What happened at New Zealand human rights campaigner John Minto’s home? Let me tell you.

Let me tell you that he wrote about it and Facebook took it down. Yep. Wrong after wrong.

Minto, national co-chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) advocacy and protest group, has been arrested at least 23 times for standing against racism.

• READ MORE: Prominent activist targeted in ‘pathetic’ attack on property
• Facebook censorship on West Papua – then deafening silence
• Other reports on the Gaza genocide

A couple of nights ago two Palestinian flags were stolen from the Christchurch Ōtautahi home of John and his partner, Bronwen. “Nazi scum” was spray-painted in large letters on his footpath.

The sign “make poverty history” ripped off the fence and the Te Tiriti sign spray-painted.

But John, who has been a leader in New Zealand protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza which has killed at least 71,000 people since October 2023, has been unable to report this because Facebook removed his original post about this crime.

Why? Because white supremacists and their allies want to win this round, their complaints are supported by oppressive social media mechanisms.

Human rights are under threat. A genocide in Gaza is supported by our New Zealand government. Propaganda is rife. And the Treaty that represents partnership, that should uphold the rights of the tangata whenua is being pushed to the gutter.

And speaking of gutter. Here you see it.

People who feel entitled to storm private property and tear down signs that stand against extermination and exile.

Facebook is blocking shares about the details about the vandalism. Censorship! To thwart the censorship, share this commentary if you wish to share the truth and disempower those who want supreme power.

Saige England is an award-winning journalist and author of The Seasonwife, a novel exploring the brutal impacts of colonisation. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. Republished from a social media post with the author’s permission.

The Papua New Guinea government has admitted to using a technology that it says was “successfully tested” to block social media platforms, particularly Facebook, for much of the day yesterday.

Police Minister Peter Tsiamalili Jr said the “test” was done under the framework of the Anti-Terrorism Act 2024, and sought to address the growing concerns over hate speech, misinformation, and other harmful content online.

Tsiamalili did not specify what kind of tech was used, but said it was carried out in collaboration with the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC), the National Information and Communications Technology Authority (NICTA), and various internet service providers.

• READ MORE: Other Facebook reports

“We are not attempting to suppress free speech or restrict our citizens from expressing their viewpoints,” Tsiamalili said.

“However, the unchecked proliferation of fake news, hate speech, pornography, child exploitation, and incitement to violence on platforms such as Facebook is unacceptable.

“These challenges increasingly threaten the safety, dignity, and well-being of our populace.”

However, government agencies responsible for communications and ICT, including NICTA, said they were not aware.

‘Confidence relies on transparency’
“Public confidence in our digital governance relies on transparency and consistency in how we approach online regulation,” NICTA chief executive Kilakupa Gulo-Vui said.

“It is essential that all key stakeholders, including NICTA, law enforcement, telecommunications providers, and government agencies, collaborate closely to ensure that any actions taken are well-understood and properly executed.”

He said that while maintaining national security was a priority, the balance between safety and digital freedom must be carefully managed.

Gulo-Vui said NICTA would be addressing this matter with the Minister for ICT to ensure NICTA’s role continued to align with the government’s broader policy objectives, while fostering a cohesive and united approach to digital regulation.

The Department of Information Communication and Technology (DICT) Secretary, Steven Matainaho, also stated his department was not aware of the test but added that the police have powers under the new domestic terrorism laws.

Papua New Guinea’s recently introduced anti-terror laws are aimed at curbing both internal and external security threats.

Critics warn of dictatorial control
However, critics of the move say the test borders on dictatorial control.

An observer of Monday’s events, Lucas Kiap, said the goal of combating hate speech and exploitation was commendable, but the approach risks paving way for authoritarian overreach.

“Where is PNG headed? If the government continues down this path, it risks trading democracy for control,” he said.

Many social media users, however, appeared to outdo the government, with many downloading and sharing Virtual Area Network (VPN) apps and continuing to post on Facebook.

“Hello from Poland,” one user said.

East Sepik Governor Allan Bird said today that the country’s anti-terrorism law could target anyone because “the definition of a terrorist is left to the Police Minister to decide”.

‘Designed to take away our freedoms’
“During the debate on the anti-terrorism bill in Parliament, I pointed out that the law was too broad and it could be used against innocent people,” he wrote on Facebook.

He said government MPs laughed at him and used their numbers to pass the bill.

“Yesterday, the Police Minister used the Anti-terrorism Act to shut down Facebook. That was just a test, that was step one,” Governor Bird said.

“There is no limit to the powers the Minister of Police can exercise under this new law. It is draconian law designed to take away our freedoms.

“We are now heading into dangerous territory and everyone is powerless to stop this tyranny,” he added.

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

A joint operation between the Fiji Police Force, Republic of Fiji Military Force (RFMF), Territorial Force Brigade, Fiji Navy and National Fire Authority was staged this week to “modernise” responses to emergencies.

Called “Exercise Genesis”, the joint operation is believed to be the first of its kind in Fiji to “test combat readiness” and preparedness for facing civil unrest, counterinsurgency and humanitarian assistance scenarios.

It took place over three days and was modelled on challenges faced by a “fictitious island grappling with rising unemployment, poverty and crime”.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji military reports

The exercise was described as based on three models, operated on successive days.

The block 1 scenario tackled internal security, addressing civil unrest, law enforcement challenges and crowd control operations.

Block 2 involved humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and coordinating emergency response efforts with government agencies.

Block 3 on the last day dealt with a “mid-level counterinsurgency”, engaging in stabilising the crisis, and “neutralising” a threat.

Flash flood scenario
On the second day, a “composite” company with the assistance of the Fiji Navy successfully evacuated victims from a scenario-based flash flood at Doroko village (Waila) to Nausori Town.

“The flood victims were given first aid at the village before being evacuated to an evacuation centre in Syria Park,” said the Territorial Brigade’s Facebook page.

“The flood victims were further examined by the medical team at Syria Park.”

On the final day, Thursday, Exercise Genesis culminated in a pre-dawn attack by the troops on a “rebel hideout”.

According to the Facebook page, the “hideout” had been discovered following the deployment of a joint tracker team and the K9 unit from the Fiji Corrections Service.

“Through rigorous training and realistic scenarios, the [RFMF Territorial Brigade] continues to refine its combat proficiency, adaptability, and mission effectiveness,” said a brigade statement.

It said that the exercise was “ensuring that [the brigade] remains a versatile and responsive force, capable of safeguarding national security and contributing to regional stability.”

However, a critic said: “Anyone who is serious about reducing crime would offer a real alternative to austerity, poverty and alienation. Invest in young people and communities.”

With just over a year left in her tenure as Prime Minister of Samoa, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa faces a political upheaval threatening a peaceful end to her term.

Ironically, the rule of law — the very principle that elevated her to power — has now become the source of significant challenges within her party.

Fiame left the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) in 2020, opposing constitutional amendments she believed undermined judicial independence. Her decision reflected a commitment to democratic principles and a rejection of increasing authoritarianism within the HRPP.

• READ MORE: Other Samoan politics reports

She joined the newly formed Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party, created by former HRPP members seeking an alternative to decades of one-party dominance.

As FAST’s leader, Fiame led the party to a historic victory in the 2021 election, becoming Samoa’s first female Prime Minister and ending the HRPP’s nearly 40-year rule.

Her leadership is now under threat from within her own party.

FAST Founder, chairman and former Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries La’auli Leuatea Polataivao Schmidt, faces criminal charges, including conspiracy and harassment. These developments have escalated into calls for Fiame’s removal from her party.

Deputy charged with offences
On 3 January 2025, La’auli publicly revealed he had been charged with offences including conspiracy to obstruct justice, fabricating evidence, and harassment. These charges prompted widespread speculation, fueled by misinformation spread primarily via Facebook, that the charges were related to allegations of his involvement in an ongoing investigation into the death of a 19-year-old victim of a hit-and-run.

Following La’auli’s refusal to resign from his role as Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Fiame removed his portfolio on January 10, citing the need to uphold the integrity of her Cabinet.

“As Prime Minister, I had hoped that the former minister would choose to resign. This is a common stance often considered by esteemed public office custodians if allegations or charges are laid against them,” she explained.

In response to his dismissal, La’auli stated publicly: “I accept the decision with a humble heart.” He maintained his innocence, saying, “I am clean from all of this,” and expressed confidence that the truth will prevail.

La’auli urged his supporters to remain calm and emphasised his commitment to clearing his name while continuing to serve as a Member of Parliament for Gagaifomauga 3.

Following his removal, the Samoan media reported that members of the FAST party wrote a letter to Fiame requesting her removal as Prime Minister.

Three ministers dismissed
In response, Fiame dismissed three Cabinet Ministers, Mulipola Anarosa Ale-Molio’o (Women, Community, and Social Development), Toelupe Poumulinuku Onesemo (Communication and Information Technology), and Leota Laki Sio (Commerce, Industry, and Labor) — allegedly involved in the effort to unseat her.

Fiame emphasised the need for a cohesive and trustworthy Cabinet, stating the importance of maintaining confidence in her leadership.

Amid rumors of calls for her removal within the FAST party, Fiame acknowledged the party’s authority to replace her as its leader but clarified that only Parliament could determine her status as Prime Minister.

She expressed her determination to fulfill her duties despite internal challenges, though she did not specify the level of support she retains within the party.

Samoa’s Parliament is set to convene next Tuesday, where these tensions may reach a critical point. La’auli, facing multiple criminal charges, remains a focal point of the ongoing political turmoil.

A day after the announcement, on January 15, four new Ministers were sworn into office by Head of State Tuimaleali’ifano Va’aleto’a Sualauvi II at a ceremony attended by family, friends, and some FAST members.

The new Ministers are Faleomavaega Titimaea Tafua (Commerce, Industry, and Labour), Laga’aia Ti’aitu’au Tufuga (Women, Community, and Social Development), Mau’u Siaosi Pu’epu’emai (Communications and Information Technology), and Niu’ava Eti Malolo (Agriculture and Fisheries).

FAST caucus voted against Fiame
Later that evening, FAST chairman La’auli announced that 20 members of the FAST caucus had decided to remove Fiame from the leadership of FAST and expel her from the party along with five other Cabinet Ministers — Tuala Tevaga Ponifasio (Deputy Prime Minister), Leatinuu Wayne Fong, Olo Fiti Vaai, Faualo Harry Schuster, and Toesulusulu Cedric Schuster.

In Samoa, if an MP ceases to maintain affiliation with the political party under which they were elected — whether through resignation or expulsion, their seat is declared vacant if they choose to move to another party or form a new party.

These provisions aim to preserve political stability, prevent party-hopping, and maintain the integrity of parliamentary representation, with byelections held as needed to fill vacancies.

Under Section 142 of Samoa’s Electoral Act 2019, if the Speaker believes an MP’s seat has become vacant as per Section 141, they are required to formally charge the MP with that vacation.

If the Legislative Assembly is in session, this charge must be made orally during the Assembly. Fiame and the four FAST members can choose to maintain their seats in Parliament as Independents.

Former Prime Minister and now opposition leader Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi remarked that what should have been internal FAST issues had spilled into the public sphere.

“We have been watching and we continue to watch what they do and how they deal with their problems,” he stated.

Freedom of expression
When asked whether he would consider a coalition or support one side of FAST, Tuilaepa declined to reveal the opposition’s strategy, citing potential reactions from the other side. He emphasised the importance of adhering to democratic processes and protecting constitutional rights, including freedom of expression.

As Parliament prepares to reconvene on January 21, Facebook has become a battlefield for misinformation and defamatory discourse, particularly among FAST supporters in diaspora communities in the US, Australia, and New Zealand.

Divisions have emerged between supporters of Fiame and La’auli, leading to vitriol directed at politicians and journalists covering the crisis. La’auli, leveraging his social media following, has conducted Facebook Live sessions to assert his innocence and rally support.

Currently, FAST holds 35 seats in Parliament, while the opposition HRPP controls 18. If the removal of five MPs is factored in, FAST would retain 30 MPs, though La’auli claims that 20 members support Fiame’s removal. This leaves 10 MPs who may either support Fiame or remain neutral.

If FAST fails to expel Fiame, La’auli’s faction may push for a motion of no confidence against her.

Such a motion requires 27 votes to pass, potentially making the opposition pivotal in determining the outcome. This could lead to either Fiame’s removal or the dissolution of Parliament for a snap election.

As Samoa faces this political crisis, its democratic institutions undergo a significant test.

Fiame remains committed to the rule of law, while La’auli advocates for her removal.

Reflecting on the stakes, Fiame warned: “Disregarding the rule of law will undoubtedly have far-reaching negative impacts, including undermining our judiciary system and the abilities of our law enforcement agencies to fulfill their duties.”

For now, Samoa watches and waits as its political future hangs in the balance.

Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson is a Samoan journalist with over 20 years of experience reporting on the Pacific Islands. She is founding editor-in-chief of The New Atoll, a digital commentary magazine focusing on Pacific island geopolitics. Junior S. Ami is a photojournalist based in Samoa. He has covered national events for the Samoa Observer newspaper and runs a private photography business. Republished from the Devpolicy Blog with permission.

Meta, the giant social media corporation, has “unpublished” Green Left’s longstanding Facebook page, which had tens of thousands of followers.

We had been regularly posting stories, videos and photographs on the page from our consistent reporting of the news and views that seldom get into the mainstream media.

But our recent interviews with veteran Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled have resulted in what appears to be a 10-year ban, imposed without warning, nor an avenue of appeal.

• READ MORE:  Meta’s broken promises — systemic censorship of Palestine content on Instagram and Facebook
• Leila Khaled on the Kurdish struggle
• Facebook censorship on West Papua – then deafening silence — David Robie

Khaled, 79, is a member of the Palestinian Council (Palestine’s parliament) and a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. She lives in political exile in Jordan.

She is recognised as the Che Guevara of Palestine; she has enormous respect from Palestinians and millions of progressive people around the world.

The Facebook banning came shortly after Zionist organisations combined with right-wing media (SkyNews and the Murdoch media) to pressure Labor to say it would prevent Khaled from addressing Ecosocialism 2024 — a conference GL is co-hosting in Boorloo/Perth in June — by not only denying her a visa, but even banning her from speaking by video link.

Multiple visits
As GL reported, the excuse for such political censorship is, as the Executive Council of Australian Jewry alleged in its letter to Labor, that allowing Khaled to speak “would be likely to have the effect of inciting, promoting or advocating terrorism”.

This is nonsense.

Khaled has visited Britain on multiple occasions over the past few years. Israel issued her a visa to visit the West Bank in 1996.

She has visited Sweden and South Africa and, on one of her multiple visits, met Nelson Mandela (once also labelled a “terrorist” by the West), who warmly welcomed her.

A growing number of human rights activists, academics, journalists and community leaders have protested against this blatant political censorship. Their statements are here and we urge you to join in by sending us a short statement.

Khaled told GL the real reason for this censorship is to “make us shut up about what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank today”.

Meta has been exposed for carrying out “systematic online censorship”, particularly of Palestinian voices.

Suppression of content
In December 2023, Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented “over 1050 takedowns and other suppression of content on Instagram and Facebook that had been posted by Palestinians and their supporters, including about human rights abuses”.

Meta did not apply the same censorship to pro-Zionist posts that incited hate and violence against Palestinians.

HRW noted that “of the 1050 cases reviewed for this report, 1049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine that was censored or otherwise unduly suppressed, while one case involved removal of content in support of Israel”.

Other studies have described the systematic “shadow banning” of pro-Palestinian posts on Facebook and Instagram.

AccessNow, which defends the “digital rights of people and communities at risk” reports that Meta is “systematically silencing the voices of both Palestinians and those advocating for Palestinians’ rights” through arbitrary content removals, suspension of prominent Palestinian and Palestine-related accounts, restrictions on pro-Palestinian users and content, shadow-banning, discriminatory content moderation policies, inconsistent and discriminatory rule enforcement.

Social media corporations, such as Meta and Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), exercise a lot of power to manipulate people’s social and political views. This power has grown exponentially as more people access their news, views and information online.

Break this power
The search for ways to break this power will go on.

In the meantime there is one way readers can break the social media bans and restrictions on GL’s voice-for-the-resistance journalism: become a supporter and get GL delivered to you.

It has always been a struggle to keep people-power media projects alive. But GL has been going since 1991 and, with your help, we will not let the giant social media corporations silence us.

Republished with permission from Green Left.

The rise in social media platforms uploading naked pictures of women and girls has come to the attention of the Censorship Board in Papua New Guinea with Chief Censor Jim Abani warning about the dangers.

In what many have termed as cyber bullying, a picture of women or girls uploaded on social media is then downloaded by other people who use Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) in creating new content like images and videos of the women or girls involved in sexual activities, including being naked and also involved in pornography.

Chief Censor Abani said his office had received many complaints regarding GAI in creating new content like images and videos of recent reported cases, including uploading of nude images of females on social media.

• READ MORE: AI-generated nude images spread at Spain school, parents outraged
• Other PNG crime reports

He said it was disrespectful and a “disgrace to our mothers and sisters”.

More than 20 girls in Spain reported receiving AI-generated naked images of themselves in a controversy that has been widely reported globally.

Chief Censor Abani said the increase of using new and advanced technology features was alarming for a young and developing country such as PNG.

“We are talking about embracing communication and connective and empowering economy but also the high risks and dangers of wellbeing is my concern, Chief Censor Abani said.

“I call on those sick minded or evil minded people to stop and do something useful and contribute meaningful to nation building.

New Facebook trend
“This is a new trend with Facebook users in the country on social media platforms increasing with unimaginable ways of discriminating and harassment using fake names to post images — particularly of young females — that are not suitable for public consumption or viewing,” he said.

He said he was calling on all relevant agencies to come together, including the Censorship Office, to start implementing some policies and regulations to address these
issues.

Chief Censor Abani said people were unaware of dangers — “particularly our female users of social media platforms”.

These acts were without the individuals’ consent and knowledge using Generative AI applications.

“Technology is good but we must use wisely and being responsible in using such information that is provided,” he said.

He said the Censorship Office would work closely with Department ICT, DATACO and NICTA, police cybercrime unit to use the Cybercrime Code Act to punish perpetrators while waiting for the Censorship Act to finalise a review and amendments.

Marjorie Finkeo is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

Former MP for Madang Open and anti-corruption campaigner Bryan Kramer has filed a Supreme Court appeal against a National Court ruling dismissing his application for leave to review a Leadership Tribunal’s decision to dismiss him from office.

His appeal to the Supreme Court follows the refusal of a leave to review application in the National Court presided by Justice John Carey on August 18.

Kramer said in a statement that he had filed an application on the 23 May 2023 in the National Court to review the decision of the Leadership Tribunal.

• READ MORE: Anti-corruption crusader guilty of misconduct in office
• ‘I will eventually get killed’: Meet Bryan Kramer, Papua New Guinea’s anti-corruption tsar
• Other Bryan Kramer reports

He later withdrew this and refiled on June 30.

The refiled application raised nine primary grounds, including breach of natural justice, procedural unfairness, apprehension of bias in being denied a fair hearing, unreasonableness and being oppressive and harsh and not “reasonably justifiable in a democratic society”.

After waiting almost three months for a judge to hear his leave application, the matter was listed before Justice John Carey on August 18. However, straight after hearing detailed submission from counsels, Justice Carey delivered an oral judgement refusing Kramer’s application.

Justice Carey ruled that Kramer had not satisfied all the requirements, in particular an arguable case

Further nine grounds
Kramer is now appealing the judge’s ruling on a further nine grounds that include an allegation that the judge had failed to properly deliver a reasoned judicial decision.

He will submit that the judge had erred in directing Kramer’s counsel to narrow his submissions to the ground of apprehension of bias to the exclusion of the issues raised in the eight other grounds.

Further, the judge had failed to consider specific matters raised in each of nine grounds.

The judge had delivered two judgments, the first oral and the second published without indicating to parties, and that was altered and expounded on the reasons in the oral judgement.

He was dismissed in May this year by a a Leadership Tribunal comprising Justice Lawrence Kangwia and senior Magistrates Josephine Nidue and Edward Komia.

The Tribunal found him guilty on seven of thirteen allegations of misconduct in office

Five of the seven misconduct charges were in relation to decisions concerning the Madang District Development Authority (DDA) that he had failed to comply with legislative administrative requirements, and the misapplication of district funds to which they could not be lawfully applied.

Facebook publications
The remaining two misconduct charges were in relation to his Facebook publications that were found to have “scandalised the judiciary”.

The background of the two charges of him scandalising the judiciary were that in October 2019 he had published a three-part series of articles on Facebook concerning an arrest warrant against former Prime Minister Peter O’Neill.

The first charge was over part of his publication insinuating a conflict of interest by Chief Justice Sir Gibbs Salika in publishing the words “a relevant matter to note is that the Chief Justice was only recently appointed by O’Neill late last year”.

The second charge was over publishing the words “What was not anticipated was that O’Neill and his lawyers would solicit the assistance from the Chief Justice and desperate enough to submit fabricated documents to mislead the court that the warrant was defective as a means to obtain a stay order”.

The Tribunal had recommended by majority that Kramer pay a fine of K2000 (about NZ$922) for each for the five charges in relation to the Madang District Development Authority as they were decisions made by the DDA Board and not Kramer alone.

However, it recommended unanimously for his dismissal from office in relation to his Facebook publications in scandalising the judiciary.

Pacific Media Watch reports that in a profile by The Guardian in 2019, Bryan Kramer — BK as he is known — was described as a “rising star in PNG politics” and as an anti-corruption campaigner who was instrumental in bringing to light the UBS scandal that helped to bring down former Prime Minister Peter O’Neill’s leadership.

Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.

A board member at RNZ appointed less than a month ago quit this week after making public comments on former Justice Minister Kiri Allan’s downfall and criticising media coverage of it.

RNZ had asked Jason Ake to stop and the government said he breached official obligations of neutrality, but he was unrepentant.

Jason Ake (Ngāti Ranginui) was one of the appointments last month to the boards of RNZ and TVNZ that represented “an exciting new era for our public broadcasters as they continue to tackle the challenges of … serving all people of Aotearoa now and into the future,” according to Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MEDIAWATCH: Public broadcaster opinions commentary
• Rob Campbell: Governance a good place for disruptive and transformative thought and debate

“Looking forward to the mahi ahead,” Ake told his LinkedIn followers at the time.

“Hoping to bring an indigenous perspective to the strategic direction at the public broadcasting institution,” he added, honouring the advocacy of pioneers Whai Ngata, Derek Fox and Henare Te Ua “for a much more visible Māori perspective in RNZ’s strategic direction”.

But even before he could be inducted into RNZ or attend a single board meeting, Ake resigned this week in the wake of controversy over social media comments he made about the downfall of cabinet minister Kiri Allan.

“When there’s blood in the water the sharks circle, and they’re more than happy to digest every last morsel and watch the bones sink to the depth. It’s a bloodsport,” he said in a Facebook post.

Referenced mental breakdown
He also referenced former National Party leader Todd Muller, who recovered from a mental breakdown to resume his work as an MP.

Jackson told reporters in Parliament on Tuesday Ake had “often been quite vocal about issues and he’s gonna have to stop”.

RNZ chair Dr Jim Mather had already been in touch to remind Jason Ake of his responsibilities under the Public Service Commission’s code of conduct for crown entity board members.

“When acting in our private capacity, we avoid any political activity that could jeopardise our ability to perform our role, or which could erode the public’s trust in the entity,” the code says.

Ake’s initial Facebook comment was not explicitly or aggressively politically partisan. Most of the comments could be construed as a reflection on the media as much as on politics or politicians.

But there is heightened sensitivity these days because of Te Whatu Ora chair Rob Campbell, who was sacked after publicly criticising opposition parties’ health policies recently. (That was amplified when media commentaries of other government-appointed board members were scrutinised in the wake of that).

In a statement earlier this week, RNZ’s chair acknowledged that  Ake was “new to the board of RNZ”.

An RNZ board member appointed less than a month ago quit this week after commenting on Kiri Allan’s downfall and criticising media coverage. The government said Jason Ake breached official obligations of neutrality, but he was unrepentanthttps://t.co/ttGog3rDLG

— Mediawatch (@MediawatchNZ) July 29, 2023

Communications professional
But he is also a former journalist and a communications professional who is currently Waikato Tainui’s communications manager. Along with his partner — Māori communications consultant Deborah Jensen — he is a director of a consultancy called Native Voice.

