Journalist, author and media academic David Robie has launched an independent news and current affairs website to complement his long-established Asia Pacific Report.

While Asia Pacific Report will continue to cover regional affairs, the new website — dubbed Café Pacific, the same name as his blog which is being absorbed into the new venture — will focus on more in-depth reports and make available on open access a range of books and articles previously hidden behind paywalls.

Café Pacific will be operated on a Creative Commons licence basis as is APR.

• READ MORE: The new Café Pacific website
• Other reports from the author/publisher

Dr Robie, formerly founding director of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre and a professor of Pacific journalism, described the website project as “innovative”.

The about page says: “Café Pacific : Media freedom and transparency is the Asia-Pacific news articles archive and website of journalist and author David Robie, published with the support of Multimedia Investments Ltd in collaboration with Asia Pacific Report, EveningReport.nz and the Asia Pacific Media Network, and contributing colleagues, academics and freelancers.”

“There is a real need for an outlet such as this — specialist Asia-Pacific websites are rare,” says Dr Robie.

“It will be a rather eclectic website, but will focus on many of the critical issues that are either ignored in mainstream media or underplayed — such as climate justice, decolonisation in ‘French’ Polynesia and Kanaky New Caledonia, digital divide, education equity, environmental integrity, human rights, media freedom, podcasts, sustainable development and the crisis in West Papua.”

Recent scoops
Among recent scoops on the website were publication of the detailed “what we told the French Prime Minister” document of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) and several exclusive West Papua reports.

The website will also be a repository for Dr Robie’s past journalism, books and academic research, making publications more publicly accessible.

Dr Robie praised EveningReport.nz and Multimedia Investments managing director Selwyn Manning for his “perceptive” role in designing and developing the website.

“Selwyn has a long track record of supporting student and alternative journalism as witnessed with first Pacific Scoop and then Asia Pacific Report. And now we see it again with Café Pacific.”

Selwyn Manning and security analyst Dr Paul Buchanan will resume their popular weekly podcasts, “A View From Afar”, about current issues on EveningReport.nz and social media outlets tomorrow at noon.

• The promo for Thursday’s programme
• Listen to the podcasts
• Watch the podcasts
• Midday Thursdays (NZT)
• 8pm Wednesdays (EDT)
• Past episodes

A Filipina journalist who cut her teeth as a young reporter in the Marcos dictatorship years and now heads an investigative digital media outlet and a New Zealand journalist who was on board the bombed Rainbow Warrior environmental campaign ship are keynote speakers at an Asia-Pacific conference opening in Auckland today.

The Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) is hosting the three-day 2021 virtual conference in partnership with Auckland University of Technology with the theme “Change, Adaptation and Culture: Media and Communication in Pandemic Times”.

Glenda Gloria, an award-winning investigative journalist and author of Under The Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao, is co-founder and executive editor of Rappler, which is at the forefront of media freedom struggles in the Philippines.

• READ MORE: The ACMC 2021 conference

Her colleague, Maria Ressa, recently jointly won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, for championing a free press and she has been the target of multiple lawsuits in an attempt by the Duterte administration to silence the media.

Gloria will talk about current challenges facing the media in the Philippines and across the Asia Pacific region.

David Robie, founding director of the Pacific Media Centre and recently retired professor of Pacific journalism, is speaking about the media and covid-19 “disinformation and hate speech”.

Dr Robie sailed on board the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior that was bombed by French secret agents in Auckland in 1985 and he has reported on environmental issues, climate issues and independence struggles.

He has been the head of three Pacific university journalism programmes and the author of several media and politics books, including Eyes of Fire and Blood on their Banner.

‘International sharing’
Senior communications lecturer at AUT Khairiah A Rahman, principal organiser of the event, said there was much to be achieved from the conference.

“We will be looking at international sharing, networking, future collaborative projects, and research publications in journals and books,” Rahman said.

The ACMC received more than 60 paper submissions and approved 44 peer-reviewed abstracts for the biannual conference which was established in the Philippines and began in 2008.

Six international ACMC conferences have been hosted by universities in Penang, Malaysia; Bangkok, Thailand; Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Hong Kong; Philippines; Taiwan; and now at AUT in Auckland.

