Hostile world media debate draws packed house

A REAL irony in these cynical times about the global “journalism crisis” and the inability of many journalists and ginger groups to seriously tackle the shackling of the media by corporate conglomerates, that AUT University experienced a packed house this week to debate safety for war correspondents. Some 200 people turned up to see the film Balibo and discuss media safety.
It may have been a mere sprinkling of journalists themselves, but the audience was made up of a horde of aspiring journalists, civil society advocates concerned about the state of the Fourth Estate and media educators and social scientists whose job is to be reflective about the media. All were treated to an inspiring evening of debate and insight into the state of the profession and the challenges of an increasingly hostile world for journalists.

Keynote speaker Tony Maniaty, author of Shooting Balibo: Blood and Memory in East Timor, spoke of the growing trend to what he calls the “outsourcing of danger” – a growing reliance on freelancers and independents to do the dangerous work. Reflecting on the East Timor experience, he also notes how easy it is nowadays for younger reporters today to sidestep the years of grind and experience taken to become a war reporter in the past.

Today, my students can - and some do - circumvent all that rigmarole by walking around the corner, buying a laptop and HD camera and a cheap air ticket to Kabul, and two days later be filming – alone, unsupported - on the frontline. And in this increasingly prevalent scenario are two more challenges facing us. One, we need to inject compulsory safety training modules into our media courses; and two, we need to address more carefully the vexed issue of freelancers, and what I call ‘the outsourcing of danger’. If networks are not prepared to send staff reporters into hot zones, do they have any right to send others there – for far lower pay, without training or insurance or training, without safety gear?

Maniaty, an ABC television reporter in 1975 and now senior lecturer in international journalism at the University of Technology, Sydney, was a survivor back then. After reporting on the Indonesian incursions at the border town of Balibo in October that year, he withdrew before the impending invasion. On his retreat, he warned Channel 7 reporter Greg Shackleton and two of his four colleagues from two networks that pressed on to Balibo – and to their deaths. They were murdered at the hands of notorious Indonesian Kopassus commandos intent on stopping the truth about the invasion "softening up" getting to the global media.

The complicity of Australian governments in the cover-up of their murders and the long silence of New Zealand governments about this episode is shameful. Another journalist, Australian Roger East, went to Dili to set up the East Timor News Agency (ETNA) and investigate the killings of the Balibo Five. He in turn was murdered, executed by Indonesian troops in cold blood on Dili’s wharf the day after the December 7 invasion and his body dumped into the sea.

Seminar host Dr David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre, spoke of the questions confronting journalists:

Are we making progress in issues of the duty of care by the news media organisations for their journalists assigned to war zones and to cover dangerous events? How well do journalists know and understand International Humanitarian Law and their rights and responsibilities? With other countries adopting a news media safety code, including Australia, should New Zealand be doing the same?

The deaths of two journalists, both of them foreigners – a Japanese and an Italian – in the civil disturbances in Thailand, are a reminder of the huge dangers facing media workers when reporting in a conflict zone.

Chris Cramer, New York-based global multimedia editor of Reuters News, who had been keynote speaker at the Reporting Wars conferences a year ago in Sydney and Wellington, sent an impassioned message to the seminar and noted how committed his own organisation was to safety of journalists and news workers (see video). It is something of a role model. Cramer is also currently president and a founding member of the International News Safety Institute.

Independent New Zealand journalist Jon Stephenson opened the panel debate by suggesting that since last year’s Reporting Wars conferences there had been no real progress made towards addressing journalist safety in New Zealand.

I regret to say this, but our profession has become something of a bad joke. Despite the slogans on the billboards around Auckland it is most definitely not ‘all about the story’… it’s all about the bottom line.

Other speakers on the panel, chaired by PMC advisory board member Dr Camille Nakhid, were TV3’s Mike McRoberts, just back from covering the crushing of the “red shirts” populist insurrection in Bangkok, TVNZ’s Sunday presenter Cameron Bennett, and Kelisiana Thynne, who gave a legal perspective, adding previous Reporting Wars seminars had been more successful than other panellists suggested, having raised considerable awareness of the role international humanitarian law can play in journalism.

Jean-Luc Metzker, head of the Regional Delegation of the International Commission of the Red Cross based in Suva, launched the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review which is themed on the issue of war reporting and published a number of papers from last year’s conferences and additional research about the safety of journalists.

