Showing posts with label awards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label awards. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
The digital media revolution, a free press and student journalism
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.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Fiji torture series wins Pacific Media Watch editor trauma journalism prize
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Torture of the captured Fiji fugitive being filmed on mobile phones. Photo: Pacific Media Watch/Freeze frame from video |
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.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Inspirational Fiji widow's story credit to Wansolwara team
NICE to see Fiji sisters Sherita and Sheenal Sharma, who have been the maestros of the Wansolwara journalism newspaper at the University of the South Pacific this year, being so innovative about their skills. They have made a showcase of their work on their Sharma Productions Facebook page. There has been a lot of interest in their inspirational video Bangladesh's Supermum about the life of a young Indo-Fijian widow. That's "Bangladesh" as in the squatter settlement Nanuku in the capital Suva, not the country. This is what they say about the programme:
A 10-minute video of a widowed mum teaching at a school for the blind, and surviving in a squatter settlement in Fiji's capital, Suva. The settlement known as Nanuku ... is one of many that have sprung up in the greater Suva area. The story of a woman who struggles to live in a two-bedroom house, with her parents, not accepted by her in-laws as well as earning very little and having to work multiple jobs, Anshoo is an inspiration to the many women who live in poverty-stricken parts of Fiji.This is development journalism - and good storytelling - at work. Congratulations Sherita and Sheenal! In fact, double congratulations for Sherita because she has just won the Gold Medal for the top USP journalism student for 2012.
Café Pacific also takes the opportunity to applaud the journalism students for reviving Wansolwara Online. Not yet quite the finished product, but it is just good to be back in cyberspace after being offline since March 2007. The website follows an award-winning pedigree. Back in the 2000, the Wansolwara website (then known as Pacific Journalism Online, incorporating Wansolwara), won the international JEAA awards for Best Online and Best Publication (any media) for its coverage of the George Speight coup. In other words, the best produced by any journalism school in Australia, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region.
- Sharma Productions on YouTube
- Fiji youth and constitution-making
- Cyberspace news on campus: The South Pacific experience
- Wansolwara Online - revived five years on
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Fiji news media stripped of the usual tempo
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20180310050928im_/http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_FW-NEhC11CI/SfVbPqlNSNI/AAAAAAAAAxQ/8iRqfklX8aI/s400/military_awards_090424_crop.jpg)
FIJI news media seem so banal these days, deprived of their usual gutsy, punchy and lively political stories and debate. Sport has taken over on many front pages. “Gateway” Fijilive – the website that took the world by storm during the George Speight coup in May 2000 – offers headline stories such as hotel bank loans may be linked to local and environmental value, a downtown jewellery theft in Suva and five being held over a murder. But the global scare of the moment on swine flu virus has an impact here too. The odd story like defence chief Ratu Epeli Ganilau being in Tonga (he says the military doesn’t need downsizing) for a regional “security” strategic meeting gets a run. And, of course, a chief headline on Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama and his top brass getting gongs for “services to humanity”. A handful of international journalists and some are doing a fine job on the ground - Philippa Tolley of Radio NZ for example. In a Listener article this week, entitled "Sticking to his guns," Rebecca Macfie asks while Bainimarama says he wants a racially fairer electoral system, "are his more self-serving motives catching up with him?"
The regime plans to review the martial law parameters now that the country has endured two weeks of censorship. Hopefully the decrees will be relaxed.
Café Pacific notes a couple of recently posted stories on why many Fiji islanders are turning to the blogs again in droves in an effort to keep abreast of both factual info and the rumours. More fact-based blogs, like Coup Four And A Half have emerged and Croz Walsh’s Fiji continues to do a fine job on analysis (he has just posted a scathing condemnation of TVNZ's Lisa Owen and her parachute beat-up about "civil unrest"). Former Fiji Broadcasting Corporation chief executive Sireli Kini is quoted in the David Brooks story on blogs for AFP as saying:
It's human instinct, people want to know what's happening and when somebody spreads a rumour it spreads like wildfire and it's very destructive… [The blogs] have taken over the role of the conventional journalism by informing the members of the public.In another article, Pacific Media Centre’s David Robie wraps up the state up of play with the crisis. While the local media remain gagged, more international journalists have filtered in –providing they were” approved” by not being in the regime’s bad books (ie. filing earlier stories that annoyed the military and/or some of its civilian henchmen). He notes that the media have become rather muted, but not for long. He has spoken on the creativity and adaptability of Fiji journalists and opined that they would find other ways to dodge the gag.
Pictured: Colonel Mohammed Aziz (Chief of Staff), Prime Minister Commodore Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama, Commander Land Forces Colonel Pita Driti and Warrant Officer Semesa Leweni at Government House after receiving their awards. Photo: Fiji government portal
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