REVIEW: By Pat Baskett

In the days before mobile phones and emails, there were telephone trees. They grew and spread messages like leaves, thriving on the fertile ground of common beliefs and support for a particular cause.

It worked like this: one member of a group phoned 10 others who phoned another 10, each of whom phoned 10 more. On and on . . . The caller was never anonymous, relationships were established — or you simply said, “no thanks”.

The task of spreading information, before the internet, was time-consuming and labour intensive. Photocopiers, which became widely used only in the late 1970s, replaced an invaluable machine called a duplicator. You cranked the handle, one turn for each page, hoping the paper wouldn’t stick. How long did it take to do a thousand?

Next came the mail-out — folding, stuffing envelopes, sticking on stamps if funds allowed, or delivering them by hand into letterboxes.

The process was convivial, the days were busy but there was always time. There needed to be, because the issue was urgent.

The Cold War, that period of perilous mistrust between the communist Soviet Union and the “free” West, led by the United States, engulfed us in fear of a nuclear holocaust. Barely a generation separated us from the end of World War II when nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

The mutually assured destruction (MAD) these weapons promised was a fragile pseudo peace. In our neighbourhood peace groups, we understood the devastation a nuclear winter would bring and we worked out the radius of death and damage from a bomb dropped on our own cities.

An essential step

Yet more than nuclear weapons was, and still is, at stake. The movement was called the Peace Movement because banning nukes was considered the essential step in ensuring world peace.

The stockpile of nuclear weapons held by each side was more than enough to eradicate all, or most, life on earth — and it still is.

Those existential threats have a familiar ring, though the cause we face today adds another dimension. So far, the benefits of almost instant communication and dissemination of information haven’t enabled the world to devise for climate disruption what activists, uniquely in New Zealand, achieved — the 1986 nuclear weapons-free legislation.

Passed by the Labour government of David Lange, it prohibits not just weapons but nuclear-powered warships — including those of our former ANZUS allies, namely the United States.

There has never been any question of rescinding this act. It remains in safe obscurity — to such an extent that I wonder how many of our Gen X contemporaries are aware of its existence.

Yet more than nuclear weapons was, and still is, at stake. The movement was called the Peace Movement because banning nukes was considered the essential step in ensuring world peace.

In 1984, 61 percent of the population were living in 86 locally declared nuclear-weapons-free zones. Academic activists came together to form Scientists Against Nuclear Arms (SANA) and Engineers for Social Responsibility (ESR – this group now focuses on the climate disruption).

The medical fraternity formed a local branch of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW).

Extraordinary sleuthing talent
Much of the information which fuelled the work of all these groups was brought to light by the extraordinary sleuthing talent of one man. Owen Wilkes is described as ” . . . the intellect behind New Zealand’s anti-nuclear stance” in a recent book, Peacemonger: Owen Wilkes international peace researcher, published by Raekaihau Press in association with Steele Roberts Aotearoa.

The book consists of 12 essays by friends and collaborators, themselves experts in their individual fields and who leave their own legacies of contribution to the knowledge that led to the anti-nuclear legislation.

They include physicist Dr Peter Wills who was instrumental in setting up SANA and Auckland University’s Centre for Peace Studies; investigative journalist and researcher Nicky Hager; and veteran peace and human rights activist Maire Leadbeater. Two contributions are by Wilkes’s colleagues at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo Norway, Dr Ingvar Botnen and Dr Nils Petter Gleditsch.

Wilkes spent six years from 1976 working in Oslo and also at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The work is edited by Mark Derby and Wilkes’s partner May Bass. While a traditional biography with a single author may have avoided the repetition of information, the various personal anecdotes and responses result in the portrayal of an unconventional, highly talented individual.

In his introduction, Derby sums up Wilkes’s life: “Although invariably non-violent, politically non-aligned and generally law-abiding, Owen encountered official opposition, harassment and intimidation in various forms as he became internationally known for the quality and impact of his peace research.”

