News that Australian Associated Press has been saved is being welcomed by media outlets in socially and culturally complex Pacific countries such as Papua New Guinea where dramatic and important stories often emerge.

When the closure of AAP was announced earlier this year, concern was expressed by media industry figures in Australia and across the Pacific.

Media outlets in the Pacific, in particular, are under-resourced due to various structural weaknesses and are, therefore, heavily reliant on credible news from Australia provided by AAP.

READ MORE: Loss of AAP a tragedy for entire Pacific

On Friday, AAP announced that a consortium of philanthropists and media executives had expressed interest are making a bid to buy the AAP Newswire service.

The consortium members, including former News Corp CEO Peter Tonagh; Fred Woollard, managing director of Samuel Terry Asset Management; and Kylie Charlton, managing director of Australian Impact Investments; have made an offer to purchase after raising a significant amount of money.

After the proposed closure was announced, Pacnews agency editor Makereta Komai was concerned that this would have a huge impact on the news service she works for and other struggling outlets.

AAP has been “a great and timely source of stories in Australia that are relevant and significant to the Pacific region,” she explained.

Essential tool
In countries like Papua New Guinea, the AAP Newswire service in particular has been an essential tool in achieving a Fourth Estate in terms of framing political issues.

Former AAP bureau chief Liza Kappelle said journalists at AAP focused on trying to make its news “interesting, engaging, informative and dead accurate”.

Among the Pacific countries, Papua New Guinea has by far the largest economy and the biggest population (8.6 million). The region includes approximately 600 small islands, and has more than 800 Indigenous languages with only 13 per cent of the population living in urban areas.

The region has seen a lot of closures and restrictions of news coverage by traditional media organisations at a time when international support is crucial.

Years ago, AAP had a bureau in Suva, Fiji, which was an important part of the region’s coverage. Then it was left with just one bureau, in Port Moresby. When that was closed in 2013, Australia broke 60 years of print media coverage on the ground in Papua New Guinea.

This left only the ABC’s broadcast media coverage, which has also been reduced due to the Australian government’s budget cuts.

In West Papua, the war of independence has intensified and Indonesia has banned media coverage of the conflict.

Media independence eroded
Successive governments in Papua New Guinea have been accused of eroding media independence.

Former Prime Minister Peter O’Neill was recently arrested under suspicion of corruption, having “bought” some leading journalists. Journalists and the media have increasingly come under threat legally and politically with restrictive legislation, intimidation, assaults, police and military brutality as well as illegal detention.

All this has occurred while Australia’s voice in the region has begun to fall silent.

China’s encroaching influence on the Pacific has made the struggle for media freedom in the region even harder. This is further complicated by Australia’s media freedom being also on a decline.

Consequently, Australia is no longer a press freedom role model for the Pacific. This year, Australia dropped five places to be rated at number 26 on the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index.

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie says lack of media diversity in Australia is directly impacting on Australia’s poor press freedom rankings. He made comparisons to when press freedom began decreasing after the country’s media independence had been quite strong.

But then the first two military coups occurred in 1987.

Never known ‘truly free press’
“There is now a generation of journalists in Fiji who have never known what it’s like to have a truly free press,” said Dr Robie, who is also editor of Asia Pacific Report.

Here in Australia, it has become increasingly difficult for journalists to report on political issues. Laws have been introduced in recent years banning journalists from reporting on Australia’s refugee detention centres in Papua New Guinea’s capital, Port Moresby, and also on Manus Island.

Australian law enforcement can probe into the identities of whistle-blowers and anonymous sources while seizing journalist’s documents and electronic devices.

The erosion of public interest journalism has left the Australian public with little understanding of what is happening in and around the Pacific Islands.

A survey by the International Federation of Journalists found nearly one in four journalists in countries including Australia, said accessing information from government or official sources was becoming more difficult.

The editor of Croakey Health Media, Dr Melissa Sweet, who has previously worked at AAP, knows this all too well, and said: “Nowadays you’ve got snowballs’ [little chance in hell] of getting people to talk to you, unless perhaps they are whistle blowers.

Tip of the iceberg
“Whistle blowers are really the tip of the iceberg in terms of who you need to communicate with to understand what’s going on in governments and organisations.

