Front page – Evening Report

Independence for Kanaky: A media and political stalemate or a ‘three strikes’ Frexit challenge?

Pacific Media Centre — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 09:25:56 +0000

Figure 10: A Kanak voter wearing a ‘Kanaky New Caledonia’ flag tee shirt at the Loyalty Islands special polling booth in Vallee du Tir, Noumea. Image: David Robie

David Robie

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Abstract

The French-ruled territory of New Caledonia, or Kanaky, as Indigenous pro-independence campaigners call their cigar-shaped islands, voted on their political future on 4 November 2018 amid controversy and tension. This was an historic vote on independence in a ‘three-strikes’ scenario in the territory ruled by France since 1853, originally as a penal colony for convicts and political dissidents. In the end, the vote was remarkably close, reflecting the success of the pro-independence Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) in mobilising voters, particularly the youth. The referendum choice was simple and stark. Voters simply had to respond ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the question: ‘Do you want New Caledonia to attain full sovereignty and become independent?’ In spite of prophecies of an overwhelming negative vote, the ‘no’ response slipped to a 56.4 percent vote while the ‘yes’ vote wrested a credible 43.6 percent share with a record turnout of almost 81 percent. New Caledonia is expected to face two further votes on the independence question in 2020 and 2022. The author of this article reported as a journalist on an uprising against French rule in the 1980s, known by the euphemism ‘les Évènements’ (‘the Events’). He returned there three decades later as an academic to bear witness to the vote and examine the role of digital media and youth. This article reflects on his impressions of the result, democracy and the future.

DOI https://doi.org/10.24135/pjr.v25i1.477

Report by Pacific Media Centre

Science Writing and Climate Change – a new environmental journalism book

Pacific Media Centre — Sat, 15 Jun 2019 04:25:48 +0000

David Robie

ISBN/code: 9781927184578

Price: $20.00

Publication date: Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Publisher: Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication (AIJC) in association with SciDev.Net and the Pacific Media Centre: Manila and Auckland.

“Disaster reporting, which focuses on deaths and casualties for the benefit of local readers, is understandable. However, the mass media also need to explain in depth the causes of climate change. Contextual climate change reporting can be taught to journalists by journalism schools if they have enough trained faculty and resources. But Asia-Pacific journalism schools are not able to do this, to cite a paper we published in Pacific Journalism Review (2017), which was based on a small survey of 20 schools in the region…. There is a vacuum in formal science and environmental education in the Asia-Pacific region… But for the long-term, there is a need for a wide-scale, systematic upgrading of the science communication/science journalism training programmes in the universities with the help of UN agencies like UNESCO.” – Lead author Professor Crispin C. Maslog

Report by Pacific Media Centre

Mekim Nius: South Pacific media, politics and education

Pacific Media Centre — Wed, 12 Jun 2019 10:25:46 +0000

An excerpt from the cover of Mekim Nius – Tok Pisin for “newsmaking”.

David Robie

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Abstract

The news media is the watchdog of democracy. But in the South Pacific today the Fourth Estate role is under threat from governments seeking statutory regulation, diminished media credibility, dilemmas over ethics and uncertainty over professionalism and training. Traditionally – with the exception of Papua New Guinea where university education has been the norm – the region’s journalists have mostly learned on the job in the newsroom or through vocational short courses funded by foreign donors. However, today’s Pacific journalists now more than ever need an education to contend with the complex cultural, development, environmental, historical, legal, political and sociological challenges faced in an era of globalisation. From the establishment of the region’s first journalism school at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1975 with New Zealand aid, Mekim Nius traces three decades of South Pacific media education history. Dr David Robie profiles journalism at UPNG, Divine Word University and the University of the South Pacific in Fiji with Australian, Commonwealth, French, NZ and UNESCO aid. He also examines the impact of the region’s politics on the media in the two major economies, Fiji and Papua New Guinea – from the Bougainville conflict and Sandline mercenary crisis to Fiji’s coups

– David Robie is a New Zealand journalist and media educator who has worked in the Pacific for more than two decades. For nine years he headed the journalism programmes at both the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of the South Pacific, where he was programme coordinator. He won Qantas and NZ Media Peace Prize awards for Pacific journalism and was the 1989 Australian Press Council Fellow. He is currently professor of Pacific journalism and director of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology.

Report by Pacific Media Centre

Pacific Media Watch documentary under way – the highlights 2019

Pacific Media Centre — Tue, 28 May 2019 00:25:48 +0000

Fair Go assistant producer and a recent AUT graduate Blessen Tom and current postgraduate student Sri Krishnamurthi embarked in May on a storytelling project about Pacific Media Watch.

They are interviewing the founders and some of the journalists and students involved on the media freedom project, which was launched in 1996 at the time of the jailing of the so-called Tongan Three for contempt of Parliament for publishing a document about an impending impeachment.

Krishnamurthi, originally from Fiji, was a news agency journalist for many years.

Watch for their completed video when the documentary project is completed.

Both have won awards for their previous media work at AUT.

Other Pacific Media Centre videos on YouTube here.

Report by Pacific Media Centre

Bougainville: The valley of the Rambos, 1989

Pacific Media Centre — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 05:26:17 +0000

A Papua New Guinean soldier guards the road to Panguna, Bougainville, 1989. Image: David Robie

David Robie

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Abstract

‘The original [Panguna mine] agreement overrode our customs, denied us our land rights and was too rushed. It contradicts our way of life; what comes from the land should benefit the landowners … nobody else. ’ – A Nasioi militant landowner

APART from convoys with soldiers riding shotgun and yellow ochre Bougainville Copper Limited trucks packed with security forces sporting M16s, you would hardly guess that a guerrilla war was in progress near the Bougainville provincial capital of Arawa. But once you reached the sandbagged machinegun nest in Birempa village at the foot of the rugged mountain jungles of the Crown Prince Range, the tension started to rise. Scanning the dense vegetation for a sign of the militants of the Bougainville Republican Army (BRA)—known as Rambos in the first year of the decade-long civil war – the Papua New Guinea Defence Force soldier manning the machinegun didn’t notice the irony of the T-shirt he was wearing.

