ANZAC Day - now we're fighting to spy for torturers and to hide how NZ soldiers die?

Cartoon: Malcolm Evans/TDB

By MARTYN BRADBURY of The Daily Blog

SO this ANZAC Day we are fighting to spy for torturers and hiding the manner in which NZ soldiers die?

While we stand at attention and bow our head solemnly to do our pious bit for ANZAC Day, what exactly are we fighting for this year?

While we stand at attention and bow our head solemnly to do our pious bit for ANZAC Day, what exactly are we fighting for this year?

Apart from siding with butchers and dictators who have helped create the new generation of Muslim fanaticism, it appears we are fighting to spy for torturers and the ability to hide how NZ soldiers die in battle.

Our need to worship the dead for some sense of identity has blinded us to the mistakes that drive war and that’s why we are silent on the outrageous hypocrisy of entering a new war to suck up to America.

The Malcolm Evans gallery at The Daily Blog

Cartoon: Malcolm Evans/TDB

The Fiji junta, an insider on censorship and cross-cultural reporting

CENSORSHIP and the assault on human rights and freedom of expression in Fiji are featured in the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review being launched at the NZ on Air diversity conference in New Zealand this week.

The AUT Pacific Media Centre-based publication, New Zealand's only peer-reviewed international media research journal, publishes a special article by an "insider" on the military regime's political and social "reforms".

The 246-page edition, themed around "Diversity, identity and the media" issues, analyses the junta that has dealt an unprecedented "mortal blow" to press freedom in the South Pacific's most crucial country for regional cooperation.

The insider article, "Fragments from a Fiji coup diary", concludes that the New Zealand government needs to have secret contacts with the Suva regime to help investigate corruption and to help restore the country on the road towards democracy.

In other commentaries, Dr Murray Masterton analyses "culture clash" problems facing foreign correspondents and warns against arrogance by Western journalists when reporting the region. Television New Zealand's Sandra Kailahi examines the Pasifika media and Scoop co-editor Selwyn Manning looks at strategic directions in Asia-Pacific geopolitical reporting.

Malcolm Evans contributes a frothy profile of global political cartooning - and also the cover caricature of Fiji's military strongman Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama.

Research articles include demographics and independent cross-cultural reporting, media diversity and a NZ Human Rights Commission seminar, the "Asian Angst" controversy and xenophobia over Chinese migration, a Lake Taupo air space media case study, the Clydesdale report deconstructed and New Zealand women's magazines and gossip.

Bill Rosenberg provides the second of two annual New Zealand media ownership and trends surveys compiled for PJR.

"This edition provides some challenging and fresh insights into diversity reporting in New Zealand, from Fiji to Asian stereotypes," says the managing editor, Associate Professor David Robie. "But it also celebrates some important achievements."

A strong review section includes books about the dark side of the pro-independence movement and media in Tonga, terrorism and e-policies in the Asia-Pacific region, conflict reporting, the making of a US president, editing and design in New Zealand and an extraordinary dissident Burmese political cartoonist.

• Subscriptions to Pacific Journalism Review (two editions a year)

Fiji regime rapped over blogger flak

While regime chief Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama and the vexed Fiji question irritates a couple of pale southern neighbours at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga this week, Pacific Journalism Review has published an insightful inquiry into the post-coup blogging issue. And the regime has landed itself on hot coals. Sophie Foster, a onetime editor of the now defunct Pacific Islands Monthly and a former senior editorial hand at The Fiji Times, reckons the military is partly responsible for the number of political blogs that have expanded the media landscape in Fiji since the fourth coup last December. She says blogs have flourished because of the military squeeze on dissenting opinion. Sophie is now a postgraduate student in Pacific media studies at the University of the South Pacific in Suva and she is clearly making good use of her research time.
In her PJR paper, Sophie says that while some blog content was racist, defamatory, provocative and irresponsible, the argument for a free, responsible press has also been also strengthened as an option worth maintaining in any society. This edition of PJR has been produced jointly by the USP journalism programme and AUT University's Pacific Media Centre. PJR cover cartoon by top Kiwi cartoonist Malcolm Evans.
Incidentally, in the latest Reporters Sans Frontieres world press freedom index, bloggers are reported to be threatened as much as in international media.

• Voreqe no 'leper'
• Military blamed over blogs
• Bainimarama: People's charter could remove government
• Stand up to Oz, NZ 'bullying', says Labour
• Fiji Daily Post's report on the blogs - lifted by the newspaper verbatim from Pacific Media Watch (two days earlier)/Pacific Media Centre (four days earlier) without acknowledgement
• Sophie's actual article at Pacific Journalism Review
• Doubt hangs heavy over Fiji election