The Paris-based global media freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the guilty verdict against Filipino journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio whose case has been challenged since her arrest almost six years ago.

Cumpio was found guilty today on a charge of “financing terrorism” in the Philippines, and now faces a sentence of between 12 and 18 years in prison.

RSF released a statement condemning the verdict and questioning the Philippines government’s commitment to a free press.

“We are appalled by this verdict. Three RSF investigations and evidence presented in court by Frenchie Mae Cumpio’s lawyers clearly show how fabricated this case has been from the very beginning,” said RSF Asia-Pacific Bureau advocacy manager Aleksandra Bielakowska
in the statement in Taipei today.

Local and international groups have condemned the conviction of 26-year-old community journalist Cumpio, saying it sends a “chilling message” to media, activists, and even ordinary people in the Philippines, reports Rappler.

“Frenchie Mae Cumpio’s conviction represents a devastating failure on the part of the Philippine justice system and the authorities’ blatant disregard for press freedom,” said Bielakowska.

“The Philippines should serve as an international example of protecting media freedom — not a perpetrator that red-tags, prosecutes and imprisons journalists simply for doing their work.

‘Highlights systemic issues’
“This sentence only highlights the systemic issues in the country and the urgent need for comprehensive reforms.

“We renew our call on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to act without delay to end this injustice and release Frenchie Mae Cumpio immediately.

“Without his decisive action, there will be no meaningful difference from previous administrations that showed no regard for upholding a free press.”

Committee to Protect Journalists Asia-Pacific director Beh Lih Yi said the court ruling was “absurd” and that the promises made by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to uphold press freedom were “nothing but empty talk”.

She added that the Philippines must stop criminalising journalists.

According to the 2025 RSF World Press Freedom Index, the Philippines is 116th out of 180 countries surveyed.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

I unequivocally support Irish author Sally Rooney with all my heart and soul. The author risks imprisonment for donating funds from her books and the TV series based on Normal People to a Palestinian group.

Once again the United Kingdom tells Palestinians who they should support. Go figure.
In her opinion piece in The Irish Times last Saturday she said that:

“Activists who disrupt the flow of weapons to a genocidal regime may violate petty criminal statutes, but they uphold a far greater law and a more profound human imperative: to protect a people and culture from annihilation.”

Whenever the people resist or rebel they are deemed terrorists. That has been the case for indigenous people around the world from indigenous Americans to Indians in India to Aborigine and Māori, the Irish and the Scots, and the Welsh.

I went from being a “born-again” starry-eyed kibbutznik who believed in Zionism to a journalist who researched the facts and the hidden truths.

Those facts are revolting. Settler colonialism is revolting. Stealing homes is theft.

I kept in touch with some of my US-based Zionist kibbutznik mates. When I asked them to stop calling Palestinians animals, when I asked them not to say they had tails, when I asked them to stop the de-humanisation — the same de-humanisation that happened during the Nazi regime, they dumped me.

Zionism based on a myth
Jews who support genocide are antisemitic. They are also selfish and greedy. Zionists are the bully kids at school who take other kids toys and don’t want to share. They don’t play fair.

The notion of Zionism is based on a myth of the superiority of one group over another. It is religious nutterism and it is racism.

Empire is greed. Capitalism is greed. Settler colonialism involves extermination for those who resist giving up their land. Would you or I accept someone taking our homes, forcing us to leave our uneaten dinner on the table? Would you or I accept our kids being stolen, put in jail, raped, tortured.

The country was weird when I visited in 1982. It had just invaded Lebanon. Later that year it committed a genocide.

The Sabra and Shatila massacre was a mass murder of up to 3500 Palestinian refugees by Israel’s proxy militia, the Phalange, during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The horrific slaughter prompted outrage and condemnation around the world, with the UN General Assembly condemning it as “an act of genocide”.

I had been primed for sunshine and olives, but the country gave me a chill. The toymaker I worked with was a socialist and he told me I should feel sorry for the Palestinians.

It isn’t normal for a country to be ruled by the militia. Gun-toting soldiers roamed the streets. But you need to defend yourself when you steal.