Chapter 16 of Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific, by David Robie (2014). ISBN 9781877484254

Report by Pacific Media Centre

Media companies on notice over traumatised journalists after landmark Age court decision

Pacific Media Centre — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 03:26:16 +0000

A landmark ruling by an Australian court is expected to have international consequences for newsrooms, with media companies on notice they face large compensation claims if they fail to take care of journalists who regularly cover traumatic events.

The Victorian County Court accepted the potential for psychological damage on those whose work requires them to report on traumatic events, including violent crimes.

The court ruled on February 22 that an Age journalist be awarded A$180,000 for psychological injury suffered during the decade she worked at the Melbourne-based newspaper, from 2003 to 2013.

The journalist, known in court as “YZ” to protect her identity, reported on 32 murders and many more cases as a court reporter. She covered Melbourne’s “gangland wars”, was threatened by one of its notorious figures, and found it increasingly difficult to report on events involving the death of children, such as the case of four-year-old Darcey Freeman who was thrown by her father from West Gate Bridge in 2009.

After complaining that she was “done” with “death and destruction”, the journalist was transferred to the sports desk. But a senior editor later persuaded her, against her wishes, to cover the Supreme Court where she was exposed to detailed, graphic accounts of horrific crimes, including the trials of Donna Fitchett, Robert Farquharson and Darcey Freeman’s father.

The repeated exposure to traumatic events had a serious impact on her mental health. YZ took a voluntary redundancy from the newspaper in 2013.

In her court challenge, the journalist alleged The Age:

had no system in place to enable her to deal with the trauma of her work
failed to provide support and training in covering traumatic events, including from qualified peers
did not intervene when she and others complained
transferred her to court reporting after she had complained of being unable to cope with trauma experienced from previous crime reporting.

The Age contested whether the journalist was actually suffering from post-traumatic stress. It argued that even if a peer-support programme had been in place it would not have made a material difference to the journalist’s experience.

Further, The Age denied it knew or should have known there was a foreseeable risk of psychological injury to its journalists and simultaneously argued that the plaintiff knew “by reason of her work she was at high risk of foreseeable injury”.

Judge Chris O’Neill found the journalist’s evidence more compelling than the media company’s, even though the psychological injury she had suffered put her at a disadvantage when being cross-examined in court.

Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma in the United States, says:

This is a historic judgment – the first time in the world, to my knowledge, that a news organisation has been found liable for a reporter’s occupational PTSD.

Media companies need to take PTSD seriously
This is not the first time a journalist has sued over occupational PTSD, as Shapiro calls it, but it is the first time one has succeeded. In 2012, another Australian journalist unsuccessfully sued the same newspaper.

In that earlier case, discussed by a co-author of this article (Ricketson) in Australian Journalism Review, the judge was reluctant to accept either the psychological impact on journalists covering traumatic events or The Age’s tardiness in implementing a trauma-aware newsroom. In stark contrast, the judge in the YZ case readily accepted both these key concepts.

Historically, the idea of journalists suing their employers for occupational PTSD was unheard of. Newsroom culture dictated that journalists did whatever was asked of them, including intrusions on grieving relatives, or “death knocks” as they are known. Doing these was intrinsic to the so-called “school of hard knocks”. Cadet journalists were blooded in the newsroom by their ability to do these tasks.

The academic literature shows that newsroom culture has been a key contributor to the problem of journalists feeling unable to express concerns about covering traumatic events for fear of appearing weak and unsuited to the job.

What is alarming from the evidence provided to Judge O’Neill is the extent to which these attitudes still hold sway in contemporary newsrooms. YZ said that as a crime reporter she worked in a “blokey environment” where the implicit message was “toughen up, princess”.

Duty of care
The YZ case shows The Age had learnt little about its duty of care to journalists from the earlier case it defended. One of its own witnesses, the editorial training manager, gave evidence of his frustration at being unable to persuade management to implement a suitable training and support programme. Judge O’Neill found him a compelling witness.

The Dart Center has a range of tip sheets on its website for self-care and peer support. What is clear from this case is that it’s not just about individual journalists and what they do, but about editors and media executive taking action.

One media organisation that is leading the way is the ABC. The national broadcaster has had a peer-support programme in place for a decade.

Such programmes are vital, not just for individual journalists, but for democracy and civil society. This is because whatever changes have been sweeping through the news media, there is no change in the incidence of disasters, crimes and traumatic events that need to be covered.

News workers need help. And they are beginning to demand it.

Dr Matthew Ricketson is professor of communication at Deakin University . He is also chair of the board of directors of the Dart Centre Asia-Pacific, which is affiliated with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma based in the United States. It is a voluntary position. During part of the period covered by the YZ court case he worked as a journalist at The Age.

Dr Alexandra Wake is journalism programme manager at RMIT University. She is also on the Dart Centre Asia Pacific board, and in 2011 was named a Dart Academic Fellow. As part of that process, Alex traveled to Columbia University in New York for training, at Dart’s expense. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence.

