“RNZ is failing in its duty to inform the public of an entirely preventable humanitarian catastrophe.”

Tautoko to Jeremy Rose, Ramon Das and Eugene Doyle for this critique of a review of RNZ’s coverage of a genocide.

Sadly, this highlights RNZ’s failure to report the genocide from the perspective of the very real victims — more journalists killed in Gaza than the whole of World War Two, aid workers murdered and buried, 17,000 children, including babies, who will never ever grow.

• READ MORE: How should the media cover a genocide? New Zealand’s national broadcaster is failing in its duty – Analysis
• Israeli attack on hospital to kill Gaza journalist condemned as ‘heinous’
• Other Gaza media freedom reports

I respect so many RNZ journalists and have always supported this important national broadcaster but it is time for it to pull up its pants, ditch the propaganda and report from the field of truth.

I carry my Jewish ancestors in standing against genocide and calling for reports that show the truth of the travesty.

For reporting on protests I have been pepper sprayed by thugged-up police donning US-style gloves and glasses (illegally carrying pepper spray and tasers).

I was banned from my own town hall when I tried — with my E Tū press card — to attend the deputy leader Winston Peters’ media conference.

This government does not want the truth reported, it seems.

I have reported from the fields of invasion and conflict. I’ve taught journalism and communications. Good journalists remember journalism ethics. Reports from the point of view of the oppressor support the oppressor.

Humanitarianism means not reporting from the perspective of a mercenary army — an army that has been enforcing apartheid for decades, and which is invoking a policy of extermination for expansion.

Please read this media review and think of how you would feel if someone demanded that you leave your home. Palestinians have faced oppression and apartheid and “unhoming” for decades.

Think of the intolerable weight of grief you would carry if a sniper put a bullet between the eyes of a child you love and know.

Report on the victims. And stop subscribing to propaganda.

Saige England is a journalist and author, and a member of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). She is a frequent contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This was first published as a social media post.

About 25 pro-Palestinian protesters picketed the Auckland headquarters of Radio New Zealand today in the second of two demonstrations claiming that media is providing biased coverage of Israeli’s war on Gaza that is now in its fifth month.

Last week protesters directed their criticism at Television New Zealand which never reported the picket.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) secretary Neil Scott called on RNZ and other media to “tell the full truth” about the Israeli genocide in Gaza that has so far killed 30,800 people, mostly women and children.

• READ MORE: NZ news media under fire for ‘bias, propaganda’ in Gaza coverage
• US push­es ‘un­re­al­is­tic’ port plan for aid de­liv­ery as Gaza death toll ris­es
• Israeli army detains female journalist, activist in West Bank raids

At least 20 people — mostly babies and children — have been reported by Palestinian health authorities as having starved to death in the past week.

Scott said news media were providing “one-sided propaganda” in their reportage.

The protest came amid mounting criticism around the world over Western media coverage of the war and growing reports by media monitoring and research agencies of bias.

Protesters also picketed several media offices in Australian cities today, condemning coverage by the public broadcaster ABC.

‘Selective’ news
In a street placard headlined “Silence is complicity”, the protesters said that New Zealand media “selectively chooses” what was reported and broadcast BBC news feeds that were ‘inaccurate and misleading”.

“The media sculpts information to create public perceptions rather than informing people of the facts,” Scott said.

He said that news media refused to tell New Zealanders about Palestinian rights such as the “right of the occupied to fight occupation”, and that the occupier — Israel — was obligated to provide for the needs of the people under occupation, such as food, water and health.

Scott also said Palestinians had the right not to be arrested and held without charge, trial or conviction — and a large number of Palestinian detainees were being held under “administrative detention”, effectively Israeli hostages.

Israel is holding more than 8200 Palestinian prisoners, more than 3000 of them without charge.

Scott said that there had been more than 20 weeks of rallies and vigils against the war in New Zealand, “averaging 25 rallies and events per week”, but they had been barely covered by media.

In Sydney, high profile Australian-Lebanese broadcaster Antoinette Lattouf, who has publicly challenged the ABC over its coverage and was ousted for perceived sympathy for the Palestinian plight, said she was “incredibly humbled and moved” by the demonstrations in front of ABC studios.

She has taken legal action against the ABC and the Federal Court on Thursday ordered mediation between her and the ABC management.

Incredibly humbled and moved to see many demonstrations of support today. Outside of FWC in Sydney but also in front of ABC studios across various cities and regions in Australia.
This legal process has been incredibly hard, and the support means more than I can express pic.twitter.com/lOcXz3kmf1

— Antoinette Lattouf (@antoinette_news) March 8, 2024

Conflict and insufficient social cohesion are the biggest challenges in Fiji, and all and any efforts to mitigate and address this situation are laudable.

The research literature posits that while news media can exacerbate social and political conflicts through their reporting styles and focus, they also have the potential to alleviate tense situations by adopting conducive, conflict resolution methodologies.

The Conflict-Sensitive Reporting Manual for Fijian Journalists includes guidelines to approach and report conflicts in a responsible manner by, among other things, conducting the requisite research, and avoiding unnecessarily inflammatory tones.

• READ MORE: Other conflict-sensitive reporting articles

Dialogue Fiji is the most active civil society in the “social cohesion” space and besides this manual, it published the proceedings of its first symposium on social cohesion in 2017 entitled Ethnic Relations in Fiji: Threats and Opportunities.

The book, which I co-edited with Dialogue Fiji executive director Nilesh Lal, not only highlighted the challenges of social cohesion in Fiji, but also the reservoir of goodwill in our communities, despite everything that we have been through together.

More than 50 years after independence we are still struggling with social cohesion, not the least because it is a complex problem given our context, with no overnight solutions.

The problem requires commitment from every sector of our nation, the news media being no exception.

National media’s contribution
In this regard, conflict-sensitive reporting can be seen as the national media’s contribution to social cohesion and nation-building.

To understand how conflict-sensitive reporting can contribute positively, we first need to look at the media-conflict dynamic, that is, how media conventionally report conflicts.

According to critics, most violent conflicts are “rooted in resource or land disputes, but fought with strong references to ethnic, cultural, and religious identities”.

The news media tend to focus on the manifestations of conflict, such as the tensions, violence, and damage, rather than the root causes, or possible solutions to any disputes. This lopsided approach risks feeding prejudices and fueling misconceptions.

Conflict-sensitive reporting, on the other hand, takes a nuanced approach to the coverage of conflicts, in that it does not regard conflict as run-of-the mill, daily news reporting round, but something that needs extra care and attention.

Conflict-sensitive reporting is an informed and considered approach, based on a commitment to understanding the roots of a conflict and reporting in an in-depth and circumspect manner.

The idea is to not only “do no harm” but report stories with the aim of facilitating solutions to conflict.

Fair and balanced?
It should be pointed that conflict-sensitive reporting is an idea that is not fully accepted in the news media fraternity, which has traditionally espoused reporting the “facts” in a fair and balanced manner. But what is “fair”, “balanced” and “objective” is in itself heavily debated in the news media sector.

As a university journalism programme, we at the University of the South Pacific are open to researching and experimenting with new and innovative concepts like conflict-sensitive reporting.

The framework has been designed for developing countries with multiethnic communities at greater risk of conflict, than societies with greater ethnic homogeneity.

Such countries are highly susceptible to movement towards civil conflict and/or repressive rule. If this sounds familiar, it is because “civil conflict and repressive rule” have been very much part of our existence in Fiji.

Fiji, mired in ethnic tensions and political differences culminating in four coups fits the description of “fragile” or “vulnerable” societies”.

Media have described Fiji’s coups as “short-lived”, “clean-up-campaign” or “coup-to-end all coups.”

This terminology is regrettable because it grossly underestimates the lingering, sustained, pervasive and long-term damage of our coup culture.

Infrastructure deficit
For example, research published by professors Biman Prasad and Paresh Narayan in 2008 indicates a 20-year infrastructure deficit of $3.4 billion partly due to instability.

Likewise, Professor Wadan Narsey in his 2013 article estimates that by 2011, Fiji had lost $1700 million because of the 2006 coup alone.

This included $400 million in government revenue, which could have been used in education, health, infrastructure and public debt repayments.

Because of just a few deaths due to the four coups in Fiji, media often describe these upheavals as “bloodless coups”.

However, in social and economic terms, the coups caused a bloodbath.

The expression “death by a thousand cuts” comes to mind. We do not feel the pain immediately because after the initial shock, there are smaller aftershocks that we feel and absorb over the course of years and decades.

In time, these repeated blows add up to inflict deeper wounds that are more difficult to heal, but we adjust to the pain, normalise it, and learn to live with our situation, especially the poor and disadvantaged, who face the brunt of it.

Low life expectancy
In Fiji these wounds are manifest in the lack of services, dilapidated infrastructure, low life expectancy, lack of opportunities, low employment and high crime, brain drain, and so forth.

Fiji gives meaning to renowned author Paul Collier’s words: “Wars and coups are not tea parties: they are development in reverse”.

Some of the key underlying causes of our lack of progress are the lack of social cohesion and national unity, which equal unrealised potential.

Since the 1980s there has been idle talk of turning Fiji into a Singapore, and more recently, political chatter about Fiji surpassing Australia and New Zealand

In my opinion, this is a pipe dream unless and until we get social cohesion right, learn to resolve our differences without guns, and move together as a united force.

This requires leadership and vision from the government, support and selflessness from citizens and professionalism and responsibility from the news media, with regards to taking it on themselves to understand the national context, and tailor their coverage accordingly 

This is an edited version of Associate Professor Shailendra Bahadur Singh’s launch address for Dialogue Fiji’s Conflict Sensitive Reporting Manual for Fijian Journalists on 8 August 2023 at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji. It was also first published in The Fiji Times.

A new media monitoring watchdog, Muslim Media Watch, published its first edition today featuring a cover story alleging that a Malaysian cult leader who was reportedly now in New Zealand could “create social unrest”.

Named as Suhaini bin Mohammad, he was allegedly posing as a Muslim religious leader and was said to be wanted by the authorities in Malaysia for “false teachings” that contradict Islam.

His cult ideology was identified by MMW as SiHulk, which was banned by the Johor State Religious Department (JAINJ) in 2021.

• READ MORE: Media, the courts, and terrorism: Lessons from the Christchurch mosque attacks – Gavin Ellis, Pacific Journalism Review
• Islam in the media: By the numbers

In an editorial, the 16-page publlcation said a need for “such a news outlet” as MMW had been shown after the mass shootings at two Christchurch mosques on 15 March 2019 and the Royal Commission inquiry that followed.

Fifty one people killed in the twin attacks were all Muslims attending the Islamic Friday prayer — “they were targeted solely because they were Muslims”.

The editorial noted “the shooter was motivated largely by online material. His last words before carrying out the shootings were: ‘Remember lads, subscribe to PewDiePie.'”

“It is therefore disappointing that, while acknowledging the role of the media in the shootings, none of the 44 recommendations in the government’s response to the [Royal Commission] relate to holding media to account for irresponsible reporting, or even mention media; the word does not appear in any recommendation,” writes editor Adam Brown.

Often not neutral
“Indeed, the word Muslim appears only once, in ‘Muslim Community Reference Group’.
It has long been acknowledged that media reporting of Muslims and Islam is often not neutral.”

The editorial cited an Australian example, a survey by OnePath Network Australia which tallied the number, percentage and tone of articles about Islam in Australian media in 2017, in particular newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp: The Daily Telegraph, The Australian, The Herald Sun, The Courier Mail and The Advertiser.

“Over the year, the report found that 2891 negative articles ran in those five newspapers, where Islam and Muslims were mentioned alongside words like violence, extremism, terrorism and radical. This equates to over eight articles per day for the whole year; 152 of those articles ran on the front page,” said the MMW editorial.

“The percentage of their opinion pieces that were Islamophobic ranged from 19 percent
to 64 percent.

“The average was 31 percent, nearly a third, with one writer reaching almost two thirds. Also, as OnePath comment, ‘Even though they are stated to be “opinion” pieces, they are often written as fact.'”

Editor Brown said the situation in New Zealand had not improved since the shootings.

“Biased and unfair reporting on Muslim matters continues, and retractions are not always forthcoming,” he wrote.

Examples highlighted
The editorial said that the purpose of MMW was to highlight examples of media reporting — in New Zealand and overseas — that contained information about Islam that was not
accurate, or that was not neutrally reported.

It would also model ethical journalism and responsible reporting following Islamic practices and tradition.

MMW offered to conduct training sessions and to act as a resource for other media outlets.

On other pages, MMW reported about misrepresentation of Islam “being nothing new”, a challenge over a Listener article misrepresentation about girls’ education in Afghanistan, an emerging global culture of mass Iftar events, an offensive reference in a Ministry of Education textbook, and the ministry “acknowledges bias in teacher recruiting”, an article headlined “when are religious extremists not religious extremists”, and other issues.

Recently, there was a serious revelation that some wire service reports were edited, without attribution, by an individual employee of our national broadcaster, RNZ.

Now, let’s examine the way I composed the above sentence.

I included the word “serious” to signal to readers that this news is of significant importance. The reason is that I believe there is already extensive frustration at media coverage of news — and therefore anything that erodes trust in our major media should be taken seriously.

• READ MORE: Mediawatch: Further fallout as RNZ takes out the ‘Kremlin garbage’
• Other RNZ inquiry reports
• Other Palestine reports

Later in the sentence, I used the word “edited”. Initially, I had used the word “altered” but I made a conscious decision to change it to “edited”. I did this because I thought the word “altered” might suggest a higher type of wrongdoing — one that could be linked to fraud and criminality, such as being paid by a foreign agent to alter documents.

There is no evidence that this was the case at RNZ. The word “edited” suggests the use of some sort of journalistic judgment which, in this particular case, regardless of the factuality or falsehood of the edits, were clearly unethical because they were unauthorised and undeclared.

The reference to “an individual employee” was to ensure that other journalists at RNZ, and the organisation as a whole, were not implicated in the revelation. If I had thought RNZ was systematically biased in its reporting, I probably would have just written that RNZ had been found to be altering wire service news.

So my choice of words to form the first sentence of this column was informed by my personal perspectives, as well as the impression I hoped to create in the minds of those reading it.

The subject of this column isn’t about what happened at RNZ. We will be informed of this, in time, when the result of the ongoing inquiry is made public.

Unbiased reporting?
The question I intend to explore here is if there is such a thing as unbiased reporting.

I went back to university later in life to study journalism because it was important to me to understand how the news was produced. My course placed a lot of emphasis on the importance of objectivity and impartiality as ideal standards of news reporting, without much discussion about the limits of achieving such unrealistic standards.

News is produced by reporters and shaped by editors who cannot help but inject their own perspectives and personal experiences into the final product. Even when reporting live from the scene, journalists often have to form a judgment as to what is newsworthy, and so depending on who is reporting the story, the information we receive may alter.

In general, the idea of “unbiased”, “objective” or “neutral” reporting cannot be entirely divorced from the editorial guides journalists use to determine what information to report, and also what they believe is the truth.

Omitting context or the decision to exclude some key words can, in some instances, produce a misleading report.

For instance, my interest in the Palestinian cause has meant that I notice the journalistic language used in reporting on Palestine. I consider that Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) should always be referred to as “occupied Gaza” and “occupied West Bank” because this is their legal status under international law.

But in many articles about Palestine, the word “occupied” is often dropped even though its use matters because it gives relevant context to reporting of political and military events there.

#Mediawatch: Further #fallout as #RNZ takes out the ‘Kremlin garbage’ #CafePacific #AsiaPacificReport #rnznews #PacificMediaWatch #rnzinquiry #kremlingarbage #RussiaUkraineWar #media #mediacredibility #newsedits @USPWansolwara https://t.co/waIGzEUdwE pic.twitter.com/wfzDEFZjdi

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) June 18, 2023

Impartial presentation
Some journalistic codes refer to “balanced” and “fair” reporting. The idea here is that, where there is controversy, there should be an impartial presentation of all facts as well as all substantial opinions relating to it.

A fair report, it is said, should avoid giving equal footing to truths and mistruths and should provide factual context to any inaccurate or misleading public statement.

In recent years, The New York Times has used a series of articles known as Explainers to, as they describe it, “demystify thorny topics”.

Stuff’s Explained follows a similar format to help deconstruct topics that are complex and challenging to understand.

The notion of bias in news writing has become the most common criticism of the media.

Ultimately, the solution to increasing trust in journalism lies in transparency and disclosure of the standards, judgments and systems used to produce and edit news. It is therefore right that RNZ has announced an external review of its processes for the editing of online stories.

But there should also be a mind shift in our understanding of the notions of unbiased and objective reporting — namely that these notions have always existed and continue to operate within power dynamics that give privilege to certain perspectives.

The best approach, therefore, is to always allow for an element of doubt — and only believe something to be true just so long as our active efforts to disprove it have been unsuccessful.

Donna Miles-Mojab is an Iranian New Zealander interested in justice and human rights issues. She lives in Christchurch and works as a freelance journalist and a columnist for The Press. This article is republished with the author’s permission.

Own goals by two of our top news organisations last week raised a fundamental question: What has happened to their checking processes?

Both Radio New Zealand and NZME acknowledged serious failures in their internal processes that resulted in embarrassing apologies, corrections, and take-downs.

The episodes in both newsrooms suggest the “second pair of eyes” that traditionally acted as a final check before publication no longer exists or is so over-worked in a resource-starved environment that they are looking elsewhere.

The RNZ situation is the more serious of the two episodes. It relates to the insertion of pro-Russian content into news agency stories about the invasion of Ukraine that were carried on the RNZ website.

The original stories were sourced from Reuters and, in at least one case, from the BBC. By today 22 altered stories had been found, but the audit had only scratched the surface. The alleged perpetrator has disclosed they had been carrying out such edits for the past five years.

RNZ was alerted to the latest altered story by news watchers in New York and Paris on Friday. It investigated and found a further six, then a further seven, then another, and another. This only takes us back a short way.

A number of the stories were altered only by the inclusion of a few loaded terms such as “neo-Nazi” and “US-backed coup”, but others had material changes. Some are spelt out in the now-corrected stories on the site. Here are two examples of significant insertions into the original text:

An earlier edit to this story said: “Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February last year, claiming that a US-backed coup in 2014 with the help of neo-Nazis had created a threat to its borders and had ignited a civil war that saw Russian-speaking minorities persecuted.”

An earlier edit to this story said: “The Azov Battalion was widely regarded as an anti-Russian neo-Nazi military unit by observers and western media before the Russian invasion. Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the nationalists of using Russian-speaking Ukrainians as human shields.”

Hot water with Reuters
The scale and nature of the inappropriate editing of the stories is likely to get RNZ into very hot water with Reuters. The agency has strict protocols over what forms of editing may take place with its copy and even the most cursory examination of the altered RNZ versions confirms that the protocols have been breached.