Paranoia from guilt
Paranoia is a consequence of a persecutor who fails to recognise their guilt. It happens when you steal. The paranoia happens when you close doors. When you don’t welcome the other — whose home you stole.

In 2014, soldiers of the IDF — a mercenary macho army — were charged with raping their own colleagues. Now footage of the rape of Palestinian men are celebrated on national television in Israel in front of live audiences. Any decent person would be disgusted by this.

The army under this Zionist madness has committed — and continues to commit — the crimes it lied about Palestinians committing. And yes, the big fat liar has even admitted its own lies. The bully in the playground really doesn’t care now, it does not have to persuade the world it is right, because it is supported, it has the power.

This isn’t the warped Wild West where puritans invented the scalping of women and children — the sins of colonisers are many — this is happening now. We can stand for the might of racism or we can stand against racist policies and regimes. We can stand against apartheid and genocide.

Indigenous people must have the right to live in their homeland. Casting them onto designated land then invading that land is wrong.

When Israelis are kidnapped they are called hostages. When Palestinians are kidnapped they are called prisoners. It’s racist. It’s cruel. It’s revolting that anyone would support this travesty.

Far far more Palestinians were killed in the year leading up to October 7, 2023, than Israelis killed that day (and we know now that some of those Israelis were killed by their own army, Israel has admitted it lied over and again about the murder of babies and rapes).

Mercenary macho army
So who does murder and rape? The IDF. The proud mercenary macho army.

Once upon a time, a Palestinian kid who threw a stone got a bullet between the eyes. Now they get a bullet for carrying water, for going back to the homeground that has been bombed to smithereens. Snipers enjoy taking them down.

Drones operated by human beings who have no conscience follow children, follow journalists, follow nurses, follow someone in a wheelchair, and blow them to dust.

This is a game for the IDF. I’m sure some feel bad about it but they have to go along with it because they lose privileges if they do not. This sick army run by a sick state includes soldiers who hold dual US and Israeli citizenship.

Earlier this year I met a couple of IDF soldiers on holidays from genocide, breezily ordering their lattes in a local cafe. I tried to engage with them, to garner some sense of compassion but they used “them” and “they” to talk about Palestinians.

They lumped all Palestinians into a de-humanised mass worth killing. They blamed indigenous people who lived under a regime of apartheid and who are now being exterminated, for the genocide.

The woman was even worse than the man. She loathed me the minute she saw my badge supporting the Palestinian Solidarity Network of Aoteara. Hate spat from her eyes.

Madness.

De-brainwashing
I saw that the only prospect for them to change might be a de-brainwashing programme. Show them the real facts they were never given, show them real Palestinians instead of figments of their imagination.

It occurred to me that it really was very tempting to take them home and offer them a different narrative. I asked them if they would listen, and they said no. If I had forced them to come with me I would have been, you know, a hostage-taker.

Israel is evidence that the victim can become the persecutor when they scapegoat indigenous people as the villain, when they hound them for crime of a holocaust they did not commit.

And I get it, a little. My Irish and French Huguenot ancestors were persecuted. I have to face the sad horrid fact that those persecuted people took other people’s land in New Zealand. The victims became the persecutor.

Oh they can say they did not know but they did know. They just did not look too hard at the dispossession of indigenous people.

I wrote my book The Seasonwife at the ripe young age of 63 to reveal some of the suppressed truths about colonisation and about the greed of Empire — a system where the rich exploit the poor to help themselves. I will continue to write novels about suppressed truths.

And I call down my Jewish ancestors who hid their Jewishness to avoid persecution. I have experienced antisemitism.

Experienced cancelling
But I have experienced cancelling, not by my publisher I hasten to add, but I know agencies and publishers in my country who tell authors to shut up about this genocide, who call those who speak up anti-semitic.

I have been cancelled by Zionist authors. I don’t have a publisher like that but I know those who do, I know agencies who pressure authors to be silent.

I call on other authors to follow Rooney’s example and for pity’s sake stop referencing Hamas. Learn the truth.

Benjamin Netanyahu refused to deal with any other Palestinian representative. Palestinians have the right to choose their own representatives but they were denied that right.