RNZ said no further comment would be made until Dr Mather and Ake had discussed the matter further.

But Ake did not wait for that.

He went on Facebook again insisting mental health was a topic that needed to be talked about, particularly because it affected Māori so much.

He also referred to “an ideological premise that we as Māori must conform”.

And while he thanked some journalists for “getting the key message”, he repeated his criticisms of the media.

“21 Māori journos got it — more than the entire compliment [sic] of our two major media entities in Aotearoa, who between them have more than 700 reporters on the staff.”

Unable to ‘stay quiet’
After that, Ake told The New Zealand Herald he had resigned from the RNZ board “on principle”, because he would have been unable to stay quiet about broadcasting decisions which impacted on Māori.

“Crown entity governance has its own tikanga and protocols that need to be observed,” Dr Mather said in a statement describing it as “a missed opportunity.”

That was reinforced by Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni.

“It’s really important that they seem to be impartial and they’re not getting involved in the politics in any way. They’ve got really important roles to play and so the public needs to have faith in them being impartial,” she told TVNZ’s Te Karere.

Whanua Ora Minister Peeni Henare told Te Karere that crown entity board members “must represent all of Aotearoa”.

Rob Campbell wrote a piece for The New Zealand Herald the same day, applauding Ake for in his words, “having the guts to speak his truth”.

“They should not remove people, or put pressure on people to resign while in a position because the public views are not mutually shared or inconvenient. Nor should they be censored or silenced. They can appoint new directors when their term has served,” he said.

Obliged to be ‘politically noisy’
In a piece for the Herald explaining his own decision, Ake said that membership of Te Whakaruruhau o Nga Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa, the umbrella group representing more than 20 iwi radio stations around the country, obliged him to be “politically noisy”.

“This would have placed me on a collision course with the political neutrality expectations as set out in the Crown Entities guidelines,” he wrote.

“I made it clear that I came with a deep commitment to the Treaty and ensuring that it is embedded into the fabric and culture of the organisation. The Treaty is by definition a political pact and this required uncomfortable and sometimes public conversations,” Ake wrote in The Herald.

“My presence cannot be a distraction to the transformative mahi ahead of it. It would not be fair on the chair or the other board members and it will undoubtedly stymie progress for the entire organisation,” he added.

But commenting on mental health or broadcasting would not be a problem if he refrained from criticising political decisions or individual politicians, or discussing RNZ in public.

Jackson also appointed Ake to lead the Māori Media Sector Shift review back in 2020.

While in that role, Ake aired opinions on broadcasting broadly mirroring Jackson’s own aspirations for state-owned media.

Boost for Māori creators
“Where is the allowance for decent Māori stories? We’ve got an opinion and a view under a whole range of things that’s not reflected in the television in high rating programmes. It shouldn’t ghetto-ised into digital online platforms only,” Ake told Radio Waatea in 2021.

In another Radio Waatea interview, Ake said RNZ and TVNZ’s merger must be a boost for Māori content creators.

“The human capability and capacity out there is really, really limited. And it doesn’t make sense for the Māori sector to fight with itself in order to bring to the market good content. I think that’s where the merger ought to look for what a decent template would look like,” he said.

Ake also aired concerns about the commercial media organisations getting money from the Public Interest Journalism Fund for Māori journalism, content and topics.

“Why would you put yourself in front of an environment that’s diabolically opposed or structured in a way that doesn’t recognise the value that Māori bring to the discussion?

“The internal culture at some of these organisations is so ingrained that it has become part of the carpets, the curtains and everything else. So there needs to be systemic change inside these commercial organisations,” he argued.

Content funding increased
Māori broadcasting content funding was boosted by $82 million in the past two years, as part of the review which Jackson appointed Ake to oversee.

In the wake of the merger’s collapse, RNZ’s own funding has been boosted — in part to fuel the Rautaki Māori (Māori strategy) Jackson called for in the past and now supports.

Ake has rejected a governance role at RNZ at a time when his input and influence may have had its greatest effect.

He has not responded so far to Mediawatch’s calls and messages.

But his most recent post on LinkedIn announcing his resignation has this footnote for reporters: “Stop ringing me. I have mahi to do.”

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

Paediatrician Dr Teuila Percival heads the list of Pacific recipients in the New Zealand King’s Birthday Honours List for 2023.

Dr Percival is one of at least 15 Pasifika people in New Zealand who are on the list. She is to be a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to health and the Pacific community.

For the past three decades she has been a strong advocate for Pacific children’s health in New Zealand and the Pacific.

• READ MORE: King’s Birthday Honours: Former NZ leader Jacinda Ardern receives high accolade
• King’s Birthday Honours: Kiwis recognised for service across fields from business to sport
• Other King’s Birthday Honours reports

Dr Percival said she felt honoured to get the award after getting over the initial surprise.

“I think it’s important for Pacific people to be recognised in the work they do, so it’s really nice in that respect,” she said.

“It’s just a great job, I love working with kids. I think children are the most important thing.”

Dr Percival was a founding member of South Seas Healthcare, a community health service for Pacific people in Auckland since 1999.

She has also been deployed to Pacific nations after natural disasters like to Samoa in 2009 after the tsunami and to Vanuatu in 2015 following cyclone Pam.

Education
Sacred Heart school counsellor Nua Silipa is to be an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to Pacific education.

Silipa said her experience struggling in the education system after immigrating from Samoa in 1962 had motivated her to help Pacific people in the classroom.

“When I look back now I think my journey was so hard as a minority in Christchurch,” Silipa said.

“It was a struggle because we weren’t in the classroom, the resources at that time were Janet and John . . .  so as a learner I really struggled.”

She said the “whole experience of underachievement” motivated her to help “people who are different in the system”.

“It’s not a one size fits all in education.”

Nua Silipa said she felt humbled to be a recipient on the King’s Birthday Honours List.

She said the award also honoured the people who had been involved in improving education for Pasifika.

“I know there’s so, so many other people who are doing work quietly every day, helping our communities and I’m really in awe of them.

“There are many unsung heroes out in our community doing work for our people.”

Technology
Mary Aue is to be a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to education, technology and Pacific and Māori communities.

Mary Aue is to be a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to education, technology and Pacific and Māori communities Photo: Supplied

In 1999, she launched Coconut Wireless as an e-newsletter for Pasifika reaching 10,000 subscribers. It relaunched in 2014 as a social media platform and now has over 300,000 Facebook followers.

“There was a disconnect between community and government agencies and there was a disconnect between our communities,” she said.

“There was no communication back then, so I created an e-newsletter.”

The name Coconut Wireless was based on the island concept as a fast way of communicating through word of mouth.

Aue has also been an advocate for more Pacific and Māori learners in science, engineering, technology and mathematics (STEM).

Aue said she was originally going to decline the award as there were a lot of people in the community who do not get recognised behind the scenes.

“I have to thank my family, my friends and the amazing community that we’re all part of.”

Sport
Teremoana Maua-Hodges said she “just about choked” on her cup of tea when she found out she had received the Queen’s Service Medal.

Maua-Hodges has been given the award for her contribution to sport and culture.

She said the award was the work of many people — including her parents — who travelled to New Zealand from the Cook Islands when she was a child.

“I’m very humbled by the award, but it’s not just me,” Maua-Hodges said.

“I stand on the shoulders of different heroes and heroines of our people in the community.

“It’s not my award, it’s our award.”

Maua-Hodges said the most important thing she had done was connect Cook Islanders.

“Uniting Cook Islanders who have come over from different islands in the Cook Islands and then to come here and be united here within their diversity makes me very proud.

“They’ve taken on the whole culture of Aotearoa but still as Cook Islanders . . .  to show their voice, to show their flag, in the land of milk and honey.”

The Queen’s Service Medal will be renamed the King’s Service Medal once the necessary processes are done, and the updated Royal Warrant is approved by King Charles.

Pasifika recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for 2022:

Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit: Dr Teuila Mary Percival — for services to health and the Pacific community.

Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit: Nua Semuā Silipa — for services to Pacific education.

Honorary Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit: Meleane Pau’uvale — for services to the Tongan community and education.

Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit:

Mary Puatuki Aue — for services to education, technology and Pacific and Māori communities.

Dr Ofanaite Ana Dewes — for services to health and the Pacific community.

Fa’atili Iosua Esera — for services to Pacific education.

Dr Siale Alokihakau Foliaki — for services to mental health and the Pacific community.

Keni Upokotea Moeroa — for services to the Cook Islands community.

Talalelei Senetenari Taufale — for services to Pacific health.

Dr Semisi Pouvalu Taumoepeau — for services to education and tourism.

Honorary Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit: Fa’amoana Ioane Luafutu — for services to arts and the Pacific community.

Queen’s Service Medal:

Joseph Davis — for services to the Fijian community.

Reverend Alofa Ta’ase Lale — for services to the community.

Teremoana Maua-Hodges — for services to sport and culture.

Putiani Upoko — for services to the Pacific community.

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

Esther Haluk, a women’s rights activist from GARDA Papua, is among West Papuan activists who have condemned a declining state of freedom of speech in the Melanesian region.

Speaking in a recent online discussion on “Status and Trends of Freedom of Expression, Assembly, and Digital Rights in West Papua”, she said there was a growing sense of fear among Papuans who wished to openly voice their opinions due to the Indonesian government’s response.

Haluk said that the deterioration of freedom of expression in Papua could be traced back to 2019 when large-scale protests erupted in response to instances of racism.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua reports

She said individuals from the Papuan community who had participated in those protests were subsequently arrested and imprisoned.

“Some Indonesian people call us monkeys but when we fight against it, we are arrested. We are victims,” Haluk told the discussion organised by SAFEnet and TAPOL this week.

According to Haluk, whenever Papuans exercised their freedom of expression to voice the truth, they were consistently met with opposition from the military and police forces.

Haluk shared that she personally experienced being arrested for participating in a peaceful protest in May 2022. However, at the police station she was questioned about her social media posts instead.

Facebook account hacked
“So at that time we were taken to the police station not because of the protest but rather due to our social media posts. My Facebook account was hacked three times after I posted some comments on the news,” Haluk explained.

Haluk said the policies implemented by the Indonesian government did not align with the wishes of the Papuan people, particularly over the splitting up of Papua province to  establish new provinces.

However, when Papuans protested against the policy, they were arrested.

“We refuse to accept the policies enforced in Papua because they do not positively impact our lives,” she said.

“We are witnessing ecological destruction that poses a threat to our existence, as well as issues of land appropriation.

“It is our fundamental right to express ourselves and engage in peaceful protests, yet the government responds by deploying a significant number of military and police personnel to suppress Papuan voices,” Haluk said.

She said Indonesia as a democratic nation should uphold and honour the freedom of expression of Papuans.

Peaceful protests
In Haluk’s view, the way the Indonesian government treated Papuans indicated that Papuans were not viewed as a part of Indonesia.

“We intended to conduct a peaceful protest, so why did the government resort to sending in the police and military to forcibly disperse us?

“We were simply exercising our rights, so why the use of such excessive force by the military and police?

“Based on our experiences as Papuans, it feels as though our rights hold no significance and are not acknowledged within Indonesia,” Haluk said.

Ian Moore of the human rights campaign TAPOL revealed in the forum that there were 21 instances of arbitrary dispersals that took place in 2022, according to the Tapol West Papua 2022 report “Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Assembly”.

Moore highlighted that most of the incidents occurred in Papua province, particularly in the capital Jayapura. However, similar incidents were also reported in other parts of West Papua, especially in Sorong, and Central Papua.

Moore said that various police units were involved in the dispersal of peaceful demonstrations in Papua, ranging from standard units to special task forces such as the Nemangkawi Task Force, the Mobile Brigade Corps, and police intelligence agencies

Papuans ‘oppressed’
Made Supriatma, a researcher at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, said the state continued to oppress Papuans by deploying military forces to deal with their protests.

This response, Supriatma added, was “excessively brutal” and amounted to repression against Papuans.

Supriatma said that various protests by Papuans indicated a growing sense of nationalism, particularly among the youth in Papua.

The Indonesian government should engage in dialogue with Papuans to address their concerns and listen to their demands.

“Papua has a strong movement, and young Papuans are eager to voice their opinions and participate in protests, even in the face of military repression,” Supriatma said.

Republished with permission.

The Fiji Attorney-General’s office has terminated the instructions of lawyers Devanesh Sharma and Gul Fatima in the contempt of court case involving Suva lawyer Richard Naidu.

Mary Motafaga, a lawyer in the Attorney-General’s office, confirmed to Justice Daniel Goundar when the matter was called in the High Court yesterday, that the law firm of R Patel & Co was no longer retained.

Justice Goundar told Motafaga and Naidu’s counsel, Jon Apted, that he had called the matter before him to ensure that the parties were aware of the resignation of the previous judge in the case, Justice Jude Nanayakkara.

• READ MORE: Other contempt of court case reports

Naidu was alleged to have scandalised the court in a Facebook post sharing an excerpt of a judgment which showed the word “injunction” misspelled as “injection” and suggesting that “maybe our judges need to be protected from all this vaccination campaigning”.

On November 22, 2023, Justice Nanayakkara found Naidu guilty of contempt of court and convicted him of scandalising the court.

Justice Goundar said that Acting Chief Justice Salesi Temo had now allocated the case to him.

“I understand that we are now at the sentencing stage of the proceedings,” he said.

Justice Goundar said he wished the parties to note that he had no personal interest in the case or any relationship with any of the parties to it.

“We are at the sentencing stage and I would like to hear the parties on where we go from now regarding this matter.”

Motofaga confirmed to the court that the A-G’s office had taken over the matter but had not yet received the files on the case, so was requesting a three-week adjournment.

Justice Goundar adjourned the case to April 3, 2023, for mention “to check the position of the Office of the A-G in relation to this matter”.

Repeka Nasiko is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

How the RNZ/TVNZ merger went from its first reading in Parliament to the legislative extinction list is an example of why New Zealand actually needs more public media and not less. Let me explain.

It has been labelled a grenade, a dog and a monolithic, monopolistic monster. Yet it is actually a reasonable policy that would bring New Zealand public media in line with most other developed countries.

No other developed country has separate national television and radio networks. They have seen how it fails us and said, “no thanks”.

• READ MORE: Other RNZ/TVNZ merger reports

Most other developed countries spend quite a bit more on their public media platforms too. Brits pay $81 each, Norwegians $110, Germans $142, but Kiwis just $27 each year to fund RNZ, TVNZ and NZ On Air.

Even with the government’s funding increase over the next three years, we’ll still be spending less per person than Australia, Ireland or any other country we like to compare ourselves to.

A big part of our public media underspend is successive governments’ policy that TVNZ pay its own way and rely on advertising dollars.

Other countries subsidise their public media because they realise that a reliable source of news and information is too important to be left in the hands of marketers and advertising departments.

Other end of the spectrum
At the other end of the spectrum is the US spending just $3 per person on public media. You have to wonder how different US politics might be if it had fully-funded public media.

It is true that TVNZ does receive funding for programmes through NZ On Air but those shows still have to be simple and entertaining because TVNZ sells adverts around them. Only Sunday mornings have programmes for minorities or long-form political interviews, and of course, that is when there is no advertising.

That is the big difference between public media and commercial media. Public media doesn’t rely on advertising so it isn’t so desperate to get your attention and blast adverts at you.

Public media has time to examine public issues in-depth.

Commercial media needs to make money and with advertising dollars drifting to Google and Facebook, they work even harder to make content as eye-catching, entertaining and easy to understand as possible.

You may have noticed it on TVNZ, Newshub, Stuff or at the New Zealand Herald. These days there are more articles about crime, car crashes and weather bombs because they catch people’s attention.

Political reporting also wants to catch your attention. While public media can spend half an hour discussing a policy in-depth, commercial media want eyeballs so they go for the fun stuff — who’s up and who’s down in the pugilistic soap opera of daily politics. It is entertaining and it’s quick and easy to explain.

Complicated issues
Unlike this opinion piece I’m writing for you now — I’m already halfway through my allotted word count, yet I’ve spent all of them just explaining the background. Complicated issues take more time to explain. I had better get on with it.

It was in this commercial political reporting soap opera that the media merger lost its way. Like many politicians, opposition broadcasting spokesperson Melissa Lee exploited commercial media’s focus on simplification and pugilism to attack the government. She repeatedly claimed the government could not explain why we need the merger, but the government had tried to explain it, only the public hadn’t heard because it is too complicated to explain quickly and simply on commercial media (as I’m trying to do here).

Political reporting fixated on Willie Jackson’s various stumbles as though this reflected the policy, rather than analysing the policy itself.

National Party leader Christopher Luxon also exploited commercial media’s lack of examination. He criticised the merger for being “ideological”, claiming it would destroy TVNZ’s business model, and saying he would demerge it if National win the election.

But none of the interviewers asked Luxon to explain his figures or why the destruction of TVNZ’s business model would be a bad thing. None asked him if demerging would also be “ideological” and none asked if he would get a cost-benefit analysis done before demerging.

Lee and Luxon’s criticism worked. A Taxpayers Union poll in November claimed 54 percent opposed the merger and 22 percent supported it.

Different polling outcome
My organisation, Better Public Media Trust, also polled on the subject but we added some information about the merger, its costs and benefits. We got quite different results with just 29 percent opposing and 44 percent supporting the merger.

That shows what a little bit of information can do to public opinion. It also shows that reliance on commercial media for political discussion is prone to being style over substance, posturing over policy, soap operas over documentaries.

That is why the merger should go ahead. People would see it’s not a dog, grenade or monster, but intelligent, diverse and informative public media. Just in time for the election.

Myles Thomas is chair of the Better Public Media Trust (BPM). He is a television producer and director of various forms of “factual” programming, and in 2012 he established established the Save TVNZ 7 campaign. This article was first published in the New Zealand Herald and is republished here with the author’s permission.

By Anusha Bradley, RNZ News investigative reporter

Within hours of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s shock resignation announcement in Napier, a small crowd gathered outside the city’s conference centre.

Unlike the steady stream of shocked Labour MPs still coming to terms with the news, these folks were celebrating.

“Ding dong the witch is gone,” a placard read.

Online, there have been similar sentiments to be found among groups bitterly opposed to Ardern. The Freedom and Rights Coalition even takes credit for Ardern’s departure in a post on Facebook: “We can now celebrate the departure of this leader of division. We did it!”

• READ MORE: Ardern’s resignation as NZ prime minister a game changer for 2023 general election
• Reaction from around the world
• Other Jacinda Ardern reports

The comments on the post are unfit to repeat here.

Entering what would have been her sixth year, Ardern is the longest-serving Labour Prime Minister after Peter Fraser and Helen Clark. But in an emotional speech to her caucus in Napier she revealed she “no longer had enough in the tank” to do the job.

“It’s time,” she said.

“As much as I have taken great joy in this job, I would be giving a disservice to this country and to the Labour Party if I continued, knowing that I just don’t have enough in the tank for another four years.”

Violent abuse
While it wasn’t explicitly stated, it’s hard to imagine the increasingly violent abuse directed at her was not part of the reason.

“It is no surprise to me at all … she could not, not be affected by this,” says Disinformation Project director Kate Hannah.

Ardern probably tops the list for the amount of vitriol endured by any political leader in this country, Hannah believes.

“In the earlier parts of her first term we got sort of commentary about her looks and her lack of perceived experience. The fact that sort of she was, you know, well spoken, and really good at communicating complex issues was kind of a slur against her.”

But in the last two years the misogyny and violence directed towards Ardern has not only increased in volume, but also become more dangerous, says Hannah, who studies online hate speech and disinformation.

“The language and imagery used to talk about the Prime Minister has become more violent, more vulgar, more crude and repetitive.”

According to a recent study, published just before Christmas, which charts the rise of misogynistic language towards female leaders and women in the public sphere, the most prevalent word used to describe the Prime Minister in these circles is “the C word, and the most prevalent visual image is of witchcraft”.

“And this is old data. This is data from the middle of last year. So it’s actually got worse.”

Grim factoid
Another grim factoid from the paper shows the word “Neve” – referring to Ardern’s pre-school daughter — is also on the most prevalent list.

In June, it was revealed the number of threats towards Ardern has almost tripled in the past three years.

Hannah, who herself has been subjected to similar abuse — including death threats — says she presented the paper’s findings to Ardern and a range of MPs late last year.

How did Ardern react?

“As we all do . . . trying to laugh it off and saying the job is more important . . . and you just have to get on with the job,” says Hannah.

But this is no laughing matter, she says. This new virulent brand of misogyny is on the rise and it affects all women.

“The international disinformation, far right, pro-Putin community is incredibly misogynistic.

‘Incredibly abusive’
“It is incredibly abusive and derogatory, and what it does is attempts to reduce a person to their basic self, and in doing so signals to every other person who shares characteristics with that individual who has been targeted that they are equally worthless, equally base, equally loathed.

“So has this purpose of both targeting individually her as a woman, her role as prime minister, and then all women or all people who share some of those characteristics with her,” says Hannah.

Massey University senior lecturer Dr Suze Wilson, who studies leadership and has examined the vitriol aimed at Ardern, says even the coining of “Jacindamania”, referring to her meteoric rise in popularity as leader served as an early warning of what was to come.

“As if somehow people were losing their heads to be excited by the prospect of a potential Prime Minister, who was young and female and articulate, through to the last couple of years where it’s become increasingly violent, the kind of abuse to which she’s been subjected.”

While the pandemic has been a factor, research also shows that generally it is becoming more challenging for women to be taken seriously, says Wilson.

“Particularly if they are younger and particularly if they don’t cleave to a masculine style, which Ardern does not.”

Worryingly, misogynistic sentiment is also on the rise globally. The latest Reykjavik Index for leadership tracks views about whether a man or woman would be more suitable to a certain position.

Backwards trend
“The most recent data came out just before Christmas, and it is showing that in some countries for the first time that there was actually some backwards moving trends,” says Wilson.

“It was showing, alarmingly, that it’s particularly among younger men, and those are the ones that are being exposed to the likes of Jordan Petersons and Andrew Tates of the world who are learning from them a really just disrespectful and antagonistic view towards women.”

Wilson says she first started noticing a shift in sentiment towards Ardern during the first 2020 lockdown. But it didn’t come from the dark corners of the anti-vax movement, but on the mainstream business social networking site LinkedIn.

‘”I started seeing people, you know like business leaders, using words like tyrant and dictator to describe the prime minister, and I was kind of quite disturbed by that.

“The fact that they can make those kinds of statements and think that somehow that would be a credible statement, tells you kind of something about the shifting norms of what’s considered an OK way to talk about our prime minister.”

Dr Wilson believes this must have taken its toll on Ardern.

“It’s hard to believe that it wouldn’t affect you, right? I mean, it would affect anybody . . . Having people talk about wanting to hang her, wanting to harm her child, the persistent rumours about her partner. She’s human, of course it’s going to take quite a toll.”

‘Look in the mirror’
Ardern herself has rarely acknowledged the abuse publicly. Wilson can understand why.

“I can understand why she doesn’t want to highlight it, because it would be, perhaps for those that are engaged in that behaviour, some kind of reinforcement that what they’re doing is having an effect.

“But really, they should just look in the mirror and be deeply ashamed of their conduct.”

Hannah says it’s also worrying the violent rhetoric towards the prime minister is now considered the “new normal”.

“This type of language and abuse is now so normalised that it’s very hard to pull back from. When people have become accustomed to using the C word, as the most commonly used word to describe the prime minister, then, you know, I just don’t know how we come back from that in any kind of quick way.”

For some, the issue was so pervasive it defined the way they viewed the announcement of her resignation. A number of public figures referred to it in posts on Twitter:

#PrimeMinister @jacindaardern resigned today. I am not surprised nor do I blame her. Her treatment, the pile on, in the last few months has been disgraceful and embarrassing. All the bullies, the misogynists, the aggrieved. She deserved so much better. A great leader. Thanks PM! pic.twitter.com/7b1AhjBXrW

— Sam Neill (@TwoPaddocks) January 19, 2023

History will judge Jacinda Ardern as a remarkable leader.

She is genuinely kind and has an incredible intellect, she’s made more of a contribution than she will ever appreciate.

I can’t help but feel like we need to find better ways to support women and mothers in politics.

