A tale of two cities – Tripoli and NZ's quake town

THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD captured the contrasting mood between two cities with poignancy, but almost accidentally. After three days of heavy black borders to mourn the loss of some 147 dead and a further 50 missing, the newspaper and other media across NZ told stories of courage, drama and devastation in the Christchurch earthquake.

A world away, and tucked deep on p. 17 in today’s Herald, the Libyan crisis raged on in Tripoli: “A city in the shadow of death.”

More than half the front broadsheet page of the Herald was devoted to the death of five-month-old Baxtor Gowland, a child of the last quake. Pictured clad in a scarlet Father Christmas outfit and cottonwool beard, Baxtor was born just two weeks after the 4 September 2010 quake. And now, tragically, he is a victim.

The inside front page told of “one street’s misery”, showing a fullpage graphic of Santa Maria Ave in the seaside suburb of Redcliffs: Reported Andrew Koubaridis:

In the minutes after Tuesday's devastating earthquake, the people of Santa Maria Ave, Redcliffs, gathered at the top of the street and hugged and cried.

Still in shock from the violent shaking, they scrambled from their shattered homes and sought comfort from one another - many will never be able to live in their homes again.

One side of the street has several homes cracked beyond repair. Others have been almost split in half and are now in danger of falling down on to a street below.

Another story reported how an Australian female urologist used tradesman’s tools – a hacksaw and a multipurpose knife – to amputate both legs of a quake victim lying trapped under a beam in a collapsed building. She saved the 52-year-old’s life.

Columnist Noelle McCarthy cited “the great poet of collapse, William Yeats, who wrote: “All is changed, changed utterly.” While noting that there is a scale to measure earthquakes, she asked how do you quantify their toll?:

In the aftermath of disaster, where to start? We start with each other. We take care of each other, we acknowledge this loss.

On Pacific Scoop, former Fiji Times editor Jale Moala, now a subeditor with the Christchurch Press, described the city as being “like a war zone” and a shock to Fiji migrants just used to cyclones and hurricanes.

Local Radio Apna and Suva’s Fijivillage.com were condemned by authorities for quoting an unnamed doctor saying eight Fiji Islanders had died in the earthquake. The authorities insisted this was false.

Meanwhile, from Tripoli in Libya, The Independent’s Robert Fisk reports in the Herald on gunfire, fear and rumour in the capital:

Up to 15,000 men, women and children besieged Tripoli's international airport last night, shouting and screaming for seats on the few airliners still prepared to fly to Muammar Gaddafi's rump state, paying Libyan police bribe after bribe to reach the ticket desks in a rain-soaked mob of hungry, desperate families. Many were trampled as Libyan security men savagely beat those who pushed their way to the front.

Among them were Gaddafi's fellow Arabs, thousands of them Egyptians, some of whom had been living at the airport for two days without food or sanitation. The place stank of faeces and urine and fear. Yet a 45-minute visit into the city for a new airline ticket to another destination is the only chance to see Gaddafi's capital if you are a "dog" of the international press.

There was little sign of opposition to the Great Leader. Squads of young men with Kalashnikov rifles stood on the side roads next to barricades of upturned chairs and wooden doors. But these were pro-Gaddafi vigilantes – a faint echo of the armed Egyptian "neighbourhood guard" I saw in Cairo a month ago – and had pinned photographs of their leader's infamous Green Book to their checkpoint signs.

There is little food in Tripoli, and over the city there fell a blanket of drab, sullen rain. It guttered onto an empty Green Square and down the Italianate streets of the old capital of Tripolitania.

But there were no tanks, no armoured personnel carriers, no soldiers, not a fighter plane in the air; just a few police and elderly men and women walking the pavements – a numbed populace.

Sadly for the West and for the people of the free city of Benghazi, Libya's capital appeared as quiet as any dictator would wish.

But this is an illusion.

Turkey is mounting the biggest evacuation operation in its history, with more than 25,000 Turks living in Libya fleeing. Twenty one other governments have asked Ankara for help getting their nationals out. A US-chartered 600-passenger ferry is leaving Tripoli for Malta and Israel has allowed 300 Palestinians from Libya to enter the occupied territories.

Petrol and food prices have trebled; towns outside Tripoli have been ripped apart by bitter fighting between Gaddafi supporters and opposition groups.

Loyalist forces patrol the capital’s streets, tanks guard the outskirts and the state radio station is heavily guarded.

This war zone is rapidly exploding.