What is a terrorist army? The IDF which has created killing field after killing field. Not just this genocide, but the genocide in Lebanon in 1982.

I have been protesting against the massacre of Palestinians since 2014 and I wish I had been more vocal earlier. I wish I had left the country when the Phalangists were killed. I did go back and report from the West Bank but I feel now, that I did not do enough. I was pressured — as Western writers are — to support the wrongdoer, the persecutor, not the victim.

I will never do that again.

Change with learning
I do believe that with learning we can change, we can work towards a different, fairer system — a system based on fairness not exploitation.

I stand alongside indigenous people everywhere.

So I say again, that I support Sally Rooney and any author who has the guts to stand up to the pressure of oppressive regimes that deny the rights of people to resist oppression.

I have spent a decade proudly standing with Palestinians and I will never stop. I believe they will be granted the right to return to their land. It is not anyone else’s right to grant that, really, the right of return for those who were forced out, and their descendants, is long overdue.

And their forced exile is recent. Biblical myths don’t stack up. Far too often they are stacked to make other people fall down.

Perhaps if we had all stood up more than 100,000 Palestinians would still be alive, a third of those children, would still be running around, their voices like bells instead of death calls.

I support Palestinians with all my heart and soul.

Saige England is an award-winning journalist and author of The Seasonwife, a novel exploring the brutal impacts of colonisation. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Once again Aotearoa New Zealand’s local elections were plagued by low voter turnout and a lack of engagement. Is the media coverage, or lack thereof, contributing to the problem — and what can it do to help?​

In dozens of campaign trail appearances, new Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown told audiences he planned to get rid of board members on the council-controlled organisations Auckland Transport and Eke Panuku.

But just days after his election victory, employment lawyer Barbara Buckett gave RNZ’s Morning Report what appeared to be surprising news on that repeated promise.

“There are legal processes and procedures that have to be followed [with board members’ employment],” she said.

“While he can influence, he certainly can’t interfere.”

Buckett added that the governing body of Auckland Council would have to consent to any changes to the boards.

Interviewer Guyon Espiner seemed startled.

‘He doesn’t have the power’
“So he doesn’t actually have power to do this?” he laughed. “He’s campaigned on something he can’t do?”

That reaction was understandable.

Despite admirable efforts from Stuff’s Todd Niall, the Herald’s Simon Wilson, The Spinoff and publicly-funded Local Democracy reporters, the promises and policies coming from mayoral candidates hadn’t received quite the same level of scrutiny they would have had if this were a general election.

If tough, fact-checking coverage was in comparatively short supply for the most high-profile mayoral election in the country, it was sometimes non-existent in ward races and less-heralded mayoral contests.

Pippa Coom, who lost her seat in Auckland’s Waitematā ward, told Mediawatch she didn’t see much coverage at all of her tight ward race against Mike Lee.

She said some media outlets didn’t publish their usual rundowns on ward races like hers, and as a result the “void was filled by misinformation and attack ads”.

“As a candidate I have to absolutely take responsibility for my own loss and for not reaching my potential supporters and not getting people out to vote,” she said.

“But the media coverage is such an important part of our democracy and our elections. So if it’s not there, it is going to … have an impact on election turnout and the result.”

Lack of coverage, engagement
The lack of coverage was matched by a lack of engagement from the public.

Turnout in this year’s election was around 40 percent across the country. In Auckland, it only reached 35 percent for the second election running.

Auckland Council carried out research where it quizzed non-voters on why they didn’t cast their ballot back in 2017.

The number one reason given was that they didn’t know anything about the candidates. Number two was that they didn’t know enough about the policies — and number three was that they couldn’t work out who to vote for.

In the weeks before the election, RNZ’s Lucy Xia vox-popped some Auckland students who told her that not only did they not vote, but they didn’t know the identity of the city’s mayor.

“I don’t really have an opinion,” one said. “Maybe for the prime minister next year. But for mayor? I don’t have views.”

The lack of engagement weighed on the mind of fill-in presenter John Campbell during last weekend’s episode of TVNZ’s Q+A.

Poorer suburbs lagged behind
In conversation with reporter Katie Bradford, he pointed to turnout in the poorer suburbs of Auckland, which — as usual — lagged behind richer areas.

