REVIEW: By Lee Duffield

The journalist, professor and peace activist Dr David Robie, was one of a media party on the ill-fated voyage of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in 1985, before its sinking by French security operatives in Auckland Harbour.

He wrote a definitive book about the lead-up in the region to the fatal sinking of the ship with limpet mines; unmasking of the plot made in Paris; attempts to obtain justice and a long aftermath with demands for empowerment by former “colonial” people to prevent such outrages in their island homelands.

The book is Eyes of Fire, first published in 1986, then successively updated as the story unfolded, with new facts and consequences of the outrage coming to light.

It ran to three revised editions, the latest out now to commemorate 40 years since the attack took place. It therefore marked 40 years since the death of the Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira, a Portuguese-born Dutch national, aged 35, father of two children, Marelle and Paul, drowned on board after the second of two blasts that hit the ship.

Eyes of Fire is a highly professional work of journalism, built out of investigation and documentation of facts, then fashioned into an accessible read; illustrated also with easy-to-comprehend maps and diagrams, showing where the ship travelled and where the bombs were planted against its hull, plus photographs from a copious accumulation built up as the Greenpeace movement generated publicity for its actions worldwide.

Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior
One section describes the Rainbow Warrior, appreciatively and affectionately: a former fisheries research vessel, a trawler type, 50-metres in length, with some difficulty converted for sail as well as power, made into a “proud campaign ship”, painted a strong green with a long rainbow-emblem along the sides.

“The wheelhouse was rather lumpy and unattractive but the rest of the ship was appealing. She had a high North Sea prow, graceful sheerline and round-the-corner stern.”

For the record…
The Rainbow Warrior sailed from Hawai’i on the Pacific Voyage — taking on board seven journalists and some leading figures from the Pacific communities, to the Marshall Islands — where it evacuated the inhabitants of a nuclear afflicted island, Rongelap, to an uninhabited island Mejatto on Kwajalein Atoll.

Pacific distances are great. They transported 350 people — with house lumber and belongings — in four trips, 250 km there and back.

The islanders were suffering from contamination by the infamous upwind explosion of the experimental thermonuclear weapon, Castle Bravo, in 1954 — causing thyroid disorders, cancers and constant miscarriages and birthing disorders.

Dissatisfied that health officials sent by the United States administration were more interested in research than care, they decided to leave. The key instigator was the late Marshall Islands legislator Senator Jeton Anjain. He was one of two Pacific Islands leaders with prominent roles in Robie’s narrative.

The other was Oscar Temaru, a nuclear-free town mayor in Tahiti, also elected as the territory’s President on five occasions.

Temaru, now 81, spoke for many when he said:

“The sad truth is that the only ones who tried to help us are the Greenpeace ecologists…”

According to folklore among Greenpeace founders, a native American woman named “Eyes of Fire” told of a legend that where there was dispossession and despoilation of the land and culture, in time mythical warriors — deliverers — would come, who would mend and restore both. So the peaceship offering aid would be a “Rainbow Warrior”.

The author, Robie, in his news despatches for Radio New Zealand and other media (for which he was awarded the 1985 NZ Media Peace Prize, judged the evacuation project a change for Greenpeace towards humanitarian work connected with environmental destruction:

“This isn’t a game or the sort of action publicity stunt that Greenpeace would do so successfully.”

But the next part of the journey was another dramatic action, in Marshall Islands, at the US missile testing base on Kwajalein Atoll. A party from the ship went ashore, got through perimeter wires and hoisted a banner inscribed “Stop Star Wars” onto a space tracking dome, escaping before the arrival of security guards.

The banner was a reference to the American Strategic Defence Initiative, “Star Wars”, testing for which had increased the heavy traffic of missiles of different levels at the Kwajalein range (dubbed by the empire as the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Site).

The scene was then being set for the tragedy as the vessel made its way 5000 km to Auckland through friendly territory, calling in at Kiribati, the country hosting the former Christmas Island base for British nuclear tests (1957-58), and Vanuatu, where the leader of the then five year-old Republic, Father Walter Lini, a champion for a nuclear free Pacific, organised a big public welcome.

The strike
Celebration fitted the mood of the “Warrior” crew a lot of the time, in this account; a group of 11 skilled and idealistic younger people, sharing a mission they considered important to the world, and enjoying it as an adventure. They wanted to protect nature and promote peace, never violent, but charismatic, given to direct action, often enough dangerous.

They had others on board — in the case of David Robie, for an extended time, 11 days, time enough to get to know the characters and introduce them to readers in his book.

A further leg of the voyage was intended, to take them to Moruroa Atoll — where France was continuing with underground nuclear testing — as flagship for a flotilla of protest boats. In the event, the flotilla sailed, led by another Greepeace ship, Greenpeace III. One boat was arrested penetrating the 12-kilometre territorial limit around the atoll, where a series of tests was about to begin.

The planned disruption of activities on Moruroa may have been the death warrant for Rainbow Warrior — a solution to the riddle of what purposes its destruction was supposed to serve.

As the ship made its way towards Auckland, two French infiltrators got to work in that City, penetrating the Greenpeace operation. A group of military divers from a training base in Corsica was en route to New Zealand on a charter boat and two officers of France’s security service, DGSE, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, flew in under cover as a honeymoon couple.

Rainbow Warrior came in on Sunday, 7 July 1985, surrounded by an escort of small boats and was sunk at the dock in shallow water just before midnight on 10 July.

Divers using an inflatable boat set off the two explosions. Prieur and Mafart were spotted picking up one of the divers on a beach by men doing night watch at their boat club, who got the number of their vehicle, enabling the police to apprehend them, and begin a tortured process to try and secure justice.

Aftermath
Updating of the book takes in the negotiations over holding Prieur and Mafart, their eventual transfer to France and subsequent early release; the fate of other conspirators spirited home, promoted, decorated, “looked after” in early retirement; intensive and large scale work by the New Zealand police to find out about the charter boat carrying some of the divers, said to have transferred them onto a submarine, the Rubis; and investigative work by the French press to sheet home responsibility for the attack.

Very soon after Rainbow Warrior was sunk, the Defence Minister, Charles Hernu, was sacked and the head of the DGSE Admiral Pierre Lacoste resigned. The book has a positive impression of the replacement Minister, Paul Quiles and the Prime Minister, Laurent Fabius, who admitted the obvious — that it had been done by French agents and was apologetic.

Subsequent negotiations between New Zealand and France, under United Nations auspices were made very difficult; a formal apology was avoided for some time; eventually both New Zealand and Greenpeace received financial packages in compensation and exemplary damages.

After the 1996 death of François Mitterrand, French President at the time, an investigation by Le Monde turned up circumstantial evidence that he knew of the attack in advance and a statement by Lacoste that he had approved it. Fabius evidently had not known.

Mitterrand’s motive was said to have been realpolitik — to support nuclear deterrence against the Soviet Union in tandem with the US, which supplied France with highly strategic computer technology.

Reviewer intercession…
Mitterrand, as a highly equivocal and manipulative politician, walked a tightrope, always watching his soft electoral margins — in this case knowing there was 60 percent support for nuclear testing in France.

In office for four years in 1985, it may have been a new government still failing to face down entrenched security identities, undisciplined, considering themselves to be “deep state”, attached to violent solutions, with potential to go rogue.

Most of Robie’s work here is a narrative, a strong true story, but it has space for analysis, and in particular registers the correlation between devastation brought by the nuclear testing, and colonial management and manipulation of islands affairs.

The post-war wave of independence had come to the Pacific, though not to French Polynesia nor New Caledonia. In addition, the United States still held its Micronesian dependencies in trust or, for Sovereign states, via signed compacts of free association, accompanied by substantial aid payments.

France’s position against independence is incentivised by maintaining colonies of more than 200,000 settlers; and in New Caledonia, the nickel deposits, around 15 percent of world resources, as well as the 200 kilometre territorial zone off the long coast of Grande Terre island, opening onto as yet unsurveyed undersea resources.

For the Americans, the priority has been both weapons testing and maintaining a strategic barrier against Russia, then China.

Old problems, future challenges
These considerations help to address the always unanswered question of what the plotters thought they had to gain. The book suggests a clumsy and excessive attempt to stop the ship leading a flotilla to Moruroa Atoll as most likely.

