wansolwara editor Reggie Dutt, for example, is now at Bond University doing a masters degree. But the heady moments of that coup coverage will never be forgotten. The students' story was told in a short video, Frontline Reporters, which has now been posted on the Pacific Media Centre’s YouTube channel for posterity. The university unilaterally closed the student journalists' website and tried to gag the newspaper (actions later condemned by the faculty board of the School of Humanities) but the students continued filing their stories to the University of Technology, Sydney, which set up a special coup website.
An earlier video (1999), Pasifik Niusbeat, tells the story of the early stages of online newsreporting and Radio Pacific at USP. You’ll recognise many young media faces familiar around the region today. Another video, Fri Pres, covers the fight for media freedom across the region in 1996. Produced and presented by David Robie, and reported by Stevenson Liu and Priscilla Raepom, it was broadcast by EMTV in Papua New Guinea and Fiji Television. The astonishing thing about this University of Papua New Guinea programme is that while it was made 16 years ago, it could just as easily have been talking about post-coup Fiji censorship and the rest of the Pacific today.
Pictured, a clip from Fri Pres with then PNG Forestry Minister Tim Nelville talking about a death threat on talkback radio.
CAFÉ PACIFIC’S scribes have been on leave so we are a bit slow off the mark for our New Year honours. Still, better late than never. Here is a brief lineup as 2010 starts cruising:
Newspaper of the year – The Fiji Times: As a crusading daily under the helm of battling Netani Rika, it is hard to go past this Australian-owned publication – the strongest daily newspaper in Fiji in spite of its past political baggage and track record that goes right back to its colonial days in Levuka. While Bainimarama’s regime regularly chokes for breakfast over this Murdoch paper and blames it (along with Fiji Television) for the “need” to impose its promised/threatened new media law, the rest of the region can thank Rika and his team for keeping up the good fight and exposing life under media censorship.
But we should not get carried away with the accolades. The Times still has plenty of flaws in both its coverage and strategy. The region also needs to acknowledge the courage of many other journalists in Fiji and the resolve and commitment of other media in tackling the regime in rather more subtle and intriguing ways. Things need to be kept in perspective globally too, there is a quantum leap between the relatively mild (but inexcusable) press freedom abuses in Fiji and the truly repugnant violence against media in such countries as Burma and even in a democracy such as the Philippines where 30 journalists can be assassinated by private militia in one dreadful killing field obscenity and when Filipino radio talkback broadcasters or reporters, in particular, can be murdered with near impunity for exposing corruption.
Media film – Balibo: The on screen version of the murder of five journalists working for Australian news media – two Australians, two Britons and a New Zealander – by Indonesian special forces invading East Timor on 16 October 1975 has revived controversial and painful memories. Not only has the Robert Connolly film reflected on the wounds of the past, and even stirred the wrath of the widow of the lead journalist killed, Greg Shackleton, it has triggered debate about journalistic professionalism in an age when bravado was perhaps more important than the safety concerns dominant today.
In a recent clandestine showing of the film – banned in Indonesia – to journalists in Jakarta the emphasis was on the “journalism” rather than the human rights issues. Warief Djajanto Basorie of the Jakarta Postwrote:
Balibo can be labelled a political film, a war film, a human rights film, or a journalism film.
After the Makassar screening, discussion focused on the journalism.The question asked: As journalists, what can you learn from the film?
In covering a conflict, it tells you to make a choice.Either you stay or you go, replied one participant.
“I would go,” he said emphatically.
Most of the 31 journalists present agreed. The majority argument was to leave the war zone, prioritising safety and the ability to continue reporting in the future.
At least two participants, however, insisted they would stay for the story because it was “too big a story to miss”.
Basorie claimed the five murdered newsmen were “embedded journalists” – embedded with Fretilin.
Independent newspaper – Wansolwara: The student journalism newspaper published by the University of the South Pacific deserved to win the Ossie Award for regular publications this year for publishing under a state censorship regime. Not only did the courageous students publish a special edition examining the media in Fiji under a military regime, but they also reported global warming, environmental issues and human rights in the region.