• Christchurch recovery map
  
• New Zealand Herald earthquake coverage - photos, videos
• Christchurch quake: One street's misery
• Doctor uses hacksaw in amputation
• Pacific reactions to the Christchurch quake
• Tripoli: A city in shadow of death - Robert Fisk
• 
  

Shame on NZ's global rugby media coverage

SHAME on the New Zealand media for the poor international rugby union coverage on Europe and the Pacific. It is astonishing that in the build up to the World Rugby Cup on these shores less than two years away that NZ media is so parochial about international rugby. Take the French Top 14 competition for example - probably the best and toughest rugby competition on the global calendar and where many New Zealand and Pacific players ply their trade. On three occasions (when now struggling Stade Français has been involved at the Stade de France in St Denis) crowds have topped 80,000 - easily shading the Super 14. Yet New Zealanders are forced to turn to European-based websites or even in Asia (such as the Bangkok Post in that traditional powerhouse of international rugby of Thailand - Stade were held to a 6-all draw by Montauban at the weekend, incidentally!) to satisfy their cravings. Thailand? (Even Fiji news media carry Top 14 results and other French rugby coverage.) Yesterday's New Zealand Herald's sport section, for example, had a page lead on Barcelona's "stutter" in the Spanish football league, yet not a word on international rugby. Interest in the potential teams that could put paid to NZ's World Cup chances yet again on its home turf is mounting and surely this deserves ongoing coverage. And bula Fiji for reinstating the much-loved cibi - the Flying Fijians' traditional answer to the All Blacks' haka.

Picture: French league leader Castre's NZ loose forward Chris Masoe (second from left) tries to break free in a match against Montauban. Photo: AFP.

Beauxis makes Biarritz pay the penalty
Tuqiri contemplates moving to France
Peter Bills analyses French rugby - The Independent

High points in media coverage of the Samoa tsunami

MEDIA reflections on the New Zealand media coverage of the September 29 earthquake in the two Samoas and in Tonga’s northerly Nuias have been few and sketchy. Radio New Zealand’s Mediawatch had an item while the New Zealand Herald’s John Drinnan did a quick rundown on early reports. Crikey in Australia looked at the current phenomenon of quakes, tsunamis and flooding in the Pacific, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam, not that there was any direct connection. John Minto wrote about the country's emerging sense of Pasifika identity.

But TVNZ’s digital Media7 programme takes the Café Pacific prize for its insightful and in-depth programme on the tsunami coverage. Two of the three journalists on the panel were Pacific Islands journalists themselves, reflecting a maturing of media coverage which is finally recognising the value of reporting the Pacific region with Pasifika journalists rather than relying on a sometimes skewed palagi perspective. In this case, two of the journalists had Samoan cultural and language ties – Tagata Pasifika’s Adrian Stevanon and Radio New Zealand’s Leilani Momoisea. The third commentator was TVNZ’s Lisa Owen, who has previous experience of reporting in so-called “trauma journalism” zones – such as the London tube bombing in 2005, the Madrid terrorist bombing in 2004 and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In spite of her previous experience of reporting tragedies, Owen found herself on the first New Zealand flight to Samoa after the tsunami struck and immediately thrust into unfamiliar territory. Many grieving relatives were sharing that flight: “Journalists and victims, if you like, shoulder to shoulder.”

Stevanon, working for both TVNZ One News (as cameraman) and Tagata Pasifika weekly magazine programme (reporter), journeyed to Samoa not sure at that stage on the fate of many of his own relatives. (As it turned out, all his extended family were okay, even in the most devastated areas of southern Upolu). What about the challenges of his contrasting roles for his network?

Working for news, then it’s standard news. What is happening right here and right now? But for our audience [at Tagata Pasifika], they’ve already seen all that. So, in my mind, I couldn’t just show death and destruction, I needed to offer something else. I needed to do a Phoenix-from-the-ashes and that’s what people were trying to tell me anyway.

Tonga, unfortunately, was shunted aside in the media priority stakes – even though nine lives were lost on the remote island of Niuatoputapu. Some of the better distance reporting to make sense of events there came from Pacific Scoop and Pacific Media Watch’s Josephine Latu, herself Tongan.



Crikey tried to make sense of the Pacific-wide crises:

Over the past few weeks, the Asia-Pacific region has seen natural disasters of epic proportions. There have been typhoons, tsunamis and earthquakes; the death toll climbing higher each day. Entire villages have seemingly been wiped out. The media coverage of the unfolding events has, however, been overwhelming. The Australian media predictably focused on the local angle, but which earthquake or tsunami happened first, where and why? And are they all connected?

Crikey pulled together a timeline to give an overview.