It goes on to identify same-old patterns of resistance in latter-day moves, successful, to get better recognition of the impacts of nuclear contamination and in the moves through international forums — such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, South Pacific Forum, United Nations agencies, the international courts — to get recognition and action on the impacts of climate change.

Pacific communities mindful of the rising seas, and other problems like impacts on sea-life, have struggled to get a hearing, finding, again, that “great powers” outside the region which hold resources that can help hold off the crisis, hold back their response.

Nuclear testing in the atmosphere was made to stop in 1974; tests underground on the atolls continued to 1996, leaving a very brief interregnum before global warming reared its head.

The current edition of Eyes of Fire has a prologue by Helen Clark, New Zealand Prime Minister from 1999-2008, a staunch keeper of the faith in a nuclear-free Pacific. Saying, “storm clouds are gathering”, she warns against renewed militarisation especially with Australia and perhaps other Pacific states acquiring nuclear submarines under the 2021 AUKUS agreement.

It is time for “de-escalation, not for enthusiastic expansion of nuclear submarine fleets in the Pacific”, writes Clark in her contribution to the new edition. With its peace policy, New Zealand wanted to be “a force for diplomacy and for dialogue, not for warmongering”.

Clark warns withdrawal of funding from the United Nations, led by the US, is a new threat: “Its humanitarian, development, health, human rights, political and peacekeeping, scientific and cultural arms all face fiscal crises.”

David Robie reports on the 40th anniversary commemoration of the 1985 events by Greenpeace, sending the new purpose-built ship, the new Rainbow Warrior, sometimes known as Rainbow Warrior III, to carry out independent radiation research. He follows up the lives and careers of the crew members and the islanders they worked with, several of whom have passed away.

While the writer’s own message, as in much good journalism, emerges from true handling of the facts, Robie does privilege a quotation from the executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa, Russel Norman, on the crew of Rainbow Warrior, to close the story:

“They faced down a nuclear threat to the habitability of the Pacific. Do we have the courage and wits to face down the biodiversity and climate crises facing humanity, crises that threaten the habitability of planet Earth?”

• Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, by David Robie (Little Island Press), 2025, 225 pages.

Dr Lee Duffield reported on Australia’s dispute with France over atmospheric testing for ABC News in Sydney and then from Paris as the ABC European Correspondent. His work entailed monitoring police actions against Kanak activists in New Caledonia, including the killings on Ouvéa Island; confrontations with French Ministers over the test programme; and negotiations between France and New Zealand, in Paris, on Rainbow Warrior, especially the jailing then early release of Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart. He later taught Journalism at QUT in Brisbane and was a contributor to Pacific Journalism Review. Dr Duffield is also one of the co-owners of Independent Australia, and the chair of its editorial board. This review is republished from the Independent Australia with permission.

The Vanuatu Daily Post is deeply saddened to learn of the sudden passing of Dan McGarry, our former media director. McGarry was a fearless investigative journalist, photographer, and software professional who made a lasting contribution to the development of the Daily Post.

He managed media content across the company’s publications, website, and social media platforms, while also shaping the wider media landscape in Vanuatu.

Before formally joining the organisation in 2015, he wrote regular columns under the pseudonym Graham Crumb.

• READ MORE: ‘He will never be replaced’ – tributes flow for ‘fearless’ Vanuatu journalist Dan McGarry
• OCCRP mourns the loss of Dan McGarry, pioneering Pacific editor and investigative journalist
• Dan McGarry’s articles on Asia Pacific Report

Prior to joining the Daily Post, McGarry was part of the Pacific Institute of Public Policy (PiPP), an independent, non-profit, regionally focused think tank based in Port Vila. He also worked with Computer Network Services (CNS) as technical manager during its early years.

Reports indicate that McGarry, 62, fell ill following a trip to Papua New Guinea earlier this month and was evacuated to Brisbane.

He faced complications during recovery and remained in critical care in recent weeks. At the time of his passing, McGarry was serving as Pacific editor for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

McGarry was a leading voice in Pacific journalism, driven by a strong sense of justice and commitment to the public good.

He is survived by his wife and children. His passing leaves a profound gap in the media community.

The Vanuatu Daily Post extends its heartfelt condolences to his family during this difficult time and stands with them in mourning this loss.

Republished from the Vanuatu Daily Post.

Tributes are pouring in from across the region for “fearless” and “formidable” Vanuatu journalist Dan McGarry, who died on Wednesday.

McGarry, 62, fell ill after a trip to Papua New Guinea earlier this month, from where he had to be evacuated to Brisbane to undergo a heart bypass.

But he faced complications during his recovery and had remained in critical care for the past few weeks.

• READ MORE: Dan McGarry’s articles on Asia Pacific Report
• OCCRP mourns the loss of Dan McGarry, pioneering Pacific editor and investigative journalist

McGarry, who was a former editor of Vanuatu’s only national newspaper, the Vanuatu Daily Post, and Pacific editor of the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) at the time of his death, has left behind his wife and children.

“It’s with great heartbreak that I have to announce that the legendary Dan McGarry passed away earlier today,” Aubrey Belford, who was a co-editor with McGarry at OCCRP, said in a Facebook post.

“Dan was an absolutely dominating presence in Pacific journalism and in the region more generally.

“Dan was compassionate, sharing, and always motivated by a sense of justice and the common good. He was driven but also understood the importance of patience, friendship, and community.

‘A shell or more of kava’
“When home in Vanuatu he loved nothing more than finishing his day with a shell or more of kava, satisfied in the knowledge he had found his place in the world.”

Belford added McGarry’s loss was devastating not just for his family but for all journalists working in the region.

“He will be missed, and he will never be replaced.”

Another friend and colleague, Andrew Gray, said McGarry was “a good man”.

“After a hard life he finally found happiness in Vanuatu, and he did a lot more for the country than people appreciate. Last time I saw him he was planning his retirement at Lalwori.

“Condolences to Line McGarry Watsivi and their daughters.”

InsidePNG described McGarry as “more than just a colleague, a titan of regional journalism and a tireless advocate for the truth”.

‘Wealth of experience’
“As the former editor of the Vanuatu Daily Post, he brought a wealth of experience and a fearless spirit to every project he touched. Dan was absolutely instrumental in the birth of our investigative centre in Port Moresby.

“He didn’t just help set the foundation, he guided and mentored InsidePNG through our most critical work, building a lasting connection with our team that went far beyond professional duty,” the news outlet said in a social media post.

Kiribati journalist Rimon Rimon, who worked with McGarry, described him as “one of the brilliant minds I had the privilege of working closely with in our OCCRP investigations!”

The University of the South Pacific’s head of journalism associate professor Dr Shailendra Singh said McGarry’s passing is “profoundly felt across the Pacific media community, where his contributions as journalist, trainer and mentor have made a lasting impact”.

“He will be greatly missed. My thoughts are with his loved ones during this difficult time.”

RNZ Pacific manager Moera Tuilaepa-Taylor said McGarry’s presence would be missed.

“Dan McGarry was one of the best – a champion of the truth.”

Asia Pacific Report editor Dr David Robie said: “Vale Dan McGarry. A stunning loss to investigative journalism and media courage and integrity in Vanuatu and the Pacific. A friend and mentor to all.

“Farewell Dan and many thanks for your inspiration and mentoring. Deepest condolences to whānau. RIP.”

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

West Papuan diaspora, academics, students and community activists warmly applauded the screening of the new investigative documentary, Pesta Babi (Pig Feast): Colonialism in our Time, in its pre-launch international premiere in New Zealand last night.

It was shown for the first time back in West Papua at the southeastern town of Merauke, which is centred in the vast denuded rainforest area featured in the film, and also in the capital Jayapura on Friday.

Dramatic footage of scenes of village resisters against the massive destruction of rainforest in one of the three largest “lungs of the world”, shipping of barge-loads of heavy machinery, vast swathes of forest scoured out for rice and palm oil plantations, and of a traditional “pig feast” — the first in a decade — gripped the audience from the opening minute.