Report by Pacific Media Centre

Bearing Witness 2017: Year 2 of a Pacific climate change storytelling project

Pacific Media Centre — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 04:26:21 +0000

David Robie, Pacific Media Centre

Monday, February 25, 2019

Abstract

In 2016, the Pacific Media Centre responded to the devastation and tragedy wrought in Fiji by Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston by initiating the Bearing Witness journalism project and dispatching two postgraduate students to Viti Levu to document and report on the impact of climate change (Robie & Chand, 2017). This was followed up in 2017 in a second phase of what was hoped would become a five-year mission and expanded in future years to include other parts of the Asia-Pacific region. This project is timely, given the new 10-year Strategic Plan 2017-2026 launched by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) in March and the co-hosting by Fiji of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP23) climate change conference in Bonn, Germany, during November. The students dispatched in 2017 on the ‘bearing witness’ journalism experiential assignment to work in collaboration with the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) and the Regional Journalism Programme at the University of the South Pacific included a report about the relocation of a remote inland village of Tukuraki. They won the 2017 media and trauma prize of the Asia-Pacific Dart Centre, an agency affiliated with the Columbia School of Journalism. This article is a case study assessing the progress with this second year of the journalism project and exploring the strategic initiatives under way for more nuanced and constructive Asia-Pacific media storytelling in response to climate change.

Bearing Witness 2016

Report by Pacific Media Centre

A life well lived paves way to encourage Pasifika women in communication

Pacific Media Centre — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 05:26:15 +0000

Geraldine Lopdell’s family was looking for a fitting way to celebrate a “life well lived” when they decided to set up one of AUT’s newest awards.

During life, Geraldine had been an excellent teacher and artist, a supportive and generous friend and a captivating storyteller with an adventurous spirit.

Her early years were spent in Tonga and Samoa where her family travelled for her father’s work, and she had a firm belief that more women’s stories and views – particularly those of Pasifika women – needed to be told and heard.

The Geraldine Lopdell Award for Diversity in Communication will encourage Pasifika women to tell their stories. The first prize will be given in April 2019, nearly one year after Geraldine’s passing. It will be set at $1,200, and is anticipated to be offered annually for an initial term of ten years.

Deciding a memorial award to support something she cared about would be a fitting way to celebrate her life, Geraldine’s partner Colin and her two daughters Alex and Anne had approached their family friend, AUT’s Professor David Robie and have since been working with the AUT Foundation to establish the award.

Professor Robie, who heads up AUT’s Pacific Media Centre – Te Amokura, suggested a prize be established alongside the existing Storyboard Award for Diversity Reporting. It was decided the Pacific Media Centre, with its focus on telling ignored and ‘untold’ stories, and amplifying Pasifika women’s voices, was a natural fit for an award to celebrate this special woman’s legacy.

The family believe that Geraldine would have been honoured to have this award established in her name as she would have wanted to value the contributions and perspectives of Pasifika women.

Future generations
As Colin says: “The award is about recognising the life of an extraordinary and wonderful woman by encouraging an extraordinary and wonderful woman at the start of her career. She would have liked her legacy to support the next generation.

“It’s not just about making a financial difference to the recipient, although clearly we hope that it will help. It is about saying to them that we acknowledge your hard work, we recognise your achievements, you are doing brilliantly, keep going!”

Setting an award up is fairly straightforward, Alex says: “and you can direct it in a way to match up with the social changes that you want to encourage and see. It’s something that can benefit future generations and depending how you set it up, it can go on in perpetuity.’

Alex and Colin say they would love to see more awards of this type, “because you don’t have to have a huge amount of money to do something small and positive. We’d love to see other people think in this space and unleash that potential.”

Stand by for news of the first recipient of the Geraldine Lopdell Memorial Award for Excellence in Communication – and undoubtedly, a few great stories from the recipient.

The Geraldine Lopdell Award for Diversity in Communication – criteria and background

AUT Foundation

More information

Report by Pacific Media Centre

USP journalism team drops in on creative industries at AUT

Pacific Media Centre — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 04:26:19 +0000

Two University of the South Pacific journalism academics today met with creative industries staff at Auckland University of Technology to discuss plans to bolster collaboration and looked in on AUT’s impressive media facilities.

USP’s journalism coordinator Dr Shailendra Singh and colleague Eliki Drugunavelu are on an Asia-Pacific research trip to Auckland.

They met with AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies dean Professor Guy Littlefair; School of Communication Studies acting head Dr Frances Nelson; associate dean postgraduate Dr Rosser Johnson; and Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie.

They discussed proposals for expanding the long-standing journalism collaboration between the two universities to enable more student and staff exchanges, joint research and the ongoing cooperation with the research journal Pacific Journalism Review.

The two programmes have collaborated for more than a decade and currently run joint international journalism assignments, which have included covering two Fiji general elections, and the current Bearing Witness climate change mission in partnership with the Te Ara Motuhenga documentary collective.

They also share publication of student assignments and staff contributions on the Wansolwara News (USP) and Asia Pacific Report (AUT Pacific Media Centre) portals.

After the meeting, communication studies senior technician Scott Creighton hosted Drugunavelu and Dr Singh on a visit to the school’s three television studios and the Media Centre editing suites.

Wansolwara News
Bearing Witness documentary trailer

Report by Pacific Media Centre

PMC director reports on historic New Caledonia referendum 30 years on

Pacific Media Centre — Sat, 08 Dec 2018 23:26:19 +0000

By Craig Major of AUT Communications

Professor David Robie, Director of the Pacific Media Centre in the School of Communication Studies, has been part of the contingent of more than 100 journalists and media academics reporting on and analysing the historic New Caledonian independence referendum in early November. Only 2 out of the 100 were from New Zealand.

David was interviewed by Tokyo TV and other media and had several of his archival photos used in media such as SBS World News because of his specialist knowledge of the 1980s insurrection known locally as “les evenements” that led to the referendum 30 years later.