“You have to say that a turnout below 20 percent in Ōtara is heartbreaking. It’s not good enough either,” he said.

“This is a dismal fail by someone.”

He went on to list some possible culprits for that — including central government, uninspiring local candidates and the election system itself.

There is some evidence pointing toward all of those.

In a BusinessDesk column, Pattrick Smellie said postal voting favours older homeowners, who are more likely to stick around at an address and to send letters than younger people and renters.

“It’s hardly news that no one under 40 has much experience of actually posting a letter. We’ve known for a while that postal voting skews local body voting to the asset-owning classes,” he wrote.

‘Boring’ consultation processes
Others criticised local government’s consultation processes, which are often boring and inaccessible for people with busy lives, along with the ratepayer roll which gives homeowners a vote for each property they own in different places.

But in response to Campbell, Bradford honed in on the media’s role in voter disengagement.

“I’m passionate about local government and there are lots of people out there who are. But how do we show people why it matters? It’s a frustration as a journalist,” she said.

Bradford told Mediawatch it was unclear whether the comparative paucity of media coverage on local government reflected a lack of public interest in the topic — or vice versa.

“It’s almost a chicken and egg situation. How much coverage the media does is so much based on what we think the public wants, and if people aren’t picking up the paper, or they’re switching off the radio or the TV when local government stories are on, they’re not going to run them,” Bradford told Mediawatch. 

TV and radio had particular difficulty producing interest stories about local government because council meetings aren’t renowned for creating interesting visuals or soundbites, Bradford said.

She thought it would help if stories explicitly connected council decisions to nationally-significant issues like the housing crisis or Wellington’s ongoing problems with its water and sewage.

‘Maybe media partly to blame’
“All of this stuff is so important and I think people think it’s always central government’s fault. They don’t necessarily think there’s council involvement and maybe the media is partly to blame for not explaining that stuff enough,” she said.

“But it’s not just our job. It’s also the job of Local Government NZ and councils to explain that.”

Bradford backed the idea of giving local government a similar amount of attention as central government, which is covered round-the-clock by teams of press gallery reporters.

But the economics of that move likely wouldn’t stack up for newsrooms, which are already experiencing significant financial constraints, she said.

She thought reporters could help by targeting the broken parts of the electoral system and shining a spotlight on the things that keep people from engaging with councils.

“This election shows that turnout didn’t get any better despite quite extensive coverage, despite a big campaign by LGNZ and others.

“Whatever we have right now is not working,” she said. “Something has to change.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Michael Andrew

An Auckland University of Technology graduate is practicing true community journalism by sharing the stories of Auckland’s most marginalised and vulnerable people.

Former AUT journalism student Six is the editor of the K’Road Chronicle, a community newspaper capturing the essence and eccentricities of Auckland’s infamous Karangahape Road which serves as home to so many homeless.

A self-described over-qualified, under-employed journalist, Six knows the road as if it were her home. It was for a time; she spent several years living on the streets.

READ MORE: Pacific research of ‘hard’ social issues profiled in new publication

She told Pacific Media Watch this experience gave her a unique perspective to write stories about other rough sleepers for the K’Road Chronicle – some of which have been made into a popular video series through a partnership with Stuff.

“It’s about building trust when I speak with them,” she says.

“I sit alongside them. Their story is my story.”

Supportive AUT Staff
While no longer homeless, Six was living on the streets during her time studying at AUT, a difficult period that she says was made easier with the support of the staff on her course.

“There was Greg Treadwell, Helen Sissons. Big respect for David Robie and his wife Del too, if it wasn’t for their support I’m not sure if I would have gotten through,” she says.

“Even the security guards, after I lost my key card and couldn’t afford to pay the $15 or whatever it was for the new one, they knew me and would let me in the building after hours.”

“And they even turned a blind eye when I’d occasionally spend the night on one of the couches.”

Head of AUT’s journalism department and Six’s former lecturer Dr Greg Treadwell says that her homelessness would have made her studies particularly challenging.

“There were rumours that she was sleeping down on the tenth floor, but I never went down to check.”