Wilkes was born in Christchurch in 1940 and died in Kawhia in 2005. In his early adult years he worked as an entomologist on various projects supported by the US military, including at McMurdo base in the Antarctic. These, he discovered, were connected with a US military germ warfare project.

Using official information laws
His gift was to see through, and behind, the information government made public about our relationship to our official allies, essentially the US. To do this he used our own official information laws and the American equivalent, plus any public reports to congress and US budget reports he could lay hands on.

Rubbish bags also feature in a couple of accounts.

What now may be stored as megabytes of information consists of boxes and folders of carefully catalogued material, the bulk of which is lodged at the Alexander Turnbull Library (with information also at the university libraries of Auckland and Canterbury).

The truth Wilkes was committed to appears, in retrospect, somehow simpler than that of the struggle towards a fossil-free future and a liveable planet for all. Peace is a part of this and the nukes are still there.

Wilkes documented how in many cases what was billed as civilian also had profound military implications. This was nowhere more clear than in the anti-bases campaign which Murray Horton chronicles — bases being sites in remote locations for monitoring or receiving satellite information, some of which new technology has rendered obsolete.

These include Mt St John near Lake Tekapo and Black Birch near Blenheim, and those still operating at Tangimoana in the Manawatu and at Waihopai, also near Blenheim.

Wilkes’s unconventional appearance and lifestyle — he famously wore shorts in sub-zero temperatures when skiing in Norway — made him a target for accusations of being a communist, a not uncommon slander of the peace movement.

Having sharp eyes
Maire Leadbeater, in her account of his long investigation by the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, suggests his only “crime” was “to have sharp eyes and the ability to put two and two together”.

Yet there were more conventional sides to his interests. One was archaeology, beginning in his 1962 when he worked as a field archaeologist for the Canterbury Museum. This continued after he left the peace movement in the early 1990s and worked for the Waikato Department of Conservation in a variety of jobs including filing archaeological and historical records.

The truth Wilkes was committed to appears, in retrospect, somehow simpler than that of the struggle towards a fossil-free future and a liveable planet for all. Peace is a part of this and the nukes are still there.

• Peacemonger – Owen Wilkes: International Peace Researcher, edited by May Bass and Mark Derby. Published by Raekaihau Press in association with Steele Roberts Aotearoa (2022). This article was first published by Newsroom is republished with the author’s and Newsroom’s permission. Asia Pacific Report editor David Robie is one of the contributing authors.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

While the covid-19 pandemic’s relentless cyclone continues across the globe wreaking havoc on economies and social systems, this book sheds light on the adversarial reporting culture of the media, and how it impacts on racism and politicisation driving the coverage.

It explores the global response to the covid-19 pandemic, and the role of national and international media, and governments, in the initial coverage of the developing crisis.

With specific chapters written mostly by scholars living in these countries, Covid-19, Racism and Politicization: Media in the Midst of a Pandemic examines how the media in Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, New Zealand, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and the United States have responded to the pandemic, and highlights issues specific to these countries, such as racism, Sinophobia, media bias, stigmatisation of victims and conspiracy theories.

This book explores how the covid-19 coverage developed over the year 2020, with special focus given to the first six months of the year when the reporting trends were established.

The introductory chapter points out that the media deserve scrutiny for their role in the day-to-day coverage that often focused on adversarial issues and not on solutions to help address the biggest global health crisis the world has seen for more than a century.

In chapter 2, co-editor Dr Kalinga Seneviratne, former head of research at the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) takes a comprehensive look at how the blame game developed in the international media with a heavy dose of Sinophobia, and how between March and June 2020 a global propaganda war developed.

He documents how conspiracy theories from both the US and China developed after the virus started spreading in the US and points out some interesting episodes that happened in the US in 2019 that may have vital relevance for the investigation of the origins of the virus.

Attacks on WHO
The attacks on the World Health Organisation (WHO), particularly by the former Trump administration, are well documented with a timeline of how WHO worked on investigating the virus in its early stages with information provided from China.

The chapter also discusses the racism that underpinned the propaganda war, especially from the West, which led to the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s controversial call for an “independent” inquiry into the origins of the pandemic that riled China.