• READ MORE:  Pesta Babi – ‘Pig Feast’ . . . a vivid new film exposing Papua’s political ecology
• Indonesia suspends participation in Board of Peace initiative

This is the largest forest conversion project in modern history — turning 2.5 million ha of tropical forest into industrial plantations under the guise of “food security” and the “energy transition”.

“It is a powerful film, rich with data and stories drawn from the lived experiences of masyarakat adat [Indigenous people],” comments Dr Veronika Kanem, a New Zealand-based Papuan academic and researcher, who was at the premiere with a group of her students.

“The film is also grounded in research conducted by Yayasan Pusaka, along with other national and local organisations.” She is pleased that her home village Muyu is featured in the film.

The audience was also treated to Q&A session with the film director, Dandhy Dwi Laksono and producer Victor Mambor, an award-winning investigative journalist and founder of Jubi Media, who first visited New Zealand 12 years ago.

Documented collusion
Investigative filmmaker Laksono gained a reputation for his 2019 documentary Sexy Killers, released just before the Indonesian general election year and documented the collusion between the political establishment and the destructive coal mining industry.

He was arrested later that year over tweets he posted about state violence in Papua.

Laksono and Mambor, along with co-director Cipri Dale, make up a formidable investigative team.

The storytelling focuses on the experiences of five Papuans and their communities:

Yasinta Moiwend was startled when, on a quiet morning, a massive ship docked at her village pier. The vessel carried hundreds of excavators and was escorted by military forces.

It was the first convoy of 2000 heavy machines to arrive in Papua under a National Strategic Project for food production, palm-based biodiesel, and sugarcane bioethanol.

Yasinta, a Marind Anim woman in Merauke, never realised that her village had been chosen as the ground zero for what would become the largest forest conversion project in modern history.

Vincen Kwipalo, from the Yei community, was likewise shocked when his clan’s land was suddenly marked with a sign reading: “Property of the Indonesian Army.” Only later did he learn that the land had been seized for the construction of a military battalion headquarters, at the very moment when a sugarcane plantation company was also encroaching on his ancestral forest.

Red Cross Movement
Threatened by the same project, Franky Woro and the Awyu community in Boven Digoel erected giant crosses and indigenous ritual markers on their land.

Known as the Red Cross Movement, this form of resistance has spread among Indigenous groups across South Papua.

More than 1800 red crosses have been planted to confront corporations and the military—both physically and spiritually. Though a Christian symbol is central to the movement, local Church pastors condemned it as not part of the church.

Dr Kanem says the film could have explored why the Awyu and Marind people chose to use the red cross, a symbol strongly associated with Christian values?

“Why did they not use their own cultural attributes or symbols instead?” she adds.

Laksono says: “Pig Feast combines detailed field recordings with in-depth research to examine the power structures behind the operation.

“It exposes how government and corporate entities — collaborating with military and religious groups — advance international and national goals of ‘food security’ and ‘energy transition’ at the expense of Indigenous communities and landscapes.”

Multinational corporations
The documentary illustrates the networks of Indonesian elites, oligarchs, and multinational corporations that benefit from the project, providing a vivid depiction of the political ecology of Indonesian governance in Papua.

Pig Feast reveals how the system of colonialism remains intact today.

Asked at the screening how dangerous was the film making, Mambor described the hardships their small crew faced to “find the truth” under the noses of the Indonesian military.

He said they walked up to 17 km a day at times to get the exclusive footage obtained for the documentary.

International journalists are banned from West Papua and a 2019 resolution by the Pacific Islands Forum calling for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit West Papua to investigate allegations of human rights abuses has been ignored by Jakarta.

The film reveals how 10 companies — all owned by one family — gained the backing of three presidents.

The Jhonlin Group, owned by oligarch Andi Syamsuddin Arsyad (aka Haji Isam), ordered about 2000 excavators from Chinese company SANY, considered one of the largest orders of its kind in the world, to clear one million hectares.

‘Second thoughts’ on Gaza
Q&A moderator Dr David Robie, deputy chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), notes the massive military involved in the operations in West Papua — as shown in the film — and how Israel has been counting on Indonesia forming “the backbone” of the planned “International Stabilisation Force” for the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza with about 8000 troops because of its experience in “suppressing rebellion”.

“However, since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran it seems that Jakarta has now had second thoughts,” he said.

Indonesia has suspended all discussions on the so-called “Board of Peace” initiative launched by US President Donald Trump, citing the military escalation in the Middle East, reports Anadolu Ajansi.

Critics had argued that joining a council led by the Trump administration could undermine Indonesia’s longstanding support for the “free Palestinian” cause.

Indonesia’s Ulema Council, the country’s top Islamic scholar body, had also called for an immediate withdrawal from the Trump initiative.

The filmmakers and documentary will now go to Australia for screenings in Sydney, Melbourne and hopefully Brisbane.

West Papua updates
Earlier in the day, at a two-day West Papua Solidarity Forum at the University of Auckland, several speakers gave updates and an analysis on political and social developments in the repressed Melanesian region.

Among speakers were Papuan environmental campaigner for Pusaka Dorthea Wabiser, longtime Aotearoa and West Papua human rights campaigner Maire Leadbeater, Papuan cultural advocate Ronny Kareni , Hawai’ian academic Dr Emalani Case, Ngaruahine researcher Dr Arama Rata, PNG academic at Waikato University Nathan Rew, West Papuan scholar Kerry Tabuni, Green Party Pacific peoples and foreign affairs spokesperson Teanau Tuiono, and forum organiser Catherine Delahunty of the West Papua Action Tāmaki Makaurau and West Papua Action Aotearoa.

Viktor Yeimo, international spokesperson of the KNPB (National Committee for West Papua) and PRP (Papuan People’s Petition), and several Papuan community spokespeople shared messages by video link.

Yeimo spoke about how many students, activists, journalists, church leaders and communities of faith in West Papua faced risks when they spoke about justice and political rights.

“To ignite a large log, one must first find many small pieces [kindling],” he said. “Each piece alone cannot produce a great fire, but together they create enough heat to ignite something much larger.”

He said one pathway involved meaningful political reform within Indonesia, including stronger protection of Indigenous rights and genuine regional autonomy.

Another pathway involved inclusive political dialogue between the Indonesian government and legitimate representatives of Papuan society, like ULMWP (United Liberation Movement of West Papua).

A third pathway existed within international law, “it is the possibility of a self-determination process supervised by an international institution [such as the United Nations].”

He pointed to the progress of the self-determination processes of Bougainville and Kanak New Caledonia for example.

Yeimo said Papuans wanted to build a Pacific future “grounded in justice and solidarity”.

A Papuan rapper spoke on screen saying he wasn’t afraid of the repression of authorities, “but they seem to be afraid of me and my music.”

• Pesta Babi (Pig Feast): Colonialism in our Time, directed by Dandhy Dwi Laksono and Cypri Dale; produced by Victor Mambor (Jubi Media, 2026, investigative documentary 90min).
  

There’s been skillful work in journalism’s dark arts on display in the UK this past week, as the nasty British right-wing media pack tore down two senior BBC executives. The right-wing culture warriors will be celebrating big time.

They reckon they’ve put a big dent in Britain’s most trusted and most used news media with the scalps of director-general Tim Davie and director of news Deborah Turness.

Best of all, the London Daily Telegraph was able to make it look like an inside job (leaning into a paean of outrage from a former part-time “standards” adviser), hiding its hit job behind the pretence of serious investigative journalism.

• READ MORE: Inside the year-long BBC saga that led to Trump’s $1bn lawsuit threat
• Other BBC reports

For the paper long dubbed the Torygraph, it’s just another day of pulling down the country’s centrist institutions for not being right wing enough in the destructive, highly politicised world of British news media.

Sure, there’s criticisms to be made of the BBC’s news output. There’s plenty of research and commentary that pins the broadcaster for leaning over backwards to amplify right-wing talking points over hot-button issues like immigration and crime. (ABC insiders here in Australia call it the preemptive buckle.)

Most recently, for example, a Cardiff University report last month found that nearly a quarter of BBC News programmes included Nigel Farage’s Reform Party — far more coverage than similar-sized parties like the centrist Liberal Democrats or the Greens received.