“So, if that was the level of support through inaction then I’m very happy to have provided that support.”

Social justice journalism
He says that such an experience would have bolstered her journalism with a strong sense of social justice.

“Her heart was always in the homeless community in many ways. And if there’s an advocacy journalism that’s appropriate, then the journalism that advocates for the homeless is fundamentally good journalism.

“If journalism speaks for the voiceless then the homeless have got to be the most voiceless in society.”

After graduating, Six had trouble finding work in the mainstream media, a problem that many journalism graduates are facing.

Her employment troubles forced her down other avenues, and while sitting on K’Road one day realised the wealth of stories that she could find through street locals. After pitching the idea and securing some initial funding from the K Road Business Association, the Chronicle was spawned.

Cult following
Now in its second year, the newspaper has attracted a cult following within the community and beyond.

“I can’t keep up with demand,” Six says. “I’m even getting asked for copies from AUT and the library.”

Other than sharing important stories, the paper is also providing employment for some K’Road locals who get given copies to sell themselves and keep the earnings, something that Dr Treadwell says is another reason why the Chronicle is a valuable asset for the homeless community.

He also says Six’s inability to find work in the mainstream media ultimately proved to be a service to journalism.

“I think it pushed Sister Six in the right direction,” he says.

“I personally think that the orthodoxy of mainstream newsrooms was never going to make her happy, she’s much more of an advocate than that.”

“So what she’s doing now is hugely valuable and helpful for society but also probably at this stage really good for her because she’s experienced the lacking of things in life, of comfort and so on.

“She knows what it’s like.”

Gonzo Journalism
A fan of American journalist Hunter S. Thompson, Six likens the type of work she does to Thompson’s Gonzo journalism, a style in which the writer becomes so involved with the subject and the subject’s world that he or she actually becomes part of the story.

Treadwell agrees.

“She’s the classic gonzo journalist in a lot of ways.

“She’s much more concerned with outcomes than process, much more interested in shining lights on injustice than necessarily following all the petty rules of the bureaucracy.

“Every city needs a sister six.”

The need for Six’s work is perhaps greater than ever. According to the Auckland Council the number of people classified as “homeless” in Auckland is 20,296. The number of people literally living without shelter day to day is 771.

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie agrees, saying that the K’Road Chronicle came at a critical time.

Paper for the voiceless
“It was an excellent and exciting initiative to start the K’Road Chronicle – not only is homelessness a growing problem in Auckland, but until this publication started the homeless were voiceless as well.”

During her time at AUT, Six filed stories on diversity for the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Scoop project.

Dr Robie says the type of diversity reporting that Six is doing is an example for all journalists.

“Journalists should be supporting the voiceless, marginalised and stigmatised far more than they do. The mainstream media are far too close to power and should be far more challenging.”

“Six and her community should be congratulated for taking up the challenge – journalism that cares.”

Caring is certainly a value, among others that Six employs in her work.

Journalism values
She says that any journalist can write advertorials or sensationalist articles but it takes a special set of values to write stories about those living on the fringes of society.

Resilience, persistence, resourcefulness, pragmatism and positivity are what enables her to get through life and do the work she does.

“A journalist is nothing without values,” she says.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By RNZ Pacific 

Clinging to to the top of a swaying coconut tree, Vanuatu journalist Edgar Howard carefully plucks out his phone from his pocket.

He’s clambered up there looking for a strong enough signal, so he can file his report to VBTC, the country’s public broadcaster in the capital, Port Vila.

That’s the way Edgar Howard often files his stories as one of the world’s most remote radio and TV correspondents, reporting on news and current affairs from Vanuatu’s northernmost islands in Torba province.

LISTEN: Remote Vanuatu journo goes above and beyond to tell stories

With increasing effects of climate change and rising seas, his work has become all the more important.

For 15 years he’s travelled between the 13 islands, sometimes motoring in his banana boat in high seas and strong winds for five hours at a time to reach the far-flung communities.

“The government must be informed about what’s happening in the province of Torba,” he said.

“I think there’s a lack of information there and that’s why the government does not know how exactly to help those people.”