“The covid-19 pandemic has exposed the inadequacies and inequalities of the globalised world. In an information-saturated society, it has also laid bare many political economy issues especially credibility of news, dangers of misinformation, problems of politicisation, lack of media literacy, and misdirected government policy priorities,” argues co-editor Sundeep Muppidi, professor of communications at the University of Hartford in the US.

“This book explores the implications of some of these issues, and the government response, in different societies around the world in the initial periods of the pandemic.”

In chapter 3, Muppidi examines specifically the US media coverage of covid-19 and he explores the “othering” of the blame related to failures and non-performances from politicians, governments and media networks themselves.

Yun Xiao and Radika Mittal, writing about a study they have done on the coverage in The New York Times during the early months of the covid-19 pandemic, argue that unsubstantiated criticism of governance measures, lack of nuance and absence of alternative narratives is indicative of a media ideology that strengthens and embeds the process of “othering”.

Ankuran Dutta and Anupa Goswani from Gauhati University in Assam, India, analyse the coverage of the covid-19 crisis in five Indian newspapers using 10 key words. They argue that the Indian media coverage could be seen as what constitutes “Sinophobia” with some mainstream media even calling it the “Wuhan Virus”.

Historical background
They trace the historical background to India’s anti-China nationalism, and show how it has been reflected in the covid-19 coverage, especially after India became one of the world’s hotspots.

“This Sinophobia hasn’t much impacted on the government policy; rather it has tightened its nationalist sentiments promoting Indian vaccines over the Chinese.” They say the Indian media’s Sinophobia has abated after the delta variant hit India.

“The narrative concerning covid-19 has taken a sharp turn bringing out the loopholes of the government’s inability to sustain its vigilance against the virus,” he notes, adding, ‘considering the global phobia concerning the delta variant put India in a tight spot and India has to defend itself from its newfound identity of being the primary source of this seemingly untameable variant.”

Zhang Xiaoying from the Beijing Foreign Studies University and Martin Albrow from the University of Wales explain what they call the “Moral Foundation of the Cooperative Spirit” in chapter 4.

Drawing on Chinese philosophical traditions—Confucianism, Daoism and Mohism—they argue that the “cooperative spirit” enshrined in these philosophies is reflected in the Chinese media’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in its early stages. Taking examples from the Chinese media—Xinhua, China Daily, Global Times and CGTN—they emphasise that the Chinese media has promoted international cooperation rather than indulge in blame games or politicising the issue.

This chapter provides a good insight into Chinese thinking when it comes to journalism.

Chapters on Sri Lanka and New Zealand examine how positive coverage in the local media of the governments’ initially successful handling of the covid-19 pandemic has contributed to emphatic election victories for the ruling parties.

Hit on NZ media industry
David Robie, founding director of Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre, explains in his chapter how New Zealand’s magazine sector was devastated by the pandemic lockdowns and economic downturn, although enterprising buy-outs and start-ups contributed to a recovery.

He points out that a year later, in April 2021, Media Minister Kris Faafoi, himself a former journalist, announced a NZ$50 million plan to help the media industry deal with its huge drop in income, because, as he says, Facebook and Google were instrumental in drawing advertising revenue away from local media players.

The chapter from Bangladesh offers a depressing picture of the social issues that came up as the virus spread, such as the stigmatisation and rejection of returning migrant worker who have for years provided for families back home, and how old people were abandoned by their families when they were suspected of having contacted the virus.

The chapter gives a clear illustration of how the adversarial reporting culture of the media impacts negatively on the community and its social fabrics.

But, the chapter’s author, Shameem Reza, communications lecturer at Dhaka University, says that when the second outbreak started in March 2021, he observed a shift in the media coverage of covid-19 pandemic.

Now, the stories are more about harassment and discrimination, such as migrant workers facing hurdles to access vaccine; uncertainty over confirming air tickets and flights for their return; and facing risk of losing jobs and becoming unemployed. Thus, now the media coverage particularly includes ordinary peoples’ suffering.