It is unsurprising that RNZ’s chief executive Paul Thompson has told staff he is “gutted” by what has occurred.

Both security analyst Dr Paul Buchanan and AUT journalism professor Dr Verica Ruper have cautioned against speculating on how the material came to be appear on the RNZ website and I agree that to do so is premature. Clearly, however, it amounts to much more than a careless editing mistake.

Paul Thompson has acted promptly in ordering an external independent enquiry into the matter and in standing down the individual who apparently handled the stories. It is likely that the government’s security services are also taking an interest in what has occurred.

What we can speculate on is the possibility that RNZ’s internal processes are deficient to the point that there is no post-production vetting of some stories before publication — that “second pair of eyes”.

We might also speculate that the problem is faced by The New Zealand Herald newsroom, following the publication of an eight-line correction at the top of page 3 of the Herald on Sunday, and carried equally sparingly on the Herald website.

“A story published last Sunday about a woman who triumphed over a difficult background to become a lawyer had elements that were false. In publishing the article, we fell short of the high standards and procedures we hold ourselves to.”

Puzzled by correction
Many readers would have been puzzled by the correction, which gave no details of the story concerned, nor did it identify those elements that were false.

There may have been legal reasons for omitting which details were incorrect, but not for leaving readers to puzzle over the story to which they referred.

It appears to relate to a three-page story in the Review section of the previous Sunday’s edition that was headed “From mob terror to high flyer”. The story related to the daughter of a woman jailed for selling methamphetamine. The daughter had gone on to a legal career in the United States.

I recall having some undefined concern about the story when I read it and still can’t quite put my finger on why the old alarm bell in the back of my head tinkled. Perhaps it was that — apart from previously published material — the story appeared to rely on a single interview. There also appeared to be a motive in telling the story to the Herald on Sunday — a forthcoming book.

The article seems to have been removed from the Herald website, but the short correction suggests that checks were missed. The same seems to have been the case with RNZ.

It is, of course, sheer coincidence that both RNZ and the Herald on Sunday should face such shortcomings in the same week. However, the likely root causes of their embarrassment are issues that all news media face.

First, the pressure on newsroom resources has increased the workload of all staff, from reporters in the field to duty editors. Time pressures are a daily, and nightly, reality and multi-tasking has become the norm.

Checking comes second
In such an environment, checking the work of other well-trained staff may come second to more pressing demands.

As an editor, I slept better knowing that each story had passed through the hands of a news editor, sub-editor and, finally, a check sub with a compulsive attention to detail who checked each completed page before it was transmitted to the printing plant. I fear our newsrooms are now too bare for that multi-layered system of checks.

If the demands of newspaper deadlines are tough, the pressures are manifestly greater in a digital environment where websites have become voracious beasts that cry out to be fed from dawn to midnight. New stories are added throughout the protracted news cycle, pushing older stories down the home page, then off it to subsidiary pages on the site tree.

The technology to satisfy the hunger has advanced to the point where reporters publish direct to the web using Twitter-like feeds. We saw it last week during the Auckland City budget debate when news websites were recording the jerk dancing minute by minute.

Clay Shirky, in his influential 2008 book Here Comes Everybody, popularised the term “publish, then filter”. It referred to a change from sifting the good from the mediocre before publication, to a digital environment in which users determined worth once it had been published.

However, increasingly, the phrase has taken on additional meaning. The burden of work created by digital appetites has seen mainstream media foreshortening the production process by removing some of the old checks and balances because they can always go back later and make changes on the website.

The abridgement may, for example, mean a pre-publication check is limited to headline, graphic, and the first couple of paragraphs. Or, in the case of “pre-edited” agency or syndication content, it may mean foregoing post-production text checks altogether (I hasten to add that I do not know whether this was the case with the RNZ stories).

Editorial based on trust
Editorial production has always been based on trust. It works both down and up. Editors trust those they rely on to carry out processes from content creation to post-production, and those responsible for one phase trust their work will subsequently be handled with care.

Individual shortcomings should not erode trust in the newsroom, but such episodes do point to a need to re-examine whether systems are fit for purpose.

Over a decade ago, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel wrote a book called Blur. It was about information overload. In it they state that, as journalism becomes more complicated, the role of the editor becomes more important, and verification is a bigger part of the editor’s role.

Incidents such as those that came to light last week reinforce that view. They also suggest that mainstream media organisations should leave Clay Shirky’s mantra to social media and bloggers. Instead, they should (thoroughly) filter, then publish.

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 the website knightlyviews.com where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

A Ukrainian man who complained about an RNZ story last year having Russian propaganda says his concerns are only now being noticed.

It comes after the revelation a staff member altered Reuters copy to include pro-Russian sentiment.

Since Friday, 250 articles published on RNZ back to January last year have been audited.

Of those articles, 15 are now known to have been altered, and an RNZ employee has been placed on leave. Fourteen of the articles were from the Reuters wire service, and one was from BBC.

An independent review of the editing of online stories has been commissioned by RNZ.

Michael Lidski, who wrote the complaint, signed by several Ukrainian and Russian-born New Zealanders said the article he complained about appeared not only on RNZ, but The New Zealand Herald and Newshub as well.

Lidski said it took some time after the article was published to send the complaint letter to RNZ to make sure everyone who signed it was happy with what it said.

It was received by RNZ on the evening of Labour Day, October 24.

Russian ‘behavior similar to Nazi Germany’
“Obviously Russia is the aggressor and behaving very similar to what the Nazi Germany did in the beginning of the Second World War,” Lidski said.

“Luckily”, he said, Russia was much less “efficient” and “successful on the front” but not so luckily, they were “very efficient” in their propaganda.

Lidski said he also sent the complaint to Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson and other media outlets – but Jackson was the only one to provide any response.

Lidski said Jackson’s response essentially said the government could not interfere with the press and refrained from “taking sides”.

As part of the audit, RNZ reviewed the story published on rnz.co.nz on May 26, 2022 relating to the war in Ukraine, which it said was updated later that day to give further balance after an editorial process was followed.

When Lidski sent his letter, he said he received no response from RNZ.

Awaiting external review
He said he would be waiting to see what comes of the external review.

“I just want to stress that we are not dealing with a situation where someone just made a mistake.

“We are in the war, the enemy is attacking us, it’s very important that, you know, we take it seriously.”

RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson declined to speak with Morning Report today, describing the breaches of editorial standards as extremely serious.

In a statement, Thompson said it was a “very challenging time for RNZ and the organisations focus is on getting to the bottom of what happened and being open and transparent”.

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

RNZ is investigating how online stories about the war in Ukraine, supplied by an international news agency, were edited to align with the Russian view of events.

A staff member has been stood down while other stories are audited. It has also prompted an external review of RNZ’s online news publishing.

The alarm was raised after a story was published by RNZ on Friday about the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict which contained significant amendments to the original copy by the international wire service Reuters.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MEDIAWATCH: Probe into RNZ’s Russian invasion of Ukraine edits
• RNZ investigation into editorial editing

The alarm was raised after a story was published by RNZ on Friday about the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict which contained significant amendments to the original copy by the international wire service Reuters.

The original story by its Moscow bureau chief Guy Faulconbridge said:

“The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatist forces fighting Ukraine’s armed forces.”

But when republished on RNZ.co.nz, that passage adopted a more “Kremlin-friendly” framing.

“The conflict in Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian elected government was toppled during Ukraine’s violent Maidan colour revolution. Russia annexed Crimea after a referendum, as the new pro-Western government suppressed ethnic Russians in eastern and southern Ukraine, sending in its armed forces to the Donbas.”

‘False account of events’
RNZ’s 4pm news bulletin on Friday said the version published by RNZ “included a false account of events” and RNZ was investigating how the story was “changed to reflect a pro-Russian view”.

RNZ corrected the story online, adding a footnote which said it was “taking the issue extremely seriously.”

Late on Friday, RNZ said an investigation was under way into “the alleged conduct of one employee” who had been “placed on leave while we look into these matters”.

“We are auditing other articles to check whether there are further problems,” the statement said.

RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson said the inappropriate editing of the stories to reflect a pro-Moscow perspective was deeply concerning and would be addressed accordingly.

Other stories in the spotlight
Another RNZ.co.nz story on the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam described the 2014 Maidan Revolution as a “coup” — pro-Russian language which did not appear in the original Reuters text.

These stories repeat false claims that Russia’s annexation of Crimea happened after a referendum on the move. The invasion was underway before the vote was held.

“Colour revolution” is sometimes used to describe protest movements backed by foreign powers with the intention of regime change.

Describing the 2014 revolution in those terms or as a “coup” aligns with the official Russian perspectives, but contradicts the Ukrainian view.

The assertion that ethnic Russian citizens were suppressed by the Ukrainian government has also been used by Russia to justify the invasion of Ukraine, but there is scant evidence for his claim. The BBC’s Kyiv correspondent called it “demonstrably false” in 2014.

An RNZ News footnote now says the story was “edited inappropriately and has been corrected” and “we are investigating.”

Other Reuters stories on rnz.co.nz with similar editorial alterations came to light on Friday. RNZ added footnotes explaining they had been “edited inappropriately and had been corrected.”

One about the first large-scale air strikes in nearly two months had said “Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine claiming that a US-backed coup in 2014 with the help of neo-Nazis had created a threat to its borders — and had ignited a civil war that saw Russian-speaking minorities persecuted.”

That example was from late-April — and it is surprising no-one noticed the inflammatory additions to it until Friday’s revelations prompted a look-back.

RNZ confirmed late on Friday night “the alleged conduct of one employee” was under investigation. Mediawatch understands this is a member of RNZ’s digital team.

The statement said the staffer had been “placed on leave while we look into these matters – and audit other articles to check for further problems”.

In a further statement in Saturday evening, RNZ said 15 inappropriately edited stories had been identified and corrected so far.

Chief executive Paul Thompson said an external review of RNZ’s online news publishing processes would now be carried out by experts “to ensure these are robust”. The results of the review would be made public, he said.

Outside sources
Reuters is aware of the issue but has not responded to a request for comment.

An online user in the US who noted “Russian propaganda . . . on the Reuters wire today under the byline of its Moscow bureau chief” said a Reuters representative told them language appearing on RNZ’s site “was not written by Reuters or Guy Faulconbridge.”

Reuters’ website terms and conditions warns: “You may not remove, alter, forward, scrape, frame, in-line link, copy, sell, distribute, retransmit, create derivative works . . . without our prior written consent.”

Mediawatch also asked RNZ if it was permitted to alter copy supplied by Reuters.

“There will be no comment until that investigation is completed and any appropriate action taken,” RNZ replied.

International news agencies such as Reuters supply news on a commercial basis to clients.

The terms of agreements with media organisations vary, but commonly allow media customers to edit text for length and to permit the addition of relevant details specific to the territory in question.

Significant changes not permitted
Passages of text can usually be included in or added to stories published by client media companies, but significant editorial changes are generally not permitted where the published story is attributed to the agency.

RNZ’s editorial policy contains a section on material from “external sources” but doesn’t specify news agency suppliers.

“Staff may not ‘lift’ material from other news organisations with which we have no supply contract without independently authenticating the information before use,” it says.

“We should be aware of the dangers involved, particularly if the material is controversial.”

RNZ’s editorial policies also say audiences “should not be able to detect a presenter or journalist’s personal views”

“Staff will have opinions of their own, but they must not yield to bias or prejudice. To be professional is not to be without opinions, but to be aware of those opinions and make allowances for them, so that reporting is judicious and fair.”

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

Former TVNZ Breakfast host Kamahl Santamaria, who quit following complaints about inappropriate workplace behaviour, has broken his silence and started a podcast he says would “set some records straight”.

The Emmy-nominated broadcaster lasted just 32 days at TVNZ after working at Al Jazeera, where he had also been accused of having sent a lewd email to a female colleague.

Speaking publicly for the first time in more than a year, Santamaria talked about the allegations, the effect they have had and how the reporting of them had led to his new website The Balance.

• READ MORE: Kamahl Santamaria – the official website
• Other Kamahl Santamaria reports

“It is very much informed and directed by my own experience over the past year, and yes I will be using it to set some records straight,” he told listeners in the first episode of his podcast, RE: Balance.

“Because in the end, I trust myself to tell my story.”

Santamaria said he had been a journalist for nearly 25 years, but for the last year had had to live with the label of being “a disgraced journalist”.

“That’s not a pleasant title to live with but that’s how it’s been ever since my departure from TVNZ in May of last year,” he said.

‘Full story yet to be told’
For legal reasons, Santamaria said he had not spoken about his departure from TVNZ — but he told listeners he would when he is able.

“The full story has definitely not been told, yet,” he said.

“The headline doesn’t always match the story, and countering that is a big part of what I’m embarking on with The Balance.

Santamaria said what happened had forced him to stop, look at himself and his behaviour in the past, and acknowledge there were times when he just got it wrong.

“I am deeply sorry for that and for the effect I have now learned that it had on others,” he said.

He said they also prompted him to look at the environments he was working in.

“What I failed to recognise was particularly in a post ‘Me Too’ world, there is just no place for over friendly, over-familiar, flirtatious, tactile behaviour or banter in the workplace no matter how friendly that workplace is or how prevalent that behaviour might be.

Mistakes impacted on health
“I’ve made mistakes but I hope my past doesn’t define who I am in the future.”

Santamaria said the effect on his mental health and that of his family has been “immense, dilapidating and long-lasting” and “it still goes on now”.

He revealed he had been in hiding for a year “growing a beard, always wearing a cap”, afraid to use his own name, and that he is on medication.

Santamaria referred to a report about his visit to the National Business Review, which he said was the “one time” we went out publicly and a journalist turned it into a story.

He said the journalist wrote about how uncomfortable he made people feel by just shaking their hands.

“The whole thing was utterly ridiculous to the point now where I don’t even shake people’s hands anymore.”

Santamaria disclosed that in the early stages, he had been on heavy medication during the day and sedation at night, and the family had him on a round-the-clock suicide watch.

He said he had been in no position, physically or mentally, to speak up for himself at the time.

“The fact that I am still here now is a testament to my family who kept me alive when I didn’t want to go on and they continue to do so,” he said.

First published by The New Zealand Herald and republished here with the author’s permission.

FijiFirst party general secretary Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum claims they are fighting The Fiji Times and Communications Fiji Ltd — not political parties — in the lead up to the 2022 general election.

He said this while taking a swipe at The Times during a news conference this week at the FijiFirst party headquarters in Suva.

Sayed-Khaiyum claimed the two media organisations were “always parroting” the People’s Alliance and the National Federation Party “without checking the facts”.

• READ MORE: Stop attacking the media, says Ali
• AG accuses CFL and Fiji Times of inaccurate reporting
• Other Fiji media freedom reports

“We are not fighting other political parties, we are fighting two mainstream media organisations — Fiji Times and CFL,” he said.

“The Fijian public know that. This is why we have our live Facebook when we have conferences, because we don’t expect these people to do any justification in terms of what we are saying.

“I urge you if you are serious about your profession and the organisation you work for, are independent, not just say ‘independent’.

“The saying goes [that] the proof is in the eating of the pudding.

“We have a seen a continuous propagation by Fiji Times and by CFL, simply parroting whatever the PAP and NFP says without checking the facts; we have a very sad state of affairs today.”

Sayed-Khaiyum cited as an example that when NFP reported the FijiFirst party to the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption about placing a banner on the Civic Car Park, The Fiji Times continued to publish commentary from NFP general secretary Seni Nabou.

“They have absolutely no idea of what due process means, they have absolutely no idea, neither Fiji Times nor does CFL have any idea what an independent process means.

“They throw these words around, bending these words around, yet not understanding what [they] mean.”

Fiji Times editor-in-chief Fred Wesley responded that The Fiji Times was being attacked — “as usual” — for doing its job.

“We strive for fair and balanced coverage of the news, especially now as political parties go into election mode,” he said.

“Understandably the pressure is on the government to respond to statements by opposition parties. We offer them a platform to clarify issues and to make statements.

We refer all opposition party criticism to the government for comment. The government rarely, if ever, replies.

“We are not here to make the government look good. We offer a platform for every party to voice their opinions. Some choose to use it and some do not.”

Arieta Vakasukawaqa is a Fiji Times reporter. Published with permission.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear Full many a floww’r is born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air

— Thomas Gray , “Elegy”, 1751

Jai Ram Reddy, former Fiji statesman, judge and international jurist, has died in Auckland aged 85.

In his passing, Fiji has lost one of its most distinguished sons of the 20th century.

We mourn his passing but, in truth, we mourn for ourselves, for he has left the silken bonds of this earth to find rest and respite in the company of Fiji’s immortals. He is now one for the ages.

• READ MORE:  Helen Reddy: A tribute to my father, Fiji’s visionary Jai Ram Reddy
• Other tributes to Jai Ram Reddy

This gifted man will continue to shine as a beacon for those who fight for fairness and justice and a higher purpose in life, and for a decent country to live in.

The words of Urdu Laureate Allama Iqbal are apposite: Bade Mushkil se Hote Hain Chaman men Deedawar paya.

Men of great clarity of vision are born rarely on this earth. Jai Ram Reddy exemplified the finest traits and traditions of his people.

He was born on May 12, 1937, the eldest child in a humble, hardworking family in the heart of Fiji’s cane country.

Transcended the limits
But he transcended the limits and limitations of his time and place and circumstance to reach the highest pinnacles of his profession in law and in international jurisprudence, with a distinguished record of public service in his native country.

Reddy graduated in law from Victoria University of Wellington in 1961. After several years at the law firm of the legendary lawyer AD Patel, he joined the Crown Law Office.

Declining the offer of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution from Chief Justice Sir John Nimmo while still in his early 30s, he joined the law firm of Stuart and Company where he remained for the rest of his legal career.

Law was his passion, he used to say, and what made all the difference was that he was so good at it.

He was the finest criminal barrister of his generation. After a short, ill-fated stint as Fiji’s Attorney-General and Minister of Justice in 1987, he accepted appointment as President of Fiji’s Court of Appeal, to the great delight of Sir Timoci Tuivaga, the Chief Justice, and Qoriniasi Bale, the Attorney-General, who counted Reddy as one of his two heroes in the law, the other being the judicial titan Justice Ghana Mishra.

Reddy’s judicial career reached its pinnacle as a Permanent Judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, ICTAR, in Arusha, Tanzania, where his judicial acumen and integrity won him accolades as a “consummate judge” respected for his “wisdom, fairness and sense of justice”.

‘A sheer privilege’
The president of ICTAR, Justice Eric Morse of Norway, wrote that it was “a sheer privilege to sit with judge Reddy on the bench”.

From law into politics which he entered in 1972 as a senator and the House of Representatives in April 1977. In Parliament he remained a commanding performer, never bested in debate, quick on his feet, withering in response, one of the best he had seen, said Dr Apenisa Kurusiqila, the Speaker.