It’s why there are mixed views about Davie (who started in the marketing rather than the programme-making side of the business), while the generally respected Turness is being mourned and protested more widely.

BBC’s damage-control plan
The resignations flow from the corporation’s damage-control plan around an earlier — and more genuine — BBC scandal: the 2020 expose that then rising star Martin Bashir had forged documents to nab a mid-1990s Princess Diana interview. You know the one: the royal-rocking “there were three of us in the marriage” one.

The Boris Johnson government grabbed onto the scandal as an opportunity to drive “culture change”, as then Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden put it in an interview in Murdoch’s The Times. As part of that change, the BBC board (almost always the villain in BBC turmoil) decided to give the Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee a bit of a hand, by adding an external “adviser”.

Enter Michael Prescott, a former News Corp political reporter before moving on to PR and lobbying. Not a big BBC gig (it pays $30,000 a year), but it came with the fancy title of “Editorial Adviser”.

Roll forward four years: new government, new board, new BBC scandal. Prescott’s term ended last July. But he left a land-mine behind: a 19-page jeremiad, critiquing the BBC and its staff over three of the right’s touchstone issues: Trump, Gaza and trans people.

It fingered the BBC’s respected Arab programming for anti-Israel bias and smeared LGBTQIA+ reporters for promoting a pro-trans agenda.

Last week, his letter turned up (surprise!) — all over the Telegraph’s front pages, staying there every day since last Tuesday, amplified by its partner on the right, the Daily Mail, helped along with matching deplora-quotes from conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and demands for answers from the Tory MP who chairs the House of Commons Culture Standing Committee.

The one stumble sustaining the outrage? Back in November 2024, on the BBC’s flagship Panorama immediately before the US presidential election, snippets of Trump’s speech on the day of the January 6 riot had been spliced together, bringing together words which had been spoken 50 minutes apart.

Not for the first time, heads have rolled at the BBC following a puffed-up scandal pushed by the UK’s Tory press. Will the ABC learn the lessons of its British compatriot? https://t.co/nteARbd2M3

— Crikey (@crikey_news) November 11, 2025

Carelessness . . . or bias?
Loose editing? Carelessness? Or (as the cacophony on the right insist) demonstrable anti-Trump bias?

The real problem? The loose editing took the report over one of the right’s red lines: suggesting — however lightly — that Trump was in any way responsible for what happened at the US Capital that day.

Feeding the right’s fury, last Thursday the BBC released its findings that a newsreader’s facial expression when she changed a script on-air from “pregnant people” to “pregnant women” laid the BBC “open to the interpretation that it indicated a particular viewpoint in the controversies currently surrounding trans identity”.

Even as the British news media has deteriorated into the destructive, mean-spirited beast that it has become, outdated syndication arrangements mean Australia’s legacy media has to pretend to take it seriously. And our own conservative media just can’t resist joining in the mother country’s culture wars.

An Australian Financial Review opinion piece by the masthead’s European correspondent Andrew Tillett took the opportunity to rap the knuckles of the ABC, the BBC and “their alleged cabals of leftist journalists and content producers”, while Jacquelin Magnay at The Australian called for a clean-out at the BBC due to its pivot “from providing factual news to becoming an activist for the trans lobby and promoting pro-Gaza voices”.

Trump, of course, was not to be left out of the pile-on, with his press secretary Karoline Leavitt calling the BBC “100 percent fake news” — and giving the UK Telegraph another front page to keep the story alive for another day. Overnight, Trump got back into the headlines as he announced his trademark US$1 billion demand on media that displeases him.

It’s not the first time Britain’s Tory media have brought down a BBC boss for being insufficiently right wing. Back in 1987, Thatcher appointed ex-Daily Mail boss Marmaduke Hussey as BBC chair. Within three months, he shocked the niceties of British institutional life when he fired director-general Alastair Milne over the BBC’s reporting on the conservative government.

Here we are almost 40 years later: another puffed-up scandal. Another BBC head falling to the outrage of the British Tory press.

Christopher Warren is an Australian journalist and Crikey’s media correspondent. He was federal secretary of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) until April 2015, and is a past president of the International Federation of Journalists. This article was first published by Crikey and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

MEDIAWATCH: By RNZ Mediawatch presenter Colin Peacock

Successive New Zealand governments have dodged the issue of how the news media should be held to account, leaving us with outdated and fragmented systems for standards and complaints.

But the issue erupted recently when the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) advised The Platform it could consider public complaints about its online output.

That sparked calls to roll back the Authority’s authority — and one MP drafted a bill to scrap it.

• READ MORE: Other RNZ Mediawatch reports

Those who reckon we don’t need an official broadcasting watchdog point out we already have laws protecting privacy, copyright and other things — and criminalising harassment and bullying.

And if someone on air — or online — lowers your reputation in the minds of right-thinking New Zealanders without good reason, you can sue them for defamation if you think you can prove it.

News organisations don’t often end up in court for that, but when they do it’s big news. Reputations are at stake — and possibly lots of money too in damages.

Thirty years ago the country’s largest-ever payment followed scurrilous claims in Metro magazine’s gossip column — all about a journalist at a rival publication.

Ten years ago, foreign affairs reporter Jon Stephenson sued the chief of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) for statements that wrongly cast doubt on his reporting about New Zealand soldiers in Afghanistan. After a full jury trial, a second was about to begin when the NZDF settled for an undisclosed sum and a statement of “regret”.

Last week, another defamation case concluded, but this time the plaintiff was not a person — and was not seeking damages.

The result may not be known for months, but it could change the way controversial claims about big companies are handled by newsrooms, and — depending on the outcome — how defamation law is deployed by those on the end of investigative reporting.

‘See you in court’
Over five weeks, lawyers for food giant Talley’s went toe-to-toe in the High Court with TVNZ and its lawyers, led by Davey Salmon KC, who also acted for Stephenson 10 years ago.

Talley’s sued TVNZ over six 1News reports in 2021 and 2022 — and also, unusually, sued Christchurch-based reporter Thomas Mead individually as well.

The series alleged problems with hygiene, health and safety at two Talley’s plants.

“To the public, the company presents a spotless image of staff producing frozen vegetables with a smile on their face, but 1News can now pull back the curtain of a different side to its Ashburton factory,” Mead told viewers in July 2021.

Whistleblowers — some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity — told 1News about problems at two plants and shared photos of dirty equipment and apparent hazards.

Other reports investigated workers’ injuries and allegations that workers’ claims had been mismanaged by the company.

TVNZ also reported a leaked email telling Talley’s staff not to talk about an incident where emergency services were called to free a worker’s hand trapped in a machine.

Mead also told viewers an invitation to tour one factory was withdrawn at the last minute. Instead, senior Talley’s staff urged TVNZ not to air the allegations and the images.

“Discussion turned to intimidation,” Mead reported.

Anonymity and privacy
Before the trial, Talley’s went to court to try — unsuccessfully — to force TVNZ to reveal the identity of some of its sources and further details of their allegations. It said this would have allowed it to assess whether the sources had sufficient understanding of the safety issues that concerned them.

“I made them a promise, and I have kept it,” Thomas Mead told the court, insisting TVNZ protected their identities because they feared retaliation from Talley’s.

In court, Talley’s lawyer Brian Dickey KC said TVNZ could not produce any evidence that any workers had faced any actual retaliation. He alleged the anonymous sources were wrong and one had tried to extort the company.

Dickey even called one report by Mead “a hit piece”, and said TVNZ’s presentation was overly emotional and its reports displayed “animus” against the company.

TVNZ insisted the reports were accurate, verified and — crucially — in the public interest, and losing the case would set a dangerous precedent for journalism.

Talley’s told the court it did not want damages, just an acknowledgement that it had been defamed and had suffered losses because of the reports.

In this case, the lawyers were not seeking to sway members of a jury — only Judge Pheroze Jagose. He said his decision may not be released until Easter next year.

“It was probably best that it was just a judge-alone (trial) because it’s mind-numbingly complex when you get into the depth of detail and the layers of what’s being argued,” Tim Murphy, Newsroom co-editor, told Mediawatch.

Pecuniary loss
To win the case, Talley’s must show it suffered pecuniary loss.