“I remember… back when I was at the AAP in the eighties, there were various meetings that I could go and report from and on that were open to the public that are now closed. Back in those days I had much better access, whether it was health ministers or health bureaucrats on all sorts of levels,” she recalls.

“People within government or bureaucracies have been unwilling to talk for a very long time. This has been a long-term trend.”

The declining plurality of the media in Australia has led to one of the most concentrated levels of media ownership in the world. Two parties own almost all privately owned media in Australia – Rupert Murdoch’s $16.3 billion dollar company, News Corp, and Nine Entertainment, which is run by a consortium created by company founders, the Packer family.

Prior to the purchase offer announcement, Murdoch’s News Corp, along with Nine Entertainment, were the two main shareholders of AAP, which has been described as the “Australian democracy safety net”.

The shareholders decided in March, that after 85 years in operation the country’s only national newswire service was no longer profitable and they announced plans for its closure on June 26 this year.

The Australian Journalism union, MEAA, blasted the shareholders’ decision, calling it “irresponsible,” “devastating” and “reckless.”

Worst time for Pacific media
The announcement could not have come at a worse time for media in the Pacific, where local media companies lack the clout to stand up to authoritarian governments. It is unknown what impact covid-19 will have on the region.

Recently, politicians and authorities in Fiji and Papua New Guinea have been accused of silencing criticism by sheltering behind emergency lockdown laws.

After the announcement in March, speculation arose about the reasons for the AAP closure. Kappelle, said she could not recall the exact words of chairman Campbell Reid. But when asked if the closure was because NewsCorp and Nine were tired of subsidising a breaking newswire service for their competitors, she answered, “That’s definitely the gist of it.”

The closure would certainly weaken competition from other news outlets. Murdoch, who has a personal fortune of $17.6 billion, has recently been accused of using the covid-19 crisis as an excuse to scrap regional newspaper titles within Australia.

Following the announcement, it was revealed that both NewsCorp and Nine had made plans to open their own breaking newswire services. However, both shareholders publicly blamed digital competitors Google and Facebook for the AAP’s demise.

Dr Sweet was devasted to hear of the proposed closure, saying it would impact on journalism globally. She explained it as a situation where people did not understand the current crisis facing many journalists and news outlets and that it was not only related to AAP, but to public interest journalism more broadly.

Vested interest reasons
“I guess as an industry we just haven’t done a very good job of explaining it and there’s vested interest reasons around that. No media outlet wants to say to you ‘we are going to hell in a hand basket’. They all want to keep trying to pretend that they are doing good journalism,” she explained.

“Whereas, the industry is obviously showing the strain of losing so many journalists, closing so many newsrooms, leaving so many communities under-served and under-covered.”

Prior to purchase offer announcement, Dr Sweet said it would be terrific if the people investing in the AAP newswire service weren’t just doing it because they wanted to make money, but so that journalism had a “public good model” that would fit with the history of AAP.

Professor Robie described continued coverage of regions such as Papua New Guinea, as vitally important, saying the country had “a treasure trove of dramatic and important stories.

“The security issues with the struggle of the Papuan people seeking independence are highly sensitive. Where the Australian media withdraws in the Pacific, Chinese media influences will take over.”

Jade Bradford is a student journalist at Curtin University in Western Australia. This article was first published in the journalism programme’s online newspaper Western Independent.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The shock announcement yesterday that the Australian Associated Press newsagency will cease operations after 85 years is a blow to journalism in Australia and the Pacific.

AAP, which is owned by Nine, News Corp Australia, The West Australian and Australian Community Media, provided services to media companies such as newswires, subediting and photography will close with the loss of 500 jobs – 180 of them journalists.

“This is a tragic end to one of the world’s best news agencies, one that has contributed so much to the first draft of history in Australia for 85 years,” says Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre.

READ MORE: AAP newswire service closes after 85 years with 500 job losses

“It’s a great tragedy and a huge loss for all those talented journalists – reporters, editors and photographers – who have been on the AAP frontline.

“AAP has also played a crucial role in the Pacific, reporting political crises, disasters and social change through two key news bureaus in Port Moresby and Suva for many years.