— Fleur Fitzsimons (@FleurFitzsimons) January 19, 2023

Apart from wartime, no New Zealand Prime Minister has faced the challenges Jacinda Ardern has handled. And certainly none has had to govern through the kind of deranged abuse and threat to which she has been subject in the past two years.

— Russell Brown (@publicaddress) January 19, 2023

No matter what you thought of her politics, the sustained personal attacks and hatred levelled at Jacinda was unlike anything I’d seen- from critiques of her motherhood to hysteria and conspiracy theories to threats of violence.

It’s not safe to be a woman in public light

— Mohamed Hassan (@mohamedwashere) January 19, 2023

And on the streets of Auckland, kilometres away from the dwindling crowd outside Napier’s conference centre, an emotional Tessa Williams from Taupō, perhaps summed up the view of those most disturbed by the vitriol Ardern received.

“She’s put up with a lot of really tough stuff. I mean, I was surprised that she has hung in kind of as long as she did,” Williams said.

“It was pretty rough how she’s been treated. Yeah, I think it’s a good decision. It was so hard for her. She did a really good job.

“It’s sad that people were so mean to her.”

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

Women now make up well over half of New Zealand’s journalism workforce, but they have serious concerns about their safety on the job, a new survey shows.

Conducted by Massey University, the Worlds of Journalism Study 2.0: Journalists in Aotearoa/New Zealand garnered responses from 359 of the country’s estimated 1600 full-time journalists.

Women make up 58 percent of the profession but are seriously concerned about their safety at work due to public discrediting, threats, surveillance, physical attack, sexual harassment, and stalking.

• READ MORE: Worlds of Journalism: Mapping journalism’s hostile environment

Journalists reported threats, bullying, stalking and rape and death threats. One had a faux Facebook page set up in their name.

Sexual abuse included “public speculation or commentary about my body, mental health, sex like, marriage, which political commentators/etc I must have had sex with.”

Since the last survey in 2015, women have closed the pay gap and are now equally represented at all levels.

Pay across the board has increased in real terms since then, adjusted for inflation.

Māori journalists now a tenth
There has been a 20 percent increase in Māori journalists, who now make up a tenth of the workforce. But Pasifika and Asian communities remain under-represented.

For the first time, New Zealand journalists were asked about their attitudes to the Treaty of Waitangi; three quarters said it applied to all or most things they wrote.

Journalists are still committed to the traditional non-biased observer role of journalists, but now feel their most important role is to educate the public.

They are less influenced by commercial considerations than they were seven years ago, and more concerned to uphold journalism ethics.

Their political views are slightly left of centre, on average.

Massey University Associate Professor Dr James Hollings said the survey showed that employers needed to do more to keep their female employees safe.

“Journalists are under a lot of strain due to shrinking newsrooms and other pressures, but they’re doing a remarkable job of holding to their core values despite that.

‘Making great diversity efforts’
“It also shows that profession is making great efforts to adapt to become more equal and more diverse, although there’s some way to go in some areas.”

The survey is New Zealand’s contribution to the Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS). It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.25 percent and a confidence level of 95 percent.

The first global survey, undertaken 2012-2016, mapped journalists in 66 countries and provided the first statistically robust picture of journalists worldwide ever undertaken.

This second global survey, which is still underway, will extend the coverage to up to 120 countries, mapping changes since 2016. The first global results will be available in 2024.

A new study suggests that the news media’s tanking levels of public trust may be made worse merely by association with social media.

The study, released this month by the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, has exposed gaps between trust in news via conventional delivery and the same thing consumed via social media.

It doesn’t matter whether people use social media or not: Levels of trust is lower if they simply associate news with the platforms.

• READ MORE: The trust gap: how and why news on digital platforms is viewed more sceptically versus news in general

The gap varies between platforms and between countries but the overall finding is that levels of trust in news on social media, search engines, and messaging apps is consistently lower than audience trust in information in the news media more generally.

And our media is becoming more and more associated with social media.

Many of the country’s main news outlets have done deals with Google to appear on its Google News platform. Click on the app and you’ll see stories from Stuff, Newshub, New Zealand Herald and NewstalkZB, Radio New Zealand, Television New Zealand, Newsroom, and the Otago Daily Times.

NZME has brokered a deal with Facebook for the use of content, and other publishers are using the Commerce Commission in the hope of leveling the negotiating playing field.

Split between north and south
The Reuters study (part of the institute’s on-going research into trust in the media) was a split between north and south. The four countries surveyed were the United Kingdom, the United States, India, and Brazil. Two thousand people were surveyed in each country and covered seven platforms: Facebook, Google, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, WhatsApp, and YouTube.

New Zealand use of social media more closely follows that of the United States and the United Kingdom than India and Brazil so the data relating to those two nations are quoted here. The full results can be found here.

Google showed the smallest gap between platform and general trust in news. It was only one percentage point behind in Britain where 53 percent express general trust in news. In the US, where the general trust level sits at 49 percent, Google was actually four percentage points ahead.

The same could not be said for other platforms.

To ease the calculation, we’ll say roughly 50 percent of respondents in both countries express trust in news in general. Contrast that with news on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, which score in the mid to high twenties.

TikTok news is trusted by only 20 percent on those surveyed, the same number as WhatsApp rates in the United States (the UK is higher on 29 percent).

Only YouTube emerged from the twenties, with its news content being rated by 33 percent in Britain and 40 percent in the United States.

Complex reasons
The reasons for these gaps in perception of news on social media are complex. This is due in part to the fact that social media serves many different purposes for many different users.

News is only a small part of the interchange that occurs. The study shows that no more than a third use Google or Facebook for daily access to news, with other platforms below 20 percent, and on TikTok only 11 percent.

Large portions of the public, in fact, do not use social media platforms at all (although this does not stop them having opinions about them in the survey). Usage varies between Britain and America but a quarter to a third never use Facebook, Google or YouTube and half to three quarters do not use the remaining platforms.

Previous Reuters research has shown levels of trust in news are higher in those who access it on a regular basis. Distrust is highest among those who have least contact with news and with social platforms. This is confirmed by the latest survey.

News organisations may take some comfort from the findings that young people are more trusting of news on social platforms than older people. The gap is huge in some cases.

An average 14 percent of Americans and Britons over 55 trust news on Facebook. That rises to 40 percent among those under 35. The gap for Google is similar and even greater on other platforms.

News aside, however, people have generally positive views of platforms. More than two-thirds give Google a tick and almost as many give the thumbs-up to YouTube. Both are seen as the best platforms on which learn new things.

Facebook doesn’t fare so well
Facebook does not fare quite so well but at 40-45 percent positive rating, while fewer than a third feel positively about Twitter and TikTok.

In spite of these warm fuzzies, however, the surveys reveal “big problems”, particularly with Facebook.

Almost two-thirds of respondents blame Facebook for propagating false or misleading information and it is also seen as the worst culprit in on-platform harassment, irresponsible use of personal data, prioritising political views, and censoring content.

Although opinions expressed by non-users has complicated the Reuters study, both users and no-users express similar views when it comes to these problems. For example, the proportion of Facebook users that say false or misleading information is a problem on the platform (63 percent) is virtually the same as those who say it is in the overall sample.

The study, which includes an even wider range of variables than are included here, attempts to correlate platform usage and ideas about journalism. After all, it is on such platforms — and from the mouths of some politicians — that users encounter discussions about journalism and criticism of journalists.

The survey asked specific questions about journalists. Half the respondents thought journalists try to manipulate the public to serve the agendas of powerful politicians and care more about getting attention than reporting the facts.

Forty percent thought journalists were careless in what they reported, and a slightly higher proportion thought they were only in it for the money.

Criticism of journalism
The researchers then attempted to identify where and how criticism of journalism is encountered. Twitter users are most likely to encounter it. In the United States almost half said they often see criticism of media there and the UK is not far behind.

More than 40 percent of Facebook and Google users in America encounter it and a third of British users of those two platforms say they see it there. Other (newer) platforms have even higher incidences.

So that is where the criticism of journalists is propagated, but who is doing the criticising? Almost half those surveyed in the United States pointed the finger at politicians and political parties, although a similar number also say the hear it from “ordinary people”.

The figures are slightly lower in the UK but around a third identify political or government sources.

The survey also asked whether other public figures were responsible for criticism of journalists. Celebrities and activists figure in around a third of responses but so, too, do journalists themselves.

The surveys also give some pointers about the relative importance of “clicks” or how much attention our newsrooms should give to real-time analytics. The answer is  . . . some.

Respondents were asked to pick the factors that were important in deciding whether they could trust information on online platforms. In both countries fewer than 40 percent said the number of likes or shares were important or very important.

Media source familiarity
Around half paid attention to comments on items but far more important was whether they had heard of the media source. Two thirds were influenced by the tone or language used in headlines and almost 60 percent were influenced by accompanying images.

That finding correlates with another in which respondents were asked who should be responsible for helping to differentiate between trustworthy and untrustworthy content on the internet.

More than two-thirds put that responsibility on media organisations, higher than on tech companies, and significantly higher than on government (although Britons were more inclined toward regulation than their American cousins).

However, if the research proved one thing, it was that the media/social media environment is deeply nuanced and manifests the complexities of human behaviour. The conclusions drawn by the researchers say as much. They leave a couple of important take-aways.

“As a trade-off for expanding reach and scale, newsrooms have often ceded considerable control to these outside companies in terms of how their content is distributed and how often and in what form their work appears on these services.

“Such relationships have been further strained as publishers become increasingly dependent on platforms to reach segments of the public least interested in consuming news through legacy modes, even as platforms themselves have pivoted to serving up other kinds of experiences farther removed from news, recognising that many of their most active users have less interest in such content, especially where politically contentious issues are involved.”

They say the gap they have identified is likely a reflection of this mismatch in audience perceptions about what platforms are for, the kinds of information they get when using the services, and how people think more generally about news media.

“It is possible that the main challenge for news organisations when it comes to building and sustaining audience trust is less about the specific problem of how their journalism is perceived when audiences encounter it online, and more about the broader problem of being seen at all.”

My conclusion
Years ago, we heard the term “News You Can Use” as a response to the challenge of declining newspaper circulation. That was a catchy way of saying “We must be relevant”. The Reuters study is further proof that journalism’s real challenge lies in producing content that ordinary people need to live their daily lives. If that means collating and publishing daily lists of what every supermarket chain is charging for milk, bread, cabbages and potatoes then so be it.

Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications — covering both editorial and management roles — that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes a website called Knightly Views where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Just the other day a robot guard came along a corridor in a special digital prison, consulted his flatscreen embedded on its wrist and then pressed his thumb on a door, which sprang open.

For the fourth time, I was being released from Facebook prison having served a term of imprisonment imposed upon me by Great Algorithm Machine which we lags shorten to GAM.

Self-sustaining and completely devoid of any human intervention, GAM has deemed me to be a serial hate speech offender. I am absolutely not, but my protests were not only pointless, there was no one listening or reading them.

• READ MORE: Facebook censorship on West Papua – then deafening silence – David Robie
• Facebook criticised for pulling article with West Papuan pic
• Other Facebook reports

Again, with no human hand involved at any point, I was hauled off to solitary inside the Mark Zuckerberg Institution for Global Speech Control.

Now, living in Aotearoa and having our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern create the Paris Call, a powerful new weapon to end online hate speech, it is my patriotic duty to support it.

But lately I have become collateral damage to her Paris Call, and a nagging thought is growing that there may be many other casualties too. Stopping the nutters, the terrorists, the bad guys might additionally include GAM wiping out any one expressing any kind of opinion.

Especially opinions that a human reader — rather than a machine — would immediately recognise as arguments opposed to opinions advanced by bad guys.

Silence save the banal
Algorithms will silence all, except the banal, the bland, the boring and the pointless.

As GAM will run all my words through its system, I am going to avoid using the commonly accepted abbreviation for the National Socialist German Workers Party. Nor will I mention its leader; that’s a fast ticket back to a Menlo Park prison.

After some trepidation, I present a summary of my rap sheet:

October 11, 2021: I made a small posting based on a clipping from New Zealand Paper’s Past, a significant historical online collection of the nation’s newspapers. I posted a little story from the Bay of Plenty Times in 1941 which reported that people in Fiji, Tonga and Samoa were raising money to buy Spitfires in order to defeat the previously mentioned German Workers Party and its leader. I was prevented from any posting or commenting for three weeks.

February 18, 2022: As an anti-covid “freedom convoy” rattled around the country, I posted a meme showing the Workers Party leader in front of the Eiffel Tower, saying he was on a freedom convoy. Locked up again.

May 26, 2022: I posted a link to US CBS News on some new arms non-control measure and commented: “The continued stupidity of (Redacted, insert nationality of a people between Canada and Mexico) bewilders the world.” This got me a big “Hate Speech” stamp, a ban and a declaration that my future posts would be lower in people’s news feeds.

September 13, 2022: I asked why accused woman beater Meli Banimarama and convicted killer Francis Kean were using the “ratu” title. Banned again.

No human review
It was immediately apparent from the formatted notice issue to me, that while GAM had processed the thing, no human in Facebook had. Generously they tell the victim that there is a review system and to fill out a submission.

Dutifully, this gullible fellow did, pressed send and got an instant message back from GAM which said, in effect, that due to covid there were no available humans to read my submission. So, the sentence, imposed entirely by machine, stands every time.

It doesn’t matter what you say; no one is listening.

Facebook’s GAM is lying at this point: Covid has nothing to do with the removal of their humans. They are deliberately sacking them, due to Wall Street demands for more profit.

At one stage I discovered email addresses for assorted Facebook functionaries in Australia and New Zealand. That did no good. They ignored me, if they even existed.

Despite all this, I have been something of a Facebook fan. With Sue Ahearn, I co-manage The Pacific Newsroom with its 60,000 plus followers. The fact that I was in the digital slammer meant that group did not get serviced in the way they normally would.

Facebook plainly does not care.

My worry now is what is all this doing to free speech. At first blush, yes it’s a good idea that something like Mein Kampf cannot be trotted out on Facebook. But wouldn’t it be a good idea for some one or ten to read it and warn us all of what is in it?

Digital trip wires
Currently GAM is looking you up, digitally speaking if certain trip wires are touched in the algorithm.

Paris Call’s GAM model has no space, or ability, to deal with satire, cynicism or sarcasm. Many would say that is, of course, a good thing. Ban them. But they have long been part of human discourse, indeed vital.

And it will silence Paper’s Past! A national treasure now defined by GAM as a gathering of hate speech.

What else do we have to give up to keep evil from exploiting public conversation?

How will we learn the new rules, other than with a spell in the digital penitentiary? Perhaps there will soon be an app, in which The Machine checks each sentence, prior to use, for social acceptability.

Is social media creating a world in which speech can only be made, after The Machine has deemed it acceptable?

Michael Field is an independent journalist and author, and co-manager of The Pacific Newsroom. This article is republished with his permission.

By Colin Peacock, RNZ Mediawatch presenter

There is mounting pressure on tech titans Google and Facebook to pay local news media to carry their news online.

Google has already done deals with some for its News Showcase, but other big names in news are still trying to get the platforms to pay — and the government is hinting it could force the issue soon.

“Are you putting the hard word on them to secure deals to pay for content? Are you going to legislate?” Newshub Nation host Simon Shepherd asked Willie Jackson last weekend, putting the hard word on the broadcasting and media minister.

“Are you putting the hard word on them to secure deals to pay for content? Are you going to legislate?” Newshub Nation host Simon Shepherd asked Willie Jackson a week ago, putting the hard word on the broadcasting and media minister.

“I’m trying really hard. I have said to them, [in] three months let’s see the deals in the marketplace,” the minister replied.

For years local news media have griped about getting very little from the platforms distributing their stuff to huge audiences  — and profiting from it.

The thing most likely to persuade the tech titans to pay local newsmakers is the likelihood of the government forcing the issue with legislation — and this was the first time that a government minister had set any kind of deadline publicly.

‘I want to see fairness’
“I want to see some fairness. I want to see all these Kiwi news organisations looked after . . and these big players have the funding and the resourcing to be able to do that,” Willie Jackson told Newshub Nation.

Some of the deals that have been done were revealed earlier this month when Google launched the local version of its News Showcase service, now available via Google’s websites and apps.

The first Kiwi outlets ever to get regular payments from Google for that include The New Zealand Herald’s owner NZME and its subscriber subsidiary BusinessDesk, RNZ, online sites Scoop and Newsroom and the Pacific Media Network. There is also a handful of local outlets too like Crux, which serves the Southern Lakes region, and Kapiti News.

“It’s part of our commitment to continuing to play a part in what we see as a very important shared responsibility to ensure the long term sustainability of public interest journalism in New Zealand,” Google’s local country representative Carolyn Rainsford told RNZ’s Gyles Beckford recently.

Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson described that as “a good start, but not enough” — while the Spinoff’s founder Duncan Grieve was also underwhelmed.

He reckoned it was actually Willie Jackson that Google had in mind with the Showcase launch “to create a sense that Google is now a solid and public spirited ally to the news industry”.

For now, Google News Showcase is far from a comprehensive or compelling service for Kiwis. It offers nothing from our biggest national news producer Stuff or other big names in news like TVNZ and Newshub — or smaller outlets such Allied Press and The Spinoff.

Bargaining collectively
Several publishers — including Stuff — have banded together with the News Publishers Association to bargain collectively with Google and Meta (the parent company of Facebook).

Earlier this year the Commerce Commission gave them permission to negotiate a deal for a 10-year period.

So how’s that going?

“We can’t comment much on the status, but we are engaging with the NPA,” was all Google’s regional head of partnerships Shilpa Jhunjhunwala would tell RNZ earlier this month.

A recent report by the Judith Nielsen Institute estimate Google and Facebook paid Australian media companies about A$200m last year.

“Unfortunately an interview won’t be possible,” Google New Zealand told Mediawatch last week (without explaining why).

Instead they gave us a statement attributable to Caroline Rainsford, country director Google New Zealand:

“We are proud of the launch of Google News Showcase and continuing our conversations with other local news media businesses.”

“We can’t give you any kind of commercial numbers because they’re all commercial and in confidence,” Google’s regional head of partnerships Shilpa Jhunjhunwala told RNZ’s Gyles Beckford earlier this month.

When pressed, she said Google’s global commitment to News Showcase was $1 billion over three years.

“But beyond that, we’re not able to share anything specific to New Zealand,” she said.

Why is there no deal with other New Zealand news publishers yet?

‘No serious offers on table’
“Those negotiations are underway, but neither of those companies have put any serious offers on the table,” Stuff chief executive Sinead Boucher told Mediawatch.

She said the Australian deals were their benchmark.

“What we produce is very similar kind of content and we operate in very similar markets. We’d be looking for payments that equate to more like NZ$40 million to $50 million a year into the industry here,” she said.

“I think the government and Minister Jackson have made clear that the government expect fair deals to be done — and that they are prepared to legislate in the near term to ensure that happens,” she said.

“The only way to materially address this is to create an environment where we can negotiate fair commercial payment from these giant multinationals who have built their businesses entirely off content created by other people,” she said.

“You could think of any search term and put it into Google and look down the results and see that a new story created by somebody is part of the results. What we are focused on negotiating a commercial payment for that content in the same way that you would for any other product,” she said.

“If you invested in a car and someone started running it as a taxi, you would expect them to compensate you for that — not to build their own business without recognising your investment,” Boucher told Mediawatch.

“Our problem is that these platforms are very reluctant to come to the table and have a fair negotiation. That’s why the sort of legislation has been needed in Australia and other countries and also here in New Zealand,” she said.

The tale across the Tasman.

The man who forced the platforms to pay up
Rod Sims has been called “the man who forced Google and Meta to pay for news.”

For more than a decade, he chaired the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Australia’s competition regulator.

“It was fraught at times, but we presented the report to government in mid-2019 and they accepted the recommendation to have a News Media Bargaining Code six months later. It was legislated in February 2021. That’s pretty quick in terms of policy development in Australia,” Sims told Mediawatch.

“Google’s done a deal with essentially all media businesses. Meta has only done a deal with media businesses which that employ 85 percent of (Australia’s) journalists. It’s crucial that . . . it’s widely shared and you need legislation so that everybody has the ability to bargain.

“I know for a fact that the payments were well in excess of A$200 million — so NZ $40 million to $50 million sounds absolutely the right number to be spread across all media,” he said.

“Google and Meta were required to bargain with all eligible media businesses — and if they could not reach agreement, then arbitration would come into place. The threat of that evened up the bargaining power,” he said.

“The second component was that if Google and Meta did a deal with one media player, then they were required under law to do a deal with all media players. So their choice was either have no media content on their platform, or do deals,” he said.

“They chose to do deals with media companies because there’s value to them,” he said.

Arbitration threat needed
“I’m a bit concerned that in New Zealand you don’t have arbitration at the end of the negotiation period negotiations fail,” he said.

A Google officer once told me struggling news media pleading for “compensation” were like redundant drivers of horse-drawn carriages and rickshaws expecting today’s taxi drivers to pay them.

“No, that’s completely wrong. This is not like the car taking the place of the horse and carriage or smartphones taking the place of Kodak film because Google and Facebook don’t produce any journalism. So they haven’t taken the place of media, because they’re just not in the media business,” Rod Sims told Mediawatch.

“For Google to be a good search engine, it needs to bring in media into its search just about every time. But they don’t need any particular media company. So only by the News Media Bargaining Code could you even up the bargaining power,” he said.

“Unless we get payment for media that’s being taken and used for free, we’ll have a lot less media and less media harms society,” he said.

“It’s not up to me to tell the New Zealand government what to do, but my advice would be to pass the Australian News Media Bargaining Code,” he said.

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

The Australian government is moving fast to reset relations with Australia’s Pacific partners, including a larger Pacific role for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Detailed research undertaken late last year for the ABC in our six key Pacific markets (Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu and Tonga) confirms that the ABC today is used, valued and highly trusted by Pacific audiences.

This result has been made possible through the ABC’s multi-channel approach, and by thoughtful programming made with Pacific partners and designed specifically for Pacific audiences.

• READ MORE: Other reports on Radio Australia in the Pacific

In terms of reach, access to AM/FM radio today is significantly higher than access to shortwave across the Pacific, and our research confirms that the most effective way today to engage audiences in urban and peri-urban regions is through FM radio transmission.

ABC Radio Australia currently has 13 transmitters across the Pacific. ABC Australia (TV) broadcasts to 16 Pacific island nations and territories under more than 25 distribution deals.

Meanwhile, a transition to digital and social media in the Pacific is also well underway. Smartphone use is high in urban areas, and increasingly, the ABC connects to its Pacific audiences via Facebook and through our digital offerings.

Our multi-channel approach is paying off. Total Pacific user interactions late last year with the ABC, whether via the ABC website, the ABC app or social media channels, were reportedly higher than usage and interactions with any other international provider, including the BBC, CNN, RNZ and CGTN.

Big jump in numbers
In the Papua New Guinea market, the research showed that more than half of all respondents had either watched ABC Australia (TV), listened to ABC Radio Australia or accessed the ABC online in the second half of 2021. That’s a big jump in audience numbers within just a few years.

The Australian government has plans to review the merits of restoring shortwave radio and the ABC will be contributing to that process. Part of that will include understanding how many people still have access to shortwave radios and the interest or need to use them as an information source.

In terms of content, the ABC’s unique advantage lies in its commitment to, and relationship with, Pacific audiences. We aim to be local. Our Asia–Pacific newsroom is the only one of its kind in Australia, with 50 journalists and producers telling the stories that matter to Indo-Pacific audiences, told in Bahasa Indonesia, Tok Pisin and Chinese as well as English.

Our flagship daily current affairs programme, Pacific Beat on ABC Radio Australia, features interviews with leaders and newsmakers, attracting audiences of all ages and genders. Then there’s Sistas, Let’s Talk (conversations with inspirational Pacific women), Wantok (Pacific-focused news and current affairs in Tok Pisin, Solomon Islands pidgin and Bislama), Island Music (reggae, dancehall and R’n’B with a focus on the Pacific region) and Pacific Playtime (for kids and families across the region).

A shared love of sport offers opportunities to strengthen social ties across the Pacific, and particularly to engage young people. ABC Radio Australia takes the men’s and women’s National Rugby League competitions to lovers of the sport across the region.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade supports the ABC to produce the only pan-Pacific sport-focused TV show, That Pacific Sports Show, and a fresh and humorous sport-oriented radio show and podcast, Can You Be More Pacific?, hosted by Australian and Pacific sportspeople.