“This adds a level because they have to show their business has been affected in a way that has cost them money,” said Murphy, who watched the trial from the press bench.

“They need to show that not only has there been loss immediately after or in the time frame of these pieces in 2021 and 2022 — but also that the particular statements in each story that they’re suing about — called ‘imputations’ in defamation law — then led to the loss.

“They said it couldn’t be specified to a dollar figure — but in their view it was obvious and inarguable that the TVNZ coverage had cost them financially.”

Talley’s said contracts with Countdown (now Woolworths) and Hello Fresh were affected.

“They also had the cost of an independent inquiry by former Police Commissioner Mike Bush, and the cost of a PR firm to handle all of this — and then costs of their management time diverted from their factories and so on,” Newsroom co-editor Tim Murphy told Mediawatch.

“They also said they had opprobrium for their staff in the community, and they said that was a cost because it can affect morale and productivity.”

What are the stakes?
“From past defamation cases that went a long way — even if they didn’t get to trial — both parties will have spent millions in legal costs to this point,” Murphy told Mediawatch.

“Talley’s have also gone for ‘indemnity costs’ so there could still be a substantial amount [to pay] for TVNZ should it lose.”

“Both parties (in court) painted this case as having a very big impact should it go the other way.”

“TVNZ’s view was that if . . .  a company can succeed with that level of loss, then it will open it up to all sorts of companies. Davey Salmon, their KC, said that it would be inviting Defamation Act cases from corporations who have effectively suffered no loss.

“Talley’s were of the view that if TVNZ won this, then it was open season on companies and corporations… and that no company would be able to withstand reporting that is in error or biased.”

Murphy’s predecessor as New Zealand Herald editor, Dr Gavin Ellis, appeared as an expert witness for TVNZ. Dr Ellis told the court TVNZ appeared to have verified sources and cross-checked key claims and sought independent views. He also believed Talley’s was given a reasonable amount of time to respond to allegations.

He also backed TVNZ’s decision not to surrender notes — or even redacted versions of transcripts from interviews with anonymous sources to protect their confidentiality.

“There were pretty good levels of both cross-referencing and validating. There are other aspects of the case with vulnerabilities and some of those were from at least one of the anonymous sources,” Murphy told Mediawatch.

“The need to be able to offer and guarantee anonymity and protection of identity in all respects is vital for that public interest function that journalists have.”

TVNZ argued that in the Court of Appeal, and won the right to continue that protection of those sources.

But TVNZ recently had to change its own policy after revealing too much of a vulnerable source itself in a recent documentary.

The jeopardy of brevity
Editors and reporters elsewhere were watching what Murphy described as a journalistic investigation, investigated.

The planning, decision-making and personal communications at TVNZ was scrutinised closely in court, as well as the reporting seen by the public.

One 1News broadcast in 2021 kicked off with host Simon Dallow saying: “a whistleblower tells 1News” Talley’s Ashburton plant was an “accident waiting to happen”.

In court it emerged that the anonymous source in question had not used those precise words, though Mead himself had put those words to the source during a conversation.

“[TVNZ] made claims that — when they were examined in microscopic detail — didn’t match what the story itself said. This is what lawyers do if they get this chance. They examine to that level and nuance,” Murphy said.

“Often in journalism if you get a clear affirmative to a question like that, then it’s fair to paraphrase it and say the person agreed it was ‘an accident waiting to happen’. But in this case the answer . . .  was very discursive.”

Talley’s also said some of TVNZ’s presentation was inappropriately emotive and Brian Dickey KC seized on individual words and phrases to allege TVNZ and Mead had taken against Talley’s.

Murphy noted Talley’s objected to reports that would “present anonymous source allegations, give Talley’s response and then end with a ‘but’. The company questioned why his summaries never raised a qualification like ‘but’ about the claims made by a source.”

“It alleged the technique undercut what Talley’s had said – and that there was a sort of default over-weighting of the critical view of them,” Murphy said.

Salmon claimed Talley’s was over-analysing the reports’ wording and amplifying their importance.

“News does not need to be presented in the austere form of a court judgment to be responsible. If it was, it would not be read or watched and it would not inform,” he told the court.

Will this change the way big stories are done?
Summarising complex things to make them easily understood in a three-minute TV news bulletin — or shorter — is a challenge.

Could this case prompt a move away from paraphrasing to make stories more engaging and comprehensible — and towards a drier, longer and a little less simplified style on television?

“In the quiet moments, all of those involved at TVNZ will see that there needs to be a tighter, clearer, more precise and weighted use of language and words — and images as well — in the bringing-together and presentation of these kinds of stories,” Murphy told Mediawatch.

“It’s no bad thing in a way for all the media to be given a sharp reminder that precision extends to every element of an investigative story and its presentation. The captions, the summary, the pull-quotes, the scripts, the promos of stories are all subject to this sort of scrutiny.”

Chilling effect?
Bryce Edwards of the pro-transparency Integrity Institute said this was an example of “the rich and powerful [using] these laws as legal weapons to silence critics, discourage investigative journalism, and shield themselves from scrutiny”.

“It put the very right of the media to hold power to account in the dock,” Edwards said.

Murphy said: “I think it was quite clear through the whole case that there was sort of a power play.

“The power of a big corporation with rich-lister family backers drawing a line in the sand and saying: ‘We’ve had power of the media thrown at us unfairly — so we’re going to exert some power back other way.'”

And while the media do not end up in court often defending defamation claims, we do not often know if media might be swayed by threats of defamation action from those with financial and legal clout. Or if they are deterred from publishing stories that could result in the kind of lengthy and potentially costly court case TVNZ has just faced.

“While there are many times where lawyers’ letters — or even perhaps injunctions to delay material being aired or published — occur, there are also many times where media companies have ploughed,” Murphy said.

“I don’t think the balance in the defamation setup we have is as yet favouring organisations or companies or the wealthy as much as elsewhere. We do have a defence of responsible publication in the public interest. But the key word there is ‘responsible’.”

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

In July 1985, Australia’s Pacific territory of Norfolk Island (pop. 2188) became the centre of a real life international spy thriller.

Four French agents sailed there on board the Ouvéa, a yacht from Kanaky New Caledonia, after bombing the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland, killing Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira.

The Rainbow Warrior was the flagship for a protest flotilla due to travel to Moruroa atoll to challenge French nuclear tests.

Australian police took them into custody on behalf of their New Zealand counterparts but then, bafflingly, allowed them to sail away, never to face justice.

• READ MORE: Australia obstructed probe into deadly Rainbow Warrior bombing — Declassified Australia
• Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior
• LISTEN: Richard Baker’s podcast trailer

On the 40th anniversary of the bombing (10 July 2025), award-winning journalist Richard Baker goes on an adventure from Paris to the Pacific to get the real story – and ultimately uncover the role that Australia played in the global headline-making affair.

The programme includes an interview with Pacific journalist David Robie, author of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior. David’s article about this episode is published at Declassified Australia here.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show looking at Israel’s ongoing targeting of Palestinian journalists. A recent report by the Costs of War Project at Brown University described the war in Gaza as the “worst ever conflict for reporters” in history.

By one count, Israel has killed 214 Palestinian journalists in Gaza over the past 18 months, including two journalists killed on Wednesday — Yahya Subaih and Nour El-Din Abdo. Yahya Subaih died just hours after his wife gave birth to their first child.

Meanwhile, new details have emerged about the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, the renowned Palestinian American Al Jazeera journalist who was fatally shot by an Israeli soldier three years ago on 11 May 2022.

She was killed while covering an Israeli army assault on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Shireen and another reporter were against a stone wall, wearing blue helmets and blue flak jackets clearly emblazoned with the word “Press”.

Shireen was shot in the head. She was known throughout the Arab world for her decades of tireless reporting on Palestine.

AMY GOODMAN: Israel initially claimed she had been shot by Palestinian militants, but later acknowledged she was most likely shot by an Israeli soldier. But Israel has never identified the soldier who fired the fatal shot, or allowed the soldier to be questioned by US investigators.

But a new documentary just released by Zeteo has identified and named the Israeli soldier for the first time. This is the trailer to the documentary Who Killed Shireen?

DION NISSENBAUM: That soldier looked down his scope and could see the blue vest and that it said “press.”