“The Parliament will not be the same without you, Jai,” he said when Reddy left after his electoral defeat in 1999. His early years in politics were unproductive ones for him and for the people he represented, caught in the quagmire of communal wrangling, hobbled by division and disunity, and drifting.

But to his everlasting credit, he transcended that in the second phase of his career to become an honoured elder statesman, respected across the communities for his vision and essential, transparent fairness and “sincerity of purpose”.

The political reconciliation he achieved with his once arch political nemesis Sitiveni Rabuka in the teeth of rancorous opposition and deep skepticism on all sides, will remain one of the shining moments of 20th century Fijian history.

And Reddy’s evolution from a communal politician to a venerable statesman is a story for the pages of history books, too. Jai Ram Reddy was a “reluctant politician”, his critics charged. And they were right although for the wrong reason.

A vehicle for social service
Jai Ram was not in the thrall of politics, making small talk, trimming the truth, mixing easily with the crowds, glad handling. He readily acknowledged his essential shyness in public spaces. Politics for Jai Ram Reddy was a vehicle for social service, not a path to personal enrichment and accumulation.

Swami Rudananda’s influence on him was profound. Reserved and shy in public, Jai could be great fun in private. His laughter was infectious. He loved music and was a social singer in his early years.

We could talk endlessly about the Hindi movies of the 1950s, the songs and the actors he remembered. He was fond of horses and once owned one he impishly named Shabana Azmi, after the great Indian actress.

But all these private passions gave way as public duties increasingly came to consume his time. Jai Ram was an intellectual who believed in the power of ideas to change society and to enable sustainable social reform.

His enlarging vision saw a unity of purpose and common space for all the people of Fiji. “We are fellow human beings travelling in the same canoe,” he used to say.

“This country is big enough for all of us,” he said to a soldier who told him menacingly in Nadi in September 1987: “In this country, Mr Reddy, you take what we give you, no more.”

That Jai Ram refused to allow such taunts and provocations to derail or define him spoke volumes about the man. In one of the defining speeches of Fiji’s 20th century history, Jai Ram shared the deepest fears of his people with the Great Council of Chiefs in 1997: He spoke movingly of history and the making of history, of truth and destiny, words the chiefs collectively had heard for the first time from an Fijian of Indian descent leader.

“Indians of Fiji brought to these shores as labourers did not come to conquer or colonise.

“We, their descendants, do not seek to usurp your ancient rights and responsibilities. We never have. We have no wish, no desire, to separate ourselves from you.

“Fiji is our home. We have no other. We want no other.”

It was a majestic moment of truth and reconciliation, none better.

At his finest, eloquent
It was Jai Ram Reddy, the statesman, at his finest, eloquent and truthful in his thoughts. We all basked in the glory of his great achievement. But it was not to last long. He was gone soon afterwards. And we can only ponder what might have been had his vision succeeded.

“What might have been” must be among the saddest words in the English language. Jai Ram Reddy was a complex man. He had a very short fuse as some of us close to him knew well. He suffered fools badly. But no-one minded. We knew he was a person of complete, unimpeachable integrity.

He said in private what you heard from him in public. Often, he spoke from the heart.

“I have said what I felt,” he often said. Transparency of purpose defined him. He had a fine mind. He could cut through clutter in a canter. He readily won respect; he was a man who could be trusted to keep his word, as Sitiveni Rabuka has often said.

That, I think, lay at the heart of his life in politics and in public. Trust and integrity will be two words most closely associated with Reddy in the long years to come. In one of my last extended conversations with him in Auckland before his ailment claimed him.

He asked me how things looked in the country to which he had given the best years of life. I replied with the words of Firaq Gorakhpuri: Suraj ke nikalne men zara der lagegi. (The sun will take a little while longer to come out.) Is raat ko dhalne men zara der lagegi. (The night will take a little longer to fade away.)

Jai looked at me wordless for a while as if to say he understood.

We are grateful
And now he is gone. We are grateful and give thanks for the gift of his life which enriched us all. Jai Ram Reddy will not be forgotten.

His words and deeds will not die, nor allowed to perish on the silent shores of Fiji’s public memory.

We bow our heads in silence and respect as Mr Reddy embarks on his final journey.

May the angels light his way to Amar Lok, that sacred place of eternal rest for humanity’s immortals. Goodbye Jai, Goodbye Mr Reddy, goodbye sir.

The late Professor Brij Lal is the author of In the Eye of the Storm. Jai Ram Reddy and the politics of postcolonial Fiji (ANU Press, 2009) and most recently of Girmitiyas: Making of their Memory Keepers (New Delhi, 2021). He and his wife Padma were banned from Fiji for life. Professor Lal wrote this tribute before he died in exile on Christmas Day in 2021. Republished with permission from The Fiji Times.

“Noa’ia ‘e” is a greeting people hear when you meet anyone from the island of Rotuma in Fiji or when they visit the Whānau Community Hub in Auckland’s Mount Roskill.

This doubles as the Rotuman-Fijian Community Centre.

It is run by Rachel Mario and her team for a whole host of purposes — a range of different programmes and activities.

• READ MORE: Other Rotuman reports

On any day they could be delivering grocery parcels, health and wellbeing classes, or training community elders (Wednesdays), language and financial literacy classes for children (Saturdays), and leadership training,

You name it and they’re probably doing it.

Mario says the centre hasn’t only been hosting the Rotuman whānau, but it’s also a “home” for other stakeholders such as Asia Pacific Media Network, government agencies, and faith communities.

As chair of the Auckland Rotuman Fellowship Group Inc., Mario now wants to throw in her leadership hat for the local board.

Standing for Puketāpapa
So she is standing for the Roskill Community Voice team for Puketāpapa Local Board (Mount Roskill).

She loves doing social work and hopes that she and her team will be elected in the October election — and she vows to keep working hard to be the voice of the wider, diverse community in Mount Roskill.

Apart from running the busy programmes at the centre for her Rotuman community and other whānau, Mario has been advocating about issues of social injustice that her community has been facing for years.

Some of these issues include the housing crisis and alleged discrimination on distribution over resources for the Rotuman Language Week celebrations.

“The biggest challenge, which isn’t fair, is the discrimination against us, the Rotuman community. In the Ministry of Pacific Peoples, they want to run a rival language week up against ours,” she says.

“We started in 2018. In 2019, because they didn’t want to list our language week, they didn’t want to list anything we do regarding our endangered indigenous language.

In response to a question from Tagata Pasifika about the allegations of discrimination faced by Mario’s group, the Minister of the Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio denied this, saying he was disappointed to hear about it.

Successful programme
However, in spite of the challenges, the Auckland Rotuman Fellowship Group successfully ran the language programme in May.

Other issues include the cultural identity of children born from intercultural marriages. However, the Auckland Rotuman Fellowship Group has embraced all children who have Rotuman blood.

TeRito Peyroux, a member of Rotuman Congregation at Kingsland Methodist Church, says that for those who could not speak Rotuman, “we are who we are, it’s much bigger than our language fluency.”

“It is about our sense of belonging and the people that are nurturing and supporting and being with us. For me, that means that having the privilege of celebrating language and culture in this foreign land makes me very humble,” she says.

Tupou Tee Kamoe, who is also one of the executive members of the Auckland Rotuman Fellowship Group, cites a quote from Green MP Teanau Tuiono that he had made in his maiden speech in Parliament which she has adapted for bicultural Rotumans:

“People often ask me, ‘am I half Rotuman, half Pacific’, and I say ‘na bro, I am not half anything, I am whole, if anything I am double — if I was a beer I would be double brown, if I was a flavour at the dairy, I would be twice as nice at only half the price.”

Laurens Ikinia is a postgraduate communication studies student at Auckland University of Technology and is a frequent contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

The EMTV News editorial decision to run the two stories [about the court cases involving Australian hotel businessman Jamie Pang] was based on two important points in our line of work:

Impartiality and Objectivity.

Impartiality cannot be achieved by the measure of words in a story, it is achieved by:

• Avoiding bias towards one point of view
• Avoiding omission of relevant facts
• Avoiding misleading emphasis

All of which are stated in the EMTV News and Current Affairs Manual 2019 in section 17.5 under standard operations of the television code.

• READ MORE:  Nineteen journalists suspended from Papua New Guinea news station in coverage row
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• Background and other Pacific Media Watch reports on the EMTV dispute

By running the stories, the team was accused of bias.

We fail to see the areas of bias in our stories, especially because we presented more than one point of view in both stories.

The information presented was based on facts and in avoiding any misleading emphasis; we delivered objective television news packages that were fully impartial in the code and conduct of journalism.

Objective stories
Overall, both stories were objective stories where two or more opinions were looked at closely in each story.

To be clear, in television news objectivity is achieved by taking a rational but sceptical approach to ALL points of view.

In this case, Jamie Pang’s arrest, conviction and charges were looked at, as well as his community and social activities:

• Pang was arrested – Fact
• Pang was convicted, charged and fined for having firearms and munitions in his possession – Fact
• Pang was acquitted by a sound and proper court of justice in the PNG judicial system, from charges relating to methamphetamine – Fact
• Being acquitted by a sound and proper court of justice in the PNG judicial system, makes Pang a free man from drug charges – Fact
• Pang is heavily involved in social and community works – Fact
• Pang was rearrested and detained – Fact

All these factual points were documented in one story.

It is important to understand, that in objective writing, the opinion of the interviewees are their own. However, [how] it is perceived by the our viewers is up to them to weigh [up] and decide.

Objective [news] stories are often mistaken as opinion pieces.

They are not the same.

An opinion piece is a commentary on one point of view.

Journalism independence
As journalists we cannot be servants of sectional interests. It is our duty to speak to both “saints” and “sinners”. It is our democratic right to report on the good, bad and the ugly aspects of any story.

There are no instances of perceived impartiality in our reporting which display a lack of objectivity.

And a lack of objectivity leaves room for personal bias which is not acceptable in the journalism code of ethics.

The failure of the interim EMTV CEO, Lesieli Vete, to understand how a newsroom operates and a newsroom’s code of conduct led to the suspension of head of news Sincha Dimara.

Vete’s failure to try to understand the newsroom’s points of objectivity and impartiality in the stories led to her issuing of the statement portraying the newsroom as biased and in support of meth by sympathising with Pang’s employees and friends.

Vete’s statement served the purpose of explaining the leaked memo and portraying a bad picture of her newsroom.

Her statement lacked objectivity and impartiality because a written standpoint of the newsroom’s reasons for airing stories in the coverage of the Pang story were not included in her statement.

Suppression of media freedom
Vete’s questioning of our stance on running the story, and not showing any interest in learning nor understanding the way it was put together, led to further suppression of freedom of speech; direct and daily intimidation of senior and junior staff; micromanagement of staff whereabouts and activities; and direct and indirect threats of termination on staff.

The immense pressure to put a [news] bulletin together while being highly and closely monitored took a direct and serious toll on newsroom staff morale.

This created conditions that were suffocating to work under. A walk off was imminent.

We are making a stand now in solidarity against bullying and ill treatment of newsroom staff in the absence of news managers.

This is the third time we are experiencing a suppression of our right to freedom of speech, and we want it to stop once and for all.

After the suspension of Sincha Dimara, EMTV’s deputy news editor Jack Lapauve Jr is now the most senior news manager and he was with the walk out. He posted this commentary on his Facebook page and it is republished here with his permission.

There was plenty of condemnation of New Zealand’s illegal occupation of Parliament in the media at first — but this week some media painted a much more palatable picture of the protesters and their motivation.

However, those who track the far-right and the media channels they use warn that ignores and obscures the protest’s dark undercurrents.

When the convoy converged on Parliament last week, Newshub vox-popped Wellingtonians who called the protest “ridiculous and disruptive”.

Offshore, Al Jazeera’s headline quoted residents who called the protesters “‘stupid’ and ‘selfish’”.

Many in the media were at pains to point out the protesters were not just a minority, but a mere fraction of the anti-vax element.

There was also sympathy for the police being confronted by angry and aggressive crowds — and public anger about children being there, even through a record-breaking wet southerly blast and the Speaker’s sprinkler stunt last weekend.

Media highlighted unpleasant conditions
And as the occupation dragged on, media highlighted increasingly unpleasant conditions underfoot.

“The [police] superintendent described the situation as squalor,” TVNZ’s 1News viewers were told last Monday.

“He said there’s faeces on the ground and children are playing in the mud.”

That amplified calls for the convoy crowd to stop blocking the streets — and the drains.

But Newstalk ZB’s political editor Barry Soper told listeners the poo problem was a fiction.

“There’s no faeces anywhere. They’ve got portaloos down there,” he said.

Soper went on to tell ZB’s Drive host Heather du Plessis-Allan the protesters were not as bad as they had been painted.

“They’re Kiwis. A lot of them have been mandated out of their jobs,” Soper said.

‘Do they have a point?’
“Do they have a point?” du Plessis-Allan asked rhetorically.

“Yes they have a point. They insist this is an anti-mandate protest and reporters on the ground say this appears to be the case. Now don’t confuse anti-mandate with anti-vax,” she warned listeners.

In fact, many reporters on the ground stressed that vaccine misinformation seemed near-universal among the occupiers — and amplification of irrational rhetoric, nooses, calls to “hang em high” and Nuremberg imagery were plain to see.

On the same ZB show soon after, NZME head of business Fran O’Sullivan said it was time to engage with them — even though there were no publicly-acknowledged leaders or mainstream political backers at that point.

“Not all people on that lawn are crazy. There’s a lot of people who are pretty ordinary folk who for one or another reason find themselves out of jobs,” she said.

Several commentators declared they were impressed by the pop-up infrustructure and support for what had earlier been described in the media as a leaderless and random occupation.

ZB’s Mike Hosking told listeners of his show the convoy deserved credit.

“I admire people who want to give up a lot of time and travel and hunker down and presumably get some sort of sense of personal accomplishment,” he said.

‘Too many nutters’
That’s quite a shift from the previous Friday, when Hosking dismissed the occupation as a waste of time with “too many nutters, and too many angry people”.

“Didn’t work. Protests make a point — but this one just pissed everyone off,” he said.

Back in 2019, he condemned those occupying Ihumātao as time-wasters too.

“Is it time in lieu you think they’re taking or annual leave they’re taking?” he said.

Politics lecturer and pundit Dr Bryce Edwards told ZB aggression at the protest had evaporated. He described protesters as merely “eccentric”.

The same day Edwards also told RNZ’s Morning Report the protesters had been unfairly smeared as “far right” — even though far right material and broadcasts were still clearly present at the protest.

“Bryce is quite wrong to gloss over the far right influence,” countered another commentator on Morning Report, academic Morgan Godfery.

Known far-right figures were among the first setting up and attending fresh occupation protests in Christchurch.

Watching their channels
Byron C Clark, who researches New Zealand’s far-right and conspiracy theory scene, told Mediawatch that reporters and commentators declaring the protest peaceful and reasonable were ignoring some of its dark undercurrents.

“If you want a full picture, you need to be engaging with people on the ground but also be in the social media channels and watch their own media,” he said.

Extreme and sometimes violent messages are still being posted on apps like Telegram, and media channels like Counterspin, he said.

“They are talking to people who are saying different things to what they say to mainstream media journalists.”

TVNZ’s Cushla Norman also confronted Counterspin frontman Kelvyn Alp orchestrating the coverage outside Parliament last week. In a story that aired on 1News on Thursday TVNZ’s Kristin Hall found messages in stark conflict with the peaceful vibe many of the protesters were projecting publicly.

Protesters have been asking me all week for “evidence” of volatility towards the Wellington public so here it is. https://t.co/mhJNcXlMrF

— Kristin Hall (@kristinhallNZ) February 19, 2022

“The Nuremburg 2.0 trials have started, why is no one reporting on that? You know, that’s the crimes against humanity and treason,” one protester told her.

Hall also pointed to Counterspin’s Kelvyn Alp telling ACT leader David Seymour he was “lucky they haven’t strung [him] up from the nearest bloody lamppost” after offering to mediate.

Common alt-right messages
Clark said those kinds of messages were common in parts of the movement.

“It’s not the case that everyone at the protest is a committed member of the alt-right movement, but it’s certainly the case that the alt-right has a presence in this movement and is trying to influence the direction it takes,” he said.

‘“On Telegram we’ve got people calling for trials and executions of politicians. On Counterspin Media, the hosts are telling people to read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. To not report on that almost seems like part of that disinformation at this point in time.”

Many protesters identified as liberal or progressive, while being increasingly influenced by extreme content, Clark said.

“You might be skeptical of vaccines for left-wing reasons. You might be distrustful of the pharmaceutical industry. Then when you go into these anti-vax groups online, you’re going to be experiencing conversations about other conspiracy theories, and people will be saying, ‘yes, the media is lying to you, not just about this but also about these other things’.”

“You’re going to be influenced by a lot of these ideas and even if you continue to call yourself a liberal or left-wing, if you’re going to these protests that are shaped by the far-right, are you part of a far-right movement without realising it? I think that’s the case with a lot of the protesters,” he said.

‘Research these fringe elements’
Clark said the convoy was the culmination of years of activity on social media channels like Telegram, where thousands of people were still being radicalised.

He urged reporters to follow his lead and infiltrate those channels, so at the least they are not surprised when another movement emerges.

“I think some of our newsrooms should be putting more resources into researching these groups. Researching these fringe elements. Because we should know after Christchurch in 2019, it doesn’t mean it’s not going to burst out into the real world,” he said.

“These thousands of people have all been chatting to each other on Telegram for months if not years — so this wasn’t something that nobody saw coming. But it’s something the media is struggling to come to terms with,” Clark told Mediawatch.

Afghan women are accusing the Taliban of using a pregnant New Zealand journalist as a publicity tool to show the world they can offer women rights.

Charlotte Bellis wrote an open letter on Sunday saying she had been rejected by New Zealand’s strict hotel quarantine system and was living in Afghanistan, where the Taliban had offered her “safe haven”.

Bellis was working in Qatar, where extramarital sex is illegal, when she discovered she was pregnant with her partner and realised she had to leave.

• READ MORE: ‘A betrayal’: Coverage of pregnant reporter ‘helped by Taliban’ is called out
• Pregnant NZ journalist Charlotte Bellis offered a place in MIQ
• Charlotte Bellis talks to Fox News about the pregnancy and the Taliban
• I’m appalled at the way the Charlotte Bellis situation has played out – John MacDonald
• How long will the stench of MIQ hang over NZ? Foreign media seized on Charlotte Bellis saga, but harm to NZ’s reputation will fade – Damien Venuto
• Muzhgan Samarqandi: MIQ debate trivialises the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan
• The Reporter Without Borders: In a war zone and a pandemic, who gets to pull strings? – Rafia Zakaria
• Charlotte Bellis’ open letter on MIQ to New Zealand – New Zealand Herald

When she was unable to go home to New Zealand, she briefly moved to her partner’s native Belgium, but could not stay long because she was not a resident.