New Caledonians voted 56% against independence from France while the strong yes vote of 44% (the indigenous Kanaks are in a minority) has opened the door for delicate negotiations and two further referendums in 2020 and 2022.

Professor Robie authored a book in 1989, Blood On Their Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific, published by Zed Books in London, which is widely cited today about the period, and a sequel in 2014 Don’t Spoil My beautiful face: Media, Mayhem & Human Rights in the Pacific.

He has also written several articles on the referendum and the events leading up to on Asia Pacific Report.

The Pacific Media Centre has had a busy month with coverage of the Fiji general election on November 14 in collaboration with the University of the South Pacific Journalism programme and also coverage of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in collaboration with EMTV News.

Postgraduate student Sri Krishnamurthi flew to Fiji to report on the election in partnership with USP’s Wansolwara student newspaper as a continuation of his International Journalism Project.

Read David’s articles on the Asia Pacific Report website

Report by Pacific Media Centre

David Robie: A future in journalism in the age of ‘media phobia’

Pacific Media Centre — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 03:26:19 +0000

Keynote address by Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie at The University of the South Pacific Journalism Awards,19 October 2018, celebrating 50 years of the university’s existence.

Kia Ora Tatou and Ni Sa Bula

For many of you millennials, you’re graduating and entering a Brave New World of Journalism…

Embarking on a professional journalism career that is changing technologies at the speed of light, and facing a future full of treacherous quicksands like never before.

When I started in journalism, as a fresh 18-year-old in 1964 it was the year after President Kennedy was assassinated and I naively thought my hopeful world had ended, Beatlemania was in overdrive and New Zealand had been sucked into the Vietnam War.

And my journalism career actually started four years before the University of the South Pacific was founded in 1968.

Being a journalist was much simpler back then – as a young cadet on the capital city Wellington’s Dominion daily newspaper, I found the choices were straight forward.

Did we want to be a print, radio or television journalist? The internet was unheard of then – it took a further 15 years before the rudimentary “network of networks” emerged, and then another seven before computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and complicated journalism.

The first rule for interviewing, aspiring journalists were told in newsrooms – and also in a 1965 book called The Journalist’s Craft that I rediscovered on my bookshelves the other day – was to pick the right source. Rely on sources who were trustworthy and well-informed.

This was long before Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post made “deep throat’ famous in their Watergate investigation in 1972.

The second rule was: make sure you get the truth, the whole truth and nothing but…

We were told that we really needed to get a sense of when a woman or a man is telling the truth.

This, of course, fed into the third rule, which was: talk to the interviewee face to face.

Drummed into us was accuracy, speed, fairness and balance. Many of my days were spent on the wharves of Wellington Harbour painstakingly taking the details of the shipping news, or reporting accidents.

The whole idea was accuracy, accuracy, accuracy. And what a drumming we experienced from a crusty news editor calling us out when we made the slightest mistake.

If we survived this grueling baptism of fire, then we were bumped up from a cadet to a real journalist.

There were few risks to journalists in those days – a few nasty complaints here and there, lack of cooperation from the public, and a possible defamation case if we didn’t know our media law.

It wasn’t until I went to South Africa in 1970 – the then white-minority ruled country that jailed one of the great leaders of our times, Nelson Mandela – that I personally learned how risky it could be being a journalist.

Jailings, assaults and banning orders were commonplace. One of my colleagues, banned then exiled Peter Magubane, a brilliant photographer, was one of my earlier influences with his courage and dedication.

However, today the world is a very different place. It is basically really hostile against journalists in many countries and it continues to get worse.

Today assassinations, murders – especially the killing of those involved in investigating corruption – kidnappings, hostage taking are increasingly the norm.

And being targeted by vicious trolls, often with death threats, is a media fact of life these days.

In its 2018 World Press Freedom Index annual report, the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without borders (RSF), declared that journalists faced more hatred this year than last year, not only in authoritarian countries but also increasingly in countries with democratically elected leaders.

RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said in a statement:

“The unleashing of hatred towards journalists is one of the worst threats to democracies.

“Political leaders who fuel loathing for reporters bear heavy responsibility because they undermine the concept of public debate based on facts instead of propaganda.

“To dispute the legitimacy of journalism today is to play with extremely dangerous political fire.”

Fifty seven journalists have been killed so far in 2018, plus 10 citizen journalists for a total of 67; 155 journalists have been imprisoned, with a further 142 citizen journalists jailed – a total of 297.

In July, it was my privilege to be in Paris for a strategic consultation of Asia-Pacific media freedom advocates in my capacity as Pacific Media Centre director and Pacific Media Watch freedom project convenor. Much of the blame for this “press hatred” was heaped at that summit on some of today’s political leaders.

We all know about US President Trump’s “media-phobia” and how he has graduated from branding mainstream media and much of what they publish or broadcast as “fake news” to declaring them “enemies of the people” – a term once used by Joseph Stalin.

#FIGHTFAKENEWS VIDEO INSERT
[embedded content]
Source: Reporters Without Borders

However, there are many leaders in so-called democracies with an even worse record of toying with “press hatred”.

Take for example, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, who is merely two years into his five-year term of office and he has unleashed a “war on drugs” killing machine that is alleged to have murdered between some 7,000 and 12,000 suspects – most of them extrajudicial killings.

He was pictured in the media cradling a high-powered rifle and he admits that he started carrying a gun recently – not to protect himself because he has plenty of security guards, but to challenge a critical senator to a draw “Wild West” style.

Instead, he simply had the senator arrested on trumped up charges.