This commitment to genuine partnership with the Pacific is paying off. The proportion of respondents in Pacific markets last year who valued the ABC across all its channels as a “trusted source of news and information” was comparable to that in Australia, at a very high 75 percent.

Pacific content locally available
It’s also worth noting that all the content we produce for Pacific audiences is available domestically in Australia, helping to maintain regional ties and build greater Australian awareness about our Pacific neighbours.

The ABC’s International Development Unit, supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and donors like USAID and the United Nations, works with partners across the region to enhance journalism skills and media capacity.

The ABC also provides skills development training for specific challenges like election coverage and emergency broadcasting, plus support for media associations, like the Media Association of the Solomon Islands, which has been active in campaigning for press access and freedom in the Solomons.

The government has committed to increase funding to the ABC’s international programme by $8 million a year over the next four years. The focal points of this strategy are enhanced regional transmission, more content production, and increased media capacity training for Pacific partners.

This approach has been informed by the ABC’s own proposals.

Over recent years, various ideas have been floated for a new administrative process or organisation to “manage” Australia’s media presence in the Pacific. That would add unnecessary bureaucracy.

There’s a lot more the ABC could do in and for the Pacific. The ABC today has the strategy, systems and relationships in the Pacific to enable rapid expansion, given funding support.

And our research confirms there is a demand for it.

Claire M. Gorman is the head of international services at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Republished from The Strategist with the author’s permission.

Former Philippines vice-presidential candidate and Laban ng Masa chairperson Walden Bello has been arrested for two counts of alleged cyber libel by the police.

Bello, 76, is a globally renowned environmental and social justice activist and academic.

Bello’s arrest yesterday was confirmed by his executive secretary and Laban ng Masa spokesperson Leomar Doctolero.

• READ MORE: ‘Pure political harassment and persecution’. Walden Bello arrested
• Other reports on cyber libel

The former VP candidate was brought to the Quezon City Police District (QCPD) Station 8 in Project 4, Quezon City.

“Walden has just been arrested for cyber libel by officers of the QCPD. He is currently being taken to QC Police Station 8, P. Tuazon,” Doctolero said.

It was Davao City Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 10 Judge Retrina Espe Fuentes who issued the arrest warrant yesterday. Bello’s counsels said they will move for the suspension of proceedings at RTC 10 after Bello posts bail.

Two counts of cyber libel
Bello faces two counts of cyber libel for which bail has been set at P48,000 (NZ$4000) each.

Police Lieutenant-Colonel Gilmore Wasin confirmed Bello’s arrest to Rappler. He added Bello would be transferred to Camp Karingal in Quezon City, QCPD’s headquarters.

Doctolero said they had been anticipating the arrest because Bello had already been indicted for the cases last month.

“We have been anticipating the arrest warrant because of the indictment of the Davao Prosecutor. It’s a bailable offence and counsel is on the way to assist him.”

Bello’s camp filed a motion for reconsideration before the Davao prosecutor’s office but it was denied, Doctolero explained.

“The resolution for his indictment was released last June 9. We filed for a motion for reconsideration with the Prosecutors’ Office which was subsequently denied.”

‘Dangerous precedent’

Under the Philippine laws, cyber libel is a bailable offence. Based on the guidelines for bail for cybercrime offences, the bail for cyber libel is typically set at P10,000 (NZ$790).

In a message to reporters, Leody de Guzman’s team said the ex-presidential candidate and Bello’s running mate was headed to QCPD Station 8 to show support for Bello.

At the height of the campaign period early this year, Jefry Tupas, Vice-President Sara Duterte’s former information officer, filed a cyber libel complaint against Bello.

She is seeking P10 million (NZ$790,000) in damages after Bello allegedly accused her on social media of being a drug addict and dealer.

Bello earlier labeled Tupas’ act as “clearly a politically-motivated move”.

In a petition for review filed on July 29, Bello’s camp argued that the position of Tupas in government “is very relevant” as the Facebook post would not have highlighted the drug raid if it weren’t for her being a public official.

Infringement on free speech
The prosecutor’s dismissal of their argument that the post merely poses a question sets “a dangerous precedent,” the petition also pointed out.

“Just imagine the severe infringement on free speech that would ensue if our jurisdiction would limit what questions people can ask!” the petition said.

Bello’s camp also argued that the post was written by his communications team, not by the former vice-presidential candidate himself, and that there is still no proof that he personally published it on Facebook.

“[Bello] does not even have administrator or moderator status in the said Facebook page,” it said.

Pacific Media Watch reports: Walden Bello posted this on his Facebook page from detention at Camp Karingal:

Seventy seven years ago today, Aug 9, 1945, the second atom bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, three days after the first blasted Hiroshima. Up to 80,000 people were killed in an act of genocide that had absolutely no military value and merely served to warn the Soviet Union of the US’ capacity to blast it to bits. The world must never forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki, especially now that the war in the Ukraine drags on, with the constant possibility of uncontrolled escalation, and Washington provokes China on Taiwan.

By Jairo Bolledo is a Rappler journalist. Republished with permission.

Two New Zealand government agencies have revealed mounting concern about the intensity and the impact of online misinformation — and prompted loud calls for government action.

But behind the scenes, the government’s already reviewing how to regulate media content to protect us from “harm” — and the digital platforms are already heading in new directions.

“There is no minister or government agency specifically tasked with monitoring and dealing with the increasing threat posed by disinformation and misinformation. That should change,” Tova O’Brien told her Today FM listeners last week.

• LISTEN TO THE FULL RNZ MEDIAWATCH REPORT: Mounting fake news
• Frontline reports on disinformation — Pacific Journalism Review

For her, the tipping point was friends and peers recycling false rumours about the Prime Minister and her partner that have been circulating for at least five years.

The Tova show made fun of those rumours — and the paranoid people spreading them — in a comedy song when it launched back in March. Co-host Mark Dye asked the PM about one of them — the claim O’Brien and Ardern were once flatmates.

The PM laughed it off on the air back then, but last week O’Brien told her listeners the worst rumors had now spread so widely there’s nothing funny about them anymore.

“Thanks to social media . . . they’ve been picked up by all of us,” she said.

‘Sad and scary’
“It’s sad and it’s scary and . . . powerful propagandists are taking advantage of them.

“It is time now for a government ‘misinformation minister’,” she said — acknowledging the job title could be misconstrued.

But last Monday, one minister said he was on the case.

“Who is the minister in charge of social media? Is that you?” Duncan Greive asked the Broadcasting and Media Minister on Spinoff podcast The Fold.

“I suppose so  . . . and we’re trying,” said Willie Jackson, who also said he had heard misinformation from people he knows, including relatives.

“There’s a lot of things out of control, but I’m trying to bring some balance to it,” he said.

“We’re going through a whole content regulation review right now. I’m waiting on some of the results.”

That review, overseen by Internal Affairs Minister Jan Tinetti, began in May 2021 — and it’s complicated.

Role of the regulators
It is reconsidering the role of the regulators and complaints bodies which uphold standards for mainstream media today — the Broadcasting Standards Authority, the Advertising Standards Authority, the Media Council and the Classification Office.

And for the first time, online outlets including social media could also be classed as “media service providers” obliged to abide by agreed standards too.

Just last week the BSA released fresh research showing New Zealanders were worried about digital social media platforms’ misinformation “making it harder to identify the truth.”

But while people can complain to the Broadcasting Standards Authority about the accuracy of what they see or hear on the air, it is all but impossible to successfully challenge fake news online.

“We need to bring a set of rules to the table. We have to at the same time balance those rules with freedom of expression,” Willie Jackson told The Fold.

Jackson also said he would soon be meeting Google and Meta (parent company of Facebook) executives to discuss all of that and more.

They already know there’s a problem.

Living by the Code — or ticking boxes?
Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Tik Tok all signed up last week to the new Aotearoa New Zealand Code of Practice for Online Safety and Harms overseen by Netsafe.

It was hailed as “a world first” in several media reports, but also condemned by some critics as a possible box-ticking exercise — that only requires the powerful platforms to tick easy boxes.

The Code creates an oversight committee to consider public objections — and that will be yet another self-regulatory body that people can complain to.

“It sounds like the worst sanction is that they’d be asked to leave the agreement, which isn’t really a sanction at all. It’s understandable that there are some people saying some concrete legislation that would have proper penalties in place would be better,” former newspaper editor Andrew Holden told RNZ this week.

“The signatories can pick and choose which measures they agree to implement, and which ones they don’t think are appropriate to them, and they can ignore,” Stuff’s technology writer Tom Pullar-Strecker noted.

Net users’ group Tohatoha called it ”an industry-led model that avoids the real change and real accountability needed to protect communities, individuals and the health of our democracy.”

“I think that this is an attempt to preempt that regulatory framework that’s coming down the pipeline,” Tohatoha chief executive Mandy Henk told Newstalk ZB last week.

She was referring to that Review of Media Content Regulation going on slowly behind the scenes and out of the headlines. One round of consultation with news media has been completed on the basic principles — and another one has begun on some of the details and the framework.

One-stop digital-age shop
The review says content can cause harm to individuals, communities and society.

A one-stop digital-age shop to regulate and set standards for all media could oblige offshore tech companies to curb misinformation on their platforms — or be penalised.

Online outlets including social media could be classed as “media service providers” with minimum standards to uphold, just like the established news media and broadcasters.

RNZ MediaWatch understands Cabinet will soon consider a proposed new regulatory framework, and details are due to be published next month for public input and discussion.

The stated goal of the review is also “to mitigate the harmful effects of content, irrespective of the way the content is delivered”.

One of the possibilities is the development of “harm minimisation codes”, with legislation setting out minimum standards for harm prevention and moderation. This could even mean the creation of new criminal offenses and penalties for non compliance.

Can this be done without compromising freedom of speech in general — and specific fundamental press freedoms as well?

Good reporting that is clearly in the public interest routinely causes some distress — or even “harm” — to certain people or groups. (Investigative reporting on Gloriavale over the past 30 years, for example).

Online giants ahead of the game

But while the government and the media industry ponder all this, the social media platforms continue to evolve in unforeseen ways.

Within the last fortnight users of Facebook and its sister platform Instagram have found their feeds featuring far more stuff from influencers, celebrities and even strangers — and less stuff from their friends, family or favoured sources of news.

The reason is Facebook fighting off Tik Tok, the Chinese made video-sharing app that now has more than a billion users around the world — including plenty here in New Zealand.

AI-driven algorithms are shaping much more of what social media users will see from now on. What this means for the spread of misinformation here in New Zealand is not yet clear.

Two days after the new social media code of practice was unveiled, Meta’s vice-president of public policy in Asia and Pacific was in Auckland talking about “the regulatory models that can drive greater transparency and accountability of digital platforms and the work being done to promote greater safety across the Meta Family of Apps.”

“We’re already creating and developing guardrails to address safety, privacy, and well-being in the metaverse,” Simon Milner said, though misinformation on Facebook or Instagram today was not mentioned.

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

A shortage of resources and investment from major digital platforms has left the Pacific region battling a campaign of misinformation and under-moderation.

The Pacific is currently a global hotspot for misinformation.

The ability of Pacific island countries and territories to respond to “infodemic” risks online has been exposed by the covid-19 pandemic.

Misinformation about the pandemic has persisted online, despite efforts by Pacific governments, civil societies, citizens, media organisations, and institutions to counter it.

The Pacific presently has the smallest percentage of their population using the internet and social media compared with the rest of the world.

Internet difficult, costly
Internet provision is made more difficult and costly in the Pacific due to the region’s unique geographic features. A lack of high-capacity cables and other technical infrastructure has also held back Pacific connectivity.

New undersea cables are arriving in the region, such as the Australian-financed Coral Sea Cable, connecting Sydney to Port Moresby and Honiara, ending decades of reliance on slow and expensive satellite connections.

These cables, along with other planned reforms and upgrades, are expected to increase the number of mobile internet users in the Pacific by about 11 percent annually between 2018 and 2025, according to estimates by industry groups.

More access has rapidly changed how government officials communicate with the public and shifted perceptions of politics.

Both Kiribati and Vanuatu broadcast their national election results live on Facebook.

In Kiribati, the 9400-member Kiribati election 2020 group posted photos of handwritten vote totals. In Vanuatu, the national broadcaster streamed the entire ballot-counting process on Facebook Live.

Sparked by the rollout of mobile broadband across Papua New Guinea, hundreds of thousands of citizens now read the latest news and monitor happenings in Port Moresby through blogs and Facebook groups filled with lengthy discussions and heated calls to action.

Flipside over access
The flipside to such access is that false online rumours and scams directly targeting Pacific people have spread rapidly through Facebook groups and closed messaging applications.

Rising internet access may be exacerbating the problem of child sexual exploitation online.

In some regions of Papua New Guinea, hate speech, harassment, and harmful rumours can sometimes lead to actual acts of violence.

Local politicians in the Pacific are starting to recognise the potential of social media, but unethical online influence techniques can go undetected if proper transparency measures and safeguards are not implemented.

Facebook, for one, has implemented its transparency systems to curb hidden manipulation of its advertising features for partisan ends.

Journalists and investigators in dozens of larger markets use these tools to reveal voter manipulation, but most Pacific island nations are yet to adopt them.

The lack of transparency makes it very difficult for observers to track what political actors are saying online, especially as Facebook’s advertising system allows different messages to be targeted to different parts of the population.

Fake Facebook accounts
Social media companies make little effort to reach out to Pacific leaders, which may explain why so few public figures in the region use the “verified” badges that are useful in helping distinguish official accounts from personal ones.

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape found that out the hard way — fake Facebook and Twitter accounts were created in his name, and his lack of verification made the real profile harder for users to distinguish.

Some governments have threatened to completely block social media to curb the spread of content they deem immoral, harmful, or destructive to established norms and values.

Nauru’s government blocked Facebook from 2015 to 2018, and Papua New Guinea and Samoa hinted at blocking the platform multiple times over the past few years.

In 2019, Tonga considered a ban on Facebook to prevent slander against the monarchy.

Social media bans are rarely implemented, and face fierce opposition from free speech advocates and users.

The frequency with which such measures are proposed in the Pacific reflects a sobering reality: communities in the region often lack the protections that communities elsewhere in the world rely on to address harmful content and abuse on social media.

Rule-breaking content
Current systems for moderating content on social media are not effective in the Pacific. These systems rely on algorithms that flag rule-breaking content in multiple languages, human reviewers who make determinations on flagged material, users who voluntarily report content violating the rules, and legal requests from law enforcement officials.

Social media platforms do not prioritise hiring from the Pacific region, where there are comparatively fewer people. They do not invest in developing language-specific algorithms for languages like Tongan, Bislama, or Chuukese, which have a smaller user base.

Despite the growing importance of third-party fact-checking partnerships, no Pacific Island country is home to a dedicated fact-checking team.

All claims in Australia and the Pacific islands are referred to the Australian Associated Press’s fact-checking unit. Pacific social media users are missing out on one of the few tools that global social media companies use to strengthen information ecosystems due to the lack of a robust local fact-checking organisation.

All signs point to an increase in the dangers posed by false and misleading information in the months and years ahead, as both state and non-state actors attempt to steer online discourse in service of their strategic goals.

Politically-motivated domestic and foreign actors (or proxies) regularly attempt to manipulate online platforms and social media worldwide. These efforts are highly diverse, always in flux, and frequently related to more extensive political or national interests.

At least one organised effort to spread false information online about the West Papuan conflict has already occurred in the Pacific.

Dangers posed
External pressures and crises will amplify the dangers posed by these campaigns, as they did during the covid-19 pandemic when an excess of data and a lack of apparent credibility and fact checking allowed rumours to spread unchecked.

Rising tensions between the developed world and China add to the already complex political situation, and the narrative tug-of-war for influence among significant powers on Covid-19 is likely to continue.

There is a risk that online misinformation from foreign media will increase due to this competition for narrative dominance, leaving countries in the region vulnerable to influence operations that target online discourse, media, and communities.

More robust local capacity (outside of government) to identify problematic content and bad actors online is necessary for the region to recover from Covid-19 and respond to future crises.

This includes better coordination among regional institutions and governments, increased engagement between social media companies and Pacific leaders, and more thorough reporting of online problems.

Foreseeing and preparing for future potential threats to health and safety is something that leaders can do now.

Romitesh Kant is a Fiji PhD scholar at the Australian National University, and a research consultant with more than 10 years’ experience in the fields of governance, civic education and human rights. He is also a contributor to Pacific Journalism Review. This article was originally published on 360info under Creative Commons and RNZ Pacific. It has been republished with permission.

In a sign of utter desperation as Fiji’s general election election approaches, the Attorney-General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, has targeted his potential rival, Richard Naidu, by obtaining leave in the High Court to bring committal proceedings against the lawyer and prospective NFP candidate for allegedly “scandalising and ridiculing the courts and the judiciary”.

Astonishingly, it relates to a Facebook posting that Richard Naidu made on 2 Feburary 2022 — almost 5 months ago — yet was brought and heard before Justice Jude Nanayakkara just this week — on Monday, June 27.

The court ruling is attached — as well as Richard Naidu’s offending posting — and readers can see for themselves the basis of the AG’s complaint, which we are unable to comment on further for legal reasons.

• READ MORE: Other Grubsheet articles on Fiji’s political and social justice affairs

In a statement, the AG said: “ We all owe a duty to protect our Courts and Judiciary from scandal or ridicule”.

Yet if the courts and the judiciary were, in fact, “scandalised” or “ridiculed” back in February, why has it taken this long for Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum to act?

As he says, “this matter is now before the Courts and the committal proceedings will take their normal course”.

The application for committal has been granted by the judge and the matter will now proceed to hearing. But it is the timing of this action that raises serious questions that are clearly in the public interest.

Election timing?
Because Fijian voters — and especially those looking forward to voting for Richard Naidu — have no way of knowing whether the matter will be heard before the election or not.

Why has it taken five months to bring this action? Precisely how has Richard Naidu scandalised or ridiculed the courts or the judiciary with what, at face value, appears to be a light-hearted comment?

FACT: Although it has not been formally announced, Richard Naidu is standing for the National Federation Party in the coming election.

REASONABLE ASSUMPTION: Given the post-election coalition agreement between the People’s Alliance and the National Federation Party (NFP), it can be assumed that if they are successful in forming government that Richard Naidu would be the logical choice to be attorney-general.

REASONABLE ASSUMPTION: So Richard Naidu is no longer merely the head of the law firm, Munro Leys, or a private citizen active in the community, but is set to go head-to-head with Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum at the coming election and has designs on his job.

ERGO: Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum has every reason to place obstacles in Richard Naidu’s path to try to prevent him from contesting the election.

CONCLUSION: The AG is not only desperate as the election approaches and the government’s fortunes plummet to 21 percent (by the account of his cheerleaders at the Fiji Sun). The prospect of Richard Naidu not only aspiring to replace him as AG but with the very real prospect of being successful in doing so challenges his gargantuan ego and must gnaw at his inner being.

Richard Naidu is everything Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum is not. The head of a major law firm, not a corporate lawyer who got lucky riding on the coat-tails of a coup leader.

Richard Naidu is also popular and respected, which Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum might have been once, but no longer.

And if the polls are correct, Richard Naidu will replace Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum as AG but Khaiyum will fight like a scalded cat to prevent that from happening.

That’s the context of this court action and you certainly don’t need a great legal brain to work it out.

Australian-Fijian journalist Graham Davis publishes the blog Grubsheet Feejee on Fiji affairs. Republished with permission.

On social media, Ferdinand Marcos Jr needed to have all pieces in place to stage a Malacañang comeback: he had a network of propagandist assets, popular myths that justified his family’s obscene wealth, and narratives that distorted the horrors of his father’s rule.

He had even asked Cambridge Analytica to rebrand his family’s image.

The living component among these pieces was Rodrigo Duterte — an ally who, when elected president, normalised Marcos’ machinery, painting over a picture of murders and plunder to show glory and heroism instead.

• READ MORE: New war: How the propaganda network shifted from targeting ‘addicts’ to activists
• Pro-Marcos, Duterte accounts step up attacks on journalists as 2022 polls near
• Networked propaganda: How the Marcoses are rewriting history
• Other Rodrigo Duterte reports

“I think that really, if we are to make a metaphor [to] describe the role of Duterte to Marcos’ win, it’s really Duterte being the sponsor or a ninong to Marcos Jr…. I think Duterte ultimately is the godfather of this all,” said Fatima Gaw, assistant professor at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman.

The alliance
Marcos’ disinformation machinery that was years in the making was complemented by his longtime ties to the Duterte family. Before “Uniteam,” there was “AlDub” or Alyansang Duterte-Bongbong.

Marcos courted Rodrigo Duterte in 2015, but Duterte chose Alan Peter Cayetano to be his running mate. Even then, calls for a Duterte-Marcos tandem persisted.

Gaw said Duterte played a part in driving interest for Marcos-related social media content and making it profitable. The first milestone for this interest, according to Gaw, was when Marcos filed his certificate of candidacy for vice-president in 2015.

They saw an influx of search demand for Marcos history on Google.

“There’s interest already back then but it was amplified and magnified by the alliance with Duterte. So every time there’s a pronouncement from Duterte about, for example, the burial of Marcos Sr. in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, that also spiked interest, and that interest is actually cumulative, it’s not like it’s a one-off thing,” Gaw said in a June interview with Rappler.

Using CrowdTangle, Rappler scanned posts in 2016 with the keyword “Marcos,” yielding over 62,000 results from pages with admins based in the Philippines. Spikes can be seen during key events like the EDSA anniversary, the Pilipinas 2016 debate, election day, and instances after Duterte’s moves to bury the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

On February 19, 2016, Duterte said that if elected president, he would allow the burial of the late dictator at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. On August 7, 2016, Duterte said that Marcos deserved to be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani for being a soldier and a former president.

The burial pushed through on November 18, 2016 and became a major event that allowed the massive whitewashing of the Martial Law period.

Made with flourish
Related content would then gain views, prompting platforms to recommend them and make them more visible, Gaw said. In a research she conducted in 2021 with De La Salle University (DLSU) communication professor Cheryll Soriano, they found that when searching “Marcos history” on YouTube, videos made by amateur content creators or people unaffiliated with professional groups were recommended more than news, institutional, and academic sources.

“A big part of Marcos’ success online and spreading his message and propaganda is because he leveraged both his political alliances with [the] Dutertes, as the front-facing tandem and political partnership. And on the backend, whatever ecosystem that the Duterte administration has established, is something that Marcos already can tap,” Gaw said.

In an upcoming study on social media and disinformation narratives authored by Aries Arugay and Justin Baquisal, they identified four thematic disinformation narratives in the last election campaign — authoritarian nostalgia/fantasy, conspiracy theories (Tallano gold, Yamashita treasure), “strongman”, and democratic disillusionment.

Arugay, a political science professor at UP Diliman, said these four narratives were the “raw materials” for further polarisation in the country.

“Para sa mga kabataan, ’yung mga 18-24, fantasy siya. Kasi naririnig natin ‘yun, ah kaya ko binoto si Bongbong Marcos kasi gusto kong maexperience ‘yung Martial Law,” Arugay said in an interview with Rappler in June.

(For the youth, those aged 18-24, it’s a fantasy. We hear that reasoning, that they voted for Bongbong Marcos because they want to experience Martial Law.)

Arugay described this as “unthinkable,” but pervasive false narratives that the Martial Law era was the golden age of Philippine economy, that no Filipino was poor during that time, that the Philippines was the richest country next to Japan, among many other claims, allowed for such a fantasy to thrive.

Institutionalising disinformation
While traditional propaganda required money and machinery, usually from a top-down system, Gaw said Duterte co-opted and hijacked the existing systems to manipulate the news cycle and online discourse to make a name for himself.

“I think what Duterte has done…is to institutionalise disinformation at the state level,” she said.

This meant that the amplification of Duterte’s messaging became incorporated in activities of the government, perpetuated by the Presidential Communications Operations Office, the Philippine National Police, and the government’s anti-communist task force or the NTF-ELCAC, among others.

Early on, Duterte’s administration legitimized partisan vloggers by hiring some of them in government. Other vloggers served as crisis managers for the PCOO, monitoring social media, alerting the agency about sentiments that were critical of the administration, and spreading positive news about the government.

Bloggers were organized by Pebbles Duque, niece of Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, who himself was criticised over the government’s pandemic response.