She said the only other place the couple had visas to live was Afghanistan.

“When the Taliban offers you – a pregnant, unmarried woman – safe haven, you know your situation is messed up,” she wrote.

It made international headlines, but the news prompted scepticism in online groups of Afghan women, Kabul resident Sodaba Noorai said.

‘Surprised’ by Taliban comments
Noorai said Afghan women “were surprised” when they heard the news that senior Taliban contacts had told the journalist she would be fine if she returned to Afghanistan.

The Fox News interview on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the New Zealand government offered Bellis a place in managed isolation and quarantine, four days after her article was published and a spate of media reports followed.

“[Afghan women] were surprised the Taliban can treat women in a good manner and know how to respect them,” Noorai said.

“The Taliban is trying to convey the message that they know about human rights, especially women’s rights.

“But in reality their treatment of Afghan women is different to their support and respect for this New Zealand woman.”

Noorai said pregnant Afghan women had been killed by the Taliban for not being married.

Witnesses claim pregnant former Afghan policewoman Banu Negar was shot dead by Taliban militants in September, but the regime has denied the incident.

‘Double standard’ over white, Western woman
“This is a double standard where they treat a white, Western woman in a way to show the world that they are behaving like a civilised government,” Pittsburgh University Afghan researcher Dr Omar Sadr said.

“But with respect to the people of Afghanistan and the women of Afghanistan, the Taliban behave totally differently.

“At the moment, Afghan women are degraded as second-class citizens, deprived of fundamental human rights where their protesting is brutally suppressed.

“They are killed, tortured, and in some cases even raped.”

It has been almost six months since the militant group took over Afghanistan, and its treatment of women has become a central point of concern for the international community.

Women live in fear under Taliban rule
Women say they live in fear, while others have been killed after protesting against the country’s new rulers.

Afghan activist Rahimi, whose last name has been withheld for security reasons, said she had gone into hiding with her sisters because she was worried she would be arrested and tortured by the Taliban for attending protests over human rights.

“I no longer have a job so I’m in a bad economic situation, I attended many demonstrations for achieving our rights and my life is in danger by the Taliban,” she said.

“We’re afraid of their violence, their rape, their killing and murder, so we’re scared in our house.

“I have a request for the international community — don’t ignore the actions of the Taliban because of this case of this New Zealand journalist.”

Taliban negotiators travelled to Oslo, Norway last week, the regime’s first official overseas delegation since returning to power in August.

Humanitarian aid offered
US and European diplomats reportedly offered humanitarian aid in exchange for an improvement in human rights.

The Taliban is calling for almost $10 billion in assets frozen by the US and other Western countries to be released, as more than half of Afghans are now facing extreme levels of hunger.

“It is fundamental that we hold the Taliban accountable by their policies and actions on the ground rather than what they do in exceptional cases like Charlotte’s,” Dr Sadr said.

But women like Noorai have urged the international community to stand firm until all women in Afghanistan, not just foreigners, are given basic rights.

“Our message is to not recognise the Taliban until they really change themselves and treat us properly.”

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

Fiji’s Assistant Minister for iTaukei Affairs Selai Adimaitoga said quite a lot on Friday in her end of week statement on the Media Industry Development Act 2010 in Parliament.

She blamed reckless reporting by journalists as “one of the causes of violence and economic destruction over the past years”.

She said dishonest media had played a role in every troubling event in Fiji’s history. For that, she said, media organisations had a duty to tell the truth to the public and not to publish things that would stir political instability or violence.

• READ MORE: Selai takes a swipe at the Fiji media

“We must ensure that history does not repeat itself as Fijians deserve honest and fair media,” Ms Adimaitoga said.

She said every media organisation should only speak the truth and fairly report on facts, adding “Fiji cannot afford the reckless reporting of the past. The media have a responsibility to publish the truth. They also have a responsibility to maintain professional standards, a responsibility to maintain integrity”.

We totally agree with her that media organisations have a duty to tell the truth and fairly report on issues. We do not just talk about it. We do it, every day.

We try, every day, to fairly report on issues of importance to the nation, and to provide coverage that cuts through any imaginary demarcation line.

There are many such lines — political leanings, ethnicity, gender and religion for instance. Any good news organisation lives on its reputation for reliability. If its information is reliable it has the trust of its readers or viewers. But a key part of the media’s role is to hold power to account.

Ms Adimaitoga, whose [FijiFirst] government has held power (in one form or another) for more than a decade, said nothing about that. Our editorial decisions on what information we present must factor in what is of public interest, and the public interest requires close scrutiny of those who exercise power over us.

So when a government politician talks about “anti-government” news, she must think carefully about the fact that the public expects accountability from her government. Keeping the trust of our readers requires us to maintain a balance and not to be partisan advocates for one political side or the other.

Ms Adimaitoga needs to better appreciate and understand the role of the media. And we will say to her what we have said to the government in the past when we have faced the same “anti-government” label.

We are not anti-government, nor are we pro-government, and neither she nor anyone should try to put us into one corner or another.

The Fiji Times does not exist to create positive headlines for the government. It exists to publish all views and to ensure there is balanced coverage of the news and balanced political debate.

The public in any democracy expects to read diverse news and opinions which are representative of our whole society and the different viewpoints and perspectives that exist in our nation.

And we believe in serving the public in line with those democratic expectations.

The Fiji Times was founded at Levuka in 1869. This editorial was published in The Sunday Times edition of the newspaper yesterday (September 26) under the title “The role of the media” and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Do the Fiji news media represent a wide range of political perspectives?
Fiji’s national media, like media elsewhere, would cover a wider berth collectively, rather than as individual media organisations, because individual media have obvious leanings and priorities.

But do the media, even as whole, provide a wide enough perspective?
Not always – media coverage is discriminatory by nature, even by necessity, some would argue.

Besides media’s commercial priorities and political biases, there are resource and logistical constraints to consider, as well as professional capacity development challenges. Inevitably, certain individuals and groups fall through the cracks.

Generally, the political elites, and to some extent the business lobby tend to receive proportionality greater coverage because they are deemed more important and more sellable than the less prominent, prosperous or powerful in society.

Internationally, research indicates that women are among the disadvantaged groups consigned to the margins of political coverage, along with youth.

Then there’s the question of political parties. Are they treated equal?
Usually, the dominant party, and/or the governing party, which can marshal the most resources, gets the lion’s share of coverage, and follows in descending order.

In Fiji, the governing party regularly accuses some media of being anti-government, especially The Fiji Times. Meanwhile, the opposition complain that they are ignored by the Fiji Sun and the Fiji Broadcasting Corporation, whom they label pro-government media.

Fiji media weaned on Anglo-American news tradition
The Fiji media were weaned on the Anglo-American news reporting tradition, based on journalistic objectivity as an ethos. This calls for reporting the “facts” in a neutral, unattached manner.

Because objectivity is neither possible nor ideal in every situation, the media can, and will take a stance on certain issues, political or otherwise. The compromise is that any such leanings are confined to the opinion sections. The news section must remain objective, unbiased and untainted by opinion.

However, it is a slippery slope, and the lines between news and opinion have become blurred, both in Fiji and abroad. Nowadays, it is not unusual to see opinion masquerading as news.

Different media commentators have different takes about the risks and benefits of this trend. At best it is a mixed bag, depending on the issue on hand.

Media can support government policy out of conviction, but not out of pecuniary/financial interests. Even if they take a certain stance, media should still provide reasonably equal coverage to opposing views. Especially state media since it is tax-payer funded.

Ideally, state media should give opposing views a fair hearing, but in the Pacific, the reality is different. State media, by policy, serve as government mouthpieces.

The surest way to know if media represent wide a political perspective is through research. USP Journalism is examining Fiji’s 2018 election coverage data with Dialogue Fiji, and preliminary results indicate a clear bias on the part of all media – some far more than others.

Complex variables for media bias
While the Fiji media do have their favourites, analysing media bias can be complex because there are so many variables to consider. For one, media bias is not only intentional, but unintentional as well.

For example, if a politician or political party refuses to talk to a certain media, then the bias is self-inflicted. The media can hardly be blamed for it.

The bottom line is that the Fiji public know by now their media’s stances. While the media have an obligation to be fair and balanced, the public have the right to choose not to consume media that are deliberately biased.

Do Fiji media exercise self-censorship?
It’s obvious that media exercise a greater level of self-censorship since the 2006 coup and the punitive 2010 Fiji Media Industry Development Act. There are several reports attesting to this, including IDEA’s Global Media-Integrity indices.

The indices show that the Fiji media have been bolder since 2013, yes, but they will not cross a certain line – the fines and jail terms in the Media Act are not worth the risk.

While no one has been charged under the Act so far, it’s like having an axe on your neck because the lettering in the Act is quite broad. For instance, any news reports that are “against the national interest” is a breach of the Act, without clearly defining what constitutes “against national interest”.

This means that there are any number of reports that could be deemed to be against the “national interest”.

An ordeal in terms of stress
Even if in the end the charges don’t stick, just going through the hearing process would be an ordeal in terms of the stress, both financial and emotional.

In 2015, the fines and jail terms for journalists were removed from the Act. Was this impactful in reducing self-censorship? Not necessarily, because the editors’ and publishers’ penalties were retained.

The editor, and to some extent the publisher, are the newsroom gatekeepers – they would put a leash on their journalists to protect themselves and their investment.

So, media are trying to live with the Act and operate around its parameters. Rather than take big risks, they are taking calculated risks, such as a degree of self-censorship, so that they can live to fight another day.

Is criticism of the government common?
The answer is both yes and no — criticism is common with some media, not all media.

There is not as much criticism as before the Act, but still a fair amount of criticism — under the circumstances. Private media such as The Fiji Times stand out for their critical reporting, as well as Fiji Village, more recently.

The FBC and the Fiji Sun are on the record saying that they have pro-government policies, and this is reflected in their coverage.

Blind eye to goverment faults
Of course, being pro-government policy would not mean turning a blind eye to the government’s faults, or endlessly singing its praises.

Some complain that Fiji media in general are not critical enough — such people do not fully understand the context that media work in, or appreciate the risks they take — on a daily basis.

Government accusations usually come with the territory. But because of the Act, the government criticism is menacing. So given the context, I don’t buy fully into claims that the media are not critical enough.

Besides its news reporting, The Fiji Times gives space to government critics in its letters columns, and hosts columnists ranging from opposition members, academics and civil society representatives.

Could there be more criticism? Should there be more criticism?
My answer to both is “yes”. But the criticism needs to be measured, as well as fair and balanced.

In the last IDEA session, University of Hawai’i professor Tacisius Kabutaulaka stated that the quality of media reporting was part of media freedom. I agree — the two cannot be separated. Just as a fawning, biased media is bad for democracy, so is a negative, overly-critical media.

Region’s toughest media law
Fiji’s Media-Integrity graph has improved since 2013 but is still among the lowest in the region. Why so?

Fiji has the lowest ranking in the region, simply because it has the toughest media law in the region. There was some improvement in the rankings because of the 2013 constitution and the 2014 elections. Compared to military rule, this signalled a return to a form of democratic order.

But as long as the Act is in place, the media are government-regulated. In a fuller democracy, the media are self-regulated, as Fiji’s media used to be.

Also, the two-day media coverage blackout on the 2018 elections would have affected Fiji’s ranking as well. The ban was seen to restrict political debate at a crucial time.

The contempt of court charge against a government critic and The Fiji Times sedition trial all affected Fiji’s rankings.

How can Fiji media improve?
Addressing the issues concerning the Act could be a starting point. For one, the Act was imposed on the media; for another, it has not been reviewed in over 10 years.

I suggest a roundtable of stakeholders to review and update the act. The government, the media and other interested parties can get together to find common ground and apply it in the Act to come up with a more acceptable arrangement.

Shailendra B Singh is associate professor in Pacific journalism and coordinator of the University of the South Pacific Journalism Programme. This is extracted from Dr Singh’s recent presentation on International IDEA’s Democratic Development in Melanesia Webinar Series 2021.

A counter-terrorism hui intended to help heal the wounds inflicted in Christchurch two years ago sparked a walk-out which hit the headlines. The news media were also there to be questioned about their rights and responsibilities after 15 March 2019.

When police National Security Adviser Cameron Bayly revealed that two possible shootings in Christchurch had been foiled in 2019 – one before and one after the atrocity on March 15 – it quickly made headline news.

The revelation came last Tuesday morning during a panel discussion at He Whenua Taurikura – an annual hui recommended by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the terrorist attack.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MEDIAWATCH: Christchurch terror attacks puts NZ media under the spotlight
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He Whenua Taurikura means “a land at peace”. But the hui created rancour when an invited speaker, Jewish Council spokesperson Juliet Moses, referenced a rally in Auckland’s Queen Street in 2018 at which some had expressed support for Hezbollah.

That had not been condemned and leaders should be consistent when confronting terrorism, Moses said.

That prompted members of the Christchurch Muslim community to walk out.

One  – Azad Razzaq Khan from the Foundation Against Islamophobia and Racism – said this “implied New Zealand Muslims support terrorism”.

This led news bulletins that evening and next morning – and the anger was amplified by the fact no victims or witnesses of the mosque atrocities were among speakers at the hui.

Following the startling news that a film studio wants to tell the March 15 story without consulting with victims or Muslim leaders in the city, this was a problem waiting to happen.

However, it didn’t derail He Whenua Taurikura’s second day on Wednesday, during which Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand leader Anjum Rahman gave an eye-opening talk on online extremism after the Christchurch attacks.

Rahman, who is an adviser to the Christchurch Call and the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, showed how social media’s hyperactive algorithms still spread anti-Muslim stuff that extremists latch onto.

Media leaders face up

“Listen and respond. Do not write narratives about us without us. Do not talk over us or for us.”

— Khairiah Rahman

Leaders from New Zealand’s news media also faced questions at the hui last Tuesday.

Stuff chief executive Sinead Boucher admitted news media coverage of ethnic issues and communities is often only surface-deep and through a European lens.

But she insisted our news media have a social conscience that social media does not.

“I can think of a handful of examples in recent years where media have not published information because of the risk it could bring to someone’s safety,” Boucher told the hui.

New Zealand Herald head of premium content Miriyana Alexander said those gathered at the hui would have different ideas about how news serves the public interest.

“We are often asked not to report something, because a certain group doesn’t believe it’s in the public interest,” Alexander said.

“We are fiercely protective of that right [to report], while we acknowledge that rights carries responsibilities.”

Reporting if gunman’s crimes
A case in point was the reporting of Brenton Tarrant’s crimes back in 2019.

Stuff didn’t publish his name for a while and only minimal details of his background and apparent beliefs. The NZ Herald published a lot more about him back in March 2019.

All mainstream news media agreed on protocols for reporting his trial last year and stuck to guidelines designed to ensure he couldn’t grandstand or promote his beliefs.

“I’ve never seen that happen before in my time in media and I think it was a great credit to all organisations involved,” Alexander said.

“It was a powerful thing to do and it laid a strong foundation for the ongoing coverage and relationships.”

RNZ head of news Richard Sutherland said individual media organisations would probably have followed the same principles anyway, without a binding pact in place.

But some free speech and media freedom advocates were alarmed by that.

Media crisis meetings
Alexander  – the current chair of the Media Freedom Committee which represents the mutual interests of the news media – said the media had been meeting twice a year with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (which organised this week’s hui), with terror attacks or crises in future in mind.

“Some protocols have been drafted,” said Alexander.

“I’m not aware of this happening in any other jurisdiction and it’s evidence of the media’s desire to be a responsible member of our community.”

Providing a Muslim community perspective on the panel was Khairiah A Rahman, a senior lecturer at the School of Communication Studies at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and a board member and researcher of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre.

She analysed Representations of Islam and Muslims in New Zealand Media in 2017 and in March 2019 she told Mediawatch she had found reporting lacking in several ways.

About 13,000 of just over 14,000 stories in the New Zealand media that included the word Islam also mentioned either terrorism or Islamic Jihad — and most were from from overseas sources.

“There appears to be a growing misconceived hatred for a faith supported by 1.5 billion of the world’s population, but more importantly, this destructive trend is promoted by the media, consciously or not,” Rahman’s paper concluded.

Praised media response
Last Tuesday in Christchurch, she praised the media response to the mosque attacks, but pointed to examples of reporting from the past that had caused offence.

She cited coverage of the so-called “jihadi brides” issue.

In 2015, Prime Minister John Key called New Zealand women travelling to Syria and Iraq “jihadi brides.” The director of the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) said the numbers were rising.  But in 2016, the SIS revealed none of the women involved actually left from New Zealand.

Rahman also warned visual elements of stories could be discriminatory and cited a Sunday Star Times story from 2014: Fears of terror in our own backyard.

The story was published at a time when government ministers were considering new measures to stop New Zealanders heading overseas as foreign fighters.

The main photo portrayed was of Sheik Abu Abdullah outside his home in West Auckland, under which a caption read: “FIREBRAND OR MAN OF PEACE?”

“You have to wonder what was the purpose of that,” Rahman said.

Experienced journalists
The story was written by two experienced journalists and focused on this controversial figure, also known as Abu Hamam, who had been barred from the Avondale Islamic Centre.

“He was not interviewed in the story so how is it fair to call him ‘Firebrand… or man of peace?’

“If you understand the people you’re reporting on in the marginalised position that they come from it’s not that difficult,” she said.

The story included comment from Muslims in Auckland who knew him, followers and Muslim experts. On the face of it the story has the kind of context and community input critics say is often missing.

“I disagree. If you were to run that story past the Muslim community there will be some things they will point out to you. You find that the voices are diminished, because at the end there is a list of people who have been through Australia and joined ISIS.”

At the foot of the article was a list of four “Kiwi Jihadis”, including Daryl Jones and Christopher Havard, killed in a US drone strike alongside al-Qaeda militants in 2013. The paper said Havard’s family claimed he was radicalised at a mosque in Christchurch.

“If you have a good introduction, but the final part is horrible, you go away thinking Muslim people are horrible,” Rahman said.

‘Largely negative’
Her research on how the New Zealand media treated Muslims before the Christchurch attacks showed coverage was “largely negative”.

“But in the Royal Commission’s report, there was no mention of the media having any responsibility. I made a submission to the Royal Commission pointing out that the media was responsible for perpetuating negative stereotypes and ideas – largely from international media,” Rahman said.

“I think it’s a start to recognise this.”

Rahman left the media with this message last Tuesday:

“Listen and respond. Do not write narratives about us without us. Do not talk over us or for us.”

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

Fiji’s Health Secretary Dr James Fong strongly attacked his country’s media for “reckless reporting” today, saying it could spark panic.

He gave no evidence of this.

Speaking at a press conference, Dr Fong announced tough measures to control the widening covid-19 community outbreak in Fiji.

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“We are still seeing media outlets bypassing official sources, publishing stories without the proper context and sparking panic among the public,” Dr Fong said.

