David Robie
Dr David Robie is the retired professor of journalism and founding director of AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre. He is a strong advocate of independent journalism at the country’s journalism schools. He is co-founder with Selwyn Manning of Pacific Scoop and manages the Pacific Media Watch media freedom project; he is also founding editor of Pacific Journalism Review research journal.
Filipino migrants call on NZ to halt military aid to Philippines...
By David Robie
Migrants and overseas Filipinos in Aotearoa New Zealand today called on the governments of both Australia and New Zealand to halt all...
Ramos-Horta challenges Pacific’s biggest threat to media freedom – China’s gatekeepers
COMMENTARY: By David Robie
Timor-Leste, the youngest independent nation and the most fledgling press in the Asia-Pacific, has finally shown how it’s done -- with...
Gallery: Nakba Day in Auckland – protesting against Israel’s ‘ethnic cleansing’
Asia Pacific Report newsdesk
Today is Nakba Day -- "the great catastrophe". This is the day marking the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians...
Philippines forgets history and sells its soul for another Marcos
COMMENTARY: By David Robie
Sadly, the Philippines has sold its soul. Thirty six years ago a People Power revolution ousted the dictator Ferdinand Marcos after...
Prasad confident ‘fed up’ Fijians will make a change in this...
By David Robie in Auckland
Opposition National Federation Party leader Professor Biman Prasad is confident there will be a change of government in Fiji this...
Open letter to Minister Faafoi – an appeal to help 34...
OPEN LETTER: By David Robie
Kia ora Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi
It is unconscionable. A bewildering and grossly unfair crisis for 34 young Papuan students –...
‘Secret plots’, sovereignty and covid challenges face Pacific for New Year
ANALYSIS: By David Robie in Auckland
The Pacific year has closed with growing tensions over sovereignty and self-determination issues and growing stress over the ravages...
New Caledonia votes to stay with France, but it’s a hollow...
ANALYSIS: By David Robie
“Loyalist” New Caledonians handed France the decisive victory in the third and final referendum on independence it wanted in Sunday’s vote.
But...
Betrayal of Kanaky decolonisation by Paris risks return to dark days
ANALYSIS: By David Robie
After three decades of frustratingly slow progress but with a measure of quiet optimism over the decolonisation process unfolding under the...
Pressure mounts on Jakarta for dialogue, not brutal ‘war on Papua’
By David Robie
Pressure is mounting on Indonesia to back off its brutal and unsuccessful military strategy in trying to crush West Papuan resistance to...
Open season again for Indonesian military trolls and ‘fake news’ campaign...
SPECIAL REPORT: By David Robie
It is open season again for Indonesian trolls targeting Asia Pacific Report and other media with fake news and disinformation...
West Papua and other critical issues – why is NZ media...
COMMENT: By David Robie in Auckland
International reporting has hardly been a strong feature of New Zealand journalism. No New Zealand print news organisation has...
Days of Fiji ‘banana republic’ protests remembered in Bavadra reunion
By David Robie in Auckland
Bananas, balaclavas and banners … these were stock-in-trade for human rights activists of the New Zealand-based Coalition for Democracy in...
Gallery: Free Palestine rally in Auckland rejects Israeli ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic...
Asia Pacific Report newsdesk
More than 2000 people took part in Auckland today in a demonstration for justice for Palestine and against "genocide" and "ethnic...
Branding armed Papuan resistance as ‘terrorists’ angers rights groups, sparks media...
By David Robie
Branding armed Papuan resistance groups as “terrorists” has sparked strong condemnation from human rights groups across Indonesia and in West Papua, some...
Dear editor, we have you in our sights for reporting ‘the...
EDITORIAL: By David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report
Asia Pacific Report, the Auckland-based independent news and analysis website, has been increasingly targeted by Indonesian...
Victory in defeat for Kanak independence movement in latest referendum
ANALYSIS: By David Robie
While pro-independence Kanak supporters rued another defeat in the second referendum on independence for New Caledonia at the weekend, it was...
Facebook censorship on West Papua – then deafening silence
COMMENT: By David Robie
The silence from Facebook is deafening and disturbing.
At first, when I lodged my protests earlier this month to Facebook over the...
35 years on, Tahiti’s Temaru likely guest in Rainbow Warrior rewind
Flashback: Tagata Pasifika's John Pulu talks to Oscar Temaru in 2016.
By David Robie
One of the champions of the South Pacific’s nuclear-free and independence campaigners,...
From nuclear refugees to climate justice – the Rainbow Warrior legacy
SPECIAL REPORT: By David Robie, who sailed on the original Rainbow Warrior to Rongelap atoll and is author of the book Eyes of Fire.
Thirty...
Covid, culture and USP’s fight to save academic freedom
PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY: By David Robie
What an irony. The 12-nation regional University of the South Pacific that prides itself on its pan-Pacific culture has...
Toxic US politics, a brutal killing and the messengers become the...
PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY: By David Robie
Three cartoonists had especially poignant takes on the tragic and toxic political aftermath of martyr George Floyd’s brutal killing...