Reza believes that the initial stigmatisation of victims, had influenced social media coverage of harassment, and “changed agendas in the public sphere”.

Lack of skills, knowledge
The authors argue in the chapter on the Philippines that the covid-19 coverage exposed the “lack of skills and knowledge in reporting on health issues”. Said a senior newspaper editor, “in the past, whenever there were training opportunities on science or health reporting, we’d send the young reporters to give them the chance to go out of the newsroom. Now we know we should have sent editors and senior reporters.”

In the concluding chapter, Seneviratne and Muppidi discuss various social and economic issues that should be the focus of the coverage as the world recovers from the covid-19 pandemic that reflects the inequalities around the world. These include not only vaccine rollouts, but also the vulnerability of migrant labour and their rights, the plight of casual labour in the so-called “gig economy”, priority for investments on health services, the power of Big Tech and many others.

This book is an attempt to raise the voices of the “Global South” in discussing the media’s role in the coverage of the covid-19 crisis, explain Seneviratne and Muppidi, pointing out that there cannot be a return to the “normal” when that is full of inequalities that have been exposed by the pandemic.

“There are many issues that the media should be mindful of in reporting the inevitable recovery from the covid-19 pandemic in 2021 and beyond.”

Krishan Dutta is a freelance journalist writing for IDN – News (In-Depth News). An earlier version of this review was first published by IDN-News under the title “New book explores how adversarial reporting culture drives politicised covid-19 coverage and this version is republished from Pacific Journalism Review.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

When Commodore (now rear admiral retired and an elected prime minister) Voreqe Bainimarama staged Fiji’s fourth “coup to end all coups” on 5 December 2006, it was widely misunderstood, misinterpreted and misrepresented by a legion of politicians, foreign affairs officials, journalists and even some historians.

A chorus of voices continually argued for the restoration of “democracy” – not only the flawed version of democracy that had persisted in various forms since independence from colonial Britain in 1970, but specifically the arguably illegal and unconstitutional government of merchant banker Laisenia Qarase that had been installed on the coattails of the third (attempted) coup in 2000.

Yet in spite of superficial appearances, Bainimarama’s 2006 coup contrasted sharply with its predecessors.

Bainimarama attempted to dodge the mistakes made by Sitiveni Rabuka after he carried out both of Fiji’s first two coups in 1987 while retaining the structures of power.

Instead, notes New Zealand historian Robbie Robertson who lived in Fiji for many years, Bainimarama “began to transform elements of Fiji: Taukei deference to tradition, the provision of golden eggs to sustain the old [chiefly] elite, the power enjoyed by the media and judiciary, rural neglect and infrastructural inertia” (p. 314). But that wasn’t all.

[H]e brazenly navigated international hostility to his illegal regime. Then, having accepted an independent process for developing a new constitution, he rejected its outcome, fearing it threatened his hold on power and would restore much of what he had undone. (Ibid.)

Bainimarama reset electoral rules, abolished communalism in order to pull the rug from under the old chiefly elite, and provided the first non-communal foundation for voting in Fiji.

Landslide victory
Then he was voted in as legal prime minister of Fiji with an overwhelming personal majority and a landslide victory for his fledgling FijiFirst Party in September 2014. He left his critics in Australia and New Zealand floundering in his wake.

Robertson is well-qualified to write this well-timed book with Bainimarama due to be tested again this year with another election. He is a former history lecturer at the Suva-based regional University of the South Pacific at the time of Rabuka’s original coups (when I first met him).

He and his journalist wife Akosita Tamanisau wrote a definitive account of the 1987 events and the ousting of Dr Timoci Bavadra’s visionary and multiracial Fiji Labour Party-led government, Fiji: Shattered Coups (1988), ultimately leading to his expulsion from Fiji by the Rabuka regime. He also followed this up with Government by the Gun (2001) on the 2000 coup, and other titles.

Robertson later returned to Fiji as professor of Development Studies at USP and he has also been professor and head of Arts and Social Sciences at James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, as well as holding posts at La Trobe University, the Australian National University and the University of Otago.