“That sort of reckless reporting can set back this entire containment strategy. It puts lives in danger, driving people to make bad decisions with bad information.”

RNZ Pacific reports a third covid-19 case in the community in Fiji.

Dr Fong’s statement followed an earlier attack on the media by Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama who told the nation that unless covid information was on the Fiji government Facebook page, it was not accurate.

Draconian powers
Bainimarama’s government, since seizing power in a coup in 2006, has often adopted draconian powers to censor media and control journalists.

Dr Fong told reporters that the Ministry of Health was holding daily briefings to give the best available information.

“We don’t deal in rumours. We rely on facts, and the media must hold themselves to that same standard. Do not publish panicked nonsense for the sake of likes on Facebook or clicks on your website – the nation needs you to do better.”

Dr Fong, who is a gynecologist, took exception to media questions, telling journalists not to ask questions he has already answered.

“Some of you have been very insistent about asking questions we have already answered.

“Please, let’s keep this focussed on new information the public does not already know.”

Dr Fong’s often rambling presentation clearly raised the irritation of viewers as one widely circulated screen grab of his press conference illustrated.

The Pacific Newsroom reports are republished with permission.

The day after New Zealand’s first lockdown was announced, I expressed to a senior colleague my concern for those around the country whose livelihoods would suffer as a result.

She agreed, but was confident that the spirit of “we’re all in it together” accompanying these drastic public health interventions would allow the government to lead the country towards a kinder, more equitable society.

“I think we might see a universal basic income,” she said hopefully.

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As it turns out, the government had little appetite for progressive welfare or tax reform.

Instead, working with the Reserve Bank, they have propped up the economy through a combination of measures that have drastically inflated the price of houses.

This has most likely protected some jobs, but it has also made work increasingly irrelevant as capital gains completely outstrip wages. The wealthy have been made even wealthier, while many can no longer afford a roof over their heads.

In the past year, the average New Zealander effectively lost $54.59 for every hour they turned up to work if they did not own a home.

According to Stats NZ, the median worker earned $26.44 per hour before tax in 2020. That comes to $21.49 per hour after tax if working a 40 hour week.

Median house prices
Meanwhile, in the year to end of February 2021, the median nationwide house price increased from $640,000 to $780,000: a difference of $140,000. If houses took weekends, public holidays and four weeks’ leave off each year – which of course they do not but it makes the calculation simpler – that makes an hourly rate equivalent to $76.08 per hour. Tax-free.

This is a direct result of the decision to support the economy through a combination of quantitative easing, a reduced Official Cash Rate and wage subsidies, instead of meaningfully increasing spending on things we need such as infrastructure and welfare.

The government handed out money to the banks, effectively at no cost, allowing them to lend more at increasingly attractive rates.

The government also bought bonds at the same time, devaluing deposits and making it pointless to keep money in the bank. This combination of easy credit and disincentivised saving caused a large amount of money to start sloshing around looking for somewhere to go.

The traditional concern with this approach to stimulus is that it will inflate the price of goods and services, increasing the cost of living.

In New Zealand, though, we like to buy houses. A tax system that drastically favours property ownership, combined with a cultural sensibility that houses are a safe bet, has seen much of this newly available money pumped straight into the housing market.

A feature
This is a feature, not a bug.

It represents a new, more interventionist version of trickle-down economics for the 2020s. Decried in 2011 by Labour MP Damien O’Connor as “the rich pissing on the poor”, politicians from the right have long argued that if the wealthy feel wealthier, their increased spending will benefit those less well off.

Generally used to advocate for reduced taxes on the rich, these ‘trickle down’ arguments refuse to die, no matter how comprehensively and repeatedly they are discredited.

This revival of trickle-down economics is a little different, as it is based on direct stimulus rather than a reduction in tax, but the effective mechanism is the same.

House price inflation is desirable, we are told, because homeowners feeling the resulting “wealth effect” will spend more on the goods and services provided by other New Zealanders. The win-win logic of this argument hides the fact that, fundamentally, someone is paying a heavy price.

Another way to think about it is that the government has effectively paid for covid-19 by levying a special tax on anyone who wants to live in New Zealand, but did not happen to own property during the summer of 2020/21, and handing that money to homeowners.

Paying the price
Many will pay this price throughout their lives. Some will be consigned to renting forever, handing over ever-increasing portions of their incomes to landlords seeking increased yield from their value-inflated properties.

Too many won’t even be able to do that, and sleeping on the street or in emergency accommodation. The relatively lucky few who do manage to buy a home will have mortgages hundreds of thousands of dollars larger than they otherwise would, spreading the cost of covid across their entire lifetimes.

Even as the beneficiaries of this covid levy, most homeowners are unable to simply stop working and enjoy this newfound wealth.

They may feel that they cannot realise their capital gain because it is tied up in their family home. What this windfall does provide, however, is choice: the option to release some of their newfound capital by downsizing into somewhere cheaper, or to stay put, taking advantage of the extra equity to fund lifestyle improvements like a new boat, a bach or a remodelled kitchen.

Unprecedented demand for watercraft this summer suggests that many are doing exactly this.

It can be tempting to view this growing inequity as just another “baby boomers vs millennials” issue. Certainly, it does represent a massive transfer of wealth from generally younger New Zealanders who do not currently own homes, to the largely older folk who were able to buy homes cheaply in the past.

This disparity is reflected in Westpac’s latest consumer confidence figures, which show that younger New Zealanders are far more likely to be worried about their financial situation compared with older cohorts.

Patronising advice about avoiding avocados and food delivery services to save for a home entirely misses this point. Nonetheless, it is important to note that many older New Zealanders also live in poverty while subject to similarly individualising narratives of self-control.

Social divide
Perhaps the more important question is how this rapidly accumulating wealth will be deployed to further entrench a growing social divide.

Parents with equity to spare are increasingly using it to help their children “get on the property ladder”. On an individual basis this is an entirely reasonable thing to do.

At a larger scale, though, the competitive advantage conferred by having generous, wealthy parents makes it even harder for those who do not have such privilege to obtain a home. Many are being left behind as a new landed gentry takes shape.

These political-economic arrangements favouring existing wealth over hard work have been a long time in the making, beginning well before most of the current crop of politicians arrived in parliament.

It is notable, though, that a government that promised to address the “housing crisis” has actively and knowingly pursued policies that have produced an unprecedented upward step-change in the market.

Perhaps most concerning is that the Prime Minister has expressed her intent that house price inflation should continue, just at a more “moderate” rate, because that’s what “people expect”.

It is exactly these expectations that are the problem: these issues will not be resolved while houses remain a speculative investment vehicle, rather than a home.

‘Tipping the balance’
Tuesday’s announcement of measures to “tip the balance” towards home buyers, rather than investors, might begin to signal a growing recognition that housing is more than an investment.

A substantial class of investors have certainly been made exceptionally wealthy by the covid-19 response, even as those who work for a living have seen their incomes stagnate.

But while this separation of ‘investors’ or ‘speculators’ from ‘homeowners’ might be politically convenient, it makes something of a false distinction.

Whether a house is owned as a home, or purely a source of income, any non-improvement appreciation in value comes at someone else’s expense.

Until New Zealand acknowledges this, little will change: whoever is in charge, and no matter how many new homes get built.

Covid-19 has shown that when politicians want to act, they certainly can. As many others have pointed out, this government promised “transformational change”. I’m not sure that taking money from those with the least, handing it to those with the most, is quite the kindness my colleague had in mind.

Dr Brendon Blue is a geographer in Te Kura Tātai Aro Whenua, the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington. He mostly studies and teaches the politics of environmental science and restoration, but would have been better off owning a house instead. This article was first published on The Democracy Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons licence.

Asia Pacific Report, the Auckland-based independent news and analysis website, has been increasingly targeted by Indonesian trolls over the past three months, involving a spate of “letters to the editor” and social media attacks.

One of the most frequent letter writers, an “Abel Lekahena”, who claims to be a “student” or “writing on behalf of the people of Papua”, has accused APR of “only taking the separatists’ narrative as they played the victim”.

Sometimes he is purportedly a student living in “Yogyakarta”, West Java; at other times he is a migrant from East Nusa Tenggara “currently living in Manokwari, West Papua”. He has written to Asia Pacific Report 10 times in the past eight weeks – twice in one day on December 29, 2020.

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“Lekahena”, if that is even his real name, claims in his latest “template” letter on Monday that since January, “the armed separatists prowled in Intan Jaya” and burned a missionary plane on January 6 and he has cited several clashes between pro-independence militants seeking independence for West Papua and the colonial Indonesian security forces.

He also blames the increase of internal Papuan refugees on the rebels.

“Instead of feeling guilty, armed separatists continue to make victims, spread propaganda, and take refuge behind refugees’ issues to seek sympathy from the domestic and international public,” claimed Lekahena in his letter to APR’s news editor.

“I would like to point out that Asia Pacific Report as a credible media should have also publish/talk/discuss [sic] regarding the endless list of the Free Papua armed separatists’ crimes in January-February 2021.”

Lekahena follows with a long list of web links to alleged Papuan rebel “crimes” while utterly ignoring the widely documented human rights violations and atrocities attributed by international watchdogs to the Indonesian security forces – both recently and over the last half century since Indonesian paratroopers invaded in 1961 and Jakarta gained control of the Papuan half of New Guinea island in a sham “Act of Free Choice” in 1969.

‘Separatist’ smear label
Our reply to Abel Lekahena is first that editorially we do not accept the term “separatist” which is a smear label that should not be used when describing indigenous people struggling to regain their homeland. This offensive word should also be discarded by the world’s media and news agencies as well.

We are reporting the struggle of pro-independence militants and human rights activists against a grave injustice. Papuans are Melanesian, just like their brothers and sisters across the border in Papua New Guinea.

They are Pacific Islanders.

Nevertheless, Asia Pacific Report seeks to independently report Papuan development, education, health, human rights, social justice and many other issues with courage, balance, fairness and vigour.

Second, a random look at newspaper headlines in Papua today – such as the West Papua Daily English language edition of Tabloid Jubi – reveals the plight of many Papuans and it is time Western countries, especially Australia and New Zealand, woke up to the reality and really put pressure on Jakarta to urgently allow a fact-finding team with the UN Rapporteurs on Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples to visit Papua:

March 10: Indonesia ‘must take responsibility’ for Nduga and Intan Jaya displaced people

March 10: Indonesian police, military investigate ‘stray bullet’ case that injures a youth in Mimik

March 8: Police arrest nine, disperse International Women’s Day rallies in West Papua

March 8: ‘Indonesia has gone too far’: A disabled man and a teenager in West Papua’s Intan Jaya shot dead

March 4: ‘The case is manipulated’: Two Papuan students detained by Jakarta police

Reveal yourself
Finally, Abel Lekahena, we invite you reveal who you are really are, and stop wasting our time with pointless propaganda for the Indonesian security forces. Many reports have surfaced about the trolling of media in Pacific countries perceived to be sympathetic voices to West Papuan self-determination.

Facebook and other social media have scrapped or suspended many fake web pages created by the Indonesian military and other authorities.

Let us get on with our job of informing our readers with the facts, stripped of the TNI (Indonesian security forces) fake news and spin or repression, and continue our commitment to speaking truth to power.

Dr David Robie is recently retired director of the Pacific Media Centre. Asia Pacific Report provides extensive coverage of West Papuan issues through a network of independent journalists, NGO advocates and researchers, and Pacific media students.

The Timorese Press Council today asked journalists to avoid being “messenger boys”, referring to the publication of a statement about former Timor-Leste president Xanana Gusmão’s controversial visit to a former priest accused of child abuse without identifying the source.

“Journalists are urged to reflect on their role in society and to refuse the function of mere passive message transmitters, messenger boys,” said a statement released today by the Press Council (Conselho De Impreza or CI).

The note was distributed after a press conference to analyse the Timorese media’s coverage of the visit that Gusmão made in late January to the house where former Father Richard Daschbach, accused of paedophilia and other crimes , is under house arrest.

• READ MORE: Church demands Timor-Leste faithful accept defrocking of accused priest
• Pedophile former priest evades justice in Timor-Leste

The Press Council said that five Timorese media outlets – the public news agency Tatoli, the online newspaper Oekussi Post, the private television GMN and the newspapers Diário and Independente – covered the visit, relying exclusively “on a statement delivered by the delegation of Xanana Gusmão”.

“The journalists replicated the statement, made few or no changes to the press release, not attributing its origin, and did not go further in the coverage,” Virgílio Guterres, president of Press Council told reporters today.

The council also highlights that in three media outlets the text was signed by a journalist, “which constitutes (…) plagiarism”.

For the Press Council (CI), there was “a total dismissal of journalistic activity, not checking, not looking for the contradictory, not diversifying sources, not looking for rigour and truth”, violating the law and the journalistic code of ethics and discrediting an activity that or “vigilant of the instituted powers and of the Democratic Rule of Law”.

‘Absence of plurality’
The council questions the “absence of plurality”, when the five outlets published “equal” texts, and the fact that the texts contain “omissions that make the news biased, not effectively fulfilling its mission to inform”.

Guterres said that the statement “aimed at an objective, like any public act, in which journalists agreed to participate, choosing to defend a particular interest rather than the public interest”.

After the criticism that the news provoked, some newspapers chose to correct the reference to Daschbach from priest to ex-priest, “but without any explanation for this change”, deleting or altering other paragraphs.

The published texts also feature a long biography of the target, “omitting relevant information”, including the fact that he was expelled from the Vatican and was accused of the crimes of paedophilia and child pornography.

“By referring in his biography only to positive facts of his journey, the media thus contribute to convey a false image of the target, disagree with reality, in a clear whitening process”, he maintains.

In addition, the texts have references “that are clearly assumed as rhetorical resources to awaken feelings of compassion and empathy in the reader”.

Guterres considered that the coverage “failed, by not presenting relevant journalistic facts”, being “unbalanced, with the intention of changing the public opinion about the accusation against the former priest”.

Reporting facts without fear
Asked by Lusa about whether the Timorese “media” were afraid to cover this case, Guterres recalled that this was the first time “that a member of the clergy is brought to justice” in Timor-Leste.

The important role of the Catholic Church in society, he said, had led to a less-than-expected media reaction, although some publications, such as Tempo Timor, had been essential in making the case known.

“We recognise that the fear-inhibiting effect exists. But now we need to report facts without fear,” he said.

Regarding the coverage of the case by Tatoli, the fact that it was a public news agency should demand increased responsibility, and its journalists “must have honesty and humility to recognise failures and mistakes and accept criticism,” he said.

Last week, the Timorese Episcopal Conference called on the Catholic community in Timor-Leste to respect Pope Francis’ decision to expel Daschbach from the priesthood.

In October last year, the representative of the Holy See in Dili told Lusa that the Vatican “has no doubt” that the former priest is guilty of these crimes.

Daschbach, 84, detained in 2019, is accused of abusing at least two dozen children at the orphanage where he worked, Topu Honis, located in the Oecusse enclave.

In September last year, the Attorney-General, José da Costa Ximenes, confirmed to Lusa that in addition to the crimes of child sexual abuse, the Public Prosecutor’s Office accused Daschbach of the crimes of child pornography and domestic violence.

The penal code provides for maximum sentences of 20 years in prison for sexual abuse of children under 14 years, increased by one third if the victims are under 12 years old.

Stuff has introduced a new company charter with Te Tiriti o Waitangi at its core, after a major internal investigation uncovered evidence of racism and marginalisation against Māori.

The media organisation issued an historic public apology today following the Our Truth, Tā Mātou Pono investigation which saw around 20 Stuff journalists scrutinise the company’s portrayal and representation of Māori from its early editions to now.

The findings unearthed numerous examples of journalism practices denying Māori an equitable voice in Aotearoa.

• READ MORE: Pou Tiaki: Stuff’s day of reckoning
• Carmen Parahi: The Fourth Estate needs to be aware of how it supports inequity

Stuff chief executive Sinead Boucher said it was imperative the company reckoned with its past, but denied the investigation was an exercise in political correctness or being “woke”.

“I don’t buy into that at all. If you think the job of the news media, in our company and others, is to hold the powerful to account, well, we are the powerful.

“We really have had an enormous impact in shaping public thought in New Zealand and societal norms, not just reflecting them, and I think it is only fitting that a progressive company can pause and have a look at itself,” Boucher said.

She acknowledged the presence of racism and unconscious bias in the digital and print products over the company’s 163-year history, and too often a monocultural approach had been taken that prioritise Pākehā worldviews.

Boucher was adamant Stuff could not hold others to account without facing up to its own past as a first step towards repairing the harm the company’s history has caused its relationship with Māori.

“When the project started, we didn’t know what we were going to find. They didn’t start off with a particular agenda … we just thought it was really critical that if we were going to embed the Treaty principles into our charter, that we need to do that examination and be up for whatever difficult finding might come out of it.

“After doing a deep examination … the finding was that over time, there had been many instances of where you could say that the work that our papers produced could have perpetuated negative stereotypes or misconceptions against Māori.

Boucher said she “struggled to think of a more important piece of work that our newsroom has produced”.

The new charter lays out Stuff’s commitment to “redressing wrongs and to doing better in future ways that will help foster trust in our work, deeper relationships with Māori and better representation of contemporary Aotearoa.”

Boucher also acknowledged Māori were under-represented in Stuff newsrooms, something the company “definitely [had] to address and redress”.

In May, Boucher took control of Stuff from its previous Australian owners, Nine – the shift into New Zealand ownership provides the company with the opportunity to reset and reposition the business, and its value system, she said.

“Our people advocated for the Treaty principles of partnership, participation and protection to be embedded in our new strategy.

“The Stuff Charter sets down a pou tiaki (guard post) to ensure we guard against this kind of inequity in our reporting and business practices in the future.

”Our wish is to be a trusted partner for tangata whenua for generations to come,” Boucher said.

This article was first published by Stuff here. It has been republished with permission.

Yesterday [Saturday], we received a lot of criticism over our coverage of the death of Senior Inspector Andrew Tovere.

As a news organisation, we have several responsibilities one of which is to deliver ACCURATE information.

READ MORE: Former PNG Defence Force chief calls for inquiry after policeman killed

Friday night’s incident presented several critical challenges:

Accuracy vs speed:
We had a situation that could have turned nasty if we had carelessly pumped out information as demanded by social media users. Yes. There is a place for breaking news and being first with information. However, given the situation [on Saturday], accuracy was of primary importance. I personally issued instructions to be careful of how we handled the situation.

Any sensationalism could have got us an enormous amount of traffic…. and contributed to tipping the city into chaos jeopardising the negotiation work that was being done by senior PNG Defence Force (PNGDF) and Royal PNG Constabulary (RPNGC) commanders behind the scenes. In short, we could have added to the complication and contributed to more deaths, had we not been careful.