Duterte has frequently berated the media and spiced up his attacks with threats such as this chilling message he gave casually at a press conference:

“Just because you’re a journalist, you’re not exempted from assassination, if you are a son of a bitch. Free speech won’t save you.”

The death rate among radio journalists, in particular those investigating corruption and human rights violations, has traditionally been high in the Philippines.

In the Czech Republic late last year, President Miloš Zeman staged a macabre media conference stunt. He angered the press when he brandished a dummy Kalashnikov AK47 with the words “for journalists” carved into the woodstock at the October press conference in Prague, and with a bottle of alcohol attached instead of an ammunition clip.

In Slovakia, then Prime Minister Robert Fico called journalists “filthy anti-Slovak prostitutes” and “idiotic hyenas”.

A Slovak reporter, Ján Kuciak, was shot dead in his home in February, just four months after another European journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia of Malta who was investigating corruption, was killed by a targeted car-bombing.

Last week, a 30-year-old Bulgarian investigative journalist, Viktoria Marinova, was murdered. Police said the television current affairs host investigating corruption had been raped, beaten and then strangled.

Most of the media killings are done with impunity.

And then the world has been outraged by the disappearance and shocking alleged murder of respected Saudi Arabian journalist and editor Jamal Khashoggi by a state “hit squad” of 15 men inside his own country’s consulate in Istanbul. He went into the consulate on October 2 and never came out.

The exact circumstances of what happened are still unravelling daily, but a Turkish newspaper reports that the journalist’s smartwatch captured audio of his gruesome killing.

BRIEF VIDEO KHASHOGGI INSERT:

[embedded content]
Source: Al Jazeera’s Listening Post

Condemning the brutal act, United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, expressed fears that enforced media disappearances are set to become the “new normal”.

While such ghastly fates for journalists may seem remote here in the Pacific, we have plenty of attacks on media freedom to contend with in our own backyard. And trolls in the Pacific and state threats to internet freedom are rife.

The detention of Television New Zealand’s Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver for four hours by police in Nauru at last month’s Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Summit while attempting to interview refugees is just one example of such attempts to shut down truth-seeking.

Among the many protests, Amnesty International said:

“Whether it happens in Myanmar, Iran or right here in the Pacific, detaining journalists for doing their jobs is wrong. Freedom of the press is fundamental to a just society. Barbara Dreaver is a respected journalist with a long history of covering important stories across the Pacific.

“Amnesty International’s research on Nauru showed that the conditions for people who have been banished there by Australia amount to torture under international law. Children are self-harming and Googling how to kill themselves. That cannot be swept under the carpet and it won’t go away by enforcing draconian limits to media freedom.”

Journalists in the Pacific have frequently been persecuted by smallminded politicians with scant regard for the role of the media, such as led to the failed sedition case against The Fiji Times.

The media play a critical role in exposing abuses of power, such as Bryan Kramer’s The Kramer Report in exposing the 40 Maserati luxury car APEC scandal in Papua New Guinea last week.

In this year’s World Media Freedom Day speech warning about the “creeping criminalisation” of journalism, the new UNESCO chair of journalism Professor Peter Greste at the University of Queensland, asked:

“If we appear to be heading into journalism’s long, dark night, when did the sun start to disappear? Although the statistics jump around a little, there appears to be a clear turning point: in 2003, when the numbers of journalists killed and imprisoned started to climb from the historic lows of the late ’90s, to the record levels of the present.

“Although coincidence is not the same as causation, it seems hard to escape the notion that the War on Terror that President George W. Bush launched after 9/11 had something to do with it.”

Peter Greste himself, and his two colleagues paid a heavy price for their truth-seeking during the post Arab Spring upheaval in Egypt – being jailed for 400 days on trumped up terrorism charges for doing their job. His media organisation, Al Jazeera, and rival media groups teamed up to wage their global “Journalism is not a crime” campaign.

Now that I have done my best to talk you out of journalism by stressing the growing global dangers, I want to draw attention to some of the many reasons why journalism is critically important and why you should be congratulated for taking up this career.

Next month, Fiji is facing a critically important general election, the second since the return of democracy in your country in 2014. And many of you graduating journalists will be involved.

Governments in Fiji and the Pacific should remember journalists are guardians of democracy and they have an important role to play in ensuring the legitimacy of both the vote and the result, especially in a country such as this which has been emerging from many years of political crisis.

But it is important that journalists play their part too with responsibilities as well as rights. Along with the right to provide information without fear or favour, and free from pressure or threats, you have a duty to provide voters with accurate, objective and constructive information.

The University of the South Pacific has a proud record of journalism education in the region stretching back ironically to the year of the inaugural coups, in 1987. First there was a Certificate programme, founded by Dr Murray Masterton (who has sadly passed away) and later Diploma and Degree qualifications followed with a programme founded by François Turmel and Dr Philip Cass.

It is with pride that I can look back at my five years with USP bridging the start of the Millennium. Among high points were gaining my doctorate in history/politics at USP – the first journalism educator to do so in the Pacific – and launching these very Annual Journalism Awards, initially with the Storyboard and Tanoa awards and a host of sponsors.

When I look at the outstanding achievements in the years since then with current Journalism Coordinator Dr Shailendra Singh and his colleagues Eliki Drugunalevu and Geraldine Panapasa, it is with some pleasure.

And USP should be rightly delighted with one of the major success journalism programmes of the Asia-Pacific region.

Wansolwara newspaper, which celebrated two decades of publishing in 2016, has been a tremendous success. Not many journalism school publications have such sustained longevity and have won so many international awards.

Innovation has been the name of the game, such as this climate change joint digital storytelling project with E-Pop and France 24 media. At AUT we have been proud to be partners with USP with our own Bearing Witness and other projects stretching back for two decades.