The response to the seminar and film screening was phenomenal. The largest previous response on a media topic at AUT was when 150 came to hear The Independent's Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk in 2008.

It shows this issue of war reporting and safety for journalists amid the growing complexities of today's world, where you can have urban war across the street in some countries and media workers are constantly at risk, is a crucial challenge for the profession. New Zealand media managements haven't been treating the issues seriously enough - and this is at their peril.

Pictured: Top: TVNZ's Cameron Bennett. Lower Top: Tony Maniaty. Middle: Pacific Journalism Review. Lower middle: Kelisiana Thynne of the International Committee of the Red Cross and panel chair Dr Camille Nakhid of the Pacific Media Centre advisory board. Above: TV3's Mike McRoberts, independent journalist Jon Stephenson and PMC director Dr David Robie. Photos: Del Abcede/PMC

The film screening and seminar were jointly hosted by the International Committee of the Red Cross, New Zealand Red Cross, AUT University and AUT’s Pacific Media Centre.

• Tony Maniaty's speech
• Chris Cramer's video
• Australia's media safety code
• Other War Reporting seminar coverage on Pacific Scoop
  

Balibo thriller exposes brutal murders of six journalists

BALIBO, the film about truth and justice in East Timor and the brutal murders of six journalists while the fledgling nation struggled for its independence against the Indonesian invasion in 1975, is certain to cause shock waves in the region.

The film, being screened at the Melbourne film festival next month and due for general release in August, is an indictment of successive Australian governments.

And New Zealand authorities are also bound to be embarrassed by the chilling story of political betrayal and death.

Five journalists – including a New Zealander – working for Australian television networks – were killed in the border village of Balibo on 16 October 1975 and a sixth in the capital of Dili eight weeks later.

Indonesian special forces led by Yunus Yosfiah murdered Australian-based journalists Greg Shackleton, Tony Stewart, Gary Cunningham (a New Zealander), Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie, who were reporting on Indonesia’s then covert invasion of East Timor.

Roger East, who went to investigate their deaths, was also murdered in Dili during the formal invasion, on December 7 – he was among 86 people summarily executed on the Dili wharf and their bodies dumped in the sea.

The military commanders involved in these atrocities today lead lives of impunity in spite of their crimes.

Director Robert Connolly unveiled some of the footage in a preview of his film at the recent 58th World Press Institute conference in Helsinki, Finland, earlier this month.

Balibo tells the story of the six murders through the eyes of war correspondent Roger East (played by Anthony LaPaglia) and a young José Ramos-Horta (now President of Timor-Leste).

In 2007, New South Wales deputy coroner Dorelle Pinch ruled that the Balibo five were deliberately killed by Indonesian troops to cover up the invasion of East Timor.

Associate Professor Damien Kingsbury, of Geelong’s Deakin University Centre for Citizenship, Development and Human Rights, writes:

As a movie, Balibo is confronting, heart-wrenching, and raises a sense of legitimate anger. These responses parallel how many Australians responded to events in East Timor in 1999, when by their numbers they compelled the Australian government to finally intervene.

Such responses also parallel how many Australians felt in 1975, and in the years since. If the concerns of 1975 faded, it was because our governments so effectively covered-up the truth of these events, and the horrors subsequently perpetrated upon the people of East Timor. The Indonesian government led that complicity, culminating in the carnage and its ignominious departure from East Timor in 1999. But our own governments, under Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard, participated in that complicity.

The movie Balibo also captures the reality that East Timor’s people were just ordinary human beings caught in terrible circumstances. The scenes, too, in the forests and of streams, over the steep mountains and of the sea and sky are so accurate because they are East Timor. Dili’s emblematic Hotel Turismo had, and retains, the atmosphere of a Graeme Greene novel.

Balibo’s critics will attack it not for its art, but citing that Australia’s relationship with Indonesia is, these days, positive, and East Timor is now an independent state with its own aspirations and struggles. What they are unlikely to admit it that the problems that East Timor has endured since independence have been rooted in its brutal past.

• Balibo: Film, truth and justice
• World journos preview Balibo film
• Coroner finds Balibo five deliberately killed
• A date with the ghosts of Balibo