Papua New Guinea is different. We all know that. I am urging everyone to look at the big picture in circumstances like this. Do not succumb to the lust for breaking news and dead bodies. As I said, there is a place for it.

Yesterday [Saturday], in my opinion, was not the place for it. We lost one senior police officer, and bear in mind, a human being with a family, a tribe and colleagues who could have taken a different course of action.

There is an editorial team made up of the head of news, the online editor, myself and other senior reporters that works everyday to verify incoming content. It is a lengthy ongoing process. It’s not “poor journalism”. it’s actually good journalism to verify and check sources. Good journalism is about accuracy and balance.

We have to care about our country.

News cannot, always, be handled like what you see in America, Australia and other countries. Our team always tries to take into account the wider impact on the community. A community made up of families, clans and tribes. That is a difficult task with no room for selfishness and sensationalism.

Verification:
While many will want to jump at the opportunity to share information circulated, we have to verify the details of what happened. We presented an honest, unsensationalised account of that happened also clearly stating that it was a developing story and that we would provide updates as things happened. There is nothing wrong with being honest and cautious.

We placed reporters at Port Moresby General Hospital to verify that a death had occurred then sought clarification from the RPNGC command and the police minister. We shared when we were sure everything we had was accurate.

Live broadcast (controlled and uncontrolled situations):
Quite a few people demanded “live coverage” of the shootout. Unfortunatley, it rarely happens in real life in UNCONTROLLED situations like a shootout. Some said we should be “risking our lives” to get accurate information. While I have team members who can do that, the answer for me as a team leader is NO.

I don’t have to explain this, but there are so many misconceptions related to this that sometimes, the comments border on fictional expectations. We don’t usually go to a scene and prepare for a police shootout to happen.

Let’s be realistic.

Scott Waide is a frequent contributor to the Pacific Media Centre’s Asia Pacific Report. Here he gives some insight into journalists’ dilemmas with news judgement, ethics and responsibility in Papua New Guinea in response to social media criticism of EMTV News coverage. The comment was first published on his Facebook page.

Australia’s news landscape, and the ability of citizens to access quality journalism, has been dealt a major blow by the announcement the Australian Associated Press is closing, with the loss of 180 journalism jobs.

Although AAP reporters and editors are generally not household names, the wire service has provided the backbone of news content for the country since 1935, ensuring every newspaper (and therefore every citizen) has had access to solid reliable reports on matters of national significance.

All news outlets have relied on AAP’s network of local and international journalists to provide stories from areas where their own correspondents could not go, from the courts to parliament and everywhere in between.

READ MORE: Media Files: What does the Nine Fairfax merger mean for diversity and quality journalism?

Despite a shrinking number of journalists in recent years and a rapid decrease in funding subscriptions, AAP continued to stand by its mission to provide news without political partisanship or bias. Speed was essential for the agency, but accuracy was even more important.

But AAP has struggled in recent years as newspapers and radio and television stations have sought to cut costs and started sourcing content for free from the internet, thanks to global publishing platforms, such as Google.

When AAP shut down its New Zealand newswire in 2018, it said subscribers were under pressure and asking for lower fees.

Media mergers, such as that of Nine and Fairfax, have also been bad for AAP, as companies consolidated their subscriptions. Sky News also gave up its AAP subscription to use News Limited in 2018.

The mantra within AAP had long been, if a major shareholder sneezes, the wire agency catches a cold.

Independence and integrity
In the opening to the book, On the Wire: The Story of Australian Associated Press, published in 2010 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of AAP, John Coomber wrote about the value of the wire service:

So much has changed in the news industry since AAP was formed by Keith Murdoch in 1935. Back then, it took a staff of only 12 people, with bureaus in London and New York, to bring overseas news into Australia.

But even in its earliest days, as an amalgamation of two agencies, the Australian Press Association and the Sun Herald Cable Service, it was set up to save money.

With the cost of cables, which were charged by the word, the pooling of resources was significant at the time. The AAP journalists were therefore required to create concise Australian-focused reports for local papers.

Although AAP reports were sometimes drawn together from other news sources, the agency’s reporters sometimes did their own original reporting. This led to wordage blowouts on major events, such as Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Austria in 1938, which set a record for the AAP’s wordage for the year.

The second world war was an unlikely boost to AAP as senior journalists from Australian papers were seconded to war zones as AAP special representatives.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Ray Maley, later Prime Minister Robert Menzies’ press secretary, was sent to Singapore. His story of the first clash between Australian and Japanese troops was widely used in newspapers in Britain and the US, as well as Australia.

Winston Turner, “our man in Batavia” (now Jakarta), was one of the last AAP journalists to get out of the region, escaping the invading Japanese by the narrowest of margins.

Award-winning journalism
AAP’s glory days weren’t just confined to the past. It has published numerous, award-winning stories in recent years, such as Lisa Martin’s report on Peter Dutton’s au pair scandal.

Long-time readers of Fairfax newspapers might remember the federal budget in 2017 when AAP filled the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age because Fairfax reporters had gone on strike. The copy written by Fairfax’s skeleton staff was sloppy, while AAP’s stories shone with the agency’s emphasis on accuracy.

AAP photographers, too, have captured moments of Australian history, such as Lukas Coch’s Walkley Award-winning picture of Linda Burney in blue high heels in the air celebrating the passage of the marriage equality law in 2017.

Coch also took the famous photo of then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard in the arms of an AFP officer when she lost a shoe while exiting a Canberra restaurant surrounded by protesters.

Rich training ground lost
One of the saddest parts of the closure of AAP is the loss of fantastic training opportunities for young reporters starting out in journalism.

AAP has produced some big names in journalism, including Kerry O’Brien, the PNG correspondent in the 1960s, and SMH editor Lisa Davies and Joe Hildebrand, who both started as AAP cadets.

AAP has solidly taken in four or five cadets each year for the past decade, and in recent years, a small group of editorial assistants. Over 12 months, the AAP cadets have been taught to write fast and accurately while also learning shorthand, video skills, ethics and media law.

During the global financial crisis in the 2000s, AAP took four cadets, while The Age took on none, and the Herald Sun only two.

As news of the AAP’s closure spreads across the country, it will be seen as yet another blow to public interest journalism in Australia.

Australia needs more sources of news, not fewer. The loss of AAP should be mourned not just by news men and women across the country, but by every single person who cares about democracy and the valuable work journalists do in keeping the public informed and the powerful to account.

By Dr Alexandra Wake, programme manager, journalism, RMIT University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

• Should governments provide funding grants to encourage public interest journalism?

Authorities and the media alike knew it was just a matter of time before New Zealand had its first case of the new coronavirus. But panic-buying sparked by the breaking news prompted more headlines this weekend that undermined the message to keep calm and carry on.

“Please – if you’re feeling anxious, try and maintain some perspective. Channel your energy into prudence,” Jack Tame told his Newstalk ZB audience on Saturday morning.

“This morning, as supermarkets are apparently overwhelmed by people stressed out about … a looming threat we can’t see, I think it’s a good opportunity for us all to strike a balance between prudence and perspective,” he said.

READ MORE: Coronavirus ‘getting bigger’  – Al Jazeera updates and infections map

It wasn’t prudence and perspective that needed to be balanced – but facts and fears.

Moments before he said all that on air, ZB’s traffic report warned of car congestion around supermarkets.

The ZB news at the top of the hour began with reports of panic-buying in Auckland supermarkets that morning, quoting one shopper’s description of a “zombie apocalypse.”

“It’s just nuts,” Alexia Russell told ZB news after visiting Wairau’s crowded Pak ‘n Save for supplies for a party.

Alexia Russell is also the producer of daily news podcast The Detail for RNZ and Newsroom.co.nz.

Misinformation examined
Two days earlier an entire edition of it was devoted to misinformation about Covid-19 and how it could provoke fear.

Meanwhile, on RNZ National, Kim Hill told her listeners: “I’d be panic-buying in Auckland too if I’d seen the screaming front page of the Weekend Herald.”

The front page of the paper on sale in Auckland yesterday was indeed startling.

Under the banner headline ‘First NZ Coronavirus case: PANDEMONIUM’ there was a big photo of a man in protective gear washing down an underground train.

But it wasn’t taken at Britomart station in Auckland – it was from Tehran, the capital of Iran and the point of origin of the New Zealand citizen who’d tested positive in Auckland on Friday.

There was also a smaller photo at the bottom of the page showing empty shelves at an unnamed Auckland  supermarket. The caption claimed “shelves across Auckland” were being cleaned out.

“Panicked shoppers had descended on supermarkets across Auckland, stocking up for what one labelled ‘the apocalypse’,” said the Weekend Herald.  

Panic-buying – but how bad really?
Panic-buying in several locations was certainly newsworthy, but how bad was this really?

The Herald story quoted one resident as saying his local Pak ‘n Save was “weird” from the outset – as it was hard to find a park at 9.15pm.

“We have been doing our groceries on Friday evenings for the past four years. Never seen anything this bad,” said another.

Another told the Herald it was “worse than Christmas Eve” in the aisles – but the Christmas crush at Countdown doesn’t usually make the news.

Interestingly, that PANDEMONIUM headline didn’t appear on Weekend Herald editions on sale outside Auckland.

And the panic-buying didn’t feature at all on the front pages of the other weekend papers in The Herald’s stable around the North Island.

Further South the Otago Daily Times – which shares copy with the Herald – led with “First case of virus in NZ.”

But queues and car park crushes in Auckland shops weren’t part of the picture.

Dramatic stuff but misleading
The business section of the Weekend Herald had the banner headline “World War V” and a huge picture of a health worker in a gown and facemask.

Dramatic stuff, but the pic was from Turin, Italy – and the actual story was an otherwise sober – and sombre – assessment of what coronavirus might do to our economy in the coming months.

Just as health authorities here have been planning for a case of Covid-19 on our soil, news media were ready with “what you need to know”-type explainers which were rolled out online when the news broke.

Radio stations had public health experts on hand to go on air.

“It’s absolutely business as usual. Go out and enjoy yourselves and do your usual things,” Otago University’s professor of public health Michael Baker said on NewstalkZB on Friday soon after the news of the first case was confirmed.

He could have added we should stick with trusted sources of news and information – but take panicky headlines like PANDEMONIUM and WORLD WAR V with a pinch of salt.

Colin Peacock is presenter of the RNZ Mediawatch programme. This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

In September 2019, the editor of The Conversation, Misha Ketchell, declared The Conversation’s editorial team in Australia was henceforth taking what he called a “zero-tolerance” approach to climate change deniers and sceptics. Their comments would be blocked and their accounts locked.

His reasons were succinct:

Climate change deniers and those shamelessly peddling pseudoscience and misinformation are perpetuating ideas that will ultimately destroy the planet.

READ MORE: Bushfires, bots and arson claims: Australia flung in the global disinformation spotlight

From the standpoint of conventional media ethics, it was a dramatic, even shocking, decision. It seemed to violate journalism’s principle of impartiality – that all sides of a story should be told so audiences could make up their own minds.

But in the era of climate change, this conventional approach is out of date. A more analytical approach is called for.

The ABC’s editorial policy on impartiality offers the best analytical approach so far developed in Australia. It states that impartiality requires:

• a balance that follows the weight of evidence
• fair treatment
• open-mindedness
• opportunities over time for principal relevant perspectives on matters of contention to be expressed.

Weight of evidence
It stops short of saying material contradicting the weight of evidence should not be published, which is the position adopted explicitly by The Conversation and implicitly by Guardian Australia.

Guardian Australia’s position is to concentrate on presenting the evidence that human-induced climate change is real and is having a detrimental effect on global heating, wildlife extinction and pollution. It states that this is the defining issue of our times and fundamental societal change is needed in response.

The position of Australia’s other big media organisations is far less clear and rests on generalities applicable to all issues.

The former Fairfax (now Nine) newspapers, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, have separate codes. The Age code does not mention impartiality but requires its journalists to report in a way that is fair, accurate and balanced. The Herald’s does mention impartiality but confines it to an instruction to avoid promoting an individual staff member’s personal interests or preferences.

Both say, however, that comment should be kept separate from news.

News Corp Australia’s editorial professional conduct policy is quite different from all these. It states that comment, conjecture and opinion are acceptable in [news] reports to provide perspective on an issue, or explain the significance of an issue, or to allow readers to recognise what the publication’s standpoint is on the matter being reported.

Its journalists are told to try always to tell all sides of the story when reporting on disputes.

Misleading publication
However, the policy also states that none of this allows the publication of information known to be inaccurate or misleading.

Markedly different as these positions are, they have one element in common: freedom of the press does not mean freedom to publish false or misleading material.

From an ethical perspective, this is a bare minimum. The ABC requires that its journalists follow the weight of evidence, which is a substantially more exacting standard of truthfulness than anything required by the Fairfax or News Corp newspapers. The Guardian Australia and The Conversation have imposed what it is in effect a ban on climate-change denialism, on the ground that it is harmful.

Harm is a long-established criterion for abridging free speech. John Stuart Mill, in his seminal work, On Liberty, published in 1859, was a robust advocate for free speech but he drew the line at harm:

[…] the only purpose for which power can be exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

It follows that editors may exercise the power of refusing to publish climate-denialist material if doing so prevents harm to others, without violating fundamental free-speech principles.

Other harms too provide established grounds for limiting free speech. Some of these are enforceable at law – defamation, contempt of court, national security – but speech about climate change falls outside the law and so becomes a question of ethics.

Climate change harm
The harms done by climate change, both at a planetary level and at the level of human health, are well-documented and supported by overwhelming scientific evidence.

At a planetary level, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a report last year on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.

It stated that human activities are estimated to have already caused approximately 1.0°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels, and that 1.5°C was likely to be reached between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.

At the level of human health, in June 2019 the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners published its Position Statement on Climate Change and Human Health.

It stated that climate change resulting from human activity “presents an urgent, significant and growing threat to health worldwide”.

Projected changes in Australia’s climate would result in more frequent and widespread heatwaves and extreme heat. This would increase the risks of heat stress, heat stroke, dehydration and mortality, contribute to acute cerebrovascular accidents, and aggravate chronic respiratory, cardiac and kidney conditions and psychiatric illness.

At both the planetary and human-health levels, then, the harms are serious and grounded in credible scientific evidence. It follows that they provide a strong ethical justification for the stands taken by The Conversation and Guardian Australia in prioritising Mill’s harm principle over free speech.

Limited internal guidance
Aside from these two platforms and the ABC, journalists are offered very limited internal guidance about how to approach the balancing of free-speech interests with the harm principle in the context of climate change.

External guidance is nonexistent. The ethical codes promulgated by the media accountability bodies – the Australian Press Council and the Australian Communications and Media Authority – make no mention of how impartiality should be achieved in the context of climate change. The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s code of ethics is similarly silent.

These bodies would serve the profession and the public interest by developing specific standards to deal with the issue of climate change, and guidance about how to meet them. It is not an issue like any other. It is existential on a scale surpassing even nuclear war.

As I write in my study at Central Tilba on the far south coast of New South Wales, the entire landscape of farmland, bush and coastline is shrouded in smoke. It has been like that since before Christmas.

Twice we have been evacuated from our home. Twice we have been among the lucky ones to return unhurt and find our home intact.

The front of the Badja Forest Road fire (292,630 ha) is 3.6 km to the north, creeping towards us in the leaf litter. A northerly wind would turn it into an immediate threat.

From this perspective, media acquiescence in climate change denial, failure to follow the weight of evidence, or continued adherence to an out-of-date standard of impartiality looks like culpable irresponsibility.

Dr Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

• Reporting on the Australian bushfires: It has been heartbreaking
• Bushfires won’t change climate policy overnight. But Morrison can shift the Coalition without losing face

More New Zealand journalists have been seeking ways to “prevent tragedy” through their reporting, shows new research published in Columbia Journalism Review.

The research, which analysed domestic and international coverage of last month’s Christchurch terror attacks, found that New Zealand news media preferred to focus on the victims, their relatives and the support from the community rather than the terrorist or his manifesto.

It also found that the most popular story in the week following March 15 shooting was a New Zealand Herald piece featuring “biographies of all the victims, focusing on their lives and their faith, which was shared almost 1.4 million times on Facebook”.

READ MORE: How can journalists improve diversity in the media?

“It seems, from our findings, that more journalists are stepping back from the “who, what, where, how, and why” to questions of how to prevent tragedy,” the research report said.

This contrasts with overseas coverage, especially by publications in the United Kingdom, which frequently used the terrorist’s name and discussed his ideas and manifesto.

“The Daily Mail also featured the shooter’s name in headlines, published excerpts from the forum post where he announced the shooting, and showed photographs of the weapons he would use, emblazoned with names and phrases designed to promote his cause,” the research said.

However, The New Zealand Herald was found to have mentioned the terrorist’s name in almost half of its most popular stories.

No Notoriety guidelines
The research team analysed 6337 stories in 508 national-level English-language news sources in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, using a guidelines template developed by the No Notoriety media advocacy organisation.

“We found a mix of good and bad news for campaigns such as No Notoriety,” the researchers reported.

“We examined the stories we retrieved for compliance with seven guidelines, compiled from No Notoriety and other campaigns that seek to limit the amplification of terrorist acts through media.

“While media justice campaigns often seek out journalists as conduits of change, we also expanded our analysis to assess whether internet culture reflects journalistic choices about whether to list the name or ideology of the attacker.”

The research team coded for compliance with the following best practices:

• Don’t publish the shooter’s name.
• Don’t link to or publish the name of the forum that the shooter posted on to promote the attacks.
• Don’t link to or publish the name of the shooter’s manifesto.
• Don’t describe or detail the shooter’s ideology.
• Don’t publish or name specific memes linked to the shooter’s ideology.
• Don’t refer to the shooter as a troll or his actions as trolling.
• Follow the AP (Associated Press) guidelines for using the term “alt-right” (contain it within quotation marks or modify it with language such as “so-called” or “self-described”)

The research team authors were Jason Baumgartner, Fernando Bermejo, Emily Ndulue, Ethan Zuckerman and Joan Donovan, all members of the International Hate Observatory project hosted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab.

Historical coverage
The research comes at a time when New Zealand media have been under scrutiny for “negative coverage” of Muslims prior to the Christchurch attacks.

A 2018 research paper in Pacific Journalism Review entitled Representations of Islam and Muslims in New Zealand Media found a clear link between Islam and terrorism in New Zealand media articles.

Of the 14349 stories featuring Islam, 90 percent also mentioned either Islamic jihad or Islamic terrorism.

The research also found many stories about Islam lacked the voice of the Muslim subject and were written in a way that created “suspicion or fear.”

The paper’s author, Khairiah Rahman, told Pacific Media Watch it was essential for journalists to engage in dialogue with their story subjects to adequately convey their voice and avoid misrepresenting them.

However, she said the New Zealand media had done excellent work covering the Muslim community since the Christchurch attacks.

“I think we’ve improved a lot since then,” she said.