ISRAELI SOLDIER: That’s what I think, yes.

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: US personnel have never had access to those who are believed to have committed those shootings.

DION NISSENBAUM: No one has been held to account. Justice has not been served.

FATIMA ABDULKARIM: She is the first American Palestinian journalist who has been killed by Israeli forces.

DION NISSENBAUM: I want to know: Who killed Shireen?

CONOR POWELL: Are we going to find the shooter?

DION NISSENBAUM: He’s got a phone call set up with this Israeli soldier that was there that day.

CONOR POWELL: We just have to go over to Israel.

DION NISSENBAUM: Did you ever talk to the guy who fired those shots?

ISRAELI SOLDIER: Of course. I know him personally. The US should have actually come forward and actually pressed the fact that an American citizen was killed intentionally by IDF.

FATIMA ABDULKARIM: The drones are still ongoing, the explosions going off.

CONOR POWELL: Holy [bleep]! We’ve got a name.

DION NISSENBAUM: But here’s the twist.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: The trailer for the new Zeteo documentary Who Killed Shireen? The film identifies the Israeli soldier who allegedly killed Shireen Abu Akleh as Alon Scagio, who would later be killed during an Israeli military operation last June in Jenin, the same city where Shireen was fatally shot.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined right now by four guests, including two members of Shireen Abu Akleh’s family: her brother Anton, or Tony, and her niece Lina. They’re both in North Bergen, New Jersey. We’re also joined by Mehdi Hasan, the founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo, and by Dion Nissenbaum, the executive producer of Who Killed Shireen?, the correspondent on the documentary, longtime Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent based in Jerusalem and other cities, a former foreign correspondent. He was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Dion, we’re going to begin with you. This is the third anniversary, May 11th exactly, of the death of Shireen Abu Akleh. Talk about your revelation, what you exposed in this documentary.

DION NISSENBAUM: Well, there were two things that were very important for the documentary. The first thing was we wanted to find the soldier who killed Shireen. It had been one of the most closely guarded secrets in Israel. US officials said that if they wanted to determine if there was a crime here, if there was a human rights violation, they needed to talk to this soldier to find out what he was thinking when he shot her.

And we set out to find him. And we did. We did what the US government never did. And it turned out he had been killed, so we were never able to answer that question — what he was thinking.

But the other revelation that I think is as significant in this documentary is that the initial US assessment of her shooting was that that soldier intentionally shot her and that he could tell that she was wearing a blue flak jacket with “Press” across it.

That assessment was essentially overruled by the Biden administration, which came out and said exactly the opposite. That’s a fairly startling revelation, that the Biden administration and the Israeli government essentially were doing everything they could to cover up what happened that day to Shireen Abu Akleh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go to a clip from the documentary Who Killed Shireen?, in which Dion Nissenbaum, our guest, speaks with former State Department official Andrew Miller. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs in 2022 when Shireen was killed.

ANDREW MILLER: It’s nearly 100 percent certain that an Israeli soldier, likely a sniper, fired the shot that killed or the shots that killed Shireen Abu Akleh. Based on all the information we have, it is not credible to suggest that there were targets either in front of or behind Shireen Abu Akleh.

The fact that the official Israeli position remains that this was a case of crossfire, the entire episode was a mistake, as opposed to potentially a mistaken identification or the deliberate targeting of this individual, points to, I think, a broader policy of seeking to manage the narrative.

DION NISSENBAUM: And did the Israelis ever make the soldier available to the US to talk about it?

ANDREW MILLER: No. And the Israelis were not willing to present the person for even informal questioning.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was State Department official — former State Department official Andrew Miller, speaking in the Zeteo documentary Who Killed Shireen? He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs in 2022 when Shireen was killed.

I want to go to Shireen’s family, whom we have as guests, Anton Abu Akleh and Lina, who are joining us from New Jersey. You both watched the film for the first time last night when it premiered here in New York City. Lina, if you could begin by responding to the revelations in the film?

LINA ABU AKLEH: Hi, Amy. Hi. Thank you for having us.

Honestly, we always welcome and we appreciate journalists who try to uncover the killing of Shireen, but also who shed light on her legacy. And the documentary that was released by Zeteo and by Dion, it really revealed findings that we didn’t know before, but we’ve always known that it was an Israeli soldier who killed Shireen. And we know how the US administration failed our family, failed a US citizen and failed a journalist, really.

And that should be a scandal in and of itself.

But most importantly, for us as a family, it’s not just about one soldier. It’s about the entire chain of command. It’s not just the person who pulled the trigger, but who ordered the killing, and the military commanders, the elected officials.

So, really, it’s the entire chain of command that needs to be held to account for the killing of a journalist who was in a clear press vest, press gear, marked as a journalist.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Anton, if you could respond? Shireen, of course, was your younger sister. What was your response watching the documentary last night?

ANTON ABU AKLEH: It’s very painful to look at all these scenes again, but I really extend my appreciation to Zeteo and all those who supported and worked on this documentary, which was very revealing, many things we didn’t know. The cover-up by the Biden administration, this thing was new to us.

He promised. First statements came out from the White House and from the State Department stressed on the importance of holding those responsible accountable. And apparently, in one of the interviews heard in this documentary, he never raised — President Biden never raised this issue with Bennett, at that time the prime minister.

So, that’s shocking to us to know it was a total cover-up, contradictory to what they promised us. And that’s — like Lina just said, it’s a betrayal, not only to the family, not only to Shireen, but the whole American nation.

AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi Hasan, you’ve backed this documentary. It’s the first big documentary Zeteo is putting out. It’s also the first anniversary of the founding of Zeteo. Can you talk about the proof that you feel is here in the documentary that Alon Scagio, this — and explain who he is and the unit he was a part of? Dion, it’s quite something when you go to his grave. But how you can absolutely be sure this is the man?

MEHDI HASAN: So, Amy, Nermeen, thanks for having us here. I’ve been on this show many times. I just want to say, great to be here on set with both of you. Thank you for what you do.

This is actually our second documentary, but it is our biggest so far, because the revelations in this film that Dion and the team put out are huge in many ways — identifying the soldier, as you mentioned, Alon Scagio, identifying the Biden cover-up, which we just heard Tony Abu Akleh point out. People didn’t realise just how big that cover-up was.

Remember, Joe Biden was the man who said, “If you harm an American, we will respond.” And what is very clear in the case of Shireen Abu Akleh, an American citizen who spent a lot of her life in New Jersey, they did not respond.

In terms of the soldier itself, when Dion came to me and said, “We want to make this film. It’ll be almost like a true crime documentary. We’re going to go out and find out who did it” — because we all — everyone followed the story. You guys covered it in 2022. It was a huge story in the world.

But three years later, to not even know the name of the shooter — and I was, “Well, will we be able to find this out? It’s one of Israel’s most closely guarded secrets.” And yet, Dion and his team were able to do the reporting that got inside of Duvdevan, this elite special forces unit in Israel.

It literally means “the cherry on top.” That’s how proud they are of their eliteness. And yet, no matter how elite you are, Israel’s way of fighting wars means you kill innocent people.

And what comes out in the film from interviews, not just with a soldier, an Israeli soldier, who speaks in the film and talks about how, “Hey, if you see a camera, you take the shot,” but also speaking to Chris Van Hollen, United States Senator from Maryland, who’s been one of the few Democratic voices critical of Biden in the Senate, who says there’s been no change in Israel’s rules of engagement over the years.

And therefore, it was so important on multiple levels to do this film, to identify the shooter, because, of course, as you pointed out in your news headlines, Amy, they just killed a hundred Palestinians yesterday.

So this is not some old story from history where this happened in 2022 and we’re going back. Everything that happened since, you could argue, flows from that — the Americans who have been killed, the journalists who have been killed in Gaza, Palestinians, the sense of impunity that Israel has and Israel’s soldiers have.

There are reports that Israeli soldiers are saying to Palestinians, “Hey, Trump has our back. Hey, the US government has our back.” And it wasn’t just Trump. It was Joe Biden, too.

And that was why it was so important to make this film, to identify the shooter, to call out Israel’s practices when it comes to journalists, and to call out the US role.