“Just as the closure of NZPA in 2011- after 132 years – left a gaping hole in New Zealand international coverage, this will be another disaster for Australian public interest journalism.”

Senior lecturer and co-ordinator of journalism at the University of the South Pacific, Dr Shailendra Singh lamented the loss of AAP at a time when Pacific governments are clamping down on the media.

Demise of AAP ‘damaging’
“The demise of AAP is tragic and damaging. The Pacific has lost another source of independent reporting. The timing couldn’t be worse,” said Dr Singh.

“There is a clear trend across the Pacific of erosion of the Fourth Estate as governments in the region clamp down.

“Part of the reason is the unprecedented scrutiny governments are facing from so-called citizen journalists. The governments are lashing out in various ways, such as stronger legislation, and the mainstream news media is caught in the crossfire,” he said.

“Of course, the AAP presence and coverage has waned, but the AAP at least used to step up during crucial times, such as cyclones and political uprisings, as in the Fiji coups and the Solomon Islands conflict.

“Pacific journalism capacity is lacking due to various structural weaknesses in the system and AAP used to fill the gap at crucial times.”

As an example of the work AAP did in the Pacific, it was the first organisation to tell the world of the 1987 Fiji coup, through then Fiji correspondent James Shrimpton, who also played a round of golf a week later with coup instigator Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka and gained another exclusive.

As journalists reacted with shock around the region, veteran Pacific journalist Michael Field remarked on The Pacific Newsroom social media platform:

‘Legendary journalists’
“AAP were legendary Pacific journalists. They had bureaux in Port Moresby and Suva, and they covered big stories. They cared about the region.

“It was AAP who told the world first about Rabuka’s coup. It was AAP who, as a competitor, I worried about. And I worked for them over the years, marvellous people…”

AAP CEO Bruce Davidson said yesterday: “We’ve seen a lot of cutbacks, closures, a reduction in news coverage by the traditional media companies across Australia; across the rest of the world.

“News agencies have endured [a tough environment] for quite a long time, but we are now in a situation where too many of our customers are not wanting to pay for our content.

“Too many of our customers are relying on what is on Google, what’s out there on Facebook in terms of their content generation,” Davidson said, explaining the rationale for the decision.

The Australian Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEEA) trade union labelled the decision to close the newswire as “irresponsible” and called on the government to rein in digital giant platforms, in a strongly worded statement.

“Look at the news stories, the photos, the coverage, the quotes and the enormous spectrum of excellent journalism that AAP has supplied over the past 85 years. AAP delivers news, photos and subediting services that the major media groups either cannot or will not,” MEAA media federal president Marcus Strom said.

Government failure blamed
He blamed the media crisis on the Australian government’s failure to adequately deal with the effect digital content aggregators, search engines and social media has had on news content makers.

“Google and Facebook are riding the coattails of news outlets, using the outlet’s news stories to lure away their audiences and advertisers which leads to the platforms also taking from the revenue streams that those news outlets sorely need,” Strom said.

“This erosion of media revenues through the proliferation of sharing of content for free by the giant digital platforms is a major cause of why AAP is losing subscriber revenue.”

In an earlier submission to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) digital platform inquiry, MEAA called for a percentage of revenue to be levied on digital platforms for the use of media content, with the funding then to be retained and distributed through a Public Interest Journalism Fund.

AAP made a similar proposal in its submission, the MEAA statement added.

MEAA chief executive Paul Murphy said: “In its final response to the ACCC inquiry last year, the federal government failed to pick up on this recommendation or even to introduce proper regulation of digital platforms. The AAP crisis makes it imperative that this proposal be revisited.

“The government must deal with the serious case of market failure that is resulting in a decline in quality public interest journalism, which is essential for our democracy.”

AAP will close it doors on June 26, while the subediting arm Pagemasters will close in August.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Alexandra Wake of RMIT University

Australia’s news landscape, and the ability of citizens to access quality journalism, has been dealt a major blow by the announcement the Australian Associated Press is closing, with the loss of 180 journalism jobs.

Although AAP reporters and editors are generally not household names, the wire service has provided the backbone of news content for the country since 1935, ensuring every newspaper (and therefore every citizen) has had access to solid reliable reports on matters of national significance.