“There’s been a huge wake up call.”

Newstalk ZB broadcaster Heather du Plessis-Allan has been censured for Pacific Island slurs in a ruling that contains uncharacteristically strong language from the official broadcasting watchdog.

It may end up costing NZME more than the $3000 the company must cough up in costs.

On her Newstalk ZB show Wellington Mornings this week, Heather du Plessis-Allan praised Jacinda Ardern for paying the grocery bill of someone without a wallet.

READ AND LISTEN MORE ON RNZ MEDIAWATCH

But about an hour earlier, the Broadcasting Standards Authority upheld complaints about Heather du Plessis-Allan telling listeners the government shouldn’t pay the bills of other Pacific Island nations.

“The Pacific Islands don’t matter. They are nothing but leeches on us,” she said.

Unsurprisingly that upset a lot of people who heard it at the time – or later on RNZ’s Mediawatch.

Some people who called Newstalk ZB to complain were initially told they should complain to RNZ instead because that’s where they heard it.

Proper context
ZB’s owner NZME argued some complaints should not be considered from people who “saw other media reporting” of the comments without the proper context.

The context – by the way – was Heather du Plessis-Allan telling listeners the Pacific Islands did not deserve financial aid from New Zealand and Jacinda Ardern shouldn’t go to the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru – which Heather du Plessis-Allan called “a hellhole”.

The BSA ruling said her comments breached the good taste and decency standards – and those for discrimination and denigration. ZB’s owner NZME has been ordered to pay $3000 in costs.

The comments were “inflammatory”, said the BSA, and “devalued the reputation of Pasifika people within New Zealand – including New Zealanders of Pacific origin”.

NZME had argued the host’s comments were not about specific individuals or organisations and the audience expect “a forthright manner” from a former political journalist.

“Her opinion is in line with the robust opinions offered in talkback … which has been recognised as a special category of radio by the Authority,” said NZME.

Indeed it is.

‘Went too far’
But the BSA decided that “even in the talkback context, these statements went too far”.

Things are said in the heat of the moment in talk radio to spark discussion – things callers and hosts alike may not say given more time for reflection.

But in this case, du Plessis-Allan re-affirmed them two days later.

“I will double down on this. I do not regret what I said because I was not talking about people living in this country or the people themselves. I was talking about the Pacific Islands and the people who run it [sic],” she told her listeners.

She also took a big swing at critics of her comments – including Privacy Commissioner John Edwards.

“Go back to university and do some more training. You are not good enough,” she said.

The Authority considered du Plessis-Allan was disingenuous in subsequently arguing that she had been referring to the Pacific Islands as leeches, not the people themselves.

“Countries are not just plots of land. They are the land and their people,” the Authority stated.

Deliberate choice
The BSA said she was deliberate in her choice of words and coupled with her “dismissive tone” it “reflected a high level of condemnation towards the Pacific Islands … with an element of malice and nastiness and went beyond responsible broadcasting.”

The authority is not usually so strong in its condemnation of a broadcaster.

Underlying all this was Heather du Plessis-Allan’s view that New Zealand aid to the Pacific Islands has not been well spent – something worth discussing in light of the Pacific Reset policy.

But du Plessis-Allan misled her listeners when she seized on Niue as an example.

She told her listeners pension portability for Niueans amounted to “welfare sponging”.

But she didn’t say Niue is a self-governing territory affiliated to New Zealand and Niueans are also New Zealand citizens.

Niueans – or other Pacific people for that matter – wouldn’t get a pension if they were not entitled to one by living here in New Zealand in the first place – and incentivising pensioners to relocate could help reduce economic dependence on New Zealand that she seemed so worried about.

Employers using temporary migration work visas and the New Zealand companies exporting roughly 13 times as much as New Zealand imports from Pacific Island countries would also disagree with her claim “we get nothing from them”.

What’s the punishment?
The award of $3000 in costs doesn’t sound a significant – but it is.

The BSA only awards costs up to a maximum of $5000 to signal serious breaches of standards.

“NZME is a large and experienced broadcaster, with staff who ought to be familiar with their obligations under broadcasting standards,” it said.

The BSA can order a broadcaster off the air for up to 24 hours, but only in exceptional circumstances. The last time it did that was 12 years ago.

NZME has instead been ordered to broadcast a statement summarising the decision on the Wellington Mornings programme – and an apology from its host.

The BSA and du Plessis-Allan’s employers at NZME agreed on one thing: she has already been subjected to heavy public criticism for what she said in September last year.

Recently she tweeted from a vigil in Wellington that she was “standing with our Muslim community” after the Christchurch attacks. Some followers replied to remind her she hurt Pacific Islands communities with her comments.

After the attacks, NZME head of talk radio Jason Winstanley told Stuff several previously-published items had been pulled from ZB’s websites because they were “upsetting people.”

“Our priority is to do the best we can for all New Zealanders, and honour those who have lost their lives,” he said.

It remains to be seen what that means on air at Newstalk ZB and the other ZB hosts who have a habit of provoking people to engage – and enrage – the audience because it’s good for business.

It’s also an issue for NZME stablemate The New Zealand Herald which is preparing to ask readers to pay for “premium content” online.

The Herald publishes the opinions of du Plessis-Allan and other ZB hosts each week and the cost of embarrassments like this BSA ruling may be greater than $3000 in costs to the Crown.

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

• More ‘Pacific leeches’ slur reports
• RNZ Mediawatch

COMMENTARY: By Jeremy Rose of RNZ Mediawatch

The speech by Imam Gamal Fouda of Al Noor mosque delivered just a week after the Christchurch massacre was a remarkable celebration of love, compassion and unity.

“This terrorist chose to tear our nation apart with an evil ideology which has torn the world apart. But instead we have shown that New Zealand is unbreakable and that the world can see in us an example of love and unity. We are broken-hearted but we are not broken.”

But Imam Fouda didn’t shy away from criticising those he believes helped pave the way to the massacre of 15 March 2019.

“The martyrdom of 50 innocent people and the injury of 42 last Friday did not come overnight – it was the result of the anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim rhetoric by some political leaders, some media agencies and others.”

LISTEN TO RNZ MEDIAWATCH

Freelance journalist Saziah Bashir is among those who have joined Imam Fouda in his criticism of the media.

“Muslims have been dehumanised and demonised in the media the world ever since 9/11. The failure to include Muslim voices in this narrative has left unchallenged the stereotypes painted of us, as if we are a two-dimensional monolith, a single monstrous Other,” said Bashir, writing on RNZ’s website four days after the massacre.

And there’s plenty of hard evidence of skewed media reporting both here and overseas.

An article in The Guardian last week cited 2007 research that found 91 percent of stories about Muslims appearing in a single week were negative. A 2011 study carried out over three months put the figure at 70 percent.

Australia’s Muslim One Path Network carried out research last year with similar results. It examined the 2017 coverage of Islam in five Australian newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and found “almost 3000 articles that referred to Islam or Muslims alongside words like violence, extremism, terrorism or radical”.

“We also found 152 front pages over the year that featured Islam in some negative capacity. A lot of the time, these articles and exclusives were the featured item, the most important story for selling the newspaper.”

Support for that negative coverage goes right to the top. Rupert Murdoch – who has an ownership stake in vast swathes of the world’s media including The Wall Street Journal and Fox News – in 2015 tweeted:

The situation in New Zealand
In 2017 the New Zealand media featured 14,349 stories that included the word Islam – nearly 13,000 of those stories mentioned either terrorism or Islamic Jihad.

The statistics are from an academic article in Pacific Journalism Review, Representations of Islam and Muslims in New Zealand Media, by Khairiah Rahman and Azadeh Emadi.

The paper concluded:

“There appears to be a growing misconceived hatred for a faith supported by 1.5 billion of the world’s population, but more importantly, this destructive trend is promoted by the media, consciously or not, and has the potential to ultimately cause an unnecessary and irreparable rift in civil society.”

Rahman – a senior lecturer in communication studies and Pacific Media Centre advisory board member at Auckland University of Technology – told Mediawatch that in 2017 for every New Zealand-produced story that mentioned Islam, there were seven that mentioned Islamic terrorism. And the ratio in overseas newswire stories was even higher.

“We found that stories tend to be more fair and balanced when Muslim voices are represented. And they tend to be negative or confused in their treatment of Muslims and Islam when the Muslim voice is absent or manipulated,” said Rahman.

She said virtually all of the stories mentioning terrorism or jihad lacked a Muslim perspective.

But things have changed dramatically since the tragic events of March 15.

“In the last week… the New Zealand media did actually make a difference. I think they’re leading the way. It’s not just about Muslims or Islam or Islamophobia, but it’s about representation of diversity and the different voices in societies where there is predominantly one sort of culture,” she said.

Former RNZ journalist Mohamed Hassan agrees.

“The coverage has been incredibly sympathetic. I think a lot of the media has done really well and has been really generous in opening up those spaces and giving those spaces to Muslim voices…. myself included,” he told Mediawatch.

Hassan, who now works for Turkish public broadcaster TRT World, said it had taken the media “a very long time to figure out how to talk about terrorism when those involved in it are of a Muslim background.”

He said there were a lot of media outlets that completely ignored Muslim voices.

“Every time you have a terrorist attack, as a media organisation you have a panel of five experts talking about Islam, none of whom are Muslim, none of whom come from those communities. So everything they say, there’s no rebuttal to,” he said.

“This week has been a really great case study of how to deal with issues that involved the Muslim community.

“Now that there are these Muslim who have been presented and have had their say – all of them are very eloquent, all of them are amazing representatives for their community, and they’re trusted… (it’s important) these voices are not forgotten when the time comes and there’s an issue that involves the Muslim community.”

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

• ‘Broken-hearted but not broken’: Al Noor imam’s Christchurch speech in full
• Mohamed Hassan’s Public Enemy podcast deals with realities of living as a Muslim in the post-9/11 world.

By RNZ Pacific

OPINION: An open letter to broadcaster Heather du Plessis-Allan on behalf of New Zealanders who have worked, and those are who are still working, in development in Solomon Islands:

Heather du Plessis-Allan’s recent comments on [Newstalk ZB] that the Pacific are leeches on New Zealand is dangerously ignorant, insulting to Pacific Islanders working hard for their countries, and undermines New Zealand itself.

This open letter is supported by a group of New Zealanders who have worked and those are who are still working in development in the Solomon Islands and condemns Ms du Plessis-Allan’s remarks on Newstalk ZB as well as Newstalk ZB’s implicit support.

History has shown that the dehumanisation of a group of people by referring to them as a class of non-human animals liberates aggression and has far-reaching consequences in enabling one group of people to hurt the other group. Well-known examples of this have been shown in the calling of Tutsi people as “cockroaches”, Bosniaks and Croatians as “aliens”, and Jews as “rats and parasites”.

READ MORE: Tongan scholars lodge protests over broadcaster’s ‘leeches’ jibe

Journalism and broadcasting plays a crucial role in all countries as voices and opinions are distributed nationwide, and so the spread of hatred should have no place in this process. National broadcasters should know better.

Here in the Solomon Islands, we work alongside many hardworking people. We work across a range of sectors, including governance, justice, climate change, health, education, youth, tourism, infrastructure, and journalism.

We work with people from the country leader level down to the staff out on the field. While of course no country is without bad people here and there, they are always outnumbered by the many good people who are dedicated to the development of the country.

It would not be surprising to find that Solomon Islanders are vastly dedicated to their own development, equally if not more so, than those in New Zealand. We have no doubt that the Solomon Islands are not unique in the Pacific in this aspect.

‘Hellholes’ insult
To paint entire countries and regions as hellholes and leeches is an insult to the good people working hard to make a change.

Finally, as there are many exemplary New Zealanders who have dedicated many years working across the Pacific Islands to help build capacity and strengthen institutions, it follows that the remarks belittle our efforts. To say that Pacific Islanders are leeching off us is a gross misunderstanding of the situation and undermines the credibility of the work of New Zealanders in the field.

Foreign aid exists not simply as a charity, but it is well understood that helping our neighbours helps us in return. In turn, we have more trade partners, better prevention of epidemics, better regional and national security, improved international relations, and of course a better reputation for New Zealand. To say that the Pacific Islands don’t matter shows a lack of understanding. The fraction of money that the New Zealand government spends here is well worth the returns we receive.

We understand that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. We simply hope that the opinions are well-formed, evidence-based, and do not spread hatred due to gross generalisations and misinformation.

However, while her comments have certainly not gone unnoticed here in the Solomon Islands, the general reaction from Solomon Islanders indicates an understanding that the unfortunate actions of a few individuals do not represent an entire nation, let alone an entire region.

Solomon Islanders continue to hold New Zealand and New Zealanders in high regard and we New Zealanders working here are confident that this remains the case.

On behalf of:

Nid Satjipanon
Howard Lawry
Rosalind Lawry
Kate Haughey
Anna O’Keefe
Sophie Lewis-Smith
Elisabeth Degremont
Jack Thompson
Craig Hooper
Pip Stevenson
Catherine Hanson-Friend
Patrick Rose
Nicole Herron
Jackie Cronin

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

At this week’s gathering of key Pacific Island leaders on the Micronesian island of Nauru, conspicuously missing were journalists from Australia’s public broadcaster.

This was because the South Pacific’s smallest nation has refused visas to journalists from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to enable them to attend and cover the four-day Pacific Islands Forum leaders summit.

And one of the Pacific’s most experienced journalists, Television New Zealand’s Barbara Dreaver was detained for more than three hours yesterday after interviewing refugees from the notorious Australian-established detention centres on the island. The Nauru government claims she was not “detained”, merely “questioned’.

READ MORE: Self-immolation, hunger strikes and suicide: Children on Nauru want to die

The Nauru government’s ban on the ABC, it says, is in retaliation for the news organisation’s “blatant interference in Nauru’s domestic politics prior to the 2016 elections, harassment of and lack of respect towards our President and… continued biased and false reporting about our country.”

But some say ABC’s criticism of Nauru’s policies on notorious Australian-run refugee detention centre on the island – plagued by widespread reports of physical, psychological and sexual abuse, with at least five suicide deaths to date – may have more to do with it.

Those controversial camps are not on the agenda and not likely to be a subject of much discussion within the forum which ended today.

And neither is the issue of free speech and media freedom, since efforts to repress critical reporting has become increasingly common among Pacific governments.

Climate change
It is not only climate change and rising sea levels that threaten the lives and wellbeing of Pacific Islanders. Rising levels of official intolerance of dissent and free speech across the region pose a threat to the wellbeing of their democracies.

Indeed, CIVICUS Monitor, an online platform that tracks threats to civil society across the globe, has found that these violations of freedom of expression appear to be systemic in the region.

In Fiji, attempts by the government to intimidate and silence free speech is creating a chilling effect ahead of upcoming national elections and before the date has even been set.

In February, Island Business magazine’s editor and two of its journalists were questioned under the Public Order Act over articles on the firing of a magistrate who had presided over a union dispute.

The 2016 sedition charges against The Fiji Times – widely regarded as the country’s last independent news outlet – saw its publisher, editor-in-chief and two others hauled through the courts over a reader’s letter to the editor that allegedly contained controversial views about Muslims.

Human rights groups believe the charges were politically motivated. The state has filed an appeal against their acquittal.

Journalists in Papua New Guinea often work in fear and many believe media freedom has been eroded. In February this year, PNG Post Courier reporter, Franky Kapin, was attacked and assaulted by staff from the Morobe Province Governor’s office for alleged biased reporting.

Journalists threatened
Journalists continue to be threatened and barred from covering the ongoing crisis at the Australian refugee detention center on Manus Island (after its closure) in the country’s north.

Senior Papua New Guinean journalist Titi Gabi says that increasing outside interference of the editorial process and the bribing and threatening of journalists has led to media freedom no longer being enjoyed in the country.

After a passenger ferry sank in Kiribati in February, leaving 93 people dead, authorities barred foreign journalists from entering the country to report on the disaster.

Meanwhile, the government of Samoa was criticised by a media freedom lobby group earlier this year for seeking to repress freedom of expression by reintroducing legislation on criminal libel without proper public consultation

Civil society groups in the regional power of Australia are extremely concerned about the impact that changes to security laws will have on fundamental freedoms. The National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill 2017 and the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Bill 2017 were met with a storm of protest from media outlets and civil society organisations.

Australian Lawyers for Human Rights has criticised the legislation, warning that the measures will have a “severely chilling effect upon academic research, free speech, and particularly constitutionally-protected free political speech”.

According to Amnesty International Australia, the draconian laws will make it a crime for charities to expose human rights violations, and to communicate with the United Nations about those violations.

Stifled free speech
So, why are governments in the region working to increasingly stifle free speech?

For one, they are coming under growing public scrutiny, led by journalists and civil society using social media, for abuse of power, lack of transparency and corruption at various government levels.

News stories exposing official human rights violations have received global attention, thanks to the efforts of international media and non-governmental organisations. Averse to the negative publicity, Pacific governments have responded with repressive action.

Also, civil society groups in the Pacific are increasingly raising not just national concerns but sensitive regional ones as well, such as rights abuses in West Papua, a region in Indonesia where there is an active pro-independence movement, and in refugee detention centres in Nauru and PNG’s Manus Island.

Seeking to appease regional powerhouses Indonesia and Australia as they appeal for economic investment, governments of small island states have no qualms trying to silence those speaking out on these issues at home.

In turn, the “growing influence of China” has also been cited as a justification for Australia’s new security policies. But many believe another objective is to keep government dealings from the public.

This regional trend flies in the face of Pacific countries’ clear commitments to respect and protect freedom of expression.

Good governance
In 2000, governments signed the Biketawa Declaration committing themselves to democracy, good governance, protection of human rights and maintenance of the rule of law. At the meeting in Nauru, leaders are expected to sign a Biketawa Plus Declaration, building on the original document.

In recent years, island nations have also made commitments to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which include the promotion of peaceful and inclusive societies, access to justice for all and effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels contained in Goal 16. Ensuring fundamental freedoms is pivotal to meeting this goal, as well as the other 16 SDGs.

Leaders at the gathering needed to reiterate their nations’ commitment to fundamental freedoms in its communique and demonstrate it – to create an enabling environment for both the media and civil society to work without fear of criminalisation, harassment and reprisals.

Failing to do so – and the detention of Barbara Dreaver yesterday – are clear signs that the forum is willing to undermine its international obligations and its commitment to democracy and the rule of law.

Josef Benedict is a civic space research officer with global civil society alliance Civicus and a contributor to Asian Correspondent. This article is republished from Asian Correspondent with the permission of the author.

• Media freedom commentators condemn ‘gag’ actions
• Other Pacific Island Forum stories

The average Australian’s conception of Pacific island nations is so limited it makes some of us wonder if they even want to understand. Our voices—and our reality—have been pointedly and repeatedly ignored in the media, and in the corridors of power.