“We had several pre-conference talks which yielded as many as 94 participants. In real — not virtual — ACMC conferences, we welcome 130 to 160 attendees from 22 countries,” Rahman said.

The opening addresses will be made by Professor Felix Tan, associate dean research and acting dean of AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies, and professor Azman Azwan Azmawa of Malaysia, president of the ACMC.

Among papers to be presented are topics such Media, Gender, and Intersectionality in the Pandemic Times; Lockdown Love: Computer-mediated Romantic Intimacies among Select Gay Filipino Couples; The Articulation of Papuan Women Ethnic Identity on Facebook; AUT’s Cindy Wang on Anyone can be a Vlogger: Sri Lankan Moviegoers in Covid-19 Pandemic Era.

Critical thinking
AUT’s Rahman and associate professor Petra Theuissen will jointly present a paper titled Concept Maps as Foundations for Critical Thinking in Public Relations Study.

Other papers to be presented include The Weibo Discussion about Taiwanese Legislation of Same-Sex Marriage presented by Massey University’s Fei Xiao.

Also, Rahman will present a timely paper after the New Zealand’s 2019 mosque massacre titled Shifting Dynamics in Popular Culture on Islamophobia Media Narratives.

Among the conference moderators is Jim Marbrook, a filmmaker and an AUT senior lecturer in screen production who in 2020 was co-producer of the documentary Loimata, The Sweetest Tears that won the 2021 FIFO grand jury prize in Tahiti. He will moderate a “media in quarantine” session.

Other moderators include associate professor Camille Nakhid, chair of the Pacific Media Centre which has been in hiatus for a year, Dr Theuissen and Deepti Bhargava, who will moderate a “crisis in communication challenges” session.

The conference begins this afternoon and ends on Saturday.

• The conference programme

Professor David Robie, founding director of the AUT Pacific Media Centre, has relaunched Asia Pacific Report as an independent Pacific affairs and analysis portal with many students or recent graduates around the region among the contributors.

Partnering with Selwyn Manning, publisher of Evening Report.nz, he is nurturing young Pacific journalists following the tradition that they started as an industry partnership with Pacific Scoop in 2009.

Asia Pacific Report has a growing audience in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and also in other Pacific nations.

“There is a continuing need for an independent portal of this kind given the dearth of Pacific outlets in the mainstream New Zealand media,” Dr Robie said.

“Apart from RNZ Pacific, Tagata Pasifika, and the Pacific Media Network, which do a fine job, there is little else.”

Asia Pacific Report, a non-profit publication, has community partnerships with the Asia Media Centre, RNZ, In-Depth News, Earth Journalism Network, University of the South Pacific, The Pacific Newsroom, Wansolwara and others.

Dr Robie retired from AUT in December after 18 years at the university – 13 of them as director of the PMC. He was the first journalism PhD (2004) at AUT and also the first associate professor and then professor in journalism (2012), specialising in Asia-Pacific and development media studies.

Previously he had been head of journalism at both the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of the South Pacific for a decade.

He was awarded the AUT Vice-Chancellor’s teaching award in 2011 and the AMIC Asian Communications award in Dubai in 2015 and has authored or edited 10 books.

He founded Pacific Journalism Review (PJR) research journal at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1994 and the publication is continuing independently with the current editorial team. However, Dr Robie has swapped editorial roles with former associate editor Dr Philip Cass who has become editor.

• Dr David Robie retires at AUT University
• Asia Pacific Report on Facebook
• Pacific Journalism Review on Facebook

The silence from Facebook is deafening and disturbing.

At first, when I lodged my protests earlier this month to Facebook over the immediate removal of a West Papua news item from the International Federation of Journalists shared with three social media outlets, including West Papua Media Alerts and The Pacific Newsroom, I thought it was rogue algorithms gone haywire.

The “breach of community standards” warning I also received on my FB page was unacceptable, but surely a mistake?

However, with subsequent protests by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) media freedom watchdog and the Sydney office of the Asia-Pacific branch of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the world’s largest journalist organisation with more than 600,000 members in 187 countries, falling on deaf ears, I started wondering about the political implications of this censorship.