All news outlets have relied on AAP’s network of local and international journalists to provide stories from areas where their own correspondents could not go, from the courts to parliament and everywhere in between.

READ MORE: Media Files: What does the Nine Fairfax merger mean for diversity and quality journalism?

Despite a shrinking number of journalists in recent years and a rapid decrease in funding subscriptions, AAP continued to stand by its mission to provide news without political partisanship or bias. Speed was essential for the agency, but accuracy was even more important.

But AAP has struggled in recent years as newspapers and radio and television stations have sought to cut costs and started sourcing content for free from the internet, thanks to global publishing platforms, such as Google.

When AAP shut down its New Zealand newswire in 2018, it said subscribers were under pressure and asking for lower fees.

Media mergers, such as that of Nine and Fairfax, have also been bad for AAP, as companies consolidated their subscriptions. Sky News also gave up its AAP subscription to use News Limited in 2018.

The mantra within AAP had long been, if a major shareholder sneezes, the wire agency catches a cold.

Independence and integrity
In the opening to the book, On the Wire: The Story of Australian Associated Press, published in 2010 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of AAP, John Coomber wrote about the value of the wire service:

So much has changed in the news industry since AAP was formed by Keith Murdoch in 1935. Back then, it took a staff of only 12 people, with bureaus in London and New York, to bring overseas news into Australia.

But even in its earliest days, as an amalgamation of two agencies, the Australian Press Association and the Sun Herald Cable Service, it was set up to save money.

With the cost of cables, which were charged by the word, the pooling of resources was significant at the time. The AAP journalists were therefore required to create concise Australian-focused reports for local papers.

Although AAP reports were sometimes drawn together from other news sources, the agency’s reporters sometimes did their own original reporting. This led to wordage blowouts on major events, such as Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Austria in 1938, which set a record for the AAP’s wordage for the year.

The second world war was an unlikely boost to AAP as senior journalists from Australian papers were seconded to war zones as AAP special representatives.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Ray Maley, later Prime Minister Robert Menzies’ press secretary, was sent to Singapore. His story of the first clash between Australian and Japanese troops was widely used in newspapers in Britain and the US, as well as Australia.

Winston Turner, “our man in Batavia” (now Jakarta), was one of the last AAP journalists to get out of the region, escaping the invading Japanese by the narrowest of margins.

Award-winning journalism
AAP’s glory days weren’t just confined to the past. It has published numerous, award-winning stories in recent years, such as Lisa Martin’s report on Peter Dutton’s au pair scandal.

Long-time readers of Fairfax newspapers might remember the federal budget in 2017 when AAP filled the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age because Fairfax reporters had gone on strike. The copy written by Fairfax’s skeleton staff was sloppy, while AAP’s stories shone with the agency’s emphasis on accuracy.

AAP photographers, too, have captured moments of Australian history, such as Lukas Coch’s Walkley Award-winning picture of Linda Burney in blue high heels in the air celebrating the passage of the marriage equality law in 2017.

Coch also took the famous photo of then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard in the arms of an AFP officer when she lost a shoe while exiting a Canberra restaurant surrounded by protesters.

Rich training ground lost
One of the saddest parts of the closure of AAP is the loss of fantastic training opportunities for young reporters starting out in journalism.

AAP has produced some big names in journalism, including Kerry O’Brien, the PNG correspondent in the 1960s, and SMH editor Lisa Davies and Joe Hildebrand, who both started as AAP cadets.

AAP has solidly taken in four or five cadets each year for the past decade, and in recent years, a small group of editorial assistants. Over 12 months, the AAP cadets have been taught to write fast and accurately while also learning shorthand, video skills, ethics and media law.

During the global financial crisis in the 2000s, AAP took four cadets, while The Age took on none, and the Herald Sun only two.

As news of the AAP’s closure spreads across the country, it will be seen as yet another blow to public interest journalism in Australia.

Australia needs more sources of news, not fewer. The loss of AAP should be mourned not just by news men and women across the country, but by every single person who cares about democracy and the valuable work journalists do in keeping the public informed and the powerful to account.

By Dr Alexandra Wake, programme manager, journalism, RMIT University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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