He has published widely on globalisation. He is thus able to bring a unique perspective on Fiji over three decades and is currently professor and dean of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne.

Since 2006, Fiji has slipped steadily away from Australian and New Zealand influence, as outlined by Robertson. However, this is a state of affairs blamed by Bainimarama on Canberra and Wellington for their failed and blind policies.

Even since the 2014 election, Bainimarama has maintained a “hardline” on the Pacific’s political architecture through his Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) alternative to the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), and on the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) Plus trade deal.

‘Turned their backs’
While in Brisbane for an international conference in 2015, Bainimarama took the opportunity to remind his audience that Australia and New Zealand “as traditional friends had turned their backs on Fiji”. He added:

How much sooner we might have been able to return Fiji to parliamentary rule if we hadn’t expended so much effort on simply surviving … defending the status quo in Fiji was indefensible, intellectually and morally (p. 294).

For the first time in Fiji’s history, Bainimarama steered the country closer to a “standard model of liberal democracy” and away from the British colonial and race-based legacy.

“Government still remained the familiar goose,” writes Robertson, “but this time, its golden eggs were distributed more evenly than before”. The author attributes this to “bypassing chiefly hands” for tribal land lease monies, through welfare and educational programmes no longer race-bound, and through bold rural public road, water and electrification projects.

Admittedly, argues Robertson, like Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara (Fiji’s prime minister at independence and later president), Rabuka and Qarase, “Bainimarama had cronies and the military continues to benefit excessively from his ascendancy”. Nevertheless, Bainimarama’s “outstanding controversial achievement remains undoubtedly his rebooting of Fiji’s operating system in 2013”.

Robertson’s scholarship is meticulous and drawn from an impressive range of sources, including his own work over more than three decades. One of the features of his latest book are his analysis of former British SAS Warrant Officer Lisoni Ligairi and the role of the First Meridian Squadron (renamed in 1999 from the “coup proof” Counter Revolutionary Warfare Unit – CRWU), and the “public face” of Coup 3, businessman George Speight, now serving a life sentence in prison for treason.

His reflections on and interpretations of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces Board of Inquiry (known as BoL) into the May 2000 coup are also extremely valuable. Much of this has never before been available in an annotated and tested published form, although it is available as full transcripts on the “Truth for Fiji” website.

‘Overlapping conspiracies’
As Robertson recalls, by mid-May, “there were many overlapping conspiracies afoot … Within the kava-infused wheels within wheels, coup whispers gained volume”. Ligairi’s role was pivotal but BoL put most of the blame for the coup on the RFMF for “allowing” one man so much power, especially one it considered ill-equipped to be a director and planner’ (p. 140).

The BoL testimony about the November 2000 CRWU mutiny before Bainimarama escaped with his life through a cassava patch, also fed into Robertson’s account, although he admits Colonel Jone Baledrokadroka’s ANU doctoral thesis is the best account on the topic, “Sacred King and Warrior Chief:The role of the military in Fiji politics”.

It was a bloody and confused affair, led by the once loyal [Captain Shane] Stevens, 40 CRWU soldiers, many reportedly intoxicated, seized weapons and took over the Officers Mess, Bainimarama’s office and administration complex, the national operations centre and the armoury in the early afternoon. They wanted hostages; above all they wanted Bainimarama. (p. 164)

The book is divided into four lengthy chapters plus an Introduction and Conclusion – 1. The Challenge of Inheritance about the flawed colonial legacy, 2. The Great Turning on Rabuka’s 1987 coups and the Taukei indigenous supremacy constitution, 3. Redux: The Season for Coups on Speight’s attempted (and partially successful) 2000 coup, and 4. Plus ça Change …? on Bainimarama’s political “reset”. (The Bainimarama success in outflanking his Pacific critics is perhaps best represented by his diplomatic success in co-hosting the “Pacific” global climate change summit in Bonn in 2017.)

One drawback from a journalism perspective is the less than compelling assessment of the role of the media over the period, considering the various controversies that dogged each coup, especially the Speight one when accusations were made against some journalists as having been too close to the coup makers.

One of Fiji’s best journalists and editors, arguably the outstanding investigative reporter of his era, Jo Nata, publisher of the Weekender, sided with Speight as a “media minder” and was jailed for treason.

However, while Robertson in several places acknowledges Nata’s place in Fiji as a journalist, there is no real examination of his role as journalist-turned-coup-propagandist. This ought to be a case study.

Robertson noted how Nata’s Weekender exposed “morality issues” in Rabuka’s cabinet in 1994 without naming names. The Review news and business magazine followed up with a full report in the April edition that year, naming a prominent female journalist who was sleeping with the post-coup prime minister, produced a love child and who still works for The Fiji Times today (p. 118).

Nata then promised a special issue on the 21 women Rabuka had had affairs with since stepping down from the military. However, after Police Commissioner Isikia Savua spoke to him, the issue never appeared. (A full account is in Pacific Journalism Review – The Review, 1994).

NBF debacle
Elsewhere in the book is an outline of the National Bank of Fiji (NBF) debacle that erupted when an audit was leaked to the media: “In fact, the press, particularly The Fiji Times and The Review, were pivotal in exposing the scandal.” Robertson added:

The Review had earlier been threatened with deregistration over its publication of Rabuka’s affair[s] in 1994; now both papers were threatened with Malaysian-style licensing laws to ensure that they remained respectful of Pacific cultural sensitivities and did not denigrate Fijian business acumen. (p. 121)

The bank collapsed in late 1995 owing more than $220 million or nearly 9 percent of Fiji’s GDP – an example of the nepotism, corruption and poor public administration that worsened in Fiji after Rabuka’s coups.

On Coup 1, Robertson recalls how apart from Rabuka’s masked soldiers inside Parliament, “other teams fanned out across the city to seize control of telecommunication power authorities, media outlets and the Government Buildings” (p. 65).

But there is little reflective detail about Rabuka’s “seduction” of the Fiji and international journalists, or how after closing down the two daily newspapers, the neocolonial Fiji Times reopened while the original Fiji Sun opted to close down rather than publish under a military-backed regime.

About Coup 3, Robertson recalls “[Speight] was articulate and comfortable with the media – too comfortable, according to some journalists. They felt that this intimate media presence ‘aided the rebel leader’s propaganda fire … gave him political fuel’. They were not alone’ (p. 154) (see Robie, 2001).

On the introduction of the 2010 Fiji Media Industry Development Decree, which still casts a shadow over the country and is mainly responsible for the lowest Pacific “partly free” rankings in the global media freedom indexes, Robertson notes how it was “Singapore-inspired”. The decree “came out in early April 2010 for discussion and mandated that all media organisations had to be 90 percent locally owned. The implication for the News Corporation Fiji Times and for the 51 percent Australian-owned Daily Post were obvious” (p. 254).

The Fiji Times was bought by Mahendra Patel, long-standing director and owner of the Motibhai trading group. (He was later jailed for a year for “abuse of office” while chair of Post Fiji.) The Daily Post was closed down.

Facing a long history of harassment by various post-coup administrations (including a $100,000 fine in January 2009 for publishing a letter describing the judiciary as corrupt, and deportations of publishers), The Fiji Times is heading into this year’s elections facing a trial for alleged “sedition” confronting the newspaper.

In spite of my criticism of limitations on media content, The General’s Goose is an excellent book and should be mandatory background reading for any journalist covering South Pacific affairs, especially those likely to be involved in coverage of this year’s general election.

The General’s Goose: Fiji’s Tale of Contemporary Misadventure, by Robbie Robertson. Canberra: Australian National University. 2017. 366 pages. ISBN 9781760461270.

References
Baledrokadroka, J. (2012). The sacred king and warrior chief: The role of the military in Fiji politics. Unpublished doctoral thesis. Canberra: Australian National University.

Robertson, R., & Sutherland, W. (2001). Government by the gun: The unfinished business of Fiji’s 2000 coup. Sydney & London: Pluto Press & Zed Books.

Robertson, R., & Tamanisau, A. (1988). Fiji: Shattered coups. Sydney: Pluto Press.

Robie, D. (2001). Coup coup land: The press and the putsch in Fiji. Asia Pacific Media Educator, 10, 149-161. See also for an extensive media coverage examination of the 1987 Rabuka coups: Robie, D. (1989). Blood on their banner: Nationalist struggles in the South Pacific. London: Zed Books; 2006 coup and 2014 elections: Robie, D. (2016). ‘Unfree and unfair’?: Media intimidation in Fiji’s 2014 elections. In Ratuva, S., & Lawson, S. (Eds.), The people have spoken: The 2014 elections in Fiji. Canberra: ANU Press.

The Review (1994). Rabuka and the reporter. Pacific Journalism Review, 1(1), 20-22.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

War Reporters, a short video launched by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) last year to honour journalists facing “danger zones”. Its release coincided with the publication of RSF’s 50th book in the “100 photos for press freedom” series – this one dedicated to the work of Robert Capa.

REVIEW: By David Robie

Media coverage of the decapitation and other atrocities against journalists has heightened global awareness of just how dangerous the profession of journalists is when covering war zones, corruption and human rights violations under dictatorships.

“Although violence against journalists is not a new phenomenon, the trend has worsened,” writes New Zealand-based media academic, political scientist and analyst Maria Armoudian in her new book Reporting from the Danger Zone: Frontline journalists, their jobs, and an increasingly perilous future.

Researcher Dr Armoudian, lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of Auckland and author of the 2011 book Kill the Messenger, provides sobering statistics in her “danger zone for journalists” analysis.

Since Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded by Pakistani extremists in 2002, at least five journalists have been decapitated on the job.

Four years ago, in 2012, Paris-based media freedom advocacy agency Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) reported a 33 percent rise in journalist killings. This followed the world’s worst single massacre of journalists at Ampatuan on the southern island of Mindanao in the Philippines in November 2009 when at least 34 were killed.

To this day there has been no justice for the families of the victims.

The mounting death toll has been accompanied by a 37 percent rise in abductions (to 119) between 2013 and 2014, writes Armoudian, citing RSF statistics.

The author also summarises other media freedom organisation tallies, noting “hundreds more have been imprisoned of exiled”.

Armoudian goes to great pains to stress that it is the local journalists who bear the brunt of the violence and slayings, “accounting for more than 75 percent of journalists killed or imprisoned, and 90 percent of the abductions.

“The attacks signal a dark era for journalism and a stark departure from previous decades when combatants, at minimum, tolerated journalists, treating them as civilians, and often sought their sympathies.” (p. 1)

What has changed? The social media revolution and the realisation by extremist groups that they no longer need journalists to tell their story.

In fact, making martyrs of journalists make good video footage. They are the “collateral damage” of insurgencies.

This research project was funded by the University of Auckland, which covered a grant from the Faculty Research Fund.

The research for Danger Zone drew largely on interviews with 32 journalists worldwide, including New Zealand’s Jon Stephenson, the country’s only “war correspondent” but nobody from the Asia-Pacific. Twenty four of the journalists agreed to be named in the book while the rest chose to remain anonymous due to the continuing occupational dangers they face.

An Auckland University of Technology journalism graduate, Corazon Miller, now a reporter with The New Zealand Herald (who recently gained a scoop interview with controversial Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte), and a Pacific Media Centre (PMC) associate, also assisted with research and transcripts.

Danger Zone has seven chapters with the introduction entitled “Why ethical journalism matters”. The other chapters explore the “origin of stories” (sourcing), the foreign correspondents’ “afflictions”, “staying alive”, “living in a danger zone”, the “first casualty” and a conclusion.

Many of the journalists with long experience recount how difficult and risky the job has become.

Carol Williams, a veteran correspondent who has reported on the break-up of Yugoslavia and the Ukraine conflict, for example, recalls that human rights stories “just happened to occur on my turf”.

She had started off as a foreign correspondent covering nuclear disarmament and the superpower relationship during the Cold War. But she became motivated by witnessing

“some of the most horrible things that were done to children. In Sarajevo, the Serbs would shoot into schools and hospitals. Little six-year-old kids [were] seeing their teachers blown up in front of them …” (p. 21)

Freelance American journalist Dahr Jamail, with little previous journalism experience, was motivated by his “personal outrage”.

“I saw the selling of the [Iraq] War and was completely outraged and decided, ‘Well, I will go in.’ And one thing I can do as a US citizen is go in a report on how this is impacting [on] the Iraqi people because that’s the phase of the story that was totally omitted from the mainstream [media].” (p. 19)

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Roy Gutman, author of How We Missed the Story, argued that journalism in conflict zones provides change-makers and hope as an antidote for hopelessness.

“Journalism is one of the few means [that] we, maybe the only means, that I certainly had, or that we have as the general public, to expose horrible practices in the hope that somebody will do something about it. And that’s what journalism is all about.” (p. 21)

He exposed Serbian concentration camps and ethnic cleansing “killing fields” in Bosnia … and “that story did have impact, and have a wallop”.

It is pleasing to see Jon Stephenson, the only journalist to take on the NZ Defence Force establishment on a matter of truth and integrity – and win, featuring in this book several times.

In one chapter, Stephenson explains how difficult it is, especially as a freelancer with limited resources available, to get to a remote and dangerous conflict zone. His form of independent “embedding”, if it can be called that, is by becoming immersed with ordinary people, not the elites.

On his first trip to Afghanistan, Stephenson flew to India, took a train to the Pakistani border, and then made a long walk across the harsh countryside into Pakistan via Wagah.

“I just walked across the border … from the moment I arrived in Pakistan, I started collecting info on what the locals felt … on buses, and even in a hotel, I’d talk to the hotel clerk and … I met an MP from the Pakistani parliament. He invited me to his home in Islamabad. I interviewed the Saudi ambassador to Pakistan who I met on the roof of the Marriott being interviewed by CNN. And I just started there really and worked my way up.” (p. 110)

Stephenson met the family of Abdul Haq, one of the major resistance leaders during the so-called jihad against the Soviets, and ended up in a family compound in Peshawar with some other journalists.

As well as the analysis, Danger Zone provides some “helpful resources” for journalists. However, while useful, including some key links such as the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma, there are notable omissions, such as Reporters Sans Frontières/Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which runs an extensive safety programme for freelance journalists in particular. This is a curious oversight because RSF is mentioned in many citations.

Pacific Media Centre, which has been the most active unit on this issue in New Zealand with a Pacific Media Watch freedom project dating back to 1996, and is associated with RSF is also not listed. This is strange given the fact that Danger Zone originated in Auckland and that the PMC, based at the neighbouring university, has produced several publications on conflict and peace journalism.

There is also no mention of the world’s worst atrocity against journalists, the Ampatuan massacre in the Philippines.

However, these are minor criticisms. Essentially this book is inspirational for a new generation of journalists in a troubled era for journalism and a helpful resource for media school libraries.

It is also encouraging that all the interviewees for this project “expressed compassion and empathy for victims of violence, abuse, and failed institutions, and most were vicariously traumatised as a result”. Ethical journalism is alive and defiant in the face of mounting pressures.

But, warns Dr Armoudian, far more work is needed from scholars, international media law experts, “and journalists themselves”, in developing safer ways to secure vital information for democracies.

Reporting from the Danger Zone: Frontline journalists, their jobs, and an increasingly perilous future, by Maria Armoudian. New York and London: Routledge, 2017. 155pp. ISBN 978-1-138-84005-8

References:
Armoudian, Maria (2011). Kill The Messenger: The media’s role in the fate of the world. New York: Prometheus Books.

Gutman, Roy. (2008). How We Missed the Story: Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, and the hijacking of Afghanistan. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press