Mocha Uson, one of the most infamous pro-Duterte disinformation peddlers, was appointed PCOO assistant secretary earlier in his term. (She ended up campaigning for Isko Moreno in the last election.)

Now, we’re seeing a similar turn of events — Marcos appointed pro-Duterte vlogger Trixie Cruz-Angeles as his press secretary. Under Duterte’s administration, Angeles had been a social media strategist of the PCOO.

Following the Duterte administration’s lead, they are again eyeing the accreditation of vloggers to let them cover Malacañang briefings or press conferences.

“So in the Duterte campaign, of course there were donors, supporters paying for the disinformation actors and workers. Now it’s actually us, the Filipino people, funding disinformation, because it’s now part of the state. So I think that’s the legacy of the Duterte administration and what Marcos has done, is actually to just leverage on that,” Gaw said.

Targeting critics
What pieces of disinformation are Filipinos inadvertently funding? Gaw said that police pages are some of the most popular pages to spread disinformation on Facebook, and that they don’t necessarily talk about police work but instead the various agenda of the state, such as demonising communist groups, activist groups, and other progressive movements.

Emboldened by their chief Duterte, who would launch tirades against his critics during his speeches and insult, curse, and red-tag them, police pages and accounts spread false or misleading content that target activists and critics. They do this by posting them directly or by sharing them from dubious, anonymously-managed pages, a Rappler investigation found.

Facebook later took down a Philippine network that was linked to the military or police, for violating policies on coordinated inauthentic behavior.

The platform has also previously suspended Communications Undersecretary and NTF-ELCAC spokesperson Lorraine Badoy who has long been targeting and brazenly red-tagging individuals and organizations that are critical of the government. She faces several complaints before the Office of the Ombudsman accusing her of violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act and the Code of Conduct for public officials.

“PCOO as an office before wasn’t really a big office, they’re not popular, but all of a sudden they become so salient and so visible in media because they’re able to understand that half of the battle of governance is not just doing the operations of it but also the PR side of it,” Gaw said.

Facebook users recirculated a post Badoy made in January 2016, wherein she talked about the murders of Boyet and Primitivo Mijares under Martial Law. In that post, just six years ago, Badoy called Bongbong an “idiot, talentless son of the dead dickhead dictator.”

Badoy has since disowned such views. In a post on May 2022, Badoy said she only “believed all those lies I was taught in UP” and quoted Joseph Meynard Keynes: “When the facts change, I change my mind.”

Angeles also said the same in June 2022 when netizens surfaced her old tweets criticising the Marcos family. She said, “I changed my mind about it, aren’t we entitled to change our minds?”

But the facts haven’t changed. A 2003 Supreme Court decision declared $658 million worth of Marcos Swiss deposits as ill-gotten. Imelda Marcos’ motion for reconsideration was “denied with finality”.

According to Amnesty International, 70,000 were imprisoned, 34,000 were tortured, and 3,240 were killed under Martial Law.

The rise of alternative news sources
Outside government channels, Badoy co-hosts an SMNI programme named “Laban Kasama ng Bayan” with Jeffrey “Ka Eric” Celiz — who is supposedly a former rebel — where they talk about the communist movement. SMNI is the broadcasting arm of embattled preacher Apollo Quiboloy’s Kingdom of Jesus Christ church.

SMNI has been found to be at the core of the network of online assets who red-tag government critics and attack the media. The content that vloggers and influencers produce to defend Duterte’s administration now bleeds into newscasts by organisations with franchises granted by the government.

The first report of the Digital Public Pulse, a project co-led by Gaw, found that on YouTube, leading politician and government channels, including that of Marcos, directly reach their audiences without the mediation of the media.

“This shift to subscribing to influencers and vloggers as sources of news and information, and now subscribing to nontraditional or non-mainstream sources of information that are [still considered institutional] because they have franchises and they have licences to operate, it’s part of the trend of the growing distrust in mainstream media,” Gaw said.

She said that given the patronage relationship that religious organisations have with politicians, alternative news sources like SMNI and NET25 don’t necessarily practice objective, accountable, or responsible journalism because their interest is different from the usual journalistic organisation.

“I think that in general these two are politically tied and economically incentivised to perform the role that the administration and the incoming presidency of Marcos want them to play, and exactly, serving as an alternative source of information,” she said.

A day after he was proclaimed, Marcos held a press conference with only three reporters, who belonged to SMNI, GMA News, and NET25.

Rappler reviewed NET25’s Facebook posts and found that it has a history of attacking the press, Vice-President Leni Robredo, and her supporters. The network had also released inaccurate reports that put Robredo in a bad light.

Gaw said because these alternative news channels owned by religious institutions have a mutually-benefiting relationship with the government, they are given access to government officials and to stories that other journalists might not have access to. There is thus no incentive for them to report critically and perform the role of providing checks and balances.

“They would essentially be an extension of state propaganda,” Gaw said.

For Arugay, the Marcos campaign was able to take advantage of how the state influenced the standards of journalism.

“Part [of their strategy] is least exposure to unfriendlies, particularly media that’s critical. I think at the end they saw the power of critical media. And once they were able to get an opportunity, they wanted to turn things around. And this is where democracy suffers,” Arugay said.

Under Duterte, journalists and news organisations faced a slew of attacks that threatened their livelihood and freedom. Rappler was banned from covering Malacañang, faced trumped-up charges, then witnessed its CEO Maria Ressa being convicted of cyber libel.

Broadcasting giant ABS-CBN was shut down. Journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio is in her second year in jail.

While the international community lauds the courageous and critical reporting of Philippine journalists, Filipinos are shutting them out.

All bases covered
While Duterte mostly used a Facebook strategy to win the election, Marcos went all out in 2022 — and it paid off.

“[The] strategy of the Marcos Jr. campaign became very complicated [compared with] the Duterte campaign because back then they were really, they just invested on Facebook. [That’s not the case here]…. No social media tech or platform was disregarded,” Arugay said.

At one point in 2021, YouTube became the most popular social media platform in the Philippines, beating Facebook. Whereas Facebook at least has a third-party fact-checking programme, YouTube barely has any strong policies against disinformation.

“I think with the Marcos campaign, they knew Facebook was a battleground, they deployed all their efforts there as well, but they knew they had to win YouTube. Because that’s where we can build more sophisticated lies and convoluted narratives than on Facebook,” Gaw said.

YouTube’s unclear policies allow lies to thrive
A study by FEU technical consultant Justin Muyot found that Marcos had the highest number of estimated “alternative videos” — those produced by content creators — on YouTube. These videos aimed to shame candidates critical of Marcos and his supporters, endear Marcos to the public, and sow discord between the other presidential candidates.

YouTube is also where hyperpartisan channels thrive by posing as news channels. These were found to be in one major community that includes SMNI and the People’s Television Network.

This legitimises them as a “surrogate to journalistic reporting”.

“That’s why you’re able to sell historical disinformation, you’re able to [have] false narratives about the achievements of the Marcoses, or Bongbong Marcos in particular. You’re able to launch counterattacks to criticisms of Marcos in a very coherent and coordinated way because you’re able to have that space, time, and the immersion required to buy into these narratives,” Gaw said.

Apart from YouTube, Gaw said that Marcos had a “more clear understanding of a cross-platform strategy” across social media.

On Twitter, freshly-made accounts were set up to trend pro-Marcos hashtags. The platform later suspended over 300 accounts from the Marcos supporter base for violating its platform manipulation and spam policy.

Ruining Robredo was a ‘coordinated effort’
Duterte and Marcos had a common target over the years: Robredo. She is another female who was constantly undermined by Duterte, along with Leila de Lima, a victim of character assassination who continues to suffer jail time because of it.

“It has been a coordinated effort of Duterte and Marcos to really undermine her, reap or cultivate hatred against her for whatever reason and to actually attach her to people and parties or groups who have political baggage, for example LP (Liberal Party) even if she’s not running for LP,” Gaw said.

The meta-partisan “news” ecosystem on YouTube, studied by researchers of the Philippine Media Monitoring Laboratory, was found to deliver propaganda using audio-visual and textual cues traditionally associated with broadcast news media.

They revealed patterns of “extreme bias and fabricated information,” repeating falsehoods that, among others, enforce negative views on Robredo’s ties with the Liberal Party and those that make her seem stupid.

Rappler found that the top misogynistic attack words used against Robredo on Facebook posts are “bobo,” “tanga,” “boba,” and “madumb,” all labeling her as stupid.

Fact-checking initiative Tsek.PH also found Robredo to be the top victim of disinformation based on their fact checks done in January 2022.

“By building years and years of lies and basically giving her, manufacturing her political baggage along the way, that made her campaign in [2022] very hard to win, very hard to convert new people because there’s already ambivalence against her,” Gaw said.

Arugay and Gaw both said that the media, academe, and civil society failed to act until it was too late. “The election result and [and where the] political landscape is at now is a product of that neglect,” Gaw said.

There is still a lack of a systemic approach on how to engage with disinformation, said Gaw, since much of it is still untraceable and underground. To add, Arugay said tech companies are to blame for their nature of prioritising profit.

“Just like in 2016, the disinformation network and architecture responsible for the 2022 electoral victory of Marcos Jr. will not die down. They will not fade.

“They will not wither away. They will just transition because the point is no longer to get him elected, the point is for him to govern or make sure that he is protected while in power,” Arugay said.

When the new administration comes in, it will be the public’s responsibility to hold elected officials accountable. But if this strategy — instilled by Duterte’s administration and continued by Marcos — continues, crucifying critics on social media and in real life, blaming past administrations and the opposition for the poor state of the country, and concocting narratives to fool Filipinos, what will reality in the Philippines look like down the line?

Loreben Tuquero is a journalist for Rappler. Republished with permission.

A Pacific journalist believes the Kiribati government has been coerced by Beijing to accommodate China’s foreign minister’s visit.

Kiribati authorities have confirmed that Wang Yi would briefly stopover to meet President Taneti Maamau as part of his Pacific-wide tour.

Journalist Rimon Rimon said the government had been “very secretive” and “people are frustrated and angry” after only learning about the trip via a Facebook post.

• READ MORE: China wants closer security, trade links with the Pacific
• Other China and the Pacific security reports

Rimon said Kiribati was grappling with a covid-19 outbreak and with the borders closed it was a change in practice by the government to oblige Beijing’s request.

“I think there has been some kind of pressure from Beijing. Only last night I had confirmation from a source from Beijing that before they travelled Kiribati was finally on the list,” he said.

“So, I finally understood that there had been some pressures and our government has submitted to those pressures.”

Rimon said a deal with Kiribati had more significance for China, as Beijing had already demonstrated its willingness to develop Kiribati’s northernmost island, Kanton Island, which has strategic military potential.

Kiribati government ‘reluctant’
“And I think China is pursuing that. I think our government is quite reluctant on something military-wise, based on the narrative that the government has been saying throughout the years.

“But I have no doubt this is, this is the number one thing on China’s agenda. How our government will respond to that or accommodate that. I have no idea of that,” he said.

The Kiribati government said the high-level state visit was an important milestone for Kiribati-China relations, as it would strengthen and promote partnership and cooperation between the two countries after the resumption of diplomatic ties in 2019.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Wang Yi is due to visit Vanuatu next Wednesday as part of his tour.

The Chinese Embassy in Port Vila has confirmed the arrival date for bilateral talks with the government of Vanuatu.

The embassy said Wang’s visit in Vanuatu had nothing to do with security issues. Instead, it said, he would discuss five memorandums of understanding as well as other business.

The embassy said the discussion points would be on tangible benefits that China could bring to the people of Vanuatu.

As well as Port Vila, Wang is due to visit Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, and Kiribati. He is currently in Solomon Islands.

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

Aotearoa New Zealand’s chair of the Māori Council, Matthew Tūkākī, has revealed the degree of “horrific abuse” he has been facing in a Today FM radio discussion about the forthcoming Tauranga byelection in the city claimed to be a hotspot of white supremacy and racism.

He joined Lloyd Burr on Today’s Lloyd Burr Live programme to discuss the safety reasons why the opposition Te Pāti Māori will not contest the byelection.

The party says it is because they feel “too unsafe” in the area, reports Today FM.

• LISTEN TO TODAY FM: The full interview with Māori Council chair Matthew Tukaki
• Te Pāti Māori’s racism safety concerns: ‘I see it daily’
• Other racism in New Zealand reports

They say racist leaflets and threats are common.

Tukaki defended Te Pati Māori’s decision, saying: “I think they’ve done the right thing.”

He said he hoped that New Zealand could address racism, or the Tauranga controversy could be an indicator of things to come with next year’s general election.

“As somebody who himself, who’s been on the back end of a significant amount of racist correspondence, emails, letters and messages from people who sadly reside in my former hometown of Tauranga, [Te Pati Māori] are absolutely justified,” Tūkākī said.

All New Zealanders ‘should be concerned’
“All Māori, all New Zealanders should be concerned.

“Not every person in the beautiful city of Tauranga is a racist or a white supremacist. I don’t think anyone’s alluding to that.

“What we do have is great concern for the activity that’s unfolding in that by-election.”

Presenter Burr asked Tūkākī about his first-hand experience with racism and hatred and supremacy.

“I get called n****r every single day in Facebook messages on fake profiles to my account. I had a six-page letter arrive at my home in Point Chevalier that was handwritten,” he told Today FM.

“He was emboldened enough so much to write his name, contact details and even sign the letter and the content. In that basically called me a black bastard. And I and any number of other things under the sun.

“I get messages calling me a dirty black bastard, you filthy gang mongrel. You this, you that.

‘It’s relentless’
“It’s relentless. It is absolutely relentless for the last couple of years, just because I choose to represent my people and pushed kaupapa that I know is going to change their lives for the better.”

Tūkākī told Today FM: “I don’t want [the abusers’] children to listen to this crap and then go to school and repeat it to little Māori kids or Pasifika kids or Asian kids — I’m tired.”

The byelection, for the seat left vacant by the resignation of former opposition National Party leader Simon Bridges, is on June 18. Tauranga is one of New Zealand’s most affluent and fastest growing cities with a population of more than 132,000.

One striking feature of the “freedom convoy” protests in Ottawa, Wellington and elsewhere has been the intense antagonism towards “mainstream media” (MSM).

These antagonisms are expressed not only in now familiar descriptions of MSM journalists as sinister agents of a wider power elite, coupled with pity or scorn for the befuddled “sheeple” who believe everything they hear in the media.

They can also take an uglier, more menacing form. Witness the clip circulating on Twitter of protesters spitting on CTV journalists in Vancouver. Or earlier reports of New Zealand journalists being “punched and belted with umbrellas” or harassed in person and online.

• READ MORE: The extremism visible at the Parliament protest has been growing in NZ for years – is enough being done?
• The NZ anti-vax movement’s exploitation of Holocaust imagery is part of a long and sorry history
• In ‘freedom convoy’ and other vaccine protests, slogans cross the political aisle

These kinds of encounters are becoming more common. Increased violence against journalists, particularly women journalists, has been a feature of the global rise of far-right politics.

This anti-media rhetoric has a clear “us” versus “them” dynamic. People start to define their own identities in opposition to the “MSM”. The media are framed as enemies (one of a gallery of interchangeable enemies) in ways that destroy the distinctions between journalism and propaganda, journalism and ideology, journalism and politics.

This language is then normalised in far-right media channels, sometimes with considerable success that might leave one wondering about the precise location of the mainstream: a livestream broadcast from one Facebook channel linked to the Wellington protests apparently had more views than the videos broadcast on The New Zealand Herald’s website.

Wellington protesters’ extreme distrust of mainstream media https://t.co/fAGmJmZxl3 pic.twitter.com/BHtqXU4CnO

— 1News (@1NewsNZ) February 26, 2022

Distrust of corporate media
The abuse and harassment of journalists trying to do their jobs are worrying. Journalists are right to suggest these attacks are an attack on democracy and the best democratic ideals of journalism.

At the same time, the cultural politics driving the antagonism to mainstream media and journalism are not as straightforward as is sometimes assumed.

In an official public sphere preoccupied with online disinformation and misinformation, one could be forgiven for thinking the problems could be fixed if people stopped feeding the social media algorithms and affirmed their trust in corporate news media instead.

It’s also not enough for journalists to insist (in good faith) they do nothing more than present balanced and objective news coverage — as if the vast academic literature documenting the problems with these professional rationalisations didn’t exist.

Defining ‘mainstream media’
The increasingly reactionary connotations of contemporary references to the “MSM” need historical context.

Like the “media” itself, the term “mainstream media” is a relatively recent invention. My research suggests academic scholars only started routinely referring to something called “mainstream media” from the 1980s onwards.

The term is nearly always taken for granted, as if it is perfectly obvious what the mainstream media is. But only 20 or 30 years ago, the term was associated primarily with left-wing critiques of capitalist media, and proposals for alternative media models.

We still hear those arguments today, and there are good reasons for critiquing mainstream media. The destructive impact of the market on contemporary journalism is more profound than it was in the 1980s and 1990s.

And there is an ironic dimension to the anti-media rhetoric of the convoy protesters, given that they benefit from the commercial appeal of “wall-to-wall mainstream media coverage”.

Into the rabbit hole
However, the meaning of media critique can become confused in a political context where the people who seem most critical of media and journalism are aligned to the far right.

This, in turn, can alter perceptions of the alternative. The online “rabbit hole” becomes a potential site of empowerment and agency — an archive of resources for mocking the conventions of “left-wing”, “woke” media.

But just because the ideological connotations of “MSM” have shifted, it does not mean the differences between authoritarian and democratic media criticism dissolve.

On the contrary, making such distinctions is more important now than ever. Being able to thoughtfully analyse how various media construct or define the world we live in is vital for our democracy.

Our democracies would be in even more trouble than they already are if anyone voicing suspicion of mainstream media was dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. It would be a world where the far right has successfully monopolised the terms of media criticism.

Anti-media sentiment among protesters cause for concern – experts https://t.co/ufus0Pfdlr

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) February 17, 2022

Ideological confusion
Nonetheless, the politically confused nature of media criticism today is a symptom
of a general ideological confusion that has accelerated during the pandemic and found another expression in the “freedom” convoys.

Talking points that might have once sounded inherently progressive start to float in unpredictable and chaotic ways. (A case in point: listening to one livestream broadcast from inside the Wellington convoy, I heard what sounded like an attempt to link the rhetoric of the sovereign citizen movement to notions of Māori sovereignty and self-determination.)

Anyone committed to a culture of vibrant democracy needs to be alert to this ideological confusion. We need to minimise the chances of our own political and media critiques compounding the problem and be vigilant for reactionary rhetoric that loves to blur left-right boundaries.

Our defence of journalists against “aspirational fascists” should be unambiguous. But our democratic imaginations will be seriously impoverished if the public conversation is reduced to a Manichean alternative of wild, paranoid denunciations of the “MSM” versus unquestioning support of our present media systems.

Dr Sean Phelan is associate professor of communication at Massey University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Indonesian Independent Journalist Alliance (AJI) has condemned the hacking and disinformation attacks against the group’s general chairperson Sasmito Madrim as a serious threat to media freedom.

In a written release, the AJI stated that the incident was a “serious threat to press freedom and the freedom of expression”.

“This practice is a form of attack against activists and the AJI as an organisation which has struggled for freedom of expression and press freedom,” the group stated.

• READ MORE: Other Indonesian media freedom reports

“The hacking and disinformation attack against AJI chairperson Sasmito Madrim is an attempt to terrorise activists who struggle for freedom of expression and democracy”, the group said.

The AJI stated that the hacking attack began on February 23 and targeted Madrim’s personal WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook accounts as well as his personal mobile phone number.

All of the posted content on his Instagram account was deleted then the hacker uploaded Madrim’s private mobile number.

Madrim’s mobile number was subsequently unable to receive phone calls or SMS messages.

Pornographic picture hack
On his Facebook account, Madrim’s profile photograph was replaced with a pornographic picture.

On February 24, the AJI monitored a disinformation attack which included Madrim’s name and photograph on social media.

The narrative being disseminated was that Madrim supported the government’s 2020 banning of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), supports the government’s construction of the Bener Dam in Purworejo regency and has asked the police to arrest Haris Azhar and Fatia Maulidiyanti, two activists who were criminalised by Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan.

The AJI Indonesia asserts that these messages are false and such views have never been expressed by Madrim.

“These three [pieces of] disinformation are clearly an attempt to play AJI Indonesia off against other civil society organisations, including to pit AJI against the residents of Wadas [Village] which is currently fighting against the exploitation of natural restores in its village,” wrote AJI.

AJI Indonesia is asking the public not to believe the narrative of disinformation spreading on social media and to support them in fighting for press freedom, the right to freedom of expression, association, opinion and the right to information.

Translated from the Kompas.com report by James Balowski for IndoLeft News. The original title of the article was “Kecam Peretasan Terhadap Ketumnya, AJI: Ancaman Serius Bagi Kebebasan Pers“.

Censoring of Facebook in Papua New Guinea can be addressed by three mandated government agencies, says Chief Censor Jim Abani.

He was responding to the Post-Courier on how his office was dealing with indecent content posted on Facebook in view of a controversy over a video of an alleged child molester.

“FB censoring is to be addressed by three agencies with relevant responsibilities that are mandated to carry out policies and regulations,” Abani said.

• READ MORE: Other Facebook reports

He added: “In the event that pictures and sexual references and connotations are published then the censor will say its objectionable publication.”

Abani said the Cyber Crime Code Act defined penalties for cyber harassment and cyber bullying.

“NICTA (National Information and Communications Technology Authority) may look into electronic devices used to commit crime or offence while Censorship Office will vet or screen the content of materials and determine whether it’s explicit, or not explicit and allowed for public consumption.”

He said police under the Summary Offences Act are equally responsible to censor illicit material posted online.

“Indecent publication published is in the amended Summary Offences Act.”

No comment on specific case
Abani could not comment on the specific video of the alleged 16-year-old child molester, saying that his officers were still working on gathering information.

However, he added that the approved 2021-2025 National Censorship Policy called for partnership and a collaborative approach from each responsible agency.

Abani said a new trend in the digital space had meant the Censorship Office to build its capacity to monitor and control apart from developing the recently launched policy it had been currently doing by reviewing the Censorship Act 1989.

The office was also working on signing an agreement with an internet gateway service provider.

Phoebe Gwangilo is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

Waves associated with the continuous volcanic eruption at Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai in Tonga crashed into Tonga’s largest island Tongatapu and forced residents to evacuate their homes.

A former Fijian journalist, Iliesa Tora, said in his Facebook live video that explosions were heard and black clouds of smoke seen in the sky followed by abnormal tidal movements and large waves.

He said a similar incident had occurred several years ago but was not of the same magnitude.

• READ MORE: No reports of deaths, injuries so far, says NZ prime minister
• RNZ News live updates on the eruption and tsunami
• ‘Rain of stones’ and ‘deafening sound’ coming from Hunga’s volcanic activities reported in Tongatapu
• Why the volcanic eruption in Tonga was so violent, and what to expect next
• Other APR reports on the tsunami

Former Fiji journalist Iliesa Tora’s Facebook video feed on the tsunami.

“Something similar happened seven years ago, but it wasn’t this bad,” he said.

Tora said his family and others were advised to move to higher ground by local authorities.

“An explosion erupted from underneath the sea near Ha’apai and we were given a tsunami warning,” Tora added.

“All the roads in Nuku’alofa have been busy as authorities try to move us to a safer place.”

Tora said rocks showered through the area while they drove to safety.

“Small rocks from the volcanic eruption started to fall like rain as a result of what had happened.”

Fiji villagers flee tidal waves
In Fiji, villagers of Narikoso on Kadavu fled for safety to elevated areas on the island after huge tidal waves crashed into the village ground yesterday afternoon.

The highest point in the island is understood to be occupied by seven households who were relocated from the old village site in 2020.

Village spokesman Kelepi Saukitoga told The Fiji Times that they were hit by three tidal waves.

He said the whole village ground was underwater.

“It was shocking and the villagers were terrified,” he said.

Saukitoga said they heard rumbling sounds before the tidal waves crashed through their homes.

“We had to chase the children and everyone in the village to higher grounds for safety. Everyone was terrified of the events that transpired this afternoon [Saturday].

“We understand that this was caused by the volcanic eruption in Tonga.”

Luke Nacei is a Fiji Times journalist. Republished with permission.