• READ MORE: Melanesia: Facebook algorithms censor article about press freedom in West Papua
• Facebook blocks user for nudity in photos of indigenous Vanuatu ceremony 

We had all complained separately to the FB director of policy for Australia and New Zealand, Mia Garlick, and were ignored.

Several news stories were also carried by Asia Pacific Report, RSF and RNZ Pacific. No reaction.

The removed item was purportedly because of “nudity” in a photograph published by IFJ of a protest in the West Papuan capital Jayapura in August last year during the Papuan Uprising against Indonesian racism and oppression that began in Surabaya, Java.

‘Media freedom in Melanesia’
The FB photo was published with an article about the content of the latest Pacific Journalism Review research journal with the theme “Media freedom in Melanesia” which highlighted “the growing need to address media freedom in the region, particularly in Vanuatu, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and West Papua”.

The two protesters in the front of the march were partially naked except for the Papuan koteka (penis gourd), as traditionally worn by males in the highlands.

As I wrote at the time when communicating with RSF:

“Anybody with common sense would see that the photograph in question was not ’nudity’ in the community standards sense of Facebook’s guidelines. This was a media freedom item and the news picture shows a student protest against racism in Jayapura on August 19, 2019.

“Two apparently naked men are wearing traditional koteka (penis gourds) as normally worn in the Papuan highlands. It is a strong cultural protest against Indonesian repression and crackdowns on media. Clearly the Facebook algorithms are arbitrary and lacking in cultural balance.

“Also, there is no proper process to challenge or appeal against such arbitrary rulings.

Using the flawed FB online system to file a challenge in this arbitrary ruling three times on August 7, I  ended up with a reply that said: ‘We have fewer reviewers [to consider the appeal] available right now because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak’.”

Two letters unanswered
My two letters to Mia Garrick on August 10 and 11 went unanswered.

RSF’s Asia-Pacific director Daniel Bastard wrote to her on August 11, saying: “Since it is a press freedom issue, we plan to publish a short statement to ask for the end of this censorship. Beforehand, I’m enquiring about your view and take on this case.”

The IFJ followed up on August 14, two days after their original FB posting had also been removed, with a letter by their Asia-Pacific project manager Melanie Morrison, who described the FB the censorship as a “cruel irony”:

“As a press freedom organisation, the IFJ strongly condemns the removal of posts on spurious grounds. Such an action amounts to censorship.

“West Papua is subjected to a virtual media blackout. Access to the [Indonesian-ruled] restive province is restricted and one of the only ways to get information out is through social media.

“The photographer, Gusti Tanati, is based in West Papua and is no stranger to operating with harsh restrictions. To have his photos censored, along with an article that points to the increasingly hostile media environment in West Papua, is a cruel irony.”

Hinting at the political overtones, Morrison also noted that if Facebook was made aware of this photo by a complaint made by a Facebook user, “it is highly likely that the complainant objects to any coverage of West Papua that may be critical of the repressive situation in the province”.

She added that “understanding the background to this ongoing censorship is critical”.

Tracking truth and disinformation
Listening to journalist and forensic online researcher Benjamin Strick in an interview with RNZ’s Kim Hill last Saturday about “tracking truth” and exposing disinformation prompted me to revive this FB censorship issue.

In 2018, Strick was part of a Peabody Award-winning BBC investigative team that exposed the soldier-killers of two mothers and their children in Cameroon – The Anatomy of a Killing.

But I was alerted by his discussion of his investigation last year of the Indonesian crackdown and disinformation campaign coinciding with the Papua Uprising.

Discussing “collaborative journalism” and the West Papuan conflict with Kim Hill, he said: “The war is really online.”

He became interested in the “resurgence” or pro-independence sentiment and racial tension after incidents when some Javanese students branded West Papuans as “monkeys” and with other extreme abuse, which sparked a series of protests from Jayapura to Jakarta.

“I was investigating this thinking that it was going to be another mass human rights crime committed in West Papua,” he recalls. “But instead, when the internet was off and I was searching online, I was seeing these tourism commercials about West Papua and I was also seeing these videos on Twitter and Facebook about the great work the Indonesian government was doing for the people of West Papua.