Wansolwara, which has not only won the most Ossie awards of any publication in Australia, NZ or the Pacific (10, plus it scooped the pool in 2000 with the online and print coverage of the George Speight coup). For 13 years, the newspaper has been self-funded by the students themselves through advertising revenue. But this year, the students brought off a coup themselves – with a deal to publish their newspaper as a liftout in the daily newspaper Fiji Sun. This immediately lifted their circulation from 2000 to more than 20,000.
Unfortunately the Reader’s Digest judge surprisingly overlooked this newspaper’s achievements and quality and awarded the “best regular publication” prize to AUT University’s Te Waha Nui instead.
Media monitoring agency – Reporters sans frontières (RSF): This award is well-deserved globally for 2009, but RSF needs to beef up its Pacific content, not just concentrate on Fiji and one or two other higher profile issues. In its roundup for the year, RSF highlighted the Ampatuan massacre – largest ever killing of journalists in a single day - and the unprecedented wave of arrests and convictions of journalists and bloggers in Iran. The agency’s summary for the year:
76 journalists killed (60 in 2008) 33 journalists kidnapped 573 journalists arrested 1456 physically assaulted 570 media censored 157 journalists fled their countries 1 blogger died in prison 151 bloggers and cyber-dissidents arrested 61 physically assaulted 60 countries affected by online censorship
Incidentally, for those with special concerns on internet freedoms, it is good news that Lucie Morillon has been appointed as the new head of RSF. She established the RSF office in New York five years ago and has long been a champion of online free speech.
Independent blog – Croz Walsh’s Fiji: Crosbie Walsh is not actually a journalist. However, as an adjunct professor and retired founding director of the University of the South Pacific’s Development Studies programme, he is an acute observer and commentator about facts and falsehoods about Fiji. Thrust into blogging almost by accident (he became rather frustrated over poor media coverage of the realities in Fiji), he established his own excellent and reliable information and analysis website in a bold attempt to make sense of the complexities of Fiji’s political, social and economic order since the 2006 coup.
In the process, his blog has embarrassed many leading journalists who profess to be “experts” on Fiji by repeatedly exposing the shallowness of their reporting. He has also been a counterfoil for some of the rabid anti-Fiji regime blogs (including several run or contributed to by journalists) and their propaganda and lies. The context and complexities may be frequently missing from mainstream media coverage, but Croz is filling many of the gaps and balancing the misrepresentations. A comment in a recent posting has taken AAP's Tamara McLean to task:
A Tamara McLean article in the NZ Herald/AAP provides readers with a rehash of what was once news, and "fresh" comments from "an Auckland University academic sympathetic to Bainimarama" (Prof Hugh Laracy) countered by three "Pacific specialists (Dr Jon Fraenkel, Jone Baledrokadroka and Prof Brij Lal) at the Australian National University" who are not." The use of "academic" and "specialists" tells readers where Tamara is coming from, but it's neither subtle nor accurate for all four are academics and specialists.
Special freedom of speech award - José Belo: For remaining defiant in the face of threats and a legal onslaught over his exposes of corruption that could have led to imprisonment in East Timor. He was ultimately saved by the collapse of the trumped up “criminal defamation” case against him and Tempo Semanal.
Pictured: A National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) protest against the killing of media workers (Photo: Bayanihan Post) and José Belo of East Timor at work (Photo: Etan).
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.
