How media ownership in Fiji chokes the watchdog

Journalists in Suva interviewing Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr
during his Forum Ministerial Contact Group meeting in Fiji.
Photo: Ministry of Information

By Professor WADAN NARSEY

SINCE 2009, the Fiji regime’s decrees, public stance and prosecutions of media owners, publishers and editors, have effectively prevented the media from being a “watchdog” on government. Some media organisations are now largely propaganda arms for the regime.

[Read the first part of this article at this link for my take on the current performance of the media.]

But it is unfortunate that some critics are targeting journalists, who are minor cogs in the media machine.

The reality is that journalists are totally under the control of editors and publishers, who in turn are ultimately controlled by the media owners.

The real weakness in Fiji’s media industry currently is that Fiji’s media owners are not “dedicated independent media companies”, but corporate entities with much wider business interests which are far more valuable to the media owners than their profits from their media assets.

Pacific Journalism Review - a new regional media resource

PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW - the only media research journal in the South Pacific - has been publishing in the region for the past 17 years. It was launched originally at the University of Papua New Guinea and then had a life at the University of the South Pacific. But it is now published by AUT University's Pacific Media Centre.

Apart from the many academic research offerings, the journal has attracted many Pacific journalists, such as the Taimi Media Group's Kalafi Moala in Tonga and Savea Sano Malifa, editor-in-chief of the Samoa Observer. International authors have included John Pilger and Robert Fisk.

Some 679 research articles and reviews have been published by the journal and more are being added to the archives. In the past, the journal articles have been available by subscribing to the hard copy edition or the online databases, but now the archives will also be available on the PJR website (long after publication on the subscriber databases in Australia, New Zealand/Pacific and the USA).

Topics include digital media, Fiji coups, environmental journalism, indigenous media, investigative journalism, media freedom, media law and ethics and media ownership.

Check out the PJR website, but login and create your own account to get access to the best content:

• Contributor profiles
• Galleries
• Letters to the editor
• Index to issues

Pacific Journalism Review website
If you want quick access on a Pacific subscriber database, go to Niustext

Fiji's 'how to gag the media' report

It is ironic that Jim Anthony's flawed report for the Fiji Human Rights Commission should be dubbed with an Orwellian title "Freedom and Independence of the Media in Fiji". It is far more like a "How to gag and shackle the media" report. It's the sort of report that gives even military-backed regimes bad reputations. A great pity. A constructive, well-researched and useful - but genuinely independent - examination of the Fiji media is long overdue. A 2007 review of the NZ Press Council is an example of the sort of thing that can be done. But the Anthony report doesn't show any interest in "free media" models that work well - he has been seduced by authoritarian straitjackets. Perhaps he isn't even aware of the M*A*S* work of the late Professor Claude-Jean Bertrand, the pioneer of global media accountability systems. A report as racist, provocative and ill-informed as this - with not even elementary referencing or sourcing - is rather embarrassing.
However, much of the media response in Fiji is also extraordinarily defensive and hypocritical, even bordering on hysterical. Why do they even bother to take such a report seriously? Surely the Anthony report deserved to quietly fade into oblivion - hardly worthy of any serious response. Yet some of the over-the-top reactions have ensured the Anthony report has gained far more international attention than it ever warranted. And certainly the spotlight is on foreign influence in media ownership. But the public deserves more than the defensive bleatings from self-interested media and political voices - where are the independent commentators and analysts for balance? The Fiji Times is one of the few to publish the odd independent reaction, such as from the Ecumenical Centre for Research Education and Advocacy (ECREA), which criticised the media for being the 'mouthpiece of the elite' and also for poor journalism standards. We also wonder about the timing of the report's release, given that it was made available hurriedly just three days after the arbitrary deportation of Fiji Times publisher Russell Hunter. Ousted Opposition leader Mick Beddoes described Dr Anthony as "paranoid", saying some of his "accusations and conclusions are not worth the paper they're printed on". A former deputy PM in Mahendra Chaudhry's People's Coalition government deposed by George Speight in 2000, Dr Tupeni Baba, dismissed the report as biased.
Dr Anthony told Radio New Zealand International that media and government relations had broken down, and for years the media had poured venom into Fiji's body politic: "Playing crybaby over this report isn't really going to wash. The media representatives, the media barons, were invited to participate in this report; they chose to boycott the inquiry. In my opinion, that was a fatally flawed decision."
Pictured: Fiji's Interim Minister for Labour and Tourism Bernadette Rounds-Ganilau is interviewed by Dr James Anthony during the media "inquiry". Source: Fiji Human Rights Commission website.
A quick summary of the report's recommendations:

• Expatriate journalists living in Fiji would be banned from working in the country under recommendations by the country's human rights commission.
• A media tribunal would be established independent of government control.
• A Fiji media development authority would be established based on a system in Singapore to monitor media organisations and train journalists.
• A 7 percent tax on media advertising and license fees would be imposed to fund the tribunal and authority.
• New sedition laws would be introduced.

Too many whites in media, says academic - audio - Anthony's defence of his report on Radio Australia's Pacific Beat
Fiji should ban expat journos: report
Media report calls for training authority
A Fiji Times breakdown of the FHRC media report into handy pdf morsels - and a summary of media reactions
The Ecumenical Centre for Research Education and Advocacy (ECREA) response
Report author condemns failure of media to take part
Fiji should ban expat journos: report
Fiji media walks the fine line
Freedom and Independence of the Media in Fiji - The Anthony report (FHRC website)
David Robie on Pacific media freedom under siege

Farewell to The Bulletin!

So The Bulletin current affairs magazine - racist, radical and later probing in its time as an icon in Oz publishing - has been axed by its foreign equity masters. Another corporate nail in the coffin of independent journalism. The Australian, in an editorial, mused:
Surviving 128 years from provocative newspaper to colour magazine, the publication served generations of readers well, from its initial sell-out appearance in Sydney on January 31, 1880, onwards. The announcement of its demise made yesterday a sad day.
John Lyons, writing in The Australian's Media section had this to say:
An American chief executive working for a Scottish boss who represents a Hong Kong private equity fund yesterday closed an Australian institution with a 128-year-old publishing history.
Welcome to the brave, but soulless, new world.
When The Bulletin's death was announced at a 10am meeting in Sydney yesterday, it ended a tradition begun with the likes of Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson and Miles Franklin, survived through literary greats such as Donald Horne and given a new lease of life in recent years with the likes of Les Carlyon and Laurie Oakes.
Its last edition, which went on sale two days ago, features lengthy articles by Thomas Keneally, Frank Moorhouse and Richard Flanagan.
Having worked full time on The Bulletin in the late 1990s and continuing to write for it until last year, I gained a sense of what the magazine meant for both the Australian public and the Packer family. It says everything about who now controls what used to be the Packer empire - a private equity company called CVC Asia Pacific - that the matriarch of the family, Ros Packer, was not even given the courtesy of a phone call to tell her that the magazine that had been at the centre of her family's media empire had been closed. She found out, by accident, when she turned on her television at 2pm.

• Foreign buyers silence The Bulletin
• Editorial: Sad day for Australia
• It made a nation, but couldn't make a buck
• The end of an era - editor-in-chief John Lehman's last message to readers

News media ownership in NZ - updates

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

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

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

Comments are, as always, welcome.
Bill Rosenberg

Bill Rosenberg's evolving media ownership file at CAFCA