“And they were using these hashtags #westpapuagenocide and #freewestpapua. I thought to myself this has got nothing to do with genocide, providing tourism in this context.”

‘Hashtag hijacking’
This is a process known as “hashtag hijacking”.

Strick’s research exposed hundreds of bogus sites sending our masses of scheduled “bots” – automated accounts – and were traced back to a Indonesian public relations agency InsightID linked to the government.

Recently, I was engaged with a high ranking Indonesian Foreign Affairs official, Director of the European affairs Sade Bimantara, in a webinar hosted by Tabloid Jubi journalist Victor Mambor when we talked about web-based disinformation.

However, my experience of this disinformation has been overwhelmingly linked to Indonesian trolls, and even our Pacific Media Centre Facebook page has been targeted by such attacks.

In October 2019, Strick and a colleague, Famega Syavira, wrote about this for the BBC News in an article titled: Papua unrest: Social media bots ‘skewing the narrative’. They wrote:

“The Twitter accounts were all using fake or stolen profile photos, including images of K-pop stars or random people, and were clearly not functioning as ‘real’ people do on social media.

“This led to the discovery of a network of automated fake accounts spread across at least four social media platforms and numerous websites.”

Fake Facebook accounts removed
Reuters reported that more than 100 fake Indonesian Facebook and Instagram social media accounts were removed for “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”. Five months later, in March this year, Facebook and Twitter pulled about 80 websites publishing pro-military propaganda about Papua.

In February 2019, Reuters had earlier reported Facebook removing “hundreds of Indonesian accounts, pages and groups from its social network” after discovering they were linked to an online group called Saracen.

This syndicate had been identified in 2016 and police had arrested three of its members on suspicion of being being paid to “spread incendiary material online” through social media.

For the moment, we would be delighted if Facebook would remove the block on our shared items and not censor future dispatches or genuine human rights news items about West Papua.

The truth deserves to be told.

POSTSCRIPT: Since this article was published, I have been contacted by Miranda Sissons, Facebook’s director of human rights product policy, apologising for the “frustrations” and lack of a response.

“Covid has had a huge impact on our content moderation capacity (see for example here). We are prioritising appeals capacity according to severity of harm (eg suicide and self injury or child endangerment),” she wrote.

“We’re also using guidance from the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights to prioritise according to scale, severity, and remediability of human rights violations.”

She has put me in touch with people who I understand will sort out the problem.

Disclaimer: Professor David Robie is director of the AUT Pacific Media Centre and is editor of Pacific Journalism Review.

PROFILE: By Craig Major of AUT News

​Based at Auckland University of Technology, the Pacific Media Centre is a small team dedicated to telling stories from across the Pacific that you won’t read anywhere else.

Established in 2007 by Professor David Robie in AUT’s School of Communication Studies, the centre focuses on postgraduate research projects and publications that impact on indigenous communities across the Pacific.

“We’re a small team, but the scope of what we cover is phenomenal,” Dr Robie explains. “As researchers and reporters, we look at the repercussions that big issues like climate change, human rights violations and press freedom have on these small communities in the Asia-Pacific region.”

The team are active publishers, managing several platforms including the Pacific Media Watch and Asia Pacific Report news websites, the half-yearly academic research journal Pacific Journalism Review and its companion Pacific Journalism Monographs, the blog Niusblog and Toktok, a quarterly newsletter.

The centre has also secured a media partnership with Radio New Zealand – the first content-sharing arrangement between a New Zealand university and a news organisation – and hosts the weekly Southern Cross radio programme on 95bFM.

Dr Robie, along with Advisory Board chair Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, sees the centre as having a strong advocacy role across the Pacific and further afield.

“I think it is a real strength of the PMC that the team can find issues in the Pacific that just aren’t covered in the mainstream New Zealand media, then explore them and report on them with authority and conviction,” Dr Robie says.

Beyond a travel brochure
“The team is skilled in identifying issues that are beyond the scope of what the public sees in a travel brochure.”

Dr Nakhid echoes this sentiment. “New Zealand’s media can be very insular when reporting on what is happening in the Pacific – even though there is so much happening right outside our doorstep.”