THE EXPECTED fallout from PINA 2009 has been fast flowing since the two-yearly regional media circus. Many rifts were on show long before the conference began in Port Vila late last month - for example, the criticisms of PINA's recent lukewarm actions over regional media freedom and the founding of the successful upstart Pacific Freedom Forum by PINA dissidents; the hostility between the conference hosts, Media Asosiesen blong Vanuatu (MAV) and the country's main newspaper, Vanuatu Daily Post, and publisher Marc Neil-Jones; and the calls for PINA and Pacnews to be relocated outside of Fiji as a protest against the regime's media censorship. The election of MAV president Moses Stevens as PINA president only served to fuel the animosity. Stevens was elected ahead of talented Stanley Simpson of Fiji's Mai TV, an innovative graduate of the University of the South Pacific, to take the regional body forward for the next two years. He cited training for young journalists as a policy priority and also hinted at the possibility of Australian and NZ media groups being allowed to fully join PINA. Reflecting on the conference's results, Matangi Tonga editor Pesi Fonua wrote:
What appeared to be a sincere intention by the former PINA board to turn its biannual convention into a Pacific Media Summit under the theme "Breaking Barriers - Access to Information'" did not live up to expectations.
Despite the great effort to attract as many participants as possible to attend the Vanuatu PINA inaugural summit, their contributions did not see the light of day, because most participants were not permitted to attend the AGM, and so some serious observations made by working journalists and media people were not translated into the decision-making process.
Café Pacific's correspondents report that the meeting became quite tense when it was realised that two military censors - both women - had been invited and were present. The mood was becoming ugly, with some people questioning why the censors were there - how dare PINA invite them?
Cook Islands News editor John Woods (elected vice-president as the Cook Islands is hosting the next conference) was a particularly strong critic. He wanted the pair to be barred from the meeting. He said their presence would have a chilling effect on Fiji journalists and discourage them from speaking their minds. Woods described their presence there as "despicable". However, some journalists thought the whole issue rather over-dramatised and that it was important to get an insight into the thinking of the Fiji censors - one of them even a former journalist.
One leading regional journalism educator, Shalendra Singh, is head of journalism and media at the University of the South Pacific. He is a former news magazine editor and is committed to all sides of the story. He defended the women's right to speak as representatives of Fiji's Ministry of Information (a PINA member, although there was some doubt over whether the Minfo was actually paid up).
"Talk about shooting the messenger! The irony is staggering," Singh said later. He said the women should be allowed to speak. The conference should not do to the women what the regime administration in Fiji had done in gagging the media. Singh also mentioned that journalism was about balance and getting all sides of the story. It was an opportunity to put the regime representatives under the spotlight and question them. He said journalists should practise freedom of expression, not just preach it. Singh also described how Fiji was facing draconian censorship and there was a danger that people might become used to the status quo.
Some views changed then and other people present, such as Lisa Williams-Lahari, founding coordinator of the Pacific Freedom Forum, spoke in favour of the women speaking but only in a session about censorship under a military regime, not this one devoted to regional stories of media freedom under fire. She also strongly asked the censors during the Q and A whether they felt Minfo should withdraw as a PINA member without waiting for PINA expulsion. Another panellist, Fiji Times editor-in-chief Netani Rika, walked out in protest at the presence of the censors after his presentation. (He was awarded the region's media freedom prize).
Only one journalist - Dev Nadkarni, a former USP journalism coordinator - commenting on this contentious issue noted the fact that one of the regime's representatives, Lance Corporal Talei Tora, was in fact educated on the USP regional journalism programme and herself a former broadcaster. Tora was well-trained in rigorous journalism skills and freedom of speech. But now as a soldier - one of Fiji's pioneering women officer cadet recruits - she follows military orders. Her elder sister, Luisa Tora, is also an award-winning journalist and long a free speech advocate.
Corporal Tora raised issues of media bias in Fiji, of media paying journalists badly and exploiting them, and other shortcomings - but these issues were not discussed at all. Media in the Pacific does not like to discuss criticism that is leveled at it - as Café Pacific has noted often in the past. There is no critical self-scrutiny as there should be at such meetings - or as happens in many other countries that have challenging "media watch" style radio and television programmes, such as Media 7 in New Zealand. Pacific media too often just plays the victim. Café Pacific understands that some mention of Pacific Media Centre director associate professor David Robie's past research on Fiji media at the time of the Speight coup was cited - the detailed findings were published in his 2004 USP book Mekim Nius: South Pacific media, politics and education. In Nadkarni's review of freedom of speech issues at the PINA convention, he wrote:
[Corporal Tora] said she was a civil servant and had a job to do and pointed to a number of cases of inaccurate reporting (for which several of the media outlets have since apologised).