According to him, there are plenty of stories to tell among the province’s 8000 people who make a living mostly from copra, coconuts, crabs, lobster and fish.

Self-taught and committed
Howard is self-taught and so committed he funded himself for the first few years until the public broadcaster VBTC took him on as a paid correspondent.

“I start like bottom up. I start with nothing and I build myself up and now I’m working with national TV and radio.”

Paying passengers hitch a ride on his boat to help defray the expensive fuel costs.

Howard doesn’t have a story in mind when he sets out as he knows there’s always something happening.

“Every day I get a story with the local people,” he said, explaining that the chief is always his first port of call when arriving on an island.

“He directs me to the people I have to talk to and I make my interview.”

Climate change coverage
The effects of climate change on the province’s coastal communities are some of the main stories he covers.

“Now they [have to] start to move inland because the place they lived before is covered by the sea.

“We’re not used to living in the middle of the bush. It’s a big change.

“Some of the historical sites we lost because of climate change, like the oldest places of our grandfathers.”

Resulting conflicts over land are also a big issue.

Conflict over land
“Because the land is not now enough, population growth is one issue and makes sometimes conflict with the land, the tribes.”

The loss of fish varieties, troubles with crops and ways to ensure fishing is sustainable for future generations are all subjects for his reports.

Howard has a 30-minute TV programme to fill every week which he films, edits and voices himself with a self-recorded stand-up at the start.

The recognition he gets when walking down the street on his occasional trips to Port Vila make him proud.

“They say, woah …Vois Blong Torba!” he laughed, referring to the name of his programme which he sends off on the weekly flight to the capital.

Risky reporting
It’s a risky business sending some of his reports from the top of a 30-metre-high tree, especially in heavy rain.

“Sometimes the tree is too slippery. I must make sure the phone is in my pocket. I find a branch of the tree to make sure I don’t fall and slowly I take the phone out of my pocket and I start to communicate.

“It takes me about 20 minutes up there to finish all my reporting.”

The reporting may be difficult, but the effort is worth it, Howard said.

An Australian-funded police post in Sola came about through his reporting.

“I feel so glad because it’s good feedback for my job. It’s so satisfying and I’m really glad because I feel I have contributed to the project.”

This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

“Fake news” combined with a lack of critical media judgment by many in the millennial generation is a major challenge to democracies across the world, says a leading Indian communication academic.

Speaking at the 26th annual conference of the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) conference with the theme “Disturbing Asian millennials: Some creative responses”, Professor Bharthur Sanjay, pro vice-chancellor of the University of Hyderabad, said the vulnerability of some states in the face of the social media crisis had led to a default response of shutting down the internet in “volatile contexts”.

In the case of India and some states, efforts to formally regulate fake news with legislated responses were withdrawn.

Papua New Guinea is an example of an Asia-Pacific country where a government minister has threatened to shut down Facebook for a month to research so-called “fake accounts”.

Professor Sanjay did not mention Papua New Guinea but he said the implications were wide-ranging for Asia-Pacific countries. Papua New Guinea is due to host APEC in November.

The WhatsApp social media platform – widely used throughout Asia – was cited as a leading outlet for disseminating fake news.

“Fake news is a bit of a misleading term, as fake news can mean many things – a mistake, intentional misleading, twisting a news story, or fabricating a complete lie,” Dr Sanjay said.

Fake accounts damage
In the opening address at the host Manipal University (MAHE) in Karnataka, South India, Dr Sanjay said that while news media organisations and credible journalists had been found to publish misleading stories and mistakes, the most damage was done by people with fake social media profiles, polarising websites, and social media sites seeking to intentionally spread fake news to win elections or promote hatred.

Formal education contexts featured debates about the public sector, commercialisation and privatisation while a “default faith” was placed on new media that could virtually bring “handheld” education to the millennials.

This was a field that the public and private education sector intended to reach out to through online education and learning tools and options, said Dr Sanjay.

He said the euphoric underpinnings of the digital era in the Asia-Pacific and its subregions of ASEAN countries, South Asia and the Southeast Asia had parallels in the colonial and postcolonial periods with a technocentric dimension.

Dr Sanjay said online Indian language context was expected to reach about 60 percent.