While generally complimentary about Radio NZ’s coverage – which has a key role in emergencies, John Drinnan, writing in his weekly Media column for the Herald, was less flattering about TVNZ in his “Not a good morning for advertorials” piece:

RNZ's counterpart - Television New Zealand - made some surprising decisions on the morning amid warnings a tsunami may be racing toward New Zealand and was due to hit Auckland at about 11.12am.
On Breakfast, Paul Henry provided a sense of urgency and concern. Yet when Henry was finished, and with the tsunami potentially about to hit the East Cape within the hour, state television went live with its advertorial show Good Morning, albeit with newsbreaks on the half hour.
TVNZ rejected a suggestion it had underestimated the gravity of the situation and even rang the NZ government to offer a camera for the Beehive bunker used during emergencies.

• Media7
• Tagata Pasifika
• John Minto on the tsunami

The browning of New Zealand media

CURIOUS how a seminar with many of the movers and shakers in the New Zealand diversity media industry running the show didn’t cut it in the news itself. Hardly a mention in news coverage, apart from on the Pacific Media Centre niusblog at AUT University and a John Drinnen item in the NZ Herald's Business about how public broadcasting was being ignored. Nevertheless, this year’s NZ On Air seminar with the theme “Screen and Heard: NZ broadcast audiences in 2020” was really worthwhile with many contributors giving fascinating and inspirational insights into this country’s media future – from SBS managing director Shaun Brown’s rundown on multicultural programmes in Australia, through BBC’s Murray Holgate on the changing role of the global broadcaster in the Asia-Pacific region to Oscar Kightley and Stan Wolfgramm on the future of diversity creations such as bro’Town and Pacific Beat Street. Brown encountered some light hearted flak over his metamorphosis from his old role in market-driven TVNZ to cross-cultural SBS – “the browning of Shaun Brown”, as Asia Downunder’s Bharat Jamnadas (and onetime Fiji journo) coined it. Brown himself said:

New Zealand is – in at least some respects – ahead of Australia in confronting and debating the issue of diversity in programme making.

For a start, while Australia has a vibrant sector dedicated to advocating on multicultural and indigenous issues, I cannot recall a discussion of this scale taking place between Australia’s broadcasters about our contribution (or even obligation) to reflect cultural realities on screen.

Also, an important element in reflecting diversity on either side of the Tasman is the place indigenous content occupies on our screens. Here particularly Australia has much to learn from New Zealand.

The outstanding success of Māori Television and the scale of Māori programming on other broadcasters places New Zealand well ahead of Australia.

Asked if he had “seen the light” about public broadcasting after he left TVNZ for SBS, Brown launched into a candid attack on a succession of NZ governments for their failures over broadcasting policy, which had been turned into a political football: “Without a charter, you don’t have a compass.”

The “scene setter “ was provided by demography professor Richard Bedford of Waikato University’s Population Studies Centre, who outlined the two-pronged challenge for New Zealand media – the demographic changes making the audiences “browner” and more culturally and ethnically diversified, and also becoming older. As PMC’s Pacific Media Watch contributing editor Josephine Latu reports:

In fact, by the year 2021, current statistical projections show that the Asian population will have increased by more than 70 percent, the Pacific Islander population by 44 percent, and the Māori population by about 24 percent since 2006.

New Zealanders of European or “other” ethnic backgrounds (including from African and South American and other nations) are altogether predicted to
increase by just below 6 percent in the same timeframe.

The number of people aged over 35 is also set to swell for all ethnic groups. Figures showed that between 2006 and 2021, those aged 35 and over will increase by 22 percent, compared to only about 5 percent for those under 35.

Café Pacific’s David Robie has produced an overview of the state of demographics and the rise of the ethnic media, published in the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review with the theme “Diversity, identity and the media”. (The edition was launched by the Human Rights Commission’s Sam Sefuiva at the seminar).

Radio Tarana’s Robert Khan and broadcasting manager Terri Byrne of Planet Radio – “the best thing we ever did” was moving from AUT University campus to Unitec, where it has been thriving – gave inspirational insights into how “minority” broadcasting was in fact becoming “mainstream”.

But in spite of the optimistic mood of the day, the seminar crashed to earth in the final session about “the broadcast media scene in 2020”. TVNZ head of television Jeff Latch, TV3’s associate director of programming Andrew Szusterman and Radio NZ’s head of news Don Rood didn’t seem to get it about the dramatic changes facing NZ’s media audiences. No visionary solutions there for the twin targets of diversity and age.

Bro'Town graphic from NZ On Air; photo of Shaun Brown by the Pacific Media Centre's Del Abcede.

• Diversity reportage in Aotearoa - by David Robie
• From minority to mainstream broadcasting - by Terri Byrne
• NZ faces growing media challenge over demographics
  
• NZ On Air
• NZ On Air to the rescue for TV
• Pacific Beat producer calls on ethnic groups to 'break into' mainstream
  

Pasifika TV - David pulling a fast one on Goliath?