Finally, I would like pay tribute to two of the whistleblowers and journalists in the Pacific and who should inspire you in your journalism career.

Firstly, Iranian-born Behrouz Boochani, the refugee journalist, documentary maker and poet who pricked the Australian conscience about the terrible human rights violations against asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru.

He has reminded Canberra that Australia needs to regain a moral compass.

And activist lawyer communicator Joe Moses, who campaigned tirelessly for the rights of the villagers of Paga Hill in Port Moresby. These people were forced out of their homes in defiance of a Supreme Court order to make way for the luxury development for next month’s APEC summit.

Be inspired by them and the foundations of human rights journalism and contribute to your communities and countries. Don’t be seduced by a fast foods diet of distortion and propaganda.

Be courageous and committed, be true to your quest for the truth.

Vinaka vakalevu

Professor David Robie is director of the Pacific Media Centre and professor of journalism in the School of Communication Studies at Auckland University of Technology. He is also editor of Pacific Journalism Review research journal and editor of the independent news website Asia Pacific Report. He is a former USP Journalism Coordinator 1998-2002.
david.robie@aut.ac.nz

References:
Al Jazeera (2018, April 25). Journalism is not a crime: Global press freedom on downward trend: World press freedom index. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/04/global-press-freedom-downward-trend-2018-world-press-freedom-index-180425082639950.html

Cooke, H. (2018, September 4). TVNZ reporter Barbara Dreaver released after being detained in Nauru. Stuff. Retrieved from https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/106822330/tvnz-reporter-barbara-dreaver-reportedly-detained-in-nauru

Greste, P. (2018). The creeping criminalization of journalism. MEAA World Press Freedom Day address. Retrieved from https://pressfreedom.org.au/the-creeping-criminalisation-of-journalism-53d1639c3ecb

International Federation of Journalists (2018, May). Criminalising journalism: The MEAA report into the state of press freedom in Australia. Retrieved from https://www.meaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/PF_report_2018_cover_FINAL2.jpg

Inquirer Mindanao (2017, September 8). Why Duterte carries a gun these days. Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved from https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/929029/philippine-news-updates-president-duterte-antonio-trillanes-iv-angelo-reyes

Peacock, C. (2018, May 6). Peter Greste: Solidarity and standards. Retrieved from https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018643318/peter-greste-solidarity-and-standards

Reporters Without Borders (2017, October 26). Czech President threatens journalists with mock Kalashnikov. Retrieved from https://rsf.org/en/news/czech-republic-czech-president-threatens-journalists-mock-kalashnikov

Reporters Without Borders (2018, May 1). RSF Index 2018: Hatred of journalism threatens democracies. Retrieved from https://rsf.org/en/rsf-index-2018-hatred-journalism-threatens-democracies

Revill, L., & Roderick, C. (Eds.) (1965). The journalist’s craft. The Australian Journalists’ Association. Sydney, NSW: Angus & Robertson.

Robie, D. (2018, July 10). ‘Sick joke’, threats cited in Asia-Pacific declining media freedom summit. Asia Pacific Report. Retrieved from https://asiapacificreport.nz/2018/07/10/sick-joke-threats-cited-in-asia-pacific-declining-media-freedom-summit/

Robie, D. (2004). Mekim Nius: South Pacific media, politics and education. Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific Book Centre.

Toboni, G. (2017, June 6). It’s super dangerous to be a journalist in the Philippines. Vice Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en_nz/article/mbqkmb/its-super-dangerous-to-be-a-journalist-in-the-philippines-v24n5

Report by Pacific Media Centre ]]>

AUT Library publishing platform in line for Open Source Award

Pacific Media Centre — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 03:26:18 +0000

By Luqman Hayes
Tuwhera, AUT’s open access publishing platform that hosts Pacific Journalism Review, has been nominated as a finalist in this year’s New Zealand Open Source Awards in the Education, Social Services and Youth category.

The nomination is acknowledgement of the hard work and innovation of the Library’s Digital Services team in creating an attractive and accessible platform for sharing AUT’s open research publications with a global audience.

Tuwhera started in 2016 with the initial objective of hosting online open access journals edited by our university’s academic staff using Open Journal Systems.

Launching with two peer-reviewed titles, including the Scopus-ranked PJR, Tuwhera has grown significantly in a short time to include research summaries, monographs, conference proceedings and links to the open collections in the AUT’s institutional research repository (formerly Scholarly Commons).

The peer reviewed collection now totals eight titles covering health, finance, law, education, journalism, psychotherapy and indigenous research. These include two entirely new journal publications alongside their more established stablemates, illustrating the way Tuwhera seeks to provide an incubator space for supporting emerging voices and unheard discourse.

A second PMC title, Pacific Journalism Monographs, is also included.

The multiple meanings and contexts of Tuwhera (open, or be open, or opening up) and of other Māori concepts have informed and shaped the team’s work and its relationships. Tuwhera’s kaupapa of openness is built upon an understanding that knowledge exists to be shared for the wider benefit of the communities it springs from.

Luqman Hayes and Donna Coventry will be attending the gala awards ceremony in Wellington on Tuesday 23 October.

Pacific Journalism Review on Tuwhera

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PMC chair Camille Nakhid talks to TTT Live about ‘decolonising’ research

Pacific Media Centre — Sat, 15 Sep 2018 00:26:21 +0000

An international conference in the Caribbean this week focusing on critical thinking, interrogative discourse and rigorous research has featured the Pacific Media Centre chair.

Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, of AUT’s School of Social Sciences, who is also chair of the PMC advisory board, with one of her PhD students, Annabel Fernandez of Cuba, also appeared on the Trinidad and Tobago Television (TTT) programme Now.