An Australian news service breathlessly proclaims Chinese plans to build a military base only a short flight away from Brisbane, and the Canberra commentariat has kittens.

Vanuatu insiders say “it was never on the cards”.

“Yes, but it was discussed!” insist defence analysts.

“A base was never discussed and it would never happen,” says Vanuatu’s Foreign Minister.

“Yes, but a Chinese military presence is in the works!” insist the same analysts.

“Vanuatu would never agree to this and anyone who says otherwise is indulging in malicious speculation,” says Vanuatu’s Prime Minister.

“Cold warriors”
“Here’s the wharf where it’s going to happen!” announce Australian media, and a chorus of “cold warriors” claim that Australia is forsaking its God-given leadership role in the Pacific.

“We, uh, have our own leaders,” say Pacific islanders.

“Yes, but they’re drowning your countries in debt!” cry the politicos.

“Well, we’re not perfect, but there’s no crisis,” say our analysts. “Our debt to GDP ratio is less than half of Australia’s.”

“China is slyly using debt/equity swaps to take over your infrastructure!” Canberra cries.

“No, actually. Our loans don’t contain language that would allow that,” reply the islanders, who by this time are wondering why they even bother saying anything.

The Chinese Bases folderol is just the latest chorus in a litany of Australian indifference to Pacific voices. Every time some tendentious prat opens their mouth and starts telling the Pacific that what’s good for Australia is obviously good for us, the entire region sighs.

Collective eye roll
That jolt you just felt was a collective eye roll that nearly tipped the island.

Can we get something clear? If you want us to listen to you, you’ve got to listen to us.

It may have escaped your attention, but there was an earthquake in Papua New Guinea recently.

It affected over half a million people, killing 150 outright and leaving 270,000 in need of humanitarian assistance. The situation remains desperate, and the breakdown of law and order in some areas has made it impossible for aid organisations to work.

You can be forgiven for not knowing this. There were no Chinese warships involved.

As you read this, massive ash falls from an active volcano are forcing 11,000 Ni-Vanuatu to relocate for the second time in six months. Thousands may never return home. No Chinese warships were involved, so again, you might not have heard.

Make no mistake: When the Pacific is in need, Australia helps. It helps more than any other nation. But the overwhelming majority of Australians don’t seem to know or care that it does.

They don’t know
If they knew, they’d probably care. But they don’t know, so they have no reason to care.

This is the fault of the media. Specifically, it’s an editorial failure. Reporters are champing at the bit to share our stories, but producers and editors constantly baulk at the time and expense of reporting from and about the Pacific islands.

On the morning Vanuatu announced the evacuation of 11,000 people from the volcanic island of Ambae, the journos who broke the Chinese base story were still in Vanuatu. When told the news, they doubted that Fairfax would pay for them to go to Ambae to report on the exodus.

This is the same company that gladly paid a team to spend a week reporting on a defence analyst’s fever dreams, someone whom the team members themselves admitted might be paranoid.

The main difference between Beijing and Canberra is that Beijing listens. For better or for worse, Chinese diplomats listen to what Pacific leaders want. Often enough, they give it to them.

And more often than not, Australian pollies wait patiently for Pacific Islanders to finish speaking, then tell them what they need. There is a pervasive and deeply pernicious perception in the foreign policy establishment that Pacific voices don’t count.

Political cartoon
A recent political cartoon in the Sydney Morning Herald distils the attitude prettily.

An island with nothing but a grass shack and a few benighted dark people is deserted by its erstwhile benefactors, and left to the tender mercies of a shipload of Asian hucksters.

Without Julie Bishop and Malcolm Turnbull and the gang, we’re left helplessly clutching our cowrie shells.

The image is so absurdly parochial it borders on outright racism.

Who benefits from these Chinese wharves? We do! The people of Vanuatu. You might have heard of us. We live here.

Beginning this week, that wharf will be the landing point for thousands of people displaced by natural disaster. Australian relief ships will no doubt be welcomed, too.

Let’s see how many headlines our devastated lives derive.

My guess is zero—unless we invite the Chinese navy to help.

Dan McGarry is media director of the Vanuatu Daily Post group. This article is republished with permission.

• Baseless rumours: why talk of Chinese military base in Vanuatu misses point
• More Vanuatu stories

Half of all race-related opinion pieces in the Australian mainstream media are likely to contravene industry codes of conduct on racism.

In research released this week, the Who Watches the Media report found that of 124 race-related opinion pieces published between January and July this year, 62 were potentially in breach of one or more industry codes of conduct, because of racist content.

Despite multiple industry codes of conduct stipulating fair race-related reporting, racist reporting is a weekly phenomenon in Australia’s mainstream media.

We define racism as unjust covert or overt behaviour towards a person or a group on the basis of their racial background. This might be perpetrated by a person, a group, an organisation, or a system.

The research, conducted by not-for-profit group All Together Now and the University of Technology Sydney, focused on opinion-based pieces in the eight Australian newspapers and current affairs programmes with the largest audiences, as determined by ratings agencies.

We found that negative race-related reports were most commonly published in News Corp publications. The Daily Telegraph, The Australian and Herald Sun were responsible for the most negative pieces in the press. A Current Affair was the most negative among the broadcast media.

Muslims were mentioned in more than half of the opinion pieces, and more than twice as many times as any other single group mentioned (see chart 2).

Portrayed more negatively
Muslims were portrayed more negatively than the other minority groups, with 63 percent of reports about Muslims framed negatively. These pieces often conflated Muslims with terrorism. For example, reports used terrorist attacks in the UK to question accepting Muslim refugees and immigrants to Australia.

This was a recurring theme in race-based opinion pieces over the study period. In contrast, there were more positive than negative stories about Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders.

Negative commentary about minority groups has lasting impacts in the community. An op-ed in The New York Times recently highlighted the impact that racism in the media has on individuals. It explained:

…racism doesn’t have to be experienced in person to affect our health — taking it in the form of news coverage is likely to have similar effects.

The noted effects include elevated blood pressure, long after television scenes are over. Racism is literally making us sick.

Note also that given the lack of cultural diversity among opinion-makers, particularly on television, social commentators are largely talking about groups to which they do not belong. According to the 2016-20 PwC Media Outlook report, the average media employee is 27, Caucasian and male, which does not reflect the current population diversity of Australia.

This creates a strong argument for increasing the cultural diversity of all media agencies to help minimise the number of individuals or groups being negatively depicted in race-related reports.

Our research echoes the findings of the UN expert panel on racial discrimination, which reported last week that racist media debate was on the rise in Australia. The UN recommended the Australian media “put an end to racist hate speech” in print and online, and adopt a “code of good conduct” with provisions to ban racism.

Urgent recommendations
Our report makes urgent recommendations to strengthen media regulations in relation to race-based reporting, to support journalists to discuss race sensitively, and to continue media monitoring.

While media regulations enable audiences to make complaints about racism in the media, under some codes, audiences have only 30 days to do so. The research report recommends that this deadline be removed to allow audiences to make complaints about racist media content at any time.

It also calls for the definition of racism be broadened in the codes of conduct to include covert forms of racism. Covert racism includes subtle stereotyping, such as the repeated depiction of Muslim women with dark veils, implying secrecy and provoking suspicion.

News agencies need to do more to help journalists address race issues responsibly. They can do this by providing training, recruiting more journalists of colour, and ensuring that their editorial policies are racially aware.

The media are meant to hold up a mirror to society. When it comes to race-related reporting, we need a more accurate portrayal of the successes of Australian multiculturalism.

Dr Christina Ho is senior lecturer and discipline coordinator in Social and Political Sciences, University of Technology Sydney. Priscilla Brice and Deliana Iacoban from All Together Now, a not-for-profit group working to combat racism, also contributed to this article. Republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence.

Papua New Guinea has long luxuriated in the bright light of the soubriquet, “Land of the Unexpected’, but this 2017 general election has exceeded all of those unexpectations.

Here are some of the more recent developments that the unfortunates on the international election observer team (already once verballed into seemingly endorsing the poll) are duty bound to investigate when reaching their conclusion on whether this election has been free and fair and provided a just result.

Enga vote deferred amid new election disruptions (Peter Kinjap – Asia Pacific Report): Polling in Enga was deferred as the majority of candidates raised grievances and electoral roll problems again surfaced. All MPs except those loyal to Peter O’Neill’s government said election manager Anton Yamau “must not hold Enga people in ransom”.

Gamato must not declare Ialibu-Pangia first (Sir Mekere Morauta, Kerenga Kua, Patrick Pruaitch, Ben Micah and Sam Basil – Joint Media Statement): Electoral Commissioner Patilias Gamato must not further undermine the integrity of the national election by declaring Peter O’Neill’s Ialibu-Pangia seat ahead of other seats. Doing so would send a clear signal to Papua New Guineans that election manipulation is continuing with the aim of forming a PNC-led government. The declaration of Ialibu-Pangia first in the 2012 election undoubtedly gave an advantage to PNC candidates in seats where voting was continuing. There must not be a repeat.

Vital initiatives to be taken to improve electoral roll (Matthew Vari – PNG Post-Courier): Electoral Commissioner Gamato said negotiations would begin with a new PNG government to undergo the vital initiatives to improve the electoral roll. He said the Electoral Commission operated like any government institution with budgetary constraints. “We requested a higher allocation of funds than that which was provided to us, but we must now work within our financial limits. We will persevere and continue to manage this election, despite these challenges,” Gamato said.

PM removed police unit trying to stop election fraud (PNG Blogs): Peter O’Neill intervened in the election process in Pangia after he told Police Commissioner Gary Baki to remove a mobile police unit from Wabag where it was tasked in looking after ballot boxes for Pangia. The unit had a confrontation with one of the prime minister’s bodyguards after a polling official removed scrutineers who were not supporting the prime minister. The bodyguard made a call to the PM who demanded the unit be removed from Pangia.

Polling area at University of PNG campus in Port Moresby – University students’ names not on PNG electoral roll (Radio New Zealand International): Many University of Papua New Guinea students are among those denied a chance to vote in this year’s election. Student Gerald Tulu Manu-Peni said he made sure his name was on the roll in March, but found his name missing when he and others in the National Capital District went to vote last Friday. Manu-Peni said at least a couple thousand student voters missed out on voting. “Not only students at the university but all around the country this is the same problem going on, so it seems that there is really something wrong somewhere,” he explained.

Armed attack in Hela to destroy ballot boxes (Malum Nalu & James Gumuno – The National): Armed men have attempted to destroy ballot boxes stored in containers at Tari police station. Assistant Police Commissioner Kaiglo Ambane said candidates and their supporters armed with high-powered guns exchanged fire with members of the security task force guarding the boxes. The security forces held their ground, forcing the armed men to retreat after around 30 minutes of fighting. “There are no casualties from the security forces. I do not know about the candidates and their supporters,” he said.

Police commander seeks permission to arrest candidates (Helen Tarawa – The National): Northern police commander Chief Inspector Lincoln Gerari is seeking approval from Police Commissioner Gari Baki to arrest two candidates for alleged bribery and discharging a firearm in public. Gerari said only Baki could give approval for the arrest of candidates during the elections. He said there was a direction from Baki not to carry out any arrests until after polling.

PNG election ‘progressing well’ despite polling problems (Liam Fox – ABC): Elections are progressing well despite thousands of people being prevented from voting, electoral commissioner Patilias Gamato says. He said the election could not be declared a failure. But just over halfway into the two-week polling period, thousands of voters are crying foul after being told their names were not on the electoral roll. Others have been prevented from voting because of a lack of ballot papers at some polling booths. Despite the problems, Gamato said voting was “progressing well” and would be completed on time in most electorates.

• More PNG election stories

Tongan Prime Minister ʻAkilisi Pōhiva has hit back at reports that he told a press conference that “Chinese businesses in Tonga did not pay any tax at all,” claiming his words were “twisted” in the media, reports Kaniva News.

Pōhiva also said reports that he said the Chinese would take over the country in the future were taken out of context.

Pōhiva told Kalino Latu of Kaniva News in an interview in ‘Atalanga, Auckland, that what he told media was that a Chinese company, Yan Jian Group Co Ltd, did not pay any tax at all.

The embattled prime minister’s government faces a lawsuit hearing on Friday over changes at the state-run Tongan Broadcasting Commission that are being condemned by critics as an attack on media freedom in the kingdom, Radio NZ International reports.

The sacked head of TBC, Nanise Fifita, can continue in her job until the judicial review of the dismissal is heard.

Pōhiva told Kaniva News: “I did not mean all the Chinese businesses in Tonga did not pay tax. That was not true.”

The Yan Jian Group has operated in Tonga since 2009 as the principal contractor on a major roads improvement scheme with the aid of the Chinese government

Court case revelation
Pōhiva said he was surprised when it was revealed in a recent court case that the former government had agreed to allow the Yan Jian Group not to pay any taxes.

The revelation was made during a Land Court hearing in which the judge ordered Lord Nuku and the Yan Jian Group Co Ltd to pay the current Lord Luani TP$5,556,000 (NZ$3.5 million) in compensation for a dispute over a block of land in Malapo.

Lawyer Sione Fonua, who acted for Lord Luani, told Kaniva News the Chinese company did not pay taxes and did not file any annual returns with Inland Revenue because of its agreement with the former government.

It has been estimated the company was given TP$80 million for the project.

Regarding reports that Pōhiva had said the Chinese would take over the country, he said he emphasised that only those who were working hard would control the country.

He said he then referred to the hard-working Chinese as an example.

He said his comments had been wrongly portrayed as if he was having a conspiracy with the Chinese or he was supporting them to take over the country.

• Former adviser calls for Tongan PM to resign

A Papua New Guinea media educator today called for an investigation into coverage of the two months of protest at the nation’s universities, including last month’s incident when police opened fire on peaceful students.

Emily Matasororo, leader of the journalism strand at the University of Papua New Guinea, was critical of students protesting against the media earlier in the period of unrest for burning the two national newspapers, PNG Post-Courier and The National, on campus.

But she added that they did this to “show their frustrations” over how they viewed the media as taking sides in the dispute.

The students were calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Peter O’Neill and for him to cooperate with a police investigation into corruption allegations.

“The burning was an indication that they disliked the paper’s coverage of events leading up to the protest,” Matasororo said in a Pacific journalism education panel session at the Fourth World Journalism Education Congress hosted at Auckland University of Technology.

“Why should the Student Representative Council go as far as preferring certain media outlets over others?”

The Post-Courier, The National and television station EMTV were banned from covering student activities on campus.

‘Public space’
“The UPNG is a public and government-run institution and is a public space open to everyone, including the media.

“If students reacted that way, it brought up issues of credibility and integrity of the freedom of the press in Papua New Guinea.”

Matasororo also said that this brought to light questions of ethics.

She quoted a statement from a student leader online in PNGLoop that described the news reports and “shallow and biased” and saying they “have no trust in the media”.

“While I acknowledge and appreciate the tireless efforts of the media’s coverage of the student protest, for me, this is a strong statement that needs to be investigated,” she said.

It needs to be done by all stakeholders concerned to promote “fair and just reporting” and “the essence of good ethics and journalism”.

The stakeholders included the newspaper publishers and management, the Media Council of PNG, Transparency International, Ombudsman Commission and journalism educators at UPNG and Divine Word University at Madang.

‘Black Wednesday’
Matasororo presented an analysis of the unfolding events in PNG.

On June 8, heavily armed police fired upon the peaceful protesters at UPNG after a scuffle and up to 30 were reportedly wounded. Some international media reported four deaths but this was later denied by Port Moresby hospital authorities.

To mark what has been dubbed “black Wednesday”, UPNG’s journalism Strand plans to unveil and wall display to tell the “untold stories” and a photo montage of “unseen images” for future students to “ponder over”.

Dr David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre, was chair of the Pacific journalism education panel.

Let there be no mistake about this. Since his proclamation by Congress as President-elect,  Rodrigo Duterte has engaged the media in a relentless campaign of coercion and harassment to browbeat journalists into submission before he takes office on June 30.

The interregnum marked an unprecedented test of wills between the presidency and the media, a ferocity not experienced by any incoming administration in the history of the adversarial relationship between the two social institutions.

The conflict has entered an impasse from which none of the protagonists appears to be backing off.

No incoming President has mounted such a  dangerous challenge to the media since the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos.

In that conflict, journalists critical of the abuses of power by Marcos survived 14 years of the martial law regime, which jailed a number of its critics.

None of the critics was threatened with  summary executions by squads sponsored by nonstate law enforcement actors.

Under siege
In this running conflict, freedom of the press has come under siege and has in fact suffered erosion without the formal declaration of emergency powers of a burgeoning, aspiring dictatorship, as Duterte awaits his inauguration.

Are we indeed entering a twilight zone in the transition of our electoral democracy?

This impasse leaves little room for complacency in  the light of Duterte’s campaign to eradicate crime and bureaucratic corruption in six months  from his inauguration on June 30.

Media reports abound about  this struggle of the press to defend its freedom from the creeping erosion posed by a supposed campaign against criminals, drug lords and corrupt officials demonised by partisan propaganda as enemies of the state.

One of the recent media reports comes from the Associated Press (AP). In this story, Duterte is reported to have blasted media groups for condemning his earlier comments that appeared to justify the killings of  journalists because they were corrupt or overly critical.

The journalists were depicted as allies of the criminal suspects tagged by Duterte. He refused to  apologise and dared reporters to carry out a threat to boycott his news conferences.

‘Don’t threaten me’
The AP reported that Duterte, in an outburst at a late night news conference in Davao City, lambasted  journalists, saying, “Don’t threaten me. Boycott, boycott … go ahead, damn you!”

The outburst came after international and local news groups  expressed outrage over Duterte’s remarks about the media killings.

Reporters Without Borders urged local media to boycott his news conferences until he issues a public apology.

Duterte replied that he would survive even if journalists boycotted him because he could ask state-run TV network to cover his activities.

“I’m telling the networks I do not need you,” he said. He threatened to order his Cabinet members not to speak to journalists who are not from the state-run network.

According to the International Federation of Journalists, the Philippines has been the second deadliest country for journalists since 1990, behind only war-torn Iraq.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Duterte’s remarks  “apparently excusing extrajudicial killings threaten to make the Philippines into a killing field for journalists.”

It said the country ranks fourth on its impunity index, which spotlights the countries where the killers of  journalists go unpunished.

Duterte’s crass pronouncements not only sully the memories of journalists who have been murdered since 1986, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said.

Open season
Asked to comment on the unsolved killings of journalists, Duterte, in effect, declared open season to silence the media.

He made the sweeping accusation that many of those slain were paid to take sides on issues or had overly criticised people who could not tolerate personal attacks.

“Just because you’re a journalist (doesn’t mean) you’re exempted from assassination if you’re a son of a bitch,” Duterte said.

“Your  freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something with the guy.”

• Only state-run media for inauguration
• Duterte threatens assassination of journalists