• READ MORE: ‘Under attack’: Report says repression of rights persists in Asia
• Other reports on people power under attack

An open rating means people are free to form associations, demonstrate in public spaces, and share information without fear of reprisals.

Concern in the report highlighted those civic rights are not respected across the region; Fiji, Nauru and Papua New Guinea remain in the “obstructed” category, meaning that restrictions of freedoms of expression, association and assembly have been raised by civil society in these countries.

Restrictions relating to media freedoms, access to information and the right to protest led to the Solomon Islands downgrade. Freedom of expression is of particular concern — in early 2021 the cabinet threatened to ban Facebook over worries about posts with “inflammatory critiques of the government”.

The government eventually backtracked after condemnation from civil society and the opposition.

Public Emergency extended
Freedom of assembly have been documented in the Solomon Islands. In July, the State of Public Emergency was extended for another four months in response to covid-19, even though there were only 20 reported cases in the country.

A march in Honiara to deliver a petition to the government by people from the Malaita province was disrupted and dispersed by the police.

Accessing information is not available to the media in the pandemic as Solomon Islands does not have freedom of information legislation. Additionally, the environment towards civil society groups is becoming more hostile in the country.

For example, in late 2019 the office of the Prime Minister called for an investigation into a number of civil society groups after they called for the prime minister to step down.

“Excessive restrictions on civic freedoms imposed by the government under the guise of preventing covid-19 led to the downgrade of the Solomon Islands. Constant threats to ban Facebook and attempts to vilify civil society have also resulted in the failure of the Solomon Islands to retain a top spot in our global rights rankings,” said Josef Benedict, Asia-Pacific civic space researcher at CIVICUS.

The use of excessive restrictions against activists and critics was the leading violation in 2021 with at least seven countries having been found to have transgressed in the report.

Target on Fiji journalists, activists and critics
In Fiji, provisions relating to sedition in the Public Order (Amendment) Act 2014 have been used to target journalists, activists, and government critics, while other sections of the act have been used to arbitrarily restrict peaceful protests.

The Fiji Trade Unions Congress (FTUC) was denied a permit to hold a rally in Suva, on International Labour Day, 1 May 2021 — no reason, written or verbal for the rejection was given.

The use of restrictive laws is a concern across the Pacific. New criminal defamation laws passed in Vanuatu and Tonga cast a chilling blow to freedom of expression.

In Australia, the government continues to hound whistleblowers through the courts, as seen in the case of Bernard Collaery, the lawyer of an ex-spy, who was charged with allegedly exposing Australia’s bugging of Timor-Leste.

In 2019, Australia was downgraded by the CIVICUS Monitor due to attempts to silence whistleblowers who reveal government wrongdoing, among other concerns.

New Zealand and Australia, which was downgraded in 2019, did not get off scot-free. The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association said the pandemic was not reason enough to quell peaceful assembly of protesters.

Indeed, protesters to the lockdown rules were detained this year for violating covid-19 rules.

Intimidation of Pacific activists
Other civic rights violations highlighted by the CIVICUS Monitor include the harassment or intimidation of activists and critics across the Pacific, as documented in Fiji, Samoa and Papua New Guinea.

Fijian surgeon Dr Jone Hawea was detained for questioning after criticising the government’s response to covid-19 in his Facebook live videos, while Papua New Guinean lawyer Laken Lepatu Aigilo was allegedly detained and assaulted by police in April 2021 after lodging an official complaint against a politician.

“The state of civic space in the Pacific may seem relatively positive. However, over the year we have seen restrictive laws being used in several countries, including criminal defamation laws. Protests have also been denied or disrupted under the pretext of handling the pandemic, while activists have faced harassment and intimidation,” said Benedict.

However, there have been some positive developments this year. After strong civil society pressure, Tongan authorities moved swiftly to charge the alleged murderer of leading LGBTQI+ activist Polikalepo “Poli” Kefu, after his body was found on a beach near Tongatapu, Tonga’s main island

More than 20 organisations collaborate on the CIVICUS Monitor to provide an evidence base for action to improve civic space on all continents.

The Monitor has posted more than 500 civic space updates in the last year, which are analysed in People Power Under Attack 2020.

Civic space in 196 countries is categorised as either closed, repressed, obstructed, narrowed or open, based on a methodology which combines several sources of data on the freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression.

Journalist and publisher Maria Ressa has called on tech and social media giants to practise “enlightened self-interest” amid a global call for platforms to step up in the fight against disinformation.

“The world that you’ve created has already shown that we must change it. I continue to appeal for enlightened self-interest,” said Ressa, chief executive and founder of Rappler, in an online lecture for the Facebook and the Big Lie series.

Ressa, a veteran journalist and Nobel Peace laureate who will be receiving the award this Friday, has been studying, reporting on, and sounding the alarm against the use of social media platforms as a means to spread lies and hate.

• READ MORE: Rappler’s Maria Ressa, Russia’s Dmitry Muratov win 2021 Nobel Peace Prize

The Rappler boss herself has been the subject of harassment online and of legal cases against her in the Philippines.

Platforms like Facebook, said Ressa, give the same weight on posts, whether it is a lie or a fact, in a bid to increase user engagement.

While it has meant more revenue for the platforms, it also means that posts that spark emotion — whether or not they are based on fact — gain the most traction online.

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen had earlier revealed that the algorithm for instances, puts weight on “angry” reactions more than regular likes.

‘Moderate the greed’
“In the Philippines, we say ‘moderate the greed.’ [These platforms] are part of our future, that’s why we’re partners,” she explained.

The stakes are even higher in countries like the Philippines, which will be electing a new president in May 2022.

“Why we must fight disinformation. It weakens, and ultimately subverts, democracy, by undermining the factual basis of reality, by denying the standards of truth.”

— #FightDisinfo

“We cannot not do anything because we in the Philippines have elections on May 9. If we do not have integrity of facts, we won’t have integrity of elections,” warned Ressa.

Platforms, after all, are anything but clueless and helpless.

Facebook, for instance, put more weight on “news ecosystem quality” or NEQ after employees found that election-related information were spreading on the platform in the days following the US elections in 2021.

The NEQ, according to The New York Times, is a “secret internal ranking it assigns to news publishers based on signals about the quality of their journalism.”

The lies asserted that the elections were rigged and that Donald Trump, then US president, was the true winner.

The ‘big lie’ persists
he “big lie,” as it has since been called, persists to this day.

Ressa said she woud be asking Facebook “behind the scenes and in front,” via Rappler’s partnerships, to turn up the NEQ locally.

Increasing the weight of the NEQ, at least in the US, meant that for a while, mainstream media accounts — The New York Times, CNN, and NPR — were more prominent on the Facebook feed than hyperpartisan pages.

“The foundational problem is that facts and lies are treated equally, which is what has poisoned the information ecosystem,” added Ressa.

Duterte, who won the 2016 elections by a wide margin in a plurality, is among the first national candidates to effectively use social media in a Philippine election.

Social media hasn’t just changed how regular citizens act and candidates campaign, it has also changed sitting leaders’ tactics.

“Leaders in the past that would take over, their first challenge is always how to unite people. Now, with social media because of the incentive schemes, we’re seeing leaders awarded if they divide,” said Ressa.

More manipulation tools
“Illiberal governments have gotten more tools to manipulate people,” she added. Rappler investigations later found that pro-Duterte networks used fake accounts to spread lies and disinformation well into his term as president.

Rappler started out as a Facebook page in mid-2011 and has since grown to be among the leading news sites in the Philippines. The news organisation faces at least seven active pending cases before different courts in the Philippines.

These are on top of online attacks over its reporting on the Duterte administration, including its bloody “war on drugs” and allegations of corruption among the President’s allies.

Ressa and a former researcher were convicted in June 2020 for a cyber libel law that hadn’t even been legislated when the article first came out.

Ressa is the first Filipino individual awardee of the Nobel Peace Prize and is the only woman in this year’s roster of laureates.

Ressa won the Peace Prize alongside Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov.

They won the prize “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”

Republished from Rappler with permission.

The New Zealand government is deploying dozens of Defence Force and police personnel to Honiara in the coming days “to help restore peace and stability”.

Since rioting and looting started in the Solomon Islands last week, Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea have sent troops to help keep the peace there.

An initial NZDF team of 15 will join them tomorrow, followed by a larger group of 50 at the weekend.

• READ MORE: Pacific regional response to Solomons post-riots crisis takes shape
• Other Solomon Islands crisis reports

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the response was short-term and to help restore peace and stability.

“New Zealand is committed to its responsibilities and playing its part in upholding regional security.

“We are deeply concerned by the recent civil unrest and rioting in Honiara, and following yesterday’s request of the Solomon Islands government, we have moved quickly to provide urgent assistance.

Samoan police are also on standby to send personnel to assist peacekeeping forces.

Unrest stemmed from protest
The unrest stemmed from a protest calling for the removal of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare that spilled over into rioting and left major destruction in the capital.

Earlier today, it was reported that the Solomon Islands government had warned that instigators were planning what it called “another evil plan” to decimate the whole of Honiara.

A government statement said the destruction of local businesses was done by “heartless people with selfish agendas”.

It warned that instigators were planning a next phase of unrest, including the declaration of Malaita province as an independent state.

Malaita’s provincial Premier Daniel Suidani, whose administration has fallen out with the national government, denies claims that he instigated the unrest.

Malaitans played a central role in last week’s protest before opportunists and looters co-opted the mobilisation into major unrest.

Ringleader statements on Facebook
The government statement said it was aware of reports that ringleaders behind the unrest were openly stating on Facebook that “in order to build a new house, the old house must be first destroyed”.

“Such statements are not helping the volatile situation we are currently experiencing in Honiara,” the statement said.

“To the peace loving and right minded Malaitans, we should ask ourselves whether we are comfortable with the violent advocators to lead our people to an independent state.”

However, the national government said it was encouraged by “the wisdom of the majority of our citizens not to employ violence, looting or threatening tactics to impose one’s evil plan of decimating Honiara city, the capital of Solomon Islands”.

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

PART 2: WS storytelling in more detail

In part one of my article on White Supremacy (WS), I articulated some of the features of the WS network in Aotearoa and positioned this framework along a spectrum. I attempted to introduce readers to a WS spectrum so people could better understand and then respond to the phenomenon of supremacy in Aotearoa.

In the first article, I argued that one of the features of the emergent WS framework in Aotearoa involved the development of narratives. This second article seeks to explore the question of WS storytelling in more detail.

Moreover, this article seeks to situate WS narratives within a storytelling framework to enable different communities to read supremacist messages as stories, contextualise them, and respond to them — from within the various standing places different communities occupy in time and space in Aotearoa.

• READ MORE: Covid disinformation and extremism are on the rise in New Zealand. What are the risks of it turning violent?
• The protest that revealed a new, ugly, dangerous side to our country
• Ardern loses the gloss as New Zealanders protest about covid restrictions
• Other reports on covid disinformation

White Supremacists (WS) have been very effective in articulating their narratives in a variety of ways during the covid-19 lockdown period. WS narratives are being disseminated across a range of media simultaneously.

The stories have been deployed in alternative media broadcasts; emails; Facebook comments, links, memes, posts, stories, video of live events; internet sites; political party press statements, political party policy documents, and even non-mainstream television shows to disseminate their stories on a wide array of issues.

Whether short or long, serious, or humorous, visual, or written, WS advocates are telling their stories and teaching their “lessons”. Such stories are being affirmed and disseminated in freedom marches and anti-vax protests — as videos of such gatherings attest.

WS messaging is occurring across multiple platforms as tracked by Hannah, Hattotuwa, and Taylor of The Disinformation Project.

Disseminating narratives
WS individuals, groups, and organisations are disseminating narratives to push their agendas. These stories include ones that illuminate:

• contempt for Te Tiriti;
• rejection of power sharing between Pakeha and Māori as articulated in Te Tiriti;
• antagonism towards Māori communities historical experience of colonialism;
• privileging of a mythology of peaceful and just race relations between Māori and Pakeha- thereby simultaneously erasing the racism experienced by Asians, Africans, Pacific peoples, and others in this land;
• desire by political parties in policies to end “race”-based privileges for Māori in health, law, or at the United Nations;
• vilification of the NZ Labour Party as “socialistic”;
• attacks on Māori activist, community, political, and scholarly leaders — and attempts to separate leaders from their peoples;
• attacks on the United Nations and governments as “cabals of evil”;
• contempt for migrants and migrant rights;
• lauding of former US President Donald Trump, Republicans, or QAnon leader, “Q”; and
• intolerance and bigotry expressed towards Māori, Jews, Muslims, and other communities.

I have identified only 11 narratives that privilege WS in the list above. There are many other stories contributing to what is a diverse WS movement.

I cannot articulate a framework illuminating how WS advocates are using video, meme, comments, or policy documents aesthetics to tell their stories because I do not have the space or time here. But what I can offer is an analysis of WS storytelling to empower communities to “close read” the stories WS supporters are telling in their deployment of different media.

We need to develop frameworks to intercept, assess, and respond to these narratives, so communities have the means of defending their lives, mana, and the sanctity of their communal stories in the face of a barrage of WS storytelling.

African, Arab, Asian, Jewish, Māori, Pacific, Palestinian, and Pakeha communities are grounded in (1) rich cultures; (2) values; (3) community spirit; (4) interpretive traditions; (5) reading traditions; (6) oral and communal storytelling traditions; and (7) wisdom and insight.

Deploy learning
I invite readers from different cultures to deploy their learning when considering the following issues concerning WS.

The first narrative I identified regarding WS frameworks above is the story of the contempt for Te Tiriti. We could ask:

• is the story of contempt for Te Tiriti based upon fact?
• is this story true?
• what beliefs about Māori and Te Tiriti must people hold to accept this story as “true?”
• who are the authors of the story of contempt for Te Tiriti?
• where do the stories come from?
• has this story been told in Aotearoa before covid 19-lockdowns in 2021?
• where is this story circulating?
• is this story being used to organise opposition to Māori communities?
• does this story uphold the mana of Māori communities?
• what values underpin this story?
• is this story connected to WS narratives coming from the US, Europe, Australia, or other foreign countries?
• is this story connected to other WS narratives circulating in contemporary Aotearoa today?
• is this story one being used to attack Māori community rights?
• what is the plot of the story of contempt for Te Tiriti?
• are there variations to the plot of this story?
• who are the key characters of this story?
• who are the heroes and who the villains in this story?
• what lessons does the story teach us?
• does this story resonate with the community beliefs, cultures, and values of many different Aotearoa communities?
• does this story attempt to erase the narratives of Māori communities?
• does this story attempt to distort the experience of Māori communities?
• does this story prevent the emergence of Māori community narratives?
• does this story foster better relationships between Māori and other communities in Aotearoa? and
• is this story good for communities, Aotearoa, and the Pacific?

I hope different communities will develop their own reading strategies in response to these problems. Similarly, it is to be hoped that communities will also develop their own questions in response to WS narratives — and the “truths” embedded these stories.

Remembering Said’s words
The words of the Palestinian-American activist, commentator, scholar, and writer Edward Said are apt here. The late Professor Said once wrote in his famed essay, “Permission to Narrate”, that, “Facts do not at all speak for themselves, but require a socially acceptable narrative to absorb, sustain and circulate them. Such a narrative has to have a beginning and end…”

We should remember Said’s words as we defend the narratives of Māori and all other communities against the stories of WS.

Covid-19 lockdowns have brought hardship to the door of many folks in Aotearoa. Nonetheless, stories of community service, kindness, unselfishness, and care abound in Aotearoa today.

Narratives of community concern, fellowship, generosity, service, respect, and tolerance underpin the labour of many — particularly those working in the health sector. These narratives are being written by all the peoples of Aotearoa together.

Māori narratives of community service have been particularly inspiring during this difficult lockdown period. People should reflect upon whether the WS narratives uphold the dignity of Kiwis of all cultures — or whether these narratives uphold the most antagonistic features of settler colonialism in Aotearoa.

In conclusion, I have ancestry from different parts of the Moana (Pacific) as well as ancestors from Europe. I am as proud of my Highland Clan Stewart heritage today as I am of my other ancestors.

I did not know my Pakeha family well and felt ashamed and antagonistic towards this ancestry when I was younger. These feelings changed when I spent time with Pakeha family in the South Island.

I admire the staunch pride of my Scottish ancestors, especially those clan members who fought against English invaders. I believe there is much to respect in Pakeha culture.

I also believe Pakeha can be proud of their ancestors and still live beyond the ideology that says their culture is superior and should rule over Tangata Whenua in this land. Pakeha culture need not be white supremacist culture.

Pakeha and Māori can respect one another and move forwards as partners under Te Tiriti. This is a narrative worth supporting moving into the future.

Tony Fala wishes to acknowledge the lives and work of Amiri Baraka, Bantu Stephen Biko, Frantz Fanon, and Edward Said as the inspiration for this article. Finally, Fala wishes to acknowledge his good friend Emeritus Professor Roger Horrocks. Horrocks was a superlative anti-Vietnam War student protest leader, scholar, and teacher. He taught Fala, alongside generations of other students, how to close read works of culture, film, history, media, literature, and television with commitment, dedication, and alofa. Horrocks is also one of the humblest people the author knows. Fala holds a PhD from the University of Auckland in Media, Film and Television.

• Yesterday: Part 1: Divide and rule with Māori and Pacific communities

A Pacific Media Centre advocate and researcher is one of five people named today in the Meta Aotearoa News Innovation Advisory Group to help support New Zealand’s news industry in a changing digital world.

Khairiah A. Rahman, an Asia-Pacific communication studies specialist at Auckland University of Technology, PMC advisory board member and assistant editor of Pacific Journalism Review, was delighted to be selected.

“It’s a privilege to be part of such a worthwhile and inclusive initiative that recognises the value of media diversity for a fully functioning democracy,” she said.

“I look forward to serving in the advisory group and seeing culturally diverse media receive the help they need to develop and flourish.”

• READ MORE: RNZ Mediawatch on the rebranding of Facebook as Meta
• A commitment to support the sustainability of New Zealand newsrooms

The other panel members have been named as Te Karere presenter Scotty Morrison; former editorial director of the NZ Newspaper Publishers’ Association Rick Neville; media consultant and former MediaWorks news director Hal Crawford; and award-winning journalist and business owner Brodie Kane.

In a statement, Meta announced that it was committed to supporting quality journalism in New Zealand.

“While news is a small part of the experience of most Kiwis on our platforms, including Facebook, we recognise that we can play a role in helping New Zealand’s news industry thrive in a changing digital world,” said news lead Andrew Hunter for Meta Australia and New Zealand.

The New Zealand government’s Public Interest Journalism Fund aimed to preserve and enhance public interest journalism, he said.

“We share the government’s commitment and believe by helping publishers reach people through free distribution, and investing in free tools and programmes specifically designed to help build audiences and revenue, we can support sustainable business models for the long term.

‘More diverse plurality’
“Today we’re furthering our investments in the local news ecosystem to drive greater and more diverse plurality in the sector, while encouraging a digital transition that is key to sustainability.”

The corporation’s four-part investment is designed specifically for Aotearoa New Zealand and tailored to support the local industry, especially regional, digital and culturally-diverse publications.

Meta’s investments include:

• Supporting local publishers develop sustainable business models through an Accelerator and Grant Fund;
• Establishing a Meta Aotearoa News Innovation Advisory Group;
• Investing in video and content innovation with Kiwi publishers; and
• Dedicated training for Kiwi publishers on growing and engaging digital audiences.

Hunter said the accelerator fund would bring 12 publishers from regional, digital and culturally-diverse publications together to “innovate, learn from experts, and collaborate on new strategies to improve their business both on and off Facebook”.

Facebook News Day
Hunter said a Facebook News Day would be launched to engage with New Zealand publishers on sustainable business models

The programme would be funded and organised by the Facebook Journalism Project. Grants would be provided through the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ).

“Newsroom leaders across the world are finding ways to better serve their audiences and boost revenue, and we are committed to supporting those efforts,” said Johanna Carrillo, ICFJ’s vice-president of programmes.

“We’re excited to now support New Zealand publishers as they work to build more sustainable news outlets in the public interest.”

• The first virtual Facebook News Day will be on November 26.
• Registrations close on November 22.
• More information on the Meta newsroom sustainability project.

October 2021 was a horror month for Facebook as the headlines screamed “Facebook under fire” which started with the social media behemoth suffering an outage for several hours.

Then it had a whistleblower — American data scientist Francis Haugen — who accused the company of:

• prioritising growth over user safety;
• bowing to the will of state censors in some countries;
• allowing hate speech to burgeon in other countries;
• ignoring fake accounts that may influence voters and undermine elections;
• allowing the antivaccine message to proliferate; and
• having algorithms that fuel noxious behaviour online.

Add to that, a major impending problem of capturing a young audience who are flocking elsewhere and turning their backs on the oldest social media platform which was founded in 2004 by Harvard students Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.

• READ MORE: Facebook profits top $9bn amid whistleblower revelations
• Other Pacific Newsroom reports
• The Pacific Newsroom

Even so, its success as the leading platform is undeniable with it announcing a $9 billion quarterly profit in October with a massive 3 billion users.

It was the access to smartphones when they were offered in the Pacific and technology that drove Facebook’s popularity to largely receptive devotees. The uptake of the social media platform in French Polynesia (72.1 percent penetration by 2020), Fiji (68.2 percent, Guam (87.8 percent), Niue (91.7 percent), Samoa (67.2 percent) and Tonga (62.3 percent) made it a no-brainer for Sue Ahearn, founder of the highly credible The Pacific Newsroom page to use the platform.

Measured success
The success of The Pacific Newsroom page can be measured by the site garnering in excess of 40,500 members most of who can participate actively by contributing to the page.

Ahearn is no stranger to the Asia-Pacific region. An Australian journalist for more than 40 years, 25 at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), who originally hails from Martinborough in New Zealand, she was drawn to set up the page primarily because of misinformation that tends to flourish in the Pacific news.

“It came to me about four years ago when the ABC cut back on all of its coverage of the Pacific, and I could see there was a big gap there,” she says.

“The ABC was only providing a small service and there was a lack of interest in most of the Australian media. You could see the technology was changing, how the information was flowing from the region was changing.’’

The apathy for a thirst for Pacific knowledge has had a profound effect on insularity in the media, especially in Australia and New Zealand, although the Public Interest Journalism Fund is attempting to address that in some way in New Zealand.

“I wish I knew, Sean Dorney, Jemima Garrett and all of the Pacific journalists just can’t fathom why is there so little interest in our region among the Australian media,’’ says Ahearn.

“It doesn’t make sense. There tends to be three or four journalists that cover the region and try to convince news outlets to run their stories or send reporters, and that has become very difficult.”

Only Pacific correspondent based in Pacific
Natalie Whiting of the ABC and the recipient of the Dorney-Walkley Foundation grant 2021 is the only journalist from Australasia who is based in the Pacific. She is stationed in the Papua New Guinean capital of Port Moresby.

“In New Zealand, that’s not a problem and New Zealand does good coverage of the Pacific. New Zealand has a much closer relationship with the Pacific,” Ahearn says.

However, Michael Field in Auckland, a page administrator and a veteran of the Pacific who went to journalism school with Ahearn, had qualms about the coverage out of New Zealand.

“The thing that really bugs me is that only Radio New Zealand (RNZ) seems to be doing Pacific news. For example, you’d pick up the (New) Herald and see who’s covering the hurricane out in Fiji only to see it is a re-run of a RNZ story,” says Field.

“It bothers me. The Herald should have had a different angle on the story, RNZ a different angle, The Dominion Post would be different and there would be work for stringers in the Pacific. Now that is not the case because RNZ takes up everybody else’s work and runs it that way,

“I guess that is the reality of it now, but it seems the voice of the Pacific these days is state radio.

“Call me old fashioned, but I’d be too embarrassed to run a story quoting another media organisation, and if you had to do it you’d do it grudgingly. We are starting to fail in the coverage of the region,” he says.

Success stirs amazement
The success and growth of The Pacific Newsroom as an organic, quasi news agency akin to Reuters, Agence France Press (AFP) or Australian Associated Press (AAP) in a tiny way, has caught Ahearn by amazement.

“I am surprised because we have a lot of engagement, some stories get 80,000 or 90,000 engagements so there is a lot of interest in it, and I think it fills a huge niche.

She speaks about the talanoa concept of The Pacific Newsroom.