On the theme of shifting from Eurocentric approaches to research to Caribbean ways of knowing, they discussed the use of Caribbean research methodology in her thesis.

Keynote speaker at the two-day conference on the Valsayn campus of the University of Trinidad and Tobago was Dr Kassie Freeman, senior adviser to the provost and senior research fellow at the Institute for Urban and Minority Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York.

She is also founding president and CEO of the African Diaspora Consortium (ADC), a global organisation with a mission to positively impact on economic, educational, and artistic opportunities and outcomes across the African diaspora, with a particular focus on populations dispersed during the transatlantic slave trade.

Conference website

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Pacific Media Centre condemns ‘flagrant’ Nauru ban on ABC at Forum

Pacific Media Centre — Sat, 14 Jul 2018 02:26:20 +0000

The New Zealand-based Pacific Media Centre has condemned the selective ban by the Nauru government in what it says is an authoritarian affront to media freedom in the region.

“Clearly the Nauru government is determined to gag any independent efforts to speak truth to power,” said director Professor David Robie.

“The fact that the ABC has gained Nauru’s displeasure is because the public broadcaster has exposed outrageous human rights violations in the Australian-established detention centre for asylum seekers and aired allegations of corruption on a higher level than many other media.”

To accuse the ABC of “biased and false reporting” when the Australian public broadcaster had by far one of the best and most comprehensive coverage of the South Pacific was disingenuous, he said.

Dr Robie also criticised the hypocrisy of the Australian government and the silence of other Forum member countries.

“Australia has spent large sums of money in journalism training in an effort to raise standards and strengthen the quality of independent media in the past two decades and yet stands meekly by in the face of this flagrant violation of media freedom.

“This is shocking and painfully obvious that Australia has much to hide in the region just like the Nauru government.”

The PMC director called on Nauru authorities to review its decision and rescind it.

Republic of Nauru’s media statement

Nauru government’s move ‘disgraceful’

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‘We cannot footnote our way to freedom’

Pacific Media Centre — Mon, 18 Jun 2018 00:26:17 +0000

The Pacific Media Centre’s Dr Sylvia C. Frain talks to human rights lawyer Julian Aguon, who recently won a landmark case in the Guam Supreme Court upholding the separation of powers doctrine, on issues ranging from law school and social justice to indigenous peoples and the right of self-determination in Guam, West Papua and beyond.

SF: Talk about law school. Did you like it? Do you have horror stories? Do you recommend it to others, to young people?

JA: It’s…complicated. When one enters that particular arena as a politicised person, it can be a bit difficult, logistically, to momentarily suspend reality as you know it and make like a blank slate. I mean, there is a kind of unspoken understanding, at least among the establishment professors, that the best kind of students are those who offer themselves up freely for the filling, like receptacles for the pouring in of conventional wisdom. Activists, on the other hand you know, often go to law school because we realise that the law is a particular kind of institution, or knowledge, around which some high walls have been built, at least in part to keep us out. The law is a skill set but also a vocabulary, even a weapon, so often deployed against those most in need of its protection. So for us the whole experience can be dicey. But if you’re lucky a light goes on. Once you get past the insularity of the universe that is law school, you realise you can use what you brought in with you. You know that the law is not neutral because it is always already a moving train, and you know you can’t be neutral on those things. Like any tool in human hands, it can be used for any end, for the amassing of private wealth and power, or for the greater common good. Once you get that, you’re good. You drop your shoulders and get to work.

SF: Well when you first went to law school, did you know you wanted to be a human rights lawyer?

JA: Yes. I could think of no better way to use the law than in defence of vulnerable communities – namely colonised and indigenous peoples, here in the Pacific but elsewhere too. Indigenous peoples, you know, are key. They have inherited worldviews that stretch so far back in time and space … worldviews that predate the neoliberalist one bringing this planet to the brink of disaster. So they have part of the answer, indigenous peoples do, to the question of what to do to get us out of this mess we’ve made. Also they represent that subset of humankind most directly connected to the physical world, and are consequently the most vulnerable to the vandalism visited upon it. Ensuring their maximal legal protection, you know … ensuring that they’re able to thrive in their ancestral spaces, is urgent, one of the urgent tasks of our time.

SF: So you are now an attorney with your own firm? Can you tell us about that?

JA: That’s right. Yes, sorry. I live and work on Guam. I started Blue Ocean Law, a small firm that works to advance the rights of non-self-governing and indigenous peoples in the Pacific. We’ve worked with a range of clients on a host of issues, many of which have human rights components. We began mostly … in Micronesia, but have grown. The attorneys I have the pleasure of working with are pretty incredible in their own right. There’s Julie Hunter, who has taken a lead role in our work in Melanesia, around the emerging extractive industry of deep sea mining, which threatens to adversely impact communities in the region. She also runs our internship programme, overseeing law student interns from Harvard, Stanford, Yale, UCLA [University of California Los Angeles], and UH [University of Hawai’i]. There’s also Clement Yow-Mulalap, who splits his time between New York and his home island, Yap. He specialises in international environmental law, particularly climate change, and is helping to develop our analytical framework on that front.

SF: Yes I know you folks are doing a ton of work on deep sea mining. You had an article published last month in the Harvard Environmental Law Review on the subject, but also you had a report called “Resource Roulette.” Can you speak more about deep sea mining? Why is it important and what’s at stake for Pacific Islanders?

