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.
News organisations have mostly reacted defensively about media "regulation" but with little attention paid to public trust. Photo: TG
ONLINE media business models will succeed only if news organisations put more effort into regaining public trust, says Pacific Journalism Review in its latest edition, reports Pacific Media Watch.
In an issue devoted to the Leveson inquiry into Britain’s News of the World phone hacking scandal and the Finkelstein and Convergence reports on the Australian news industry, the research journal has questioned the “increasingly desperate” search for a business model.
“Is the new model the only answer to the current plight of journalism?” writes edition editor Dr Johan Lidberg from Monash University in Melbourne.
“Are media proprietors paying enough attention to the fact that the business model is built on the public trusting the journalistic practices that sit at the heart of the media brands?”
It is as important to retain public trust in journalism and to rebuild lost trust as the quest to make online journalism pay, Dr Lidberg writes.
“Indeed, without, or with low, public trust in news media, will online journalism ever pay enough to sustain quality journalism?” he asks.
One important tool to retain and rebuild trust in any professional practice is openness and accountability.
Ethical codes
“It is to achieve this that industries construct ethical codes of conduct to complement the existing legal framework.”
Along with the British and Australian media crises, the journal also examines NZ Law Commission proposals for media accountability reforms.
“The NZ media has not yet demonstrated anything like the excesses that have been the focus of the Leveson inquiry,” comments media law analyst Linda Clark.
“Which means the government can afford to sit back and watch what happens in the UK and in Australia. It can allow the broadcasters to experiment with an extra layer of self-regulation.”
Contributors to this edition include professors Wendy Bacon, Duncan Bloy, Rodney Tiffen, Mark Pearson and Denis Cryle (an assessment of Rupert Murdoch’s flagship newspaper, The Australian, two decades on).
Dr Lidberg, who also contributes an article about Australian media attitudes to accountability, was assisted for the edition by Professor Chris Nash and managing editor Professor David Robie.
He said he hoped the issue would be the beginning of an ongoing debate where media practice accountability would be elevated to the same level as media regulation.
Conference theme
It is a theme for the annual conferences of both the Journalism Education Association of Australia (JEAA) and Journalism Education Association of New Zealand (JEANZ) next month.
Professor Wendy Bacon has also contributed an article for the new Frontline section of the journal devoted to a “research journalism” strategy in an academic environment.
“Over the last two decades, the history of journalism research in universities has been a dynamic and intellectually rewarding one,” writes Bacon, who is editor of Frontline.
“Frontline will build a public archive of examples of journalism research and exegeses to assist those who embark on the challenging process of critiquing their own work.”
Brutal repression of journalists and civil rights in Indonesian-ruled West Papua, censorship and self-censorship in Fiji and abuses of a free press in Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu have been highlighted in a Pacific media freedom report being published tomorrow.
The 41-page report by the Pacific Media Centre’s freedom project Pacific Media Watch is a harrowing indictment of the “fragile” state of the media in the region.
Marking the UNESCO World Press Freedom Day (WPFD) - observed globally on May 3 each year - the report is also accompanied by an eight minute video about the media made by a School of Communication Studies crew at the Auckland University of Technology.
“The state of Pacific media freedom remains fragile with setbacks across the region in spite of the brief glimmer of hope in Fiji with the lifting of the Public Emergency Regulations (PER) at the start of this year,” said Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie.
“While official censorship has been lifted, the tough Fiji Media Industry Development Decree imposed by the military-backed regime is still in force and is a major chilling factor for the local – and foreign – news media.
“Self-censorship is rife and suspicion plagues rival media groups eyeing a favoured place in an authoritarian mediascape.
“It is not an encouraging environment for freedom of expression as the country looks to the promised and hoped for elections in 2014.”
Media freedom video
The media freedom video, reported by Pasifika student Jordan Puati and directed by AUT television journalism lecturer Danni Mulrennan, examines media freedom issues in New Zealand as well as in the Pacific.
It also highlights freedom issues faced by Māori, Pasifika and ethnic journalists in comparison to the mainstream media culture.
The video and media freedom report will be launched at a WPFD seminar hosted by the Pacific Media Centre and chaired by Fijian Dr Steven Ratuva of Auckland University’s Centre for Pacific Studies at AUT tomorrow night.
Dr Robie said the media freedom report had been republished in book form from an article published in Pacific Journalism Review late last year.
He said the worrying trend set last year had continued into this year and he cited the following issues:
• Fiji: The lifting of the Public Emergency Regulations (PER) has ended formal censorship the draconian Fiji Media Industry Development Decree 2010 is still in place: “Many journalists and civil society advocates are still fearful of speaking out due to the harsh legal penalties that they face under the law and this will damage the democratisation process,” Dr Robie said.
• Papua New Guinea: A rise in assaults and intimidation of journalists reporting on the ongoing political crisis with “two governments” since late last year, two violent incidents involving armed police. “The continued political uncertainty and climate of impunity has raised the stakes for journalists,” Dr Robie said.
• West Papua: “In the past year, there have been two killings of journalists, five abductions or attempted abductions, 18 assaults (including repeated cases against some journalists), censorship by both the civil and military authorities and two police arrests (but no charges),” said the media freedom report.
Dangerous places
Dr Robie said: “Clearly the two provinces of West Papua are the most dangerous places for the media in the Pacific region.
“While politically, the territory is regarded globally as part of Indonesia, the Papuans are Melanesian and the Pacific Islands Forum and Pacific media advocacy groups should be giving their Melanesian brothers priority support.
“This is the major media freedom hot spot at the moment. But it is mostly dropping below the radar for Australia, New Zealand and independent Pacific nations.”