SO Will 'Ilolahia stole a march on the big boys at Television NZ and TV3 during the Pasifika media fono today. During a panel devoted to the future of a Pasifika TV channel when TVNZ and TV3's own ideas were floated - interesting but not very convincing - maverick broadcaster Will 'Ilolahia rose and spoke from the floor about a Pacific TV channel which he says will be streaming on the internet by November 1. His announcement came like a bombshell at the fono, leaving Tagata Pasifika's Taualeo'o Stephen Stehlin and TV3 Pasifika consortium's Innes Logan (Spasifik publisher) almost speechless.
"We know there are a lot of PIs around the world who are dying to watch Kiwi films and that kind of stuff," Will explained. When asked why he kept the establishment of the channel secret, 'Ilolahia told the Pacific Media Centre's Dominika White that he had wanted to wait until his organisation had something concrete. "To be honest, I came here to hear about the competitors. That's why I got up and said it," he said. Under the moniker of Kiwi Television, the new channel will be available at: http://kiwitv.streamstaging.co.nz/ (yet to go live). Check out Will's response.

Full marks to Pacific Islands Media Association's Aaron Taouma and his PIMA team for a lively and stimulating conference at AUT University, the best in years. From the "mainstreaming" session in the morning - which included newcomers like the New Zealand Herald's South Auckland reporter Vaimoana Tapaleao to the doyen of television news producers Tati Urale - to the final "future directions" panel, including heavyweights like Taimi 'o Tonga publisher Kalafi Moala and the National Pacific Radio Trust's Fa'amatuainu Tino Pereira, the fono was a great success. Moala's challenge to PIMA was to step up its regional Pacific role. The "Pac2thefuture" theme was a real winner and so were the lower registration fees - especially for students. It was a buzz to see so many younger faces, and students came from Whitireia and the NZ Broadcasting School in Christchurch as well as the usual AUT crowd. A bonus was the announcement of AUT's new Graduate Diploma in Pacific Journalism, the first Pasifika media education initiative in almost two decades - since the early success of the old Manukau journalism course.

• Pacific Media Centre coverage of PIMA08
• PMC pix gallery on PIMA
• Pasifika journalists negotiate 'fine line'
• Pacific journalists urged to 'aim high'
• Minister Luamanuvao Winnie Laban's speech
• PIMA website - Pac2thefuture

Robert Fisk's recipe for young journo success

TRUE believers? A host of them trooped in for the Robert Fisk lecture/ student news exchange organised by the Pacific Media Centre at AUT University. Where were the sceptics?

Apart from the core of AUT student journalists, radio and TV students and staff who had ditched their mid-semester break to come along to be challenged, inspired - and even entertained - by Fisky, there were academics, civil rights activists and many others. Robert Fisk was in NZ for a promotional tour for his latest book, The Age of the Warrior.

The AUT booking was thanks to Amnesty International. The lecture theatre (chosen for its intimacy and which normally seats 160 people) was packed out with at least another 40 or 50 people for the hour-long lunch date. Just as well there were no health and safety hawks drifting around. Fisk was at his inspirational best - it's quite extraordinary to see a journalist having such a cult following. Many editors were sighted in the audience, including the NZ Herald's former editor-in-chief Gavin Ellis, who chose the AUT rather than his own University of Auckland bash, which was charging $25 a head for a Fisk Amnesty fundraiser.

Fisk had plenty of gems on offer for his audience including anecdotes about his contempt for how the internet has become "a system of hate". Scolding media for not reporting the full truth about the Middle East, he also had some advice for the neophite journos that wouldn't go down too well with either the digital natives or the digital grandstanders:

• "Write only for newspapers, which print what you write as you write it".


• "Get on a good relationship with a trustworthy editor. If you can't find the right newspaper in New Zealand - and I can imagine what you might reply to me - look elsewhere."


• "Don't go into blogging, it doesn't work. It doesn't have the integrity that the printed paper has - you won't get into mainstream journalism that way, anyway."


• "Don't refer to the mainstream press as the mainstream press."


• "Don't waste your time writing for the alternative press because it is only read by believers."


• "Challenge your government."
  
  
• PMC photographer Alan Koon captured Te Waha Nui editor James Murray (top right) joining the believers at the book signing after he had seized an earlier moment to video the scribe in full force.
  