AMY GOODMAN: I  just want to go to Dion, for people who aren’t familiar with the progression of what the Biden administration said, the serious cover-up not only by Israel, but of its main military weapons supplier and supporter of its war on Gaza, and that is Joe Biden, from the beginning.

First Israel said it was a Palestinian militant. At that point, what did President Biden say?

DION NISSENBAUM: So, at the very beginning, they said that they wanted the shooter to be prosecuted. They used that word at the State Department and said, “This person who killed an American journalist should be prosecuted.” But when it started to become clear that it was probably an Israeli soldier, their tone shifted, and it became talking about vague calls for accountability or changes to the rules of engagement, which never actually happened.

So, you got to a point where the Israeli government admitted it was likely them, the US government called for them to change the rules of engagement, and the Israeli government said no. And we have this interview in the film with Senator Chris Van Hollen, who says that, essentially, Israel was giving the middle finger to the US government on this.

And we have seen, since that time, more Americans being killed in the West Bank, dozens and dozens and dozens of journalists being killed, with no accountability. And we would like to see that change.

This is a trajectory that you’re seeing. You know, the blue vest no longer provides any protection for journalists in Israel. The Israeli military itself has said that wearing a blue vest with “Press” on it does not necessarily mean that you are a journalist.

They are saying that terrorists wear blue vests, too. So, if you are a journalist operating in the West Bank now, you have to assume that the Israeli military could target you.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go to another clip from the film Who Killed Shireen?, which features Ali Samoudi, Shireen Abu Akleh’s producer, who was with Shireen when she was killed, and was himself shot and injured. In the clip, he speaks to the journalist Fatima AbdulKarim.

FATIMA ABDULKARIM: We are set up here now, even though we were supposed to meet at the location where you got injured and Shireen got killed.

ALI SAMOUDI: [translated] We are five minutes from the location in Maidan al-Awdah. But you could lose your soul in the five minutes it would take us to reach it. You could be hit by army bullets. They could arrest you.

So it is essentially impossible to get there. I believe the big disaster which prevented the occupation from being punished and repeating these crimes is the neglect and indifference by many of the institutions, especially American ones, which continue to defend the occupation.

FATIMA ABDULKARIM: [translated] We’re now approaching the third anniversary of Shireen’s death. How did that affect you?

ALI SAMOUDI: [translated] During that period, the occupation was making preparations for a dangerous scenario in the Jenin refugee camp. And for this reason, they didn’t want witnesses.

They opened fire on us in order to terroriSe us enough that we wouldn’t go back to the camp. And in that sense, they partially succeeded.

Since then, we have been overcome by fear. From the moment Shireen was killed, I said and continue to say and will continue to say that this bullet was meant to prevent the Palestinian media from the documentation and exposure of the occupation’s crimes.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Ali Samoudi, Shireen Abu Akleh’s producer, who was with Shireen when she was killed, and was himself shot and injured.

We should note, Ali Samoudi was just detained by Israeli forces in late April. The Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti recently wrote, “Ali Samoudi was beaten so bad by Israeli soldiers he was immediately hospitalised. This man has been one of the few journalists that continues reporting on Israeli military abuses north of the West Bank despite the continued risk on his life,” Mariam Barghouti wrote.

The Committee to Protect Journalists spoke to the journalist’s son, Mohammed Al Samoudi, who told CPJ, quote, “My father suffers from several illnesses, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and a stomach ulcer . . .  He needs a diabetes injection every two days and a specific diet. It appears he was subjected to assault and medical neglect at the interrogation center . . .

“Our lawyer told us he was transferred to an Israeli hospital after a major setback in his health. We don’t know where he is being held, interrogated, or even the hospital to which he was taken. My father has been forcibly disappeared,” he said.

So, Dion Nissenbaum, if you could give us the latest? You spoke to Ali Samoudi for the documentary, and now he’s been detained.

DION NISSENBAUM: Yeah. His words were prophetic, right? He talks about this was an attempt to silence journalists. And my colleague Fatima says the same thing, that these are ongoing, progressive efforts to silence Palestinian journalists.

And we don’t know where Ali is. He has not actually been charged with anything yet. He is one of the most respected journalists in the West Bank. And we are just seeing this progression going on.

AMY GOODMAN: So, the latest we know is he was supposed to have a hearing, and that hearing has now been delayed to May 13th, Ali Samoudi?

DION NISSENBAUM: That’s right. And he has yet to be charged, so . . .

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to Lina Abu Akleh, who’s in New Jersey, where Shireen grew up. Lina, you were listed on Time magazine’s 100 emerging leaders for publicly demanding scrutiny of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, the horror.

And again, our condolences on the death of your aunt, on the killing of your aunt, and also to Anton, Shireen’s brother. Lina, you’ve also, of course, spoken to Ali Samoudi. This continues now. He’s in detention — his son says, “just disappeared”.

What are you demanding right now? We have a new administration. We’ve moved from the Biden administration to the Trump administration. And are you in touch with them? Are they speaking to you?

LINA ABU AKLEH: Well, our demands haven’t changed. From day one, we’re calling for the US administration to complete its investigation, or for the FBI to continue its investigation, and to finally release — to finally hold someone to account.

And we have enough evidence that could have been — that the administration could have used to expedite this case. But, unfortunately, this new administration, as well, no one has spoken to us. We haven’t been in touch with anyone, and it’s just been radio silence since.

For us, as I said, our demands have never changed. It’s been always to hold the entire system to account, the entire chain of command, the military, for the killing of an American citizen, a journalist, a Palestinian, Palestinian American journalist.

As we’ve been talking, targeting journalists isn’t happening just by shooting at them or killing them. There’s so many different forms of targeting journalists, especially in Gaza and the West Bank and Jerusalem.

So, for us, it’s really important as a family that we don’t see other families experience what we are going through, for this — for impunity, for Israel’s impunity, to end, because, at the end of the day, accountability is the only way to put an end to this impunity.

AMY GOODMAN: I am horrified to ask this question to Shireen’s family members, to Lina, to Tony, Shireen’s brother, but the revelation in the film — we were all there last night at its premiere in New York — that the Israeli soldiers are using a photograph of Shireen’s face for target practice. Tony Abu Akleh, if you could respond?

ANTON ABU AKLEH: You know, there is no words to describe our sorrow and pain hearing this. But, you know, I would just want to know why. Why would they do this thing? What did Shireen do to them for them to use her as a target practice? You know, this is absolutely barbaric act, unjustified. Unjustified.

And we really hope that this US administration will be able to put an end to all this impunity they are enjoying. If they didn’t enjoy all this impunity, they wouldn’t have been doing this. Practising on a journalist? Why? You know, you can practice on anything, but on a journalist?

This shows that this targeting of more journalists, whether in Gaza, in Palestine, it’s systematic. It’s been planned for. And they’ve been targeting and shutting off those voices, those reports, from reaching anywhere in the world.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Anton, if you could say — you know, you mentioned last night, as well, Shireen was, in fact, extremely cautious as a journalist. If you could elaborate on that? What precisely —

ANTON ABU AKLEH: Absolutely. Absolutely. Shireen was very careful. Every time she’s in the field, she would take her time to put on the gear, the required helmet, the vest with “press” written on it, before going there. She also tried to identify herself as a journalist, whether to the Israelis or to the Palestinians, so she’s not attacked.

And she always went by the book, followed the rules, how to act, how to be careful, how to speak to those people involved, so she can protect herself. But, unfortunately, he was — this soldier, as stated in the documentary, targeted Shireen just because she’s Shireen and she’s a journalist. That’s it. There is no other explanation.

Sixteen bullets were fired on Shireen. Not even her helmet, nor the vest she was wearing, were able to protect her, unfortunately.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Mehdi Hasan, you wanted to respond.

MEHDI HASAN: So, Tony asks, “Why? Why would you do this? Why would you target not just a journalist in the field, but then use her face for target practice?” — as Dion and his team reveal in the film. And there is, unfortunately, a very simple answer to that question, which is that the Israeli military — and not just the Israeli military, but many people in our world today — have dehumanised Palestinians.