Internally the team takes a cross-discipline approach, working closely with students and staff in the School of Communication Studies (particularly Te Ara Motuhenga, the documentary collective) and the School of Social Sciences.

The centre also has international partnerships, such as with the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, and maintains close ties to Pacific communities based in New Zealand – and are sure to collaborate with community groups for events and seminars.

“Pacific Media Centre organised a seminar about the refugee situation in Myanmar recently,” recalls publications designer Del Abcede. “Through talking to the Burmese citizens that we had invited, we discovered a range of issues that only came to light in the mainstream after the Myanmar election.”

PMC reporting staff – mostly postgraduate students – are encouraged to uncover and explore the issues that interest them.

“Working with the PMC has been very illuminating,” says Sri Krishnamurthi, a postgraduate student who has covered Fiji-based news for PMC, and has interviewed two of the three party heads hoping to win Fiji’s general election next month.

“I have a background in communications and journalism, but doing this kind of reporting has been a real eye-opener,” says Krishnamurthi, a Fiji-born journalist who worked with the NZ Press Association for 17 years.

Film festival screening
And just this week two students from the centre, Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom, have had their Bearing Witness climate change documentary, Banabans of Rabi, accepted for screening at the 2018 Nuku’alofa Film Festival.

The trailer of Banabans of Rabi, a short documentary on climate change accepted by the 2018 Nuku’alofa Film Festival. Video: BOR

The freedom to pursue stories in the region is an opportunity for Dr Robie and the team.

“Students that work with us learn so much – and there really is no underestimation of their abilities,” Dr Robie said.

“Not only that, it promotes media and journalism as a viable career path for Pacific students, and leads to opportunities for international journalism projects.”

• Pacific Media Centre website
• Pacific Media Centre on YouTube

“I realised that the thinking of a society is greatly influenced by what they read, listen to, and watch — for better or worse.” Kalafi Moala’s Pacific voice and commitment comes through loud and clear in our email interview between Nuku’alofa and Wellington.

For me, these words summarise my passion for journalism and my goal of bringing knowledge to our people here in New Zealand about the Pacific through the art of storytelling.

For centuries, our ancestors have passed down a wealth of knowledge through storytelling. Growing up as a Pacific Islander, there was always a story to be told, whether it be around the kava bowl, in church, in our communities or at home. I remember listening to the words that were spoken, soaking up every detail, and going away with my own thinking and understanding of the stories told.

Media has taken storytelling to a whole other level giving us an opportunity to hear and tell stories at any given moment through the convenience of social media.

So, why aren’t there more Pacific journalists?

In 2013, a Statistics New Zealand census summary reported that 7.4 percent of New Zealand’s population identified with one or more Pacific ethnic groups.

However, in 2015, a survey of journalists in New Zealand showed that Pacific people were still underrepresented in newsrooms making up only 1.8 percent of the journalism workforce.

Opened the Pacific doors
Twenty-eight years ago Kalafi Moala changed the Tongan media and opened the doors for Pacific journalists, but at a cost.

As a popular newspaper publisher, he became a threat to the Tongan government.

“At that time only government and church owned newpapers published newspapers. Most governments continue to try and control media, by violating media’s ethics. Either by threat and bribe, rendering media ineffective in its role.”

In 1996 he was forced to put his newspaper on the line in a thrilling pursuit to release the media from the bondages of the Constitution.

He became the first voice to dare to criticise the Tongan system in the mid 1990s with his now famous publication Taimi ‘o Tonga.

In the Pacific, cultural beliefs and values often clash with the practice of journalism.

Power in the Pacific doesn’t usually come from a gun like most countries. Instead it comes from the social structures which Moala says are “hierarchical and rooted in status”.

Kalafi Moala explains that in Tongan society and many Pacific cultures, it is forbidden to criticise those in authority and exposing any weakness or corruption was seen as criticism. Some things have changed, but some have not since Kalafi Moala’s actions 28 years ago.

Moala’s actions cost him a 30-day sentence in jail for contempt of Parliament, but that did not stop him from smuggling out editorials written on toilet paper.