The questions flew thick and fast: Would she and her colleague be reporting the proceedings to their military bosses? Would the emergency regulations apply to Fiji journalists now they were in a different country? Would they be liable to action? Tora stood her ground and answered questions with confidence, although she used her comparatively junior rank to express inability to comment on the more sensitive matters.
Freedom of speech cuts both ways. If media bleatings over the gagging of Fiji news organisations are to be taken seriously in global contexts, then a major effort needs to be taken by the region's journalists to be fully informed about the complexities of Fiji politics and to report with more insight and balance and to defend open dialogue. Ironically, two of the best reports to come out of Fiji in recent times have not been from Pacific media at all but by Australian-based investigative journalists Graham Davis and Mark Davis for their attempts to give the "other side of the story" of Bainimarama's claimed plan for genuine democracy shorn free of racism.
Pictured: Fiji Times editor Netani Rika speaking at the PINA convention - he was awarded the PINA media freedom award for his defence of free speech in Fiji; Moses Stevens. Photos: Fiji Times; MAV.
MIXED REPORTS seem to dog the AusAID-spawned journalism schools that have been springing up around the Pacific. In spite of the usually gushing puff pieces that get turned out by the technical institutes and the donor guardians, things don’t seem to be as rosy as they’re portrayed. Given the climate of censorship and media paranoia in post-putsch Fiji, there should be a lot more scrutiny about their activities and progress. In the light of many jaundiced messages from media old hands around the region, Café Pacific wonders how rigorous these new schools are – certainly compared to the transparent and thorough practices in the universities.
On the one hand, it is good to be providing more entry-level opportunities for both students and media practitioners to develop their professional skills, However, many oldtime professional educators are troubled about the “bypassing of establishing teaching institutions” and the undermining of the sustainable institutions in the region offering journalism programmes – the University of Papua New Guinea (j-school founded in 1975), Divine Word University at Madang, PNG (1982) and the University of the South Pacific (1987). Journalism being taught with a bunch of skills but without critical studies (the training of the ability to think and question) is rather pointless for a serious Fourth Estate role. And the universities are out on their own in this regard.
Some old hands are questioning the value of the Fiji Institute of Technology j-school, for example, describing it as “poorly thought out and implemented in a jiffy”. According to some media education and training critics:
Many courses are under-taught, poorly taught or not taught at all. Attendance by both lecturers and students are poor.
But somehow students are still graduating. Students are voting with their feet … and they have some horror stories to tell.
The TVets were supposed to have become self-funding. But this has not happened. Recently AusAID pumped another $190,000 into the FIT programme to stop it becoming yet another failed Pacific media aid project and an embarrassment.
Café Pacific wonders whether it was also to avoid uncomfortable questions from taxpayers. How much longer will AusAID continue propping up these schools. What happens when AusAID eventually bails out? And why is that there is virtually no critique of standards? Not just in Fiji, but in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and elsewhere as well. For years, the university courses encountered flak from some industry quarters when in fact time and again they demonstrated value – by winning awards against international, competition in Australia and New Zealand, for example.
Where is the independent media being produced by these TVet programmes? All the university j-schools have run their own media for years – newspapers, television programmes, radio stations etc. This is the hallmark of good and challenging journalism programmes overseas. Yet the TVet outputs are almost invisible. Merely producing fodder for industry at a time when critical, independent journalism needs to be nurtured more than ever. And where are the transparent audits of these virtual courses? If a flourishing Fourth Estate across the Pacific is what they really had in mind, the AusAID moguls must be regretting their investment.