• Pacific Media Centre's Melissa Fidow's audio report
• PMC Katie Llanos-Small's profile on Robert Fisk
• PMC photo gallery on Fisk
• Other Fisk reports
• Only the internet can stop Robert Fisk

Herald cops ruling over 'democracy under attack' editorials

The New Zealand Herald is eating humble pie over its vigorous "democracy under attack" campaign against the passing of the Electoral Finance Act late last year. Today it was forced to run a brief front page item on the front page acknowledging that it had been rapped by the NZ Press Council over two of its editorials that misrepresented the curb on electoral campaign funding (but with fuller coverage of the adjudication inside). A complaint by the Coalition for Open Government against the Herald editorials of 4 December and 20 November 2007 has been upheld. As Victoria University law lecturer and author Steven Price, who brought the campaign on behalf of the coalition, notes on his Media Law Journal:
"The Herald fulminated that the bill would require anyone wanting to spend any of their own money electioneering to register with the Electoral Commission. That seemed to grossly restrict everyone’s political free speech - an impression underscored by the subhead 'Speak now or next year hold your peace'. But it wasn’t true. Only those who want to spend more than $12,000 electioneering (or $1000 in an electorate) need to register. Still, much better for the Herald’s campaign to brush over the fact that this would only affect a small number of wealthy people and organisations.
"Most irritating Herald argument: its mistake didn’t really matter as “it does not undermine our general view of the shortcomings of this bill.” Well, bully for the Herald. But one might have hoped that they would have felt embarrassed to advance this as a justification for failing to publish accurate information and let readers make up their own minds."

• Accuracy under attack
• Democracy under attack
• Press Council rules on omitted detail

When racism and fascism converge

Mohamed Haneef has become the cause celebre for many who have warned about the consequences of racist and open-book anti-terrorism legislation on the erosion of civil liberties for us all. Creeping fascism in Oz. But many sections of the media are also appalling. The New Zealand Herald's front page story at the weekend headlined " 'Terror' doctor goes free" is a case in point - after the trumped up "terror" case had already collapsed. Six quick questions from the outraged on the Haneef campaign page at TwoCircles:

1. Is it a crime to buy and travel on one-way air tickets?
2. Are all relatives of a terrorist considered terrorists?
3. Dr. Haneef's SIM card was not involved in any terror activity.
4. Why was his wife's visa to Australia canceled?
5. When Dr. Haneef's visa was cancelled, why was he not deported?
6. Why was Dr. Asif Ali, friend of Dr. Haneef, harassed and why is he not allowed to say what happened to him when he was under detention?

• Nick Bryant's piece on the Keystone cops - why the case disintegrated.
• Haneef's win new blow for Howard government - court quashes cancellation of visa

Death of our civil rights

Anybody who saw the UK film Death of a President in the Auckland International Film Festival this week wouldn't have been surprised by the harrowing consequences of the so-called "war on terror" on civil rights and our fundamental freedoms as we lurch closer to the totalitarian systems we are supposedly being defended against. Gabriel Range's restrospective docudrama (based on the fictitious assassination of George W. Bush in Chicago in October 2007) is a brilliant - and controversial - portayal of the abyss we have been plunged into. Our fundamental concept of innocent until proven guilty is suspended when it comes to Muslim suspects. In that context and in the light of the Kafkaesque detention of Mohamed Haneef in Oz, note this ABC news item yesterday - and now Dr Haneef, as reported in the NZ Herald, has been freed with no case to answer! And the Oz authorities get away with the outrageous arrest without so much as an apology:
ListMail: ABC News
Saturday July 21, 2007
(For more news visit ABC News Online at http://www.abc.net.au/news)

*Haneef predicament 'every Muslim's fear'*
A Muslim civil rights advocate says the handling of the case of the
Gold Coast doctor Mohamed Haneef has confirmed the Muslim community's
worst fears.
Haneef is facing charges of recklessly providing support to a terrorist
organisation involved in the recent UK attempted car bombings.
In Brisbane last Saturday, the court was told that Haneef's SIM card
was found in the car that was driven into Glasgow airport.
But the ABC has been told by sources in the UK and Australia that the
SIM card was first seized by police eight hours later, when his cousin
Sabeel Ahmed was arrested in Liverpool.
Dr Waleed Kadous from the Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy
Network says the fears felt by Muslims date back to the introduction of
the counter-terrorism legislation last year.
Dr Kadous says the Haneef case has left many thinking "there but for
the grace of God go I".
"[It was] every Muslim's fear that this could happen to him," he said.
"They can imagine being in the same situation as Haneef was in, that
they left a SIM card with a relative before leaving country and then
something happens a year later.
"They can imagine borrowing money from someone and paying the loan
back, these are not unusual things."
Greg Ansley in the NZ Herald wrote about the red faces over the collapse of "evidence" against Haneef.