‘Truth covered up’
“Truth is often covered up in order to maintain a false image about that person in leadership and anyone who tries to expose that often becomes the enemy of the ruling elite,” he says.

He was physically threatened, harassed and jailed by the government, and banned from Tonga for a period of time.

However, Moala’s courageous actions opened doors for a new generation journalists from all over the Pacific to follow.

“For others to aspire to what you are doing you have to inspire them and inspiration comes through life actions, not just persuasion by words. Nothing will ever be achieved if people only look at journalism as a job, instead of a tool for change and improvement. I look at journalism as a ‘call’, a destiny so to speak, for those of us so deeply involved.”

For me, journalism was an unexpected calling which I stumbled across when a family member took on journalism. That person is my brother Isileli Sau, whose stories at home of studying journalism first sparked my interest.

Before the interview started for this feature, things were already awkward because we weren’t used to talking to each other on a personal level. It’s a Tongan thing.

Growing up in a Tongan household we were taught the pillars of Tongan society that have been practised by my parents and those before them in Tonga. Those core values are Ofa (love), Faka’apa’apa (respect), Anga fakato ki lalo (humility) and Tauhi Vaha’a (gratitude).

So, for example, an aspect of faka’apa’apa is traditional brother-sister avoidance. This meant never discussing personal issues with each other, or doing activities together such as watching television. So for my brother and I this interview was a huge cultural hurdle.

Dinner table discussions
But growing up there were some exceptions which was dinner time, when we would all gather around the table and discuss how school was going. As my brother discussed how school was, I became fascinated by his stories, but mostly by how he got the opportunity to voice the stories of our Pacific people which were rare for us growing up.

Journalism wasn’t his first pick. His first choice was to join the army, but after school he decided to give studying one last shot. “I picked journalism because I enjoyed writing and English was a favourite subject of mine,” he says.

He clears his throat, takes a deep breath and slowly begins to reveal things I had not been aware of in his struggle as a Pacific journalist in training. “I knew it was pretty random and interesting that someone with my heritage and background would choose this path.”

When I asked if he faced difficulties, he shifts his seating position, and I know it is our ingrained faka’apa’apa he is negotiating with these personal questions

He pauses, and says quietly: “I just wasn’t used to the environment and not having a good knowledge of things.” But the volume in his voice begins to louden as he continues to speak. “I was over being in an environment I wasn’t familiar with,” he says with a staunch tone.

So he joined the army

He assures me that the path he chose was a great experience. “I just needed more life experience before committing to journalism.”

Lack of career path knowledge
Why does he think there are not many Pacific people in journalism in New Zealand? “They think they aren’t capable, which isn’t true. Some just lack knowledge of the career path and where it can lead,” he says with a slight grin which suggests he is talking about himself.

Editor of Asia-Pacific Report and director of the Pacific Media Centre Professor David Robie knows a lot about Pacific students’ capabilities, and the challenges they face, having taught journalism in Papua New Guinea and Fiji before joining AUT University in Auckland. Asia Pacific Report was launched as a platform for AUT’s Asia-Pacific student journalism in the “real world” competing with other mainstream media. It not only publishes their own students’ work, but articles and multimedia by students all across the Pacific and articles by academics.

In 2000, David Robie recounts the story of his young media students at the University of the South Pacific being in the front line for one of the strangest coups in Fiji.

In a 2010 Pacific Journalism Review article Dr Robie and his students explain how the day unfolded.

May 19 was the day it started. Students reported protests in downtown Suva, the capital, which was a diversion while the actual coup was happening at Parliament. Another student, on internship for Radio Fiji, reported the actual coup from a cassava patch outside Parliament.

Deputy Prime Minister Dr Tupeni Baba was speaking at the time and then, just like that, everything turned into an unforgettable dream. In the 2010 Pacific Journalism Review paper, Dr Robie quotes one of his students at the time: “We heard somebody yelling and telling people to remain seated in Parliament and gunshots fired”.

George Speight, a mixed race and bankrupt businessman seized Parliament and the elected government at gunpoint. Everyone in the Radio Fiji newsroom couldn’t believe what was going on so “we left everything and moved closer to the radio and then the lines were cut,” says the student.