“It’s like a town square where people can meet, share stories and talk about what is happening. Michael (Field) and I spend an enormous time on this project and we’re basically volunteers, we’re not being paid or making any money from it,” she says.

Nor would she entertain the thought of applying for funding either in New Zealand or Australia, preferring instead to maintain their editorial independence.

“Mike and I have discussed this, and we think one of the main attractions of our site is it is not monetised, that it is a voluntary site, there are no advertisements on it, we try and keep it independent, and we are both at the stage in our lives where we’re not working fulltime in the media,” Ahearn says.

“We’ve got time to spend doing this as a public interest, we really enjoy doing it too, it’s a lot of fun.

Many great stories
“There are so many great stories in the Pacific that need to be amplified to the world.

“Things are happening with technology and it’s giving a much stronger voice to the Pacific whether it’s on climate change or fishing or other important issues and that is why it is going to get stronger and stronger,” Ahearn says.

Among the stories that gained the site momentum was the University of the South Pacific (USP) having its vice-chancellor and president Professor Pal Ahluwalia at the centre of controversy during his first term when Fiji government and educational officials tried to oust him from office in the so-called USP saga, eventually unceremoniously deporting him in a move widely condemned around the Pacific.

“The big story which moved us along was the USP saga last year, for quite political reasons which had to do with the players, we were leaked all the reports and people could see if it got a certain amount of information on Pacific Newsroom that things might happen, and it did,” Field says.

“More recently we’ve had the same with the Samoan elections where a number of players wanted to be interviewed directly; the former Prime Minister (Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi) seemed to have some misinformed view that we are more powerful than we are. We cope with that so it is constantly moving thing.”

Another worrying development were the libel laws in Australia where last month the court ruled publishers to be liable for defamatory comments.

“The libel laws, it’s another tension and another thing we’ve got to watch. We watch it like a hawk (as moderators) and that is not to characterise the particular audience we’ve got,” Field says.

‘Shooting your mouth off’
“Shooting your mouth off seems to be regarded in much of the Pacific as a God-given right — ‘why you trying to stop me from saying this’, we just delete people now. We tried saying to people right at the beginning we didn’t need expletives, swear words and all that stuff, and we were going to take them down.

“It is learning experience, moderating a site like Pacific Newsroom can be hard, depressing work and sometimes there’s a lot of people that sort of feel they have to say something even though it is a complete nonsense, and it is hard yakka that sort of stuff,’’ Field says.

On the flip side of it were the tangible rewards that make it all worthwhile.

“I can remember one particular point where we were tracking a superyacht that was tripping around Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga; there were people from quite remote village areas of these countries that would send us pictures saying, ‘here is a picture of the yacht that has just passed my village ‘. Whereas back in the day you tried to get a shortwave radio operator to tell you what happened three weeks after the event.

“The Pacific is now full of people with smartphones and with good connections so we can cover everything in the Pacific,” Field says.

As for the credibility of the site, Field declined an approach from a major mainstream New Zealand media company that sought copyright and permission to use the material that was published.

Then there was the young journalist from another mainstream media company who asked Field for a contact in relation to a Vanuatu story, telling Field that they all shared their contacts in the newsroom. Needless to say, he went away disappointed and empty-handed.

Ancient settler societies
Just how well The Pacific Newsroom is regarded in the Pacific is summed up eloquently by history associate professor Morgan Tuimaleali’ifano of the USP who tells it with a Pacific panache.

“Apart from Australia, New Zealand, Tokelau, Hawai’i, Guam, American Samoa, West Papua, Rapanui, and the French territories (New Caledonia, Uvea and Futuna, Tahiti), the nature of independent and self-governing Pacific societies is that they are ancient settler societies steeped in conservatism,” Tuimaleali’ifano says.

“While their constitutions have absorbed Western influences, imperial laws, Christianity, fundamental freedoms/rights, monetary capitalism, they remain steeped in ancient systems of governance based largely on hereditary hierarchies.

“Two worlds co-exist with the constitutional democratic model heavily influenced by kinship patterns of thought and behaviour. Within kinship hierarchies, there exists diverse governance structures and no two villages share the exact governing structure,” he says.

“Equally important are the constitutions and parliamentary legislation. These law-making institutions together with the judiciary are constantly evolving as they must with changing circumstances and best practices.

“It is within these social dynamics that journalism provides the Fourth or Fifth Estate to maintain an even keel on the Pacific’s growth as a viable region of nation-states.

“The Pacific Newsroom plays a vital role, of mirroring the changing Pasifika people needs and commenting on sensitive matters that many may find unsavoury difficult and overwhelming to articulate within ultra-conservative societies.

‘Without fear or favour’
“Without fear or favour, The Pacific Newsroom and its sister networks provide a critical service for a multi-faceted Pasifika struggling to reconcile and reshape a new consciousness for Pasifika.

“These include the enduring issues of regional identity and solidarity and unity within the context of relentless ideological and geopolitical power plays.”

As associate professor and head of journalism at USP Shailendra Singh in Suva, who continues to strive to keep his students well abreast in journalism under draconian media laws in Fiji, says:

“It is indeed a success story, due to a large following, because of media restrictions in Fiji. Users from Fiji especially feel more comfortable expressing themselves on this page.

“The page is prudently and professionally moderated, so it is respectable. The page uses information from credible news sources. (Independent sources like Bob Howarth on Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste; former Vanuatu Daily Post publisher Dan McGarry; current Pacific Island Times publisher Mar-Vic Cagurangan; and photojournalist Ben Bohane, until he returned to Australia from Vanuatu; as well as David Robie‘s Asia-Pacific Report which is a huge contributor to the page).

“I promote USP journalism students’ work on Pacific Newsroom. It is exemplary of how Facebook can support democracy.”

A vital source of information in the covid era. You get a cross-section of news and views on one platform. It is definitely the most popular virtual “kava bar” in the Pacific.

• Browse The Pacific Newsroom

The Pacific Newsroom – the virtual ‘kava bar’ news success story #ThePacificNewsroom #AsiaPacificReport @shrek45 #mediafreedom #independentmedia @RSF_inter @RSF_AsiaPacific @sueahearn @MichaelFieldNZ @ShailendraBSing @wansolwara @USPWansolwara https://t.co/9m7DJ0DUq6 pic.twitter.com/QIJUlvsbFu

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) November 5, 2021

Facebook has today launched a public education campaign to help people in five Pacific Island countries and territories learn how to identify and combat health-related misinformation.

The locations and languages are Wallis & Futuna (French), New Caledonia (French), Tonga (English and Tongan), Solomon Islands (English and Solomon Islands Pijin), and Cook Islands (English).

The campaign, which follows an earlier launch in Samoa, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, will run for five weeks and includes graphics and videos.

• READ MORE: Facebook Information Centre

The content is designed to encourage three key behaviours by Facebook users:

• Awareness – Be informed that misinformation exists
• Investigation – Find out more to confirm if the information is indeed false
• Action – Visit the local health authority to get accurate information

Mia Garlick, director of public policy for Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Islands, says: “One of our commitments is to connect people to reliable information, and give people the tools to make informed decisions about the information they see on Facebook.

“We are extending our efforts to reach more people across the Pacific, ensuring they can easily compare what they see with official public health resources.

“We will continue to work with health experts including the World Health Organisation (WHO), and local partners, to make sure that we have the right policies in place to reduce the spread of harmful covid-19 and covid-19 vaccine misinformation on our platform.”

Throughout the pandemic, Facebook has worked closely with WHO to direct people to authoritative covid-19 information, and to do more to identify and take action to remove incorrect claims about the virus.

The campaigns can be found at:
Wallis & Futuna (French)
New Caledonia (French)
Tonga (English)
Tonga (Tongan)
Solomon Islands (English)
Solomon Islands (Solomon Islands Pijin)
Cook Islands (English)

“Not a great week for journalism at the ABC”, News Corp’s Sharri Markson tweeted earlier this month, when the week was barely a day old.

It is hard to remember the last time a News Corp columnist declared it was a great week for journalism at the ABC. Markson’s tweet linked to a story in The Australian that quoted former Attorney-General Christian Porter saying his dropping of his defamation claim against the ABC was “a humiliating backdown by the ABC”.

Apart from reporting the settlement, the main basis for the article was that the ABC had warned its staff not to claim victory following Porter’s withdrawal, and to be careful in the way they talked about it.

• READ MORE: View from The Hill: Porter decides it’s time to ‘fold em’ in ABC defamation case
• Latest $84 million cuts rip the heart out of the ABC, and our democracy
• Conspiracy theories on the right, cancel culture on the left: how political legitimacy came under threat in 2020

At such a legally sensitive moment, one might have thought the ABC warning to staff was mere prudence, but it also points to more recurring issues about how media organisations view their journalists’ statements on social media. These issues are likely to become more common, not less.

The right to tweet?
The Sydney Morning Herald recently published a story quoting Liberal Senator and former ABC journalist Sarah Henderson saying the national broadcaster’s social media policy was “woefully inadequate”.

There are genuine dilemmas here. Journalists as professionals and employees are subject to certain disciplines. What they tweet can and will affect the way others perceive their work.

Conversely, as citizens, they also have the right to free expression.

In April, The Australian’s economics editor, Adam Creighton, sent this tweet:

Covid19 has killed free speech. Covid19 will be the most formative event of my life.
Virtue signalling dominates truth.
The West is finished.

— Adam Creighton (@Adam_Creighton) April 11, 2021

Does such a cri de coeur affect how readers regard his judgement and capacity to report? Or should he have the right to say how he feels?

What constitutes crossing the line?
The ABC is the Australian media organisation that has most earnestly sought to resolve these dilemmas. It has four eminently sensible guidelines:

• do not mix the professional and the personal in ways likely to bring the ABC into disrepute
• do not undermine your effectiveness at work
• do not imply ABC endorsement of your personal views
• do not disclose confidential information obtained through work.

Henderson pointed to two breaches of these guidelines. One was from an ABC lawyer who called the Coalition government “fascist” and Prime Minister Scott Morrison “an awful human being” on Twitter, and then resigned. Henderson said he should not have been allowed to resign, but should have been fired.

Her other example involved what she called “Laura Tingle’s trolling of a prime minister” last year. This is an inaccurate use of the word trolling, but increasingly politicians (and journalists) seem to equate any criticism of themselves on social media as trolling.

Tingle’s single offending tweet concluded “we grieve the loss of so many of our fine colleagues to government ideological bastardry. Hope you are feeling smug Scott Morrison”. The tweet was posted late at night after a farewell function for her friend and colleague Philippa McDonald, and it was deleted the next morning.

It is asking a lot of ABC journalists to feel detached and impartial about government cutbacks to their own organisation that adversely affect the careers of their colleagues. Nevertheless, the ABC has a large investment in Tingle’s public credibility, and the tweet was immediately addressed internally.

ABC managing director David Anderson injected an unusual note of common sense when he was asked whether Tingle was reprimanded during a Senate estimates hearing. He called Tingle’s tweet “an error of judgement” and said “there’s a proportionality that needs to be applied”.

ABC boss David Anderson says rural and regional jobs have been ring fenced from the current cuts. As of last week about 70 ABC staff whose roles are gone are yet to depart the public broadcaster. Everyone leaving knows their job is gone. #estimates

— Tom McIlroy (@TomMcIlroy) October 21, 2020

The dangers of an unduly restrictive approach
The larger danger is that journalists, especially those at the ABC, will get caught up in public controversies surrounding their own work. While at one level they clearly should have the right to defend themselves, the problem is the temptation to succumb to the cheap point-scoring in which critics often engage, to be dragged down from the professional standards of the original programme.

Though recent public controversies have focused on apparent breaches on social media not being sufficiently punished, there are also dangers and potential injustices in an unduly restrictive approach.

The most obvious victim of a journalist being punished for social media activity was SBS football commentator Scott McIntyre, who posted a series of tweets on ANZAC Day in 2015 about the “cultification of an imperialist invasion”.

Then-Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull thought they were “despicable remarks which deserve to be condemned”, and contacted the head of SBS, Michael Ebeid. Ebeid fired McIntyre the same day.

Malcolm Turnbull denies influence over SBS decision to sack Scott McIntyre over controversial Anzac tweets. http://t.co/tzxHMBkCrD

— The Sydney Morning Herald (@smh) April 27, 2015

Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson was then quoted as saying McIntyre’s freedom of speech was not being curtailed, and that his historical claims “will be judged very harshly”.

Whatever the merits of his ANZAC tweets, they had no relationship to his role as a football commentator. Is his reporting on soccer compromised by his views on the ANZAC tradition?

This episode illustrates that “political correctness” and “cancel culture” are found across the political spectrum — and media organisations will continue to grapple with these issues as the social media profiles of their journalists continue to grow.

Dr Rodney Tiffen, is emeritus professor in the Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

In a lawsuit filed with the public prosecutor in Paris this week, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has accused Facebook of “deceptive commercial practices” on the grounds that the social media company’s promises to provide a “safe” and “error-free” online environment are contradicted by the large-scale proliferation of hate speech and false information on its networks.

Using expert analyses, personal testimony and statements from former Facebook employees, RSF’s lawsuit demonstrates that the California-based company’s undertakings to its consumers are largely mendacious, and that it allows disinformation and hate speech to flourish on its network (hatred in general and hatred against journalists), contrary to the claims made in its terms of service and through its ads.

To condemn this large-scale, unprecedented phenomenon, RSF filed a lawsuit in France, where consumer law is especially well suited to deal with the issue and where Facebook has a huge number of consumers – 38 million overall users, including 24 million who use it every day.

• READ MORE: Under the surface: Covid-19 vaccine narratives, misinformation and data deficits on social media

As Facebook’s terms of service are the same all over the world, a court ruling in France on its deceptive practices has the potential for a global impact. RSF is considering filing similar lawsuits in other countries.

This suit concerns Facebook France and Facebook Ireland.

Under articles L121-2 to L121-5 of the French consumer code, a commercial practice is considered deceptive “if it is based on false claims, statements or representations or is likely to mislead,” especially with regard to “the essential characteristics of the goods or service” or “the extent of the advertiser’s promises”. This offence is punishable by a fine up to 10 percent of annual turnover (article L132-2 of the consumer code).

In its terms of service, Facebook undertakes to exercise professional diligence in providing “a safe, secure and error-free environment,” one that cannot be used to “share anything (…) that is unlawful, misleading, discriminatory or fraudulent”.

In its Community Standards, it undertakes to “significantly reduce the distribution” of false information. And in an ad published in French media in early 2021, Facebook claims to offer “precise information in real-time to better combat the pandemic” and says it is working with governments and international organisations to “share reliable information about covid-19”.

A different reality
The reality is quite different. First Draft, a non-profit organisation founded in 2015 to combat online disinformation, recently identified Facebook as “the hub of vaccine conspiracy theories” in French-speaking communities.

According to the German Marshall Fund (GMF), Facebook posts linking to deceptive sites resulted in 1.2 billion interactions in the fourth quarter of 2020. A UNESCO report published in 2020 named Facebook as the “least safe” social media platform.

The evidence provided by RSF in support of its lawsuit confirms the scale of this phenomenon and provides emblematic examples.

With regard to combatting online hatred, RSF provides two legal officer’s reports (of 80 and 73 pages, respectively). The first concerns the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s Facebook page at the time it published the “Tout ça pour ça” issue in September 2020, coinciding with the start of the trial of those accused of complicity in the massacre at the magazine’s headquarters in January 2015.

RSF registered dozens of comments containing insults, threats and calls for violence against the magazine and its journalists.

The second concerns the hate messages and threats against journalists working on the French TV programme Quotidien, which were posted on public Facebook pages, and comments threatening the French regional newspaper L’Union, one of whose photographers was viciously attacked in February 2021.

Verbal violence
The newspaper provided the RSF case with a statement about the verbal violence to which its journalists are routinely subjected on Facebook.

As regards disinformation, RSF provides two legal officer’s reports compiled in December 2020 (478 and 86 pages, respectively) showing how easy it is to access large amounts of significant disinformation about covid-19 that Facebook has not labeled as such.

For example, five different posts of the conspiracy theory video Hold-up – five of the many available on Facebook – were viewed more than 4.5 million times in two months.

Another film, Manigances-19, containing numerous falsehoods about covid-19 according to AFP analysis, was viewed an average of nearly 4000 times a day for two months.

The lawsuit also cites the case of a post including a link to a video entitled UN member Claire Edwards denounces the planned Covid-19 genocide (Censored), which has potentially been viewed by nearly 400,000 users.

Asia Pacific Report and its Pacific Media Watch freedom project collaborate with RSF in Paris.

Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) union is reconsidering its involvement in the Australian Press Council and has appealed to members to give feedback on this issue.

Vice-president media Karen Percy has appealed to delegates on a YouTube video to take part in this consultation.

“Members have raised concerns about the lack of financial transparency at the Press Council and rulings that are increasingly out of step with community expectations,” she said.

• READ MORE: Facebook and Google deals may leave small publishers out in the cold
• Download the media bargaining code

If the MEAA leaves, it needs to give four years notice “to end our contributions”, which last year were more than A$100,000.

“That four years gives us time to look at alternative regulatory options, and that’s in line with the MEAA submission to the Senate Inquiry into media diversity which proposes a single entity for self-regulation,” said Percy.

Meanwhile, the MEAA says in a recent statement on its website that Facebook’s recent “ham-fisted handling of its news sharing ban” in Australia – which initially blocked crucial community information and health and government information sites – had revealed the real dangers of an organisation that “abuses its dominant position” and “thumbs its nose at rules and regulations”.

Last month’s decision by Facebook to unilaterally ban news on hundreds of Australian pages was “the arrogant act of a company with too much power that thinks it is beyond the reach of any government”, the statement said.

Facebook was acting in retaliation to the proposed News Media Bargaining Code, which would force it and Google to compensate media outlets for content that until now has been published on their platforms for free.

While Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code was not a silver bullet to fix the problems within the news media, it was an important step to address the “blatant imbalance between the digital giants” and those who produced public interest news content.

New Zealand’s High Commissioner in Fiji, Jonathan Curr, has taken to social media to counter claims that Wellington drafted a bill to give greatly increased powers to Fiji’s often corrupt police force.

The Police Bill, tabled in Parliament last week, has been labelled draconian by critics while social media has been merciless over the friendship between prime ministers Voreqe Bainimarama and Jacinda Ardern.

She signed off on the deal in Suva in February 2020.

• READ MORE: More power for Fiji’s police force – draft bill enables eavesdropping

New Zealand is spending $11 million over four years to improve the Fiji Police Force which, since the 2006 Bainimarama coup, has been under military control.

Amid intense criticism on Facebook, Curr took to Twitter: “NZ is engaged in a 4 year strengthening programme with @fijipoliceforce, partnering with @UNDP_Pacific & @nzpolice to improve policing, and support Fiji to meet international human rights obligations.”

NZ is engaged in a 4 year strengthening programme with @fijipoliceforce, partnering with @Undp_Pacific & @nzpolice to improve policing, and support #Fiji to meet international human rights obligations.

— Jonathan Curr (@JCurrNZ) March 5, 2021

In a second tweet, Curr said a component of the aid programme was to support public consultations on the Draft Police Bill 2020, led by Ministry of Defence and National Security
He added: “NZ has not been involved in drafting or developing the Bill.”

And in a third tweet said: “Such an important piece of legislation needs to be consulted with Fiji’s citizens. This is an opportunity for the community to influence the final shape of the Bill, and to express concerns & provide feedback.”

NZ push for consultation ‘useful’
Fiji lawyer and politician, Tupou Draunidalo, went on Facebook to support Curr, suggesting New Zealand’s insistence on consultations was useful.

“If NZ did not sponsor the consultations, we would get the bill in its raw form through s.51 standing orders (as is normal) with one hour debate.”

She added: “So what the NZ government is sponsoring (to allow every Fijian a say in the Bill, not even just the parliamentarians) is highly commendable for current and future governance infrastructure.”

New Zealand, Australia and the UN Development Programme were rebuilding what the opposition and their allies destroyed over decades, Draunidalo said.

“If we really prefer no consultations, just write to the (New Zealand High Commission) so that they don’t waste their money on the doomed.”

The consultation process was formally launched last week with some odd optics. Police Minister Inia Seruiratu joined with UNDP representative Nanise Saune-Qaloewai and Curr to grasp a large military sword to cut an over-iced yellow cake.

The significance was not explained.

Target audience
The consultation New Zealand is paying for involves online surveys and face-to-face interviews. The “target audience” for consultation was five to 10,000 people by the end of April.

Social media critics have been outspoken. One asked how long Curr had been in the country: “Do you not know that the public consultation process is a facade and the (FijiFirst Party) government will do whatever they want regardless of what the public’s views are?”

Another said it was “clearly unacceptable unless NZ foreign policy now supports draconian legislation overseas.”

One comment said it would have been better to train police because most of them “don’t even know what they are doing.”

Another writer said the consultation process was an excuse by the government which could then use parliamentary orders to claim ”it has received public scrutiny—therefore allowing this bill to pass through with limited debate on the floor of Parliament.”

Curr had earlier said New Zealand was working on enhancing investigative skills, providing early access to justice and promoting gender equality.

“This is critical to supporting the work of other components of the criminal justice system, and it is an important plank in the efforts of New Zealand and Fiji to combat shared threats such as trans-national organised crime,” he said.

Communications powers
Under the bill, Fiji police take new powers to monitor communications and forcefully enter premises to place tracking devices. Police will have the powers to secretly or forcefully enter any premises to place tracking devices, states the draft law.

Police can also secretly monitor and record “communications” of persons about to commit a crime or have committed a crime if the draft law is passed in its current form.

The law also allows police to recruit an “informer” who is described as “any person who, whether formally recruited by police or otherwise, provides information in relation to anything sought by police for any lawful purpose”.

Police officers will not be allowed to join a union, states the draft law and it will be unlawful for them to go on strike or to take any industrial action.

Ardern announced the aid package just before covid-19 ended overseas travel.

“In the same way we cooperate on issues that affect the whole Pacific like climate change, Fiji and New Zealand will work together to combat transnational crime and drug trafficking, which are having an increasingly negative impact across the region,” she said

“The more we can do to prevent countries like Fiji being used as a transit point for trafficking, the more we can stop drugs arriving on New Zealand’s borders.

“This police partnership programme highlights the deepening of relations between New Zealand and Fiji and is an important step in the strengthening of a key institution in Fiji.”

Michael Field is a co-convenor of The Pacific Newsroom. This article is republished with permission.

The federal government must act urgently to support small Australian news outlets that could be shut out of commercial deals with Facebook and Google under its News Media Bargaining Code, says the union for Australia’s journalists.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) said in a statement that it welcomed Facebook’s decision to no longer block news links in Australia following negotiations with the federal government over the code, but added that it was concerned about what this will mean for small media organisations and freelancers.

MEAA media federal president Marcus Strom said that while the way had now been cleared for the big media companies to strike commercial deals with Facebook and Google, it was unclear to what extent small outlets would benefit.

• READ MORE: Why Facebook defied the government’s wishes while Google buckled
• Pacific media say big tech content agreements could be beneficial
• More Facebook news ban reports

“For small publishers that have become reliant on Facebook to distribute their news, it will be a huge relief that the news tap has been turned back on,” Strom said.

“But they will remain at the mercy of Facebook and Google, which are both seeking to avoid mandatory regulation and will instead choose which media companies they come to agreements with.

“This will particularly affect small publishers if the Treasurer deems that Google and Facebook have done enough not to be named as respondents to the News Media Mandatory Code.

“For small publishers who fail to make side deals with the tech giants, they could be locked out, further entrenching the narrow ownership base of the Australian media market.

A ‘threat to misbehaving companies’
“We now face the strange possibility that the News Media Mandatory Code could be passed by Parliament and it applies to precisely no one. It will just sit in the Treasurer’s drawer as a threat to misbehaving digital companies, which could later counter threat to turn the tap back off.

“It shouldn’t be up to Facebook and Google to cherry pick and groom publishers it deems acceptable for side deals. Any code should be mandatory, uniform, predictable, and fair; not at the whim of technology executives”

Strom said there also remained no guarantees that any money raised for news media from the tech companies would be spent on journalism.

“Where is the commitment to stable funding to the public broadcasters? Where are the tax incentives to support public interest journalism? And where is the ongoing commitment to support rural, suburban and regional media, along with freelancers?’ he asked.