JA: So deep sea mining is this new extractive industry that’s proceeding around the world without sufficient safeguards, either for the environment or for the people most likely to be impacted by it. As we speak, corporations and countries alike are scrambling to secure rights to explore and exploit vast tracks of the international seabed. You know it’s even being called the new global gold rush. And the thing is most of it’s happening in the Pacific. Look, one Canadian company has already applied for exploration rights to over half a million square kilometres of the seafloor surrounding Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Tonga, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, and I believe also New Zealand. So it’s important because industry proponents are touting the whole thing as lucrative and low-risk, which it isn’t. We’ve talked to the people, you know? We’ve worked with community-based organisations in affected areas, who themselves have done real field work, on the ground, and are reporting a host of adverse impacts. The stories coming in paint a different picture.

SF: So most of your work is in Micronesia and Melanesia. Do you have any plans to expand to Polynesia too? I know you went to law school in Hawai’i.

JA: Well, technically, you could say my work as a law scholar, if not a practising attorney, already touches part of Polynesia. I authored the international law chapter in the recently released second edition of the legal treatise on Native Hawaiian rights, and before that I authored a piece I’m particularly proud of, entitled “The Commerce of Recognition (Buy One Ethos, Get One Free),” a rather ambitious law article on the viability of the three main redress regimes available under international law, normatively I mean, for the recovery of Hawai’ian independence.

SF: I’m sure you’re asked this a lot but what’s been the most important case you’ve worked on? Which is the one you feel most passionate about?

JA: That would have to be Davis v. Guam, a case I’m litigating at the moment. The case threatens to effectively deny the native inhabitants of Guam from exercising their fundamental right of self-determination in accordance with law. Davis is a case that reaches the heights of cynicism. At bottom, the legal argument constructed there is that virtually any American who moves to the American colony of Guam is legally entitled to cast a vote in the island’s long-awaited self-determination plebiscite. To deny any such person the vote, the argument goes, is unconstitutional race-based discrimination violative of, among others, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. This case is not only counter-historical, it’s absurd. Decolonisation is a remedy for the colonised. Not those who hail squarely from the coloniser. Not only that but the challenged classification itself is not a racial one in the first place. This case is … I mean, it pains me more than the others because I see it as the latest distortion of an already deeply distorted equal protection jurisprudence that seems ever more concerned with protecting only those not actually in need of protection.

SF: The case is about self-determination?

JA: Right.

SF: So your bio says you’re a UN-recognised expert in self-determination. I was wondering if you would, or could you just explain what the right of self-determination is?

JA: Under international law, self-determination is the right of peoples to be free … from colonisation, alien subjection and domination. Traditionally, the right has been understood as namely applyin g to colonized and occupied peoples, though the content of the right has been filled out progressively over time, with new fact patterns emerging which have stretched the right beyond its initial scope, like South African apartheid. No norm of international law comes close to matching the liberatory heft of self-determination. It is singularly responsible for the liberation of literally hundreds of millions of human beings. It is also the promise that stirs the hearts of those whose homelands remain on the UN list of non-self-governing territories, like my own, Guam.

SF: But aren’t there colonies not on the UN list that also have the right of self-determination?

JA: Absolutely. West Papua, perhaps because of the … well, the bloodshed, is the first example that comes to mind. There is no doubt in any international lawyer’s mind that the people of West Papua have the right of self-determination, and that that colony should be formally, and immediately, slated for an act of decolonisation. Despite Indonesia’s claims to the contrary, in no universe was the infamous 1969 plebiscite a valid exercise of self-determination. And let’s not, you know, be confused here. The legal status of West Papua, or any colony for that matter, is determined by international law, not the list. The situation in West Papua is … just so acutely troubling because of what we know … that the denial of self-determination is but one of many forms of state-sanctioned violence. Our sisters and brothers there are suffering horrendously.

SF: As you know, I’ve spent time here on Guam, doing research, meeting people. One of the things you hear when you interview people about Guam’s colonial status is the argument that Guam can’t be that colonised because Congress allowed Guam to create its own laws. How do you respond to that?

JA: Guam may enact its own laws, but you see, those laws may be undone by Congress. Per the terms of the Organic Act of Guam of 1950, in Title 48 of the US Code, the laws of Guam are subject, as is the entire government of Guam itself, to complete defeasance by Congress. As they say, what Congress giveth, Congress can taketh away. This is the lynchpin of the colonial relationship. To be sure, I’m being somewhat simplistic, but I think there’s something to that, actually. I think too many scholars are lost looking for life everlasting at the end of an elaborate footnote. We cannot footnote our way to freedom. But anyway there are times, usually times of crises, when the evidence of our colonial condition is just too plain to deny, when the truth just sits there in the scorching sun. Like Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. These national moments of reckoning burn our illusion.

SF: On that note, what do you think about the Pacific? When you look out at the Blue Continent, as you like to call it, what gives you hope?

JA: Vanuatu … Vanuatu is leading us. In some pretty significant ways, Vanuatu has emerged as a leader among our nations. From its consistent showing of solidarity with the people of West Papua to its principled, precautionary stance on deep sea mining, Vanuatu has been shining a light for others to follow. Also, the Marshall Islands has given the world several reasons to smile. From leading global climate change negotiations to taking on the nuclear nine in the ICJ, the Marshallese are punching way above their weight. And that is something. They keep proving the point that smallness is a state of mind. Lastly, you know, well I guess, is just the people themselves. There is such a breadth of beauty in our communities. I mean, Papua New Guinea alone, what range! One need only see a Highlands headdress to know what I’m talking about, to be reminded of the beauty and variety of this region, to want to fight for it.

More information:
Blue Ocean Law
Broadening common heritage: Addressing gaps in the deep sea mining regulatory regime – Harvard Environmental Law Review
Blue Ocean Law/Pacific Network on Globalisation “Resource Roulette” report

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