Digital destinations across genres would capitalise on the profile that was non-English.

Information was considered an enabling and empowering input.

The speed with which it travels through multiple platforms has raised concerns about legacy media content through adaptation or user-generated content, Dr Sanjay said.

Higher trust
Apart from ethics, the legacy media enjoyed higher trust based on its screening and verification processes.

User-generated content reflected a paradigm shift that in theory allowed higher participation.

The millennials profile was not uniform across countries and the kind of content had come into sharper focus.

A critique of the content was an issue for both academic discourse and legal and regulatory frameworks, Dr Sanjay said.

Extension models of higher education seemed to suggest that they could be tapped to bring skilled youth into the workplace.

AMIC chairman Professor Crispin Maslog of the Philippines said the millennials were the largest such generation in history – “and we ‘centennials need to understand them’.”

“There are some 1.8 billion out of the 7 billion global population – and they love smart phones. Of that 1.8 billion, 600 million are Asian.”

Redefining millennial life
Millennials, sometimes known as the “echo boomers”, are generally regarded as the 16 to 34-year-olds – the “digital natives’ who are not just consumers of media, but produce their own media content.

Globalisation, migration and technology are some of the major factors redefining the millennials’ way of life.

Most of the 200 academics from 15 countries at the conference presented papers on millennials education research and innovative case stories.

Themes explored included “Branding millennials – defining identity”, “A passion for technology – living in a social media world”, “News and current affairs as consumption (or creation) practices”, “evolving gender representation in the new mediascape”, and “Research and data management – today’s cutting edge competencies”.

One of the conference highlights was a “Free/Dem” panel dialogue and presentation about communication for and by young people in practice.

Deepika and Summi, programme associates of India’s Feminist Approach to Technology (FAT), gave inspiring addresses in Hindi about how their movement had worked across the continent to give girls in poverty-hit communities the opportunity to work with computers and learn technical skills.

“When I saw people using computers, I wanted to be able to do the same,” said Summi, a 13-year-old from a very poor urban neigbourhood where girls never got an opportunity.

“Now I am able to help other girls to do the same.”

Creative communication and culture were also major parts of the programme, including an episode of Jataaya Moksha performed by MAHE’s creative arts school Yakshagana Kendra.

Launching a report on “World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development“, New Delhi-based national UNESCO programme officer Anirban Sarma, said that while new media had expanded freedoms and communication beyond the media, there had also been “increasing incursions into proivacy and an expansion of mass and arbitrary surveillance”.

“The rise of new forms of political populism as well as what have been seen as authoritarian policies are important developments,” says the report based on a survey of 131 countries.

“Citing a range of reasons, including national security, governments are increasingly monitoring and also requiring the take down of information online, in many cases not only relating to hate speech and content seen to encourage violent extremism, but also what has been seen as legitimate political positioning.”

Asia communication awards

Filipino Charlie Agatep – a public relations guru in Asia – made a passionate video plea for more courageous, rigorous and accurate journalism as an antidote for “fake news”.

He was also critical of the “digital acrobats” who swept Rodrigo Duterte into the presidency in 2016 and who still manipulates and distorts public opinion in the Philippines.

Agatep founded the PR agency Agatep Associates in 1988 and transformed it into Grupo Agatep Inc., the largest marketing and digital (social media) communication agency in the Philippines.

He was one of two AMIC Asia Communication Award in Transformative Leadership recipients for 2018.

The other was Manila-based Father Franz-Josef Eilers, an inspirational Catholic church and social justice communicator of the Society of Divine Word (SVD).

The conference was hosted by MAHE’s School of Communication whose director Professor Padma Rani, thanked ZEE television, UNESCO and the many sponsors and her “fabulous” faculty team for the successful outcome.

Next year’s conference will be hosted by Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand.

• The Pacific Media Centre’s Professor David Robie addressed the opening plenary panel on “Millennials’ concept of democracy: freedom of expression for all v. freedom of expression for themselves” and delivered a paper on the expanding notions of “Pacific way” journalism.

A brief clip from a community journalism promotion video produced for the Manipal University School of Communication and screened at the university’s “experimental theatre”.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz