PFF makes a blue with the Fiji regime's propaganda

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.

• 'Think outside the box', Fiji's AG tells journalists
• Pacific Freedom Forum

The politics of Fiji news media under scrutiny

A MAJOR question about publication of the latest edition of Fijian Studies dealing with “media and democracy” (the cover actually says, incorrectly, development) is why did it take so long to surface in public? It took a year for the November 2008 edition to be published and launched in a Suva restaurant.

Nervousness about how the authoritarian post-coup 4.5 Fiji regime might react? Where does a publication like this fit into the state censorship in Bainimarama’s Fiji?

Perhaps the publisher, Fiji Institute of Technology director and series editor of the Fiji Institute of Applied Studies, Dr Ganesh Chand, considered the political climate had stabilised sufficiently to publish this without too much reaction. Fair enough. There was barely a ripple in media – or state – circles, and hardly any newspapers engaged with this thought-provoking book.

A pity. There is a wealth of valuable information packed into the 297-page volume by more than a score of authors, mostly journalists, media academics and political scientists. Debate about some of the content would have been ideal before the Fiji Media Council independent review in February – and should have been available before the reviewers delivered their report (which unfortunately became redundant after the Easter putsch). It would have even been more useful for the regime too to have had access to this research before donning the newsroom jackboots.

However, a big bouquet for the publishers and editors in having the initiative and courage to go ahead with such an important volume at this time. It will be a very useful resource.

As well as the wide-ranging introduction by the editors themselves - head of journalism Shailendra Singh and economics professor Biman Prasad at the University of the South Pacific - most of the authors have provided important insights into the Fiji media, including the impact of digital media in a strained political environment.

Fiji Times associate editor Sophie Foster, for example, provides a study of the mainstream media and its approach to online publication and she calls for “greater emphasis on preparing journalists and their audiences to better use interactive options”. Hannah Harborow’s “Sites of resistance: Fiji’s untamed media” is an incisive examination of the post-coup blogosphere:

While the internet has the potential to empower citizens and communities in new ways that redefine governance, the susceptibility of bloggers to Fiji’s “coconut wireless” places this potential at risk. Like all media, bloggers tread specific ideological paths and are not necessarily straightforward propagators of the “truth”.

Politics lecturer Dr Rae Nicholl of USP in research on media treatment of women in the 1987, 2000 and 2006 coups found that women were “almost entirely absent from the press following the 1987 coup but their presence increased following the 2000 coup and increased still further following the 2006 coup”.

Susan Naisara Grey and professor of governance Graham Hassall, both also of USP, examined the print media’s coverage of the Office of the Auditor-General and concluded that news organisations are “not tracking issues raised in [auditor] reports, as they are considered – or not considered – by the relevant participating committees”. Only in a few instances, such as relating to the alleged misuse of funds within the Department of Agriculture, did the media provide sustained monitoring of an issue.

In a political economy review of the Fiji media and democracy, Dr Erik Larson, a visiting American academic at USP, found a model of “disengagement”. He concluded:

The dependence of news media on information from official sources also may make reporters more reliant on research and analysis from those outside the media. As a result, news items tend to be reactive and the news media does not perform its watchdog function as effectively.

Café Pacific publisher Dr David Robie contributed two articles, one a research paper around media accountability systems, or M*A*S, and he contrasted the methodologies of the controversial 2007 “review” of the Fiji’s news media industry with a genuinely independent review of the NZ Press Council undertaken during the same time frame. The editors also published his controversial “Press and the putsch” paper from a decade ago for the first time in Fiji (it had previously been published in Australia).

Daryl Tarte, who recently stepped down as chair of the Fiji Media Council after three terms, outlined the council’s role and the increasing challenges it faced. Among his concerns were deteriorating media standards and the lack of investigative journalism:

The coups from 1987 to 2006 have had a serious impact on the media in that journalists have been threatened and incarcerated by military regimes. This has led to the loss overseas of many experienced journalists. Standards have deteriorated for it takes time to train new people and give them the opportunity to gain experience.

While Tarte was given a big tick for his contribution to Pacific media freedom by both the Pacific Freedom Forum and Croz Walsh's Fiji blog, others, including Café Pacific, actually saw him as part of the problem as conflict between governments and media escalated during his term. His long reign at the Fiji Media Council coincided with cosy, self-interested cronyism in the media and a lack of proactive and visionary leadership. For example, the independent council review belatedly commissioned by the industry was more than two years too late to have any impact in derailing the regime from its censorship debacle. The council also short-changed the Fiji public on media responsibility issues. The review, headed by Australian Jack Herman, executive secretary of the Australian Press Council, noted:

[I]n the absence of regular [council] reports, and of the council being as outspoken on the occasional lapse in media responsibility as it is in defence of media freedom, the perception has emerged that the Media Council has not performed up to its own high ideals … This need to better balance the freedom and responsibility aspects of its activities was a constant theme in submissions…

Cartoon: Voreqe Bainimarama and the media, by Malcolm Evans of Pacific Journalism Review.

• Fijian Studies
• The launch of the journal