Published ‘in defiance’
The USP journalism website was then forced to shut down for no apparent reason. David explains “the journalism programme was still publishing its newspaper and its website” in defiance. By that time the students had posted 109 stories, dozens of soundbites and scores of digital photographs, and the University of Technology Sydney journalism programme began publishing their stories.

He says the university authorities considered their actions as a risk, but as a journalist a good story is sometimes worth the risk. “I thought well this is an opportunity that students only have once in a blue moon sort of thing. So I wasn’t going to deny them the opportunity,” he says with a firm tone.

David used the coup as an example of the cultural challenges Pacific people face overseas as journalists, which are rarer here in New Zealand. “The first 10 days of the coup was really risky. The government was being held at gunpoint in Parliament in Fiji and now students were going in every day,” says David.

Students wandered blindly through the first day, in some cases speechless over what was unfolding in front of their very eyes. “There were some that had a problem and realised that journalism really wasn’t their field.”

Fiji’s worst nightmare soon came to an end 10 weeks later, on July 26, when Speight and many of his followers were arrested by Fiji’s army.

As our conversation comes to an end, I asked David one last question on how Pacific people can overcome difficult situations they will have to endure as a Pacific journalists and his answer was quite simple. “Don’t be afraid of the difficulties — go for it and take on as many challenges as you can.”

In New Zealand, one of those challenges is Pacific role models, because of the lack of visibility.

It is not common to see or hear a Pacific journalist on mainstream media or radio.

No consistent coverage
In a 95bFM podcast interview published this month, E-Tangata online magazine founder Gary Wilson says mainstream media here in New Zealand doesn’t have consistent coverage on the Pacific population. “With all the media platforms there are now it is still very much a niche thing,” says Wilson, who focused on Māori and Pacific when he was involved in journalism training decades ago. “They don’t get as much viewers as mainstream media.” he says.

Being a journalist has its challenges, and Kalafi Moala, Isi Sau and David Robie it’s how we tackle those challenges that will define the future of Pacific journalists.

For me being a Pacific journalist in training has been a difficult process as I wasn’t used to people being so open about things that are quite personal to them, and for me having to ask the tough questions. As a Pacific islander we are raised in an environment that doesn’t really allow space for heart to heart talks or questioning the action of those in authority, whether it is in church, government and family.

Cultural values and beliefs will always be the main struggle for those planning to take on the journalism industry, but if we don’t overcome that fear we will never achieve anything sitting in silence.

If we want more Pacific people in the journalism industry it has to start with us.

As Kalafi Moala says: “The best motivation for Pacific people to join the journalism industry is for practising journalists to carry out their job the best possible way, and to make a difference.”

Kateni Sau is a student journalist at New Zealand’s Whitireia Community Polytechnic Journalism School, Wellington.This article was originally published by NewsWire and has been republished here with permission.

• Kalafi Moala – Inspiring Islanders — Tagata Pasifika

Students and staff filed their first two stories this week for the innovative website published in partnership with Evening Report.

Roy Abrhamn Narra and Carlo Casingcasing reported an exclusive story showing how Canada’s latest global terrorism blacklists were tagging the Philippines as having the third highest number of “individual terrorists” behind Saudi Arabia and Iraq while journalism coordinator Assistant Professor Jeremaiah M. Opiniano covered Philippines Environment Secretary Regina Lopez’s crackdown on mining companies in a bid to encourage a “green economy”.

Twenty three mining companies have been been served with closure notices and  five others face suspensions. One company involved has assets in New Zealand.

Opiniano was pleased with the collaboration and said UST was working towards a more comprehensive partnership with the PMC and School of Communication Studies.

Professor David Robie, director of the PMC and editor of Asia Pacific Report, welcomed the development, saying: “We are delighted to have UST on board and their input will help boost coverage of the Philippines, especially with more depth.”

He said that since the live feed of the Philippines presidential election last year, the website had experienced a strong Filipino interest and this was reflected by the growing audience among the Philippines diaspora in New Zealand.

Asia Pacific Report also collaborates with other journalism schools around the region, including at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji and Wansolwara newspaper.

• Two new journalism degrees in Philippines