“While we support this Bill, MEAA has always maintained that the News Bargaining Code alone has never been a ‘silver bullet’ for small, regional, community and independent outlets.

“Throughout the long process of developing the code, going back to the original digital platforms inquiry by the ACCC, MEAA has called for a holistic suite of reforms to nurture a vibrant and diverse media ecosystem.

“Beyond meaningfully addressing the need to ensure digital platforms pay for the news content they carry, there are a range of discrete measures that can be adopted in Australia to maintain the viability of media company operations and, critically, encourage new entrants.

Reforms called for
Among the reforms that were called for by the MEAA were:

• extending the operation of the Public Interest News Gathering programme to become an annual round of funding;
• the adoption by the federal government of critical measures which have been used overseas, such as directly funding local news, offering taxation rebates and incentives;
• part-funding editorial positions;
• and resetting government assistance to ensure funding is available for new media organisations, as well as traditional media companies.

Facebook reverses Australia news ban after government makes media code amendmentshttps://t.co/NXfdCaH8Ch

— Tactical Tech (@Info_Activism) February 23, 2021

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned Facebook for carrying out its threat to block the sharing of its journalistic news content in Australia in retaliation to the federal government’s plan to make platforms pay media outlets.

The ban impacts on the reliability and pluralism of the information available on this social media platform, said the Paris-based global media watchdog.

“No posts yet” is the message that the Facebook pages of the Australian media have been showing since February 17, says RSF in a statement.

• READ MORE: Facebook to reverse ban on Australian news sites after backlash
• Other Media Bargaining Code stories

This blackout is deliberate. Facebook announced on February 17 that it would “restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content.”

The decision was taken in reaction to the Australian government’s proposed News Media Bargaining Code, under which platforms such as Facebook and Google would have to pay Australian media outlets for the content they display.

Facebook’s response, called the “nuclear option” by The Australian daily newspaper, is radical.

Australian media can no longer share or post content on their Facebook pages, while users in Australia can no longer see or share links to news on the platform, whether Australian or international news.

Facebook ‘abusing dominant position’
“Facebook is abusing its dominant position to defend its economic interests at the expense of online news reliability and pluralism,” said Iris de Villars, the head of RSF’s Tech Desk.

“Regardless of the proposed law being discussed, these restrictions affect the ability of Australian citizens to access reliable and independent information on this platform.

“We urge Facebook to reverse this decision, which totally contradicts its pledges to combat disinformation.”

To implement these restrictions, Facebook has been using machine-learning tools to identify news content publishers but this has had the collateral effect of blocking other kinds of content, including the pages of several NGOs such as RSF, public health bodies, governmental institutions and even entities that handle emergencies.

Facebook has not as yet responded to RSF’s questions.

Asia Pacific Report and Pacific Media Watch collaborate with Reporters Without Borders.

The tech juggernaut Facebook’s shock decision to block all news feeds from Australian media outlets this week in response to a proposed new Media Bargaining law, that will force social media giants to pay for news content that is posted on their platforms, has created fury among Australians.

But it is also turning attention to the impact of Facebook – and Google – on Australian journalism.

Facebook banned Australian users from accessing news in their feeds on the morning of Thursday, February 18, as the government pursues laws that would force it to pay publishers for journalism that appears in people’s feeds.

• READ MORE: Facebook backs away from news across the Tasman – RNZ Mediawatch
• Facebook’s Australia ban threatens to leave Pacific without key news source
• Other News Bargaining law stories

The legislation was introduced to Parliament in Canberra in December 2020. The House of Representatives passed it earlier this week.

The bill that has wide political support in Australia is now under review by a Senate committee before it is presented for a vote in the upper house.

In a lengthy statement issued by Facebook on February 18, the company revealed that it would bar Australian news sites from sharing content on the platform.

Within moments of the announcement being made public, Australian news organisations, media commentators, interest groups and local consumers of Facebook that runs into millions, began voicing their fury.

‘Go directly to source’
National broadcaster ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) immediately posted a notice on their news pages on the website calling on Australians to “go directly to the source” by downloading from their own news application.

Facebook’s head of policy for Asia-Pacific, Simon Milner was unrepentant during an interview on the ABC network, arguing that they disagree with the broad definition of news in the new legislation.

“One of the criticisms we had about the law that was passed by the House of Representatives [on February 16] is that the definition of news is incredibly broad and vague,” he said

Facebook has said earlier that the proposed laws fundamentally misunderstood the relationship between their platform and publishers who used it to share news content.

In fact, Facebook has been arguing for a long time that they are a publisher that provides a free platform for news organisations.

But many media organisations and scholars argue that they are bleeding out revenue from the Australian media running advertising on these pages, which otherwise used to go to the media companies and their platforms such as newspapers and TV stations.

A first of its kind, the success or otherwise of the Australian legislation is closely watched by other countries, especially in Europe.

US government pressure
Interestingly, according to an ABC report on January 18, the US government had tried to pressure the Australian government to drop the proposed legislation.

According to the ABC, a document with the letterhead of the Executive Office of the President has said: “The US government is concerned that an attempt, through legislation, to regulate the competitive positions of specific players … to the clear detriment of two US firms may result in harmful outcomes.”

The Australian government, however, sees the new legislation as designed to ensure these media companies are fairly remunerated for the use of their content on search engines and social media platforms.

Google has begun signing deals with publishers in response, but Facebook has chosen to follow through on its threat and remove news for Australian users.

In an interview on ABC Radio on February 18, Glen Dyer of popular Crikey! media that uses Facebook extensively to reach their audiences described Facebook’s behaviour as “resembling China’s (Community Party)”.

He argued that in the past year China has been imposing trade restrictions literally overnight on spurious grounds inconveniencing Australians at the behest of China’s leader, and Mark Zuckerberg is also behaving in a similar high-handed way.

“It [Facebook] has a management structure that is controlled by a small group headed by Mark Zuckerberg,” he noted.

Boycott Facebook
“Australian advertisers should boycott Facebook”.

However, Dyer added that they would not have the guts because “most of these Australian companies are controlled offshore and the local executives would not risk their bonuses”.

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, speaking on ABC TV’s flagship current affairs programme 7.30 Report on February 18, argued strongly for an across the board tax on advertising revenue designed in such a way that both local and foreign companies operating in Australia cannot avoid it.

“The real question is that the revenue model for media has moved into other platforms like Facebook and Google. There is less revenue support for journalism and that has been a worry for some time,” said Turnbull, who was a merchant banker before moving into politics.

“Government will be better off imposing a tax on advertising revenue across the board …. take that revenue from Facebook and Google and make the money available to support public interest journalism,” he recommended.

Turnbull believes that government has lost the plot because they are saying to companies like Facebook and Google, “you have to pay money to those [media companies] who put contents on your site [even though] you are not stealing it or breaching copyrights, you have to pay”.

Thus, he appealed to Australians to go directly to Australia media news platforms and applications – like that offered by the ABC – without using Facebook.

Digital threat to democracy
Chris Cooper, executive director of Reset Australia, a global initiative working to counter the digital threat to democracy has also condemned Facebook’s action.

“Facebook is telling Australians that rather than participate meaningfully in regulatory efforts, it would prefer to operate a platform in which real news has been abandoned or de-prioritised, leaving misinformation to fill the void,” he argued.

Reset Australia had made a submission to the government during the legislation’s drafting stage arguing that the true impact of the legislation should be changes to the news, media and journalism landscape in Australia, that should ensure promoting greater diversity and pluralism within the Australian media landscape.

Cooper argues that Facebook does not care about Australian society nor the functioning of democracy.

“Regulation is an inconvenient impost on their immediate profits – and the hostility of their response overwhelmingly confirms regulation is needed,” he says.

Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg blasted Facebook’s decision to block access to pages like 1800Respect, the WA Department of Fire and Emergency Services and the Bureau of Meteorology.

Speaking on ABC he said that this was done at a time that a bushfire emergency in Western Australia depended on this information, and also when Australia is about to roll out the covid-19 vaccines where people needed access to reliable information.

Frydenberg noted that this heavy-handed action will damage its reputation.

“Their decision to block Australians’ access to government sites — be they about support through the pandemic, mental health, emergency services, the Bureau of Meteorology — was completely unrelated to the media code, which is yet to pass through the Senate,” he said.

“What today’s events do confirm for all Australians, is the immense market power of these digital giants.”

Kalinga Seneviratne is a media analyst and author. This article was first published on IDN-InDepth News and is republished with the permission of the author.

Facebook’s ban on Australian news will cut off a vital source of authoritative information for the Pacific region, government and industry analysts have warned.

Across the Pacific, thousands have found their access to news blocked, or severely limited, after the tech giant wiped all news on the platform in Australia in response to proposed legislation that would require Facebook to pay for content from media groups.

The ban’s impact is especially acute in Australia’s region.

• READ MORE: Why Google is now funnelling millions into media outlets, as Facebook pulls news for Australia
• Facebook under fire over move to ‘bully democracy’ in Australia
• Google’s and Facebook’s loud appeal to users over the news media bargaining code shows a lack of political power
• Facebook has pulled the trigger on news content — and possibly shot itself in the foot
• Facebook back at negotiating table with Australia
• Facebook move reinforces need for a News Media Bargaining Code
• JERAA demands Facebook stop blocking Australians from receiving news

Across the Pacific, thousands of people are on pre-paid data phone plans which include cheap access to Facebook. Those on limited incomes can get news through the social network, but cannot go to original source websites without using more data, and spending more money.

The region’s largest telco provider, Digicel, with a presence in Fiji, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu, offers affordable mobile data plans with free or cheap access to Facebook.

In Australia, news from Pacific sites also appeared to be blocked, a significant impediment for diaspora communities and seasonal workers.

From Australia, The Guardian visited the Samoa Observer, Vanuatu Daily Post, The Fiji Times, and Papua New Guinea’s Post-Courier. None had visible posts.

Significant expatriate communities
Samoa, Vanuatu, Fiji and PNG all have significant expatriate communities in Australia.

Dr Amanda Watson, a research fellow at the Australian National University’s Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, and a researcher in digital technology use in the Pacific, said there was widespread confusion across the Pacific about the practical ramifications of Facebook’s Australian news ban.

“There has not been any clear, accessible and accurate information put out for Facebook users or anything particularly targeted at Facebook users in the Pacific that has explained parameters of this decision,” she said.

Watson said that for many in the Pacific, Facebook was the entry point to, and even the extent of, the internet.

“Facebook is the primary platform, because a number of telco providers offer cheaper Facebook data, or bonus Facebook data. Many Pacific Islanders might know how to do some basic Facebooking, but it’s questionable if they would be able to open an internet search engine and search for news, or go to a particular web address.

“There are technical confidence issues, and that’s linked to education levels in the Pacific, and how long people have had access to the internet.”

Bob Howarth, country correspondent for Timor-Leste and PNG for Reporters Sans Frontières media freedom watchdog, and the former managing director and publisher of PNG’s Post-Courier, said “the Facebook ban on Australian news pages will have a significant impact on Pacific users, especially many regional news providers”.

Sharing breaking news
“As someone who regularly checks literally dozens of Facebook pages, especially in PNG and Timor-Leste, many use the Australian pages for sharing breaking news and a source of ideas and angles for their own news reporting.”

Articles reposted from Australian news sources are often used in the Pacific to rebut misinformation being spread on Facebook, Dr Watson and Howarth said.

“One very popular page in PNG seems to attract more than its fair share of long-longs [an ill-informed person in pidgin] opposing vaccination as the covid pandemic quietly spreads daily,” Howarth said.

The founder of The Pacific Newsroom, Sue Ahearn, told The Guardian the internet had revolutionised communications across the Pacific – historically a region where communication had been difficult – and enabled the instantaneous sharing of news and information that had previously taken weeks or months.

“Facebook and social media are not the be all and end all but they are vital as sources of information. Radio and TV and newspapers remain important, but technology has really woken up the Pacific.

“People are able to share material right around the region and Facebook is the key platform for that.”

Ahearn said the dissemination of accurate and impartial news was vital to countering misinformation across the region.

Misinformation in PNG
“For instance, there is so much misinformation in PNG on covid – people say ‘I don’t believe Melanesians can catch covid’ or ‘I don’t believe what the government says about vaccines’. It’s really important that that misinformation can be countered, and articles from Australian sources are valuable for that.”

Ahearn said the Pacific Newsroom Facebook page had been “overwhelmed” with responses to the Facebook Australian news ban.

“From people all around the world: Fijians in South Sudan, Tongans in Utah, Pacific Islanders are everywhere, and they are telling us they are not seeing anything out of Australia.”

Australia’s Minister for International Development and the Pacific, Zed Seselja, has labelled Facebook’s actions “disappointing”, and argued the tech giant was “impeding public access to high-quality journalism in Australia and across the Pacific”.

“In many Pacific countries Facebook is the primary avenue to access legitimate Australian news content, and for many Pacific Islanders, Australian news is a key source of reliable, fact-checked, balanced information,” he said.

William Easton, the managing director of Facebook Australia and New Zealand, said Australia’s proposed media bargaining law had misunderstood the nature of the relationship between the platform and news publishers, and had forced the tech company into restricting news in Australia.

He said the company had chosen to block news “with a heavy heart”.

“Unfortunately, this means people and news organisations in Australia are now restricted from posting news links and sharing or viewing Australian and international news content on Facebook. Globally, posting and sharing news links from Australian publishers is also restricted.”

Sheldon Chanel is a Suva-based journalist reporting for The Guardian’s Pacific Project supported by the Judith Nielson Institute. This article was first published by The Guardian here and it has been republished with the author and The Guardian’s permission.

It has indeed been a few strange days for Australian news media. Apparently, monopolies are bad if they are not NewsCorp.

This week, Facebook came through on its threat to ban all news from its service, in retaliation against the Australian Federal government’s proposed new media code, that could see the tech giant paying news producers for content they willingly share on the Facebook platform.

Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp rather predictably ran a story accusing Facebooks’ messenger platform of aiding and abetting paedophiles. A remarkable display of mutual chestbeating.

• READ MORE: Why Google is now funnelling millions into media outlets, as Facebook pulls news for Australia
• Facebook under fire over move to ‘bully democracy’ in Australia
• Google’s and Facebook’s loud appeal to users over the news media bargaining code shows a lack of political power
• Facebook has pulled the trigger on news content — and possibly shot itself in the foot
• Facebook back at negotiating table with Australia
• Facebook move reinforces need for a News Media Bargaining Code
• JERAA demands Facebook stop blocking Australians from receiving news

But it is news media diversity and independent journalism routinely pillaged by Murdoch that will be the real victims of ScoMo trying to extort one billionaire at the behest of another.

Queensland’s independent press, for example, is just beginning to lift its head after Rupert ruthlessly destroyed a whole swathe of rural and regional newspapers of record. I wonder how this posturing between two billionaires will affect those independent newspapers that are slowly beginning to show promise in that desolate landscape.

Sure, there needs to be funding for good journalism, and the tech-giants should pitch in, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, of a rather long “to do list” to ensure a robust and independent news media that includes ensuring media diversity and the public’s access to fact-verified public interest journalism irrespective of petty party politics.

In this respect it’s hard to see this whole fiasco as anything but a half-baked idea built on a NewsCorp orchestrated lie.

Holding readers hostage
News organisations could have easily blocked Google searches listing their content. They could also have stopped putting their content on Facebook pages, explored micro-payments or some such innovative solution, instead of holding readers hostage with archaic subscription models.

Is Australian journalism suffering because of Google and Facebook? What of the media monopolies that have systematically destroyed diversity and independence of the press through concentration of ownership unparalleled in the Western world?

What of the three-decade long devaluing of journalism, and training an entire generation to get free news on vanity websites while simultaneously selling the same content in printed papers, only to then retreat behind paywalls?

What about forcing journalists to pimp their stories by linking KPIs to journalists’ capacity to secure subscriptions and assessing the value of stories on the basis of clicks?

What of the ruthless stripping of journalists’ rights that has created a precariat work force?

And what of the armies of media pundits who jumped on the citizen journalism bandwagon and vigorously claimed we didn’t need professional journalists because we were now all citizen journalists?

What of the media educators who have conflated journalism with media, normalised native advertising and created a grey slurry of content where fact and fiction is indistinguishable and ethics non-existent?

Championed social media
And then there are the media theorists who have championed social media as a great equaliser.

A “town square” where ideas flow freely, or as Mark Zuckerberg calls it a “digital living room” instead of seeing it for what it really is – a privately owned advertising platform hell bent on creating a global monopoly.

Let’s say we manage to force Facebook to pay for content. I wonder exactly how the dollars Zuckerberg doles out to Newscorp will flow onto the journalists and the gutted newsrooms who everyone is suddenly concerned for.

Shouldn’t the money be directly invested in public interest journalism instead of becoming just another version of that wonderfully Liberal idea of trickle-down economics filtered through Rupert’s pockets.

Dr Kasun Ubayasiri is a senior lecturer and journalism programme director at Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. An earlier version of this piece was originally a Facebook posting and this been revised and contributed to Asia Pacific Report as a column.

Facebook this week made good on its threat to block Australians from accessing or posting news content. The ban includes blocking links to Australian and overseas news publishers.

Facebook said the ban was a direct response to the federal government’s news media code legislation, which is expected to become law soon and would require digital platforms such as Facebook and Google to pay news media companies whose content they host.

The move is either a last-ditch attempt to gain concessions in the legislation, or a simple cut-and-run by Facebook.

• READ MORE: Why Google is now funnelling millions into media outlets, as Facebook pulls news for Australia
• Google’s and Facebook’s loud appeal to users over the news media bargaining code shows a lack of political power
• Facebook back at negotiating table with Australia
• Facebook move reinforces need for a News Media Bargaining Code
• JERAA demands Facebook stop blocking Australians from receiving news

The social media giant claims news publishers derive more value from news sharing than Facebook does. This is plausible, as news content makes up only 4 percent of sharing on the platform, whereas many news sites gain a large fraction of their traffic from Facebook referrals.

But this is probably more about flexing some muscle. Facebook may be demonstrating to the Federal government that if it does not like the rules, it can damage national interests.

Collateral damage
Australians will feel some short-term negative impacts of Facebook’s flex.

Certain government Facebook pages, such as those belonging to the Bureau of Meterology and some health department sites, have been caught up in the ban. Facebook says this is due to the wording of the legislation, stating:

As the law does not provide clear guidance on the definition of news content, we have taken a broad definition in order to respect the law as drafted.

While Facebook says it will restore non-news pages, the action will put pressure on the government to define more clearly what it means by news content.

In the meantime, the move will affect Australians’ access to vital information related to emergencies and the covid pandemic. Without a concerted effort to ensure online behaviour change from users, this could be dangerous.

Misinformation risk
We can also expect to see a short-term proliferation of misinformation as Facebook’s news feed will have a vacuum of professionally sourced and fact-checked news.

A significant number of Australians discuss news on Facebook, both via their newsfeed and in groups. Being able to source factual information from news sites is part of the everyday political and social participation that social media platforms facilitate.

The democratic impact of Facebook’s ban will be felt – and is counter to Facebook’s stated principle of connecting people and its recent pledge to tackle misinformation.

Will it hurt Facebook?
The impact of this action against the legislation on Facebook itself is yet to be seen.

The reputational damage from blocking important sites that serve Australia’s public interest overnight – and yet taking years to get on top of user privacy breaches and misinformation – undermines the legitimacy of the platform and its claimed civic intentions.

Facebook’s actions may send a message to the government, but they will also send one to their Australian users.

Readers are likely to find other ways to get their news. If we learn from the experience of Google’s news ban in Spain, we can see that after an initial dip in traffic, most major news organisations in Spain regained much of their web traffic after about a year.

Surfing social waves
Tools such as Facebook are only useful if people want to use them. And for some existing users, the lack of news might be a dealbreaker.

Facebook already faces a long-term problem of an ageing user demographic, as under-25s turn to Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok for news and information.

Young people may have Facebook profiles, but they are less likely to be active users.

News organisations are already following their lead. For example, The Conversation Australia has 325,735 Facebook followers and will probably feel the impact of the loss of engagement there.

But it also has more than 21,000 Instagram followers and counting. It is increasingly making visual news “tiles” to cater for the younger demographic of users who source news from other platforms. It has also been working to reach readers directly via regular email newsletters, which one in five US readers now say is their primary way of accessing news.

News organisations have already learned how to pivot fast. When Facebook changed its algorithms in 2018 to deprioritise news publishers, many took action to reduce their reliance on Facebook’s traffic, analytics or digital advertising dollars.

What now?
Larger news organisations will be OK in the long run. But Australia’s smaller outlets, including local publishers and non-profits that produce public interest journalism, will need protection.

The long-term task for news organisations and journalists is to convince the public – especially young people – that it’s worthwhile to actively seek out professional news and journalism as part of their daily online lives, rather than simply reading whatever comes across their feed.

As for Facebook, going back to its original purpose of facilitating personal connection and social networking, rather than posing as a forum for public information, may not be a bad thing. But the reputational damage and publisher exodus will eventually damage its core business: digital advertising revenue.

Dr Diana Bossio is a lecturer in Media and Communications, Swinburne University of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned a proposed cyber-security law in Myanmar that would organise online censorship and force social media platforms to share private information about their users when requested by the authorities.

This would violate the confidentiality of journalists’ data and sources, and the public’s right to reliable information, says the Paris-based media freedom watchdog RSF.

Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

Nine Entertainment and News Corporation are wrong to say Google and Facebook have destroyed their business models by stealing content, according to news publisher Eric Beecher, reports The New Daily.

Giving evidence before the Australian Senate hearing on the government’s proposed media bargaining code on Monday, Beecher said representatives from Nine, News Corp and The Guardian had wrongly accused Facebook and Google during previous hearings of “stealing both their content and their advertising revenue”.

Beecher, the chairman of Solstice Media and owner of Private Media, publisher of the independent Crikey!, said the multibillion-dollar organisations clearly gained more than they lost from sharing their journalism on Facebook and Google, writes Euan Black in his New Daily report.

• READ MORE: The Conversation’s submission to the Australian Senate media code inquiry
• Nine’s statement to the media bargaining code inquiry
• The proposed Australian media bargaining code

“Those media companies actively provide snippets or their full journalism to the platforms for one blindingly obvious reason: They gain huge benefit from the exposure – and clicks – their content attracts on Google and Facebook,” he told the senate committee.

“If they didn’t, they wouldn’t allow it to be ‘stolen’.”

Beecher, who also chairs Motion Publishing, publisher of The New Daily, disputed claims that the internet giants had siphoned off advertising revenue from the news organisations.

He said that before Google and Facebook most of this revenue came from newspaper classifieds that have since moved online.

Money ‘ended up in pockets’
Beecher said this money had “ended up in the pockets” of realestate.com.au (owned by News Corp), Domain (owned by Nine) and other classified advertising websites like Seek and Carsales.

“As has been meticulously researched, the vast bulk of Google and Facebook’s advertising revenue has not come from news publishers,” he told the hearing.

In an earlier submission to the senate inquiry, Facebook said it had generated 4.7 billion referrals to Australian media publishers and shared A$5.4 million in revenue with them between January and November.

It also claimed “the commercial value we derive from news content in Australia is virtually zero”, while Google has threatened to remove its search engine from Australia if the current version of the code is passed into law.

Despite disagreeing with key arguments used to defend the media bargaining code, Beecher said the internet giants were “almost certainly too powerful” and should be legally required to “pay full Australian tax on all their Australian profits that stem from all their Australian revenue”.

“I’m not here to defend Google and Facebook,” he said.

‘Their behaviour is scary’
“Their market dominance and the information they collect about their users’ online behaviour is scary.”

Beecher said the huge market share and tax minimisation strategies of the internet giants provided enough justification to ask them to pay a “social licence” fee to support public interest journalism.

“For those reasons — not because of spurious arguments about stealing content and advertising revenue — I believe they should pay what is, in effect, a social licence to support the public interest journalism that has been severely affected by the invention of the commercial internet, which Google and Facebook dominate,” he said.

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who is the Greens’ media spokesperson and sits on the committee tasked with interrogating the proposed new laws, also called for the code to explicitly support public interest journalism.

She said in a statement that the Greens would seek amendments to the bill that:

• “Require news organisations to spend the revenue from the Code on resourcing public interest journalism, and
• “Require the 12-month review of the Code to report on the impact that the Code is having on small, independent and start up publications.”