THANKS to Pacific Media Watch for the following item about the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA), media freedom and truth in the Pacific media. But first, this gem of a picture above. PARTNERS AT PINA: Pictured while dining with Fiji regime leader Voreqe Bainimarama at the Lagoon Resort in Pacific Harbour are arch critic Lisa Williams-Lahari (International Federation of Journalists Pacific campaigner and coordinator of the Pacific Freedom Forum, just behind VB in striped blouse); Pitt Media Group director Shona Pitt; former PINA president Fr John Lamani, managing director of the Solomon Star; and Moses Stevens of Vanuatu, recently reelected to a second two-year term as president of PINA. (Source: PINA Facebook. Lisa has promptly pointed out on the PIJO network and elsewhere that this photo is out of context and not what it seems. She says she was in the picture at the insistence of her Cook Islands colleague Shona.) Since these items below were broadcast or published, Fiji-born journalist Graham Davis has written a devastating critique about "off this planet" commentary and his original article about PINA has been published in The Australian.
Dr Marc Edge (Canada): Author and Head of Journalism at the University of the South Pacific - first PINA conference after less than a year in the Pacific:
QUOTE (in a Radio Australia interview with reporter Bruce Hill): The PINA conference organisers have to be very happy but they've managed to keep a lid on all the dissension. That was largely because many of the dissenters were not there, and those who were dissenters were either trying to act as conciliators, or were not able to make their voices heard because it seems most of the decisions were made behind closed doors by a small group. USP is an associate member of PINA, and I have wanted to bring up certain issues and I just found that there was no opportunity. Like I said they managed to keep a lot of the dissension out of the conference, but that doesn't mean there's not dissension. I was not impressed at all with some of the speakers, a lot of the panellists were forced to confess from the outset that they had no expertise on the subject. It seems just that whoever donated money as a sponsor was given time on the program whether they knew anything about the subject or not. Most of the sponsors donated money so that they could give sessions on different topics which were largely propaganda; things like non-communicable diseases dominated the agenda. And certainly it's white propaganda because it's for a good cause, but it's propaganda nonetheless. They were paying to get a captive audience of journalists in one spot to get out their message. Listen to the full radio interview
Graham Davis (Australia): Fiji-born award-winning television investigative journalist who has had a lifetime of Pacific experience:
QUOTE on the Grubsheet blog: The South Pacific media has been wracked by deep division over how journalists should respond to the 2006 Fiji coup and Frank Bainimarama’s continuing hold on power. The last gathering in Vanuatu three years ago of members of PINA – the Pacific Islands News Association – was marred by bitter infighting, so much so that a group of mainly Polynesian delegates broke away and set up a rival organisation, the Pacific Islands Media Association ( PasiMA). There were unprecedented scenes of acrimony at the conference venue in Port Vila. One prominent delegate threatened to kill another. And the then editor of The Fiji Times, Netani Rika, stormed out in protest at the presence of two representatives of Fiji’s Information Ministry, one of whom was reduced to tears by the vitriol aimed in her direction. It clearly wasn’t the most pacific of occasions. And many delegates expected more of the same at the 2012 PINA summit in Fiji – the cause of all the trouble in the first place. Yet three years on, the hand of sweet reason appears to have descended on the region’s media professionals, judging from events at Pacific Harbour, the rain-drenched summit venue. The deeply religious head of the PINA secretariat, Fiji’s Matai Akauola, cast it as the hand of God bringing peace to his fractured media flock. Either way, the 2012 PINA summit was notable for healing some of the deep divisions of the past. Read the full article
Dr David Robie (NZ): Journalist, author and director of the Pacific Media Centre. This was his third PINA conference (two of them - in Fiji and PNG - on the host organising committee, but is not and has never been a PINA member):
QUOTE on the Café Pacific blog: Whether it was the 21st birthday (as celebrated by the cake at a gala dinner) or 40th anniversary (as flagged by a former president in the opening speech notes), last week’s Fiji milestones for the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) were notable achievements. There was a convivial and relaxed atmosphere at the Pacific Harbour venue – in marked contrast to the tense last Pacific Media Summit in Port Vila more than two years ago. And an optimistic mood about the future. Instead of beating itself up over unresolved differences such as The Great Fiji Divide or the Tired Old Vanuatu Feud, PINA seems to be picking up the pieces and moving on. A more inclusive atmosphere characterised this summit and the boycott threats fell flat. The peacemaker was veteran Tongan publisher and media freedom campaigner Kalafi Moala, the only journalist to actually put his campaigning credentials on the line and be jailed for trumped up contempt of Parliament charges by his kingdom. Moala has perhaps mellowed these days, but believes strongly that it is up to Pacific media “elders” to bury their differences and build on their common goals. As deputy chair of the rival Apia-based Pacific Islands Media Association (PasiMA), one of the key organisations to call for a last-minute boycott of the PINA summit, Moala made an impassioned plea – in his private capacity as publisher of the Taimi Media Network – to “go forward” in unity and diversity. Read the full article
Disclosure: David Robie was not funded by PINA or any donor organisation to be at the Pacific Media Summit. He was there in his capacity as director of the Pacific Media Centre and independently funded by his university.
The death of King George Tupou V was unexpected for all – especially for family and close friends.
Neil Underhill is an Honorary Correspondent for the British government to King Tupou V. He is also a close personal friend.
Born in Fiji, he has lived most of his life there and frequently travels to Tonga to see the King. He strongly disagrees with those who describe “HM” as eccentric and instead remembers him as a man of “impeccable dignity”.