There is the removal of humanity from the people you are oppressing, occupying, subjugating and killing. It doesn’t matter if you’re an American citizen. It doesn’t matter if you have a press jacket on. It only matters that you are Palestinian in the sniper’s sights.

And that is how they have managed to pull of the killing of so many journalists, so many children. The first documentary we commissioned last year was called Israel’s Real Extremism, and it was about the Israeli soldiers who go into Gaza and make TikTok videos wearing Palestinian women’s underwear, playing with Palestinian children’s toys. It is the ultimate form of dehumanisation, the idea that these people don’t count, their lives have no value.

And what’s so tragic and shocking — and the film exposes this — is that Joe Biden — forget the Israeli military — Joe Biden also joined in that dehumanisation. Do you remember at the start of this conflict when he comes out and he says, “Well, I’m not sure I believe the Palestinian death toll numbers,” when he puts out a statement at the hundred days after October 7th and doesn’t mention Palestinian casualties.

And that has been the fundamental problem. This was the great comforter-in-chief. Joe Biden was supposed to be the empath. And yet, as Tony points out, what was so shocking in the film is he didn’t even raise Shireen’s case with Naftali Bennett, the prime minister of Israel at the time.

Again, would he have done that if it was an American journalist in Moscow? We know that’s not the case. We know when American journalists, especially white American journalists, are taken elsewhere in the world, the government gives a damn. And yet, in the case of Shireen, the only explanation is because she was a Palestinian American journalist.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, in the United States, the US government is responsible for American citizens, which Biden pointed out at the beginning, when he thought it was a Palestinian militant who had killed her. But, Lina, you yourself are a journalist. And I’m thinking I want to hear your response to using her face, because, of course, that is not just the face of Shireen, but I think it’s the face of journalism.

And it’s not just American journalism, of course. I mean, in fact, she’s known to hundreds of millions of people around world as the face and voice of Al Jazeera Arabic. She spoke in Arabic. She was known as that to the rest of the world. But to see that and that revealed in this documentary?

LINA ABU AKLEH: Yeah, it was horrifying, actually. And it just goes on to show how the Israeli military is built. It’s barbarism. It’s the character of revenge, of hate. And that is part of the entire system. And as Mehdi and as my father just mentioned, this is all about dehumanizing Palestinians, regardless if they’re journalists, if they’re doctors, they’re officials. For them, they simply don’t care about Palestinian lives.

And for us, Shireen will always be the voice of Palestine. And she continues to be remembered for the legacy that she left behind. And she continues to live through so many, so many journalists, who have picked up the microphone, who have picked up the camera, just because of Shireen.

So, regardless of how the Israeli military continues to dehumanise journalists and how the US fails to protect Palestinian American journalists, we will continue to push forward to continue to highlight the life and the legacy that Shireen left behind.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s turn to Shireen Abu Akleh in her own words. This is an excerpt from the Al Jazeera English documentary The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh.

SHIREEN ABU AKLEH: [translated] Sometimes the Israeli army doesn’t want you there, so they target you, even if they later say it was an accident. They might say, “We saw some young men around you.” So they target you on purpose, as a way of scaring you off because they don’t want you there.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, that was Shireen in her own words in an Al Jazeera documentary. So, Lina, I know you have to go soon, but if you could just tell us: What do you want people to know about Shireen, as an aunt, a sister and a journalist?

LINA ABU AKLEH: Yes, so, we know Shireen as the journalist, but behind the camera, she was one of the most empathetic people. She was very sincere. And something not a lot of people know, but she was a very funny person. She had a very unique sense of humor, that she lit up every room she entered. She cared about everyone and anyone. She enjoyed life.

Shireen, at the end of the day, loved life. She had plans. She had dreams that she still wanted to achieve. But her life was cut short by that small bullet, which would change our lives entirely.

But at the end of the day, Shireen was a professional journalist who always advocated for truth, for justice. And at the end of the day, all she wanted to do was humanise Palestinians and talk about the struggles of living under occupation. But at the same time, she wanted to celebrate their achievements.

She shed light on all the happy moments, all the accomplishments of the Palestinian people. And this is something that really touched millions of Palestinians, of Arabs around the world. She was able to enter the hearts of the people through the small camera lens. And until this day, she continues to be remembered for that.

AMY GOODMAN: Before we go, we’re going to keep you on, Mehdi, to talk about other issues during the Trump administration, but how can people access Who Killed Shireen?

MEHDI HASAN: So, it’s available online at WhoKilledShireen.com, is where you can go to watch it. We are releasing the film right now only to paid subscribers. We hope to change that in the forthcoming days.

People often say to me, “How can you put it behind a paywall?” Journalism — a free press isn’t free, sadly. We have to fund films like this. Dion came to us because a lot of other people didn’t want to fund a topic like this, didn’t want to fund an investigation like this.

So, we’re proud to be able to fund such documentaries, but we also need support from our contributors, our subscribers and the viewers. But it’s an important film, and I hope as many people will watch it as possible, WhoKilledShireen.com.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank Lina, the niece of Shireen Abu Akleh, and Anton, Tony, the older brother of Shireen Abu Akleh, for joining us from New Jersey. Together, we saw the documentary last night, Who Killed Shireen? And we want to thank Dion Nissenbaum, who is the filmmaker, the correspondent on this film, formerly a correspondent with The Wall Street Journal. The founder of Zeteo, on this first anniversary of Zeteo, is Mehdi Hasan.

The original content of this Democracy Now! programme is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

At Papua New Guinea’s Post-Courier, our senior journalists often operate in the shadows, yet their courageous efforts are often overlooked — continuously pushing boundaries to bring us important stories that shape our lives and venturing outside their comfort zones to deliver top-notch content.

This is the tale of one of Post-Courier’s esteemed senior journalists, Gorethy Kenneth. From Tegese Village, Lontis on Buka Island in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, “GK” (Gee-Kay) as her colleagues fondly call her, has dedicated 23 years of her life to journalism at this newspaper.

When asked about who inspired her to pursue a career in media and journalism, she said, “My late father!” She mentions that she “always wanted to be an economist like her uncle Julius Longa”.

• READ MORE: Other Gorethy Kenneth reports at Asia Pacific Report
• Samoa down in RSF media freedom world ranking due to ‘authoritarian pressure’
• Indonesian postcard image ‘dangerous’ but Fiji a rising star in RSF press freedom index
• Fiji media welcomes credible news services, but not ‘pop-up propagandists’, says Simpson
• PINA on World Press Freedom Day – facing new and complex AI challenges
• Rabuka salutes Fiji media but warns against taking freedom for granted
• NZ fares well in latest RSF press freedom index as authoritarian regimes stifle Asia-Pacific media
• RSF 2025 World Press Freedom rankings
• RSF World Press Freedom Index 2025: economic fragility a leading threat to press freedom

However, she states that “Maths was horrible . . .  So, my late papa told me, I talk too much and should think about television — I ended up with newspaper reporting.”

Fast forward to 2024
Through her dedication and persistence, Kenneth is now a senior journalist within the company, specialising as a political editor. She commends the company for its commitment to well-researched investigative journalism, impartial reporting, comprehensive coverage, community involvement, thorough analysis, media freedom and informative content.

Starting off with Uni Tavur student journalist newspaper at the University of Papua New Guinea, Kenneth has amassed a wealth of experience as a profound writer and encountered different personalities over the years, noting numerous stories she covered during her tenure at the Post-Courier.

As a proud Bougainvillean, she highlights her interview with Francis Ona, the reclusive leader of her home province at the time. Reflecting on the experience, she remarks, “I was the first and last to interview him — the journey to get through to him was tough, despite my Bougainvillean heritage.”

Kenneth is known for her unique approach to investigative journalism. One memorable story she recalls, is about a scandalous love triangle between a former Secretary of Foreign Affairs and his secret lover, known as “Jolyne”.

Using a clever tactic, Kenneth assumed the identity of “Jolyne” and managed to reach the Secretary through a landline call, shedding light on the secretive affair. Amusingly, veteran journalists now refer to her as “Jolyne”, a nod to the character she ingeniously portrayed to deceive the unsuspecting Secretary.

In the early 2000s, she, alongside security reporter Robyn Sela, daringly stepped out of their comfort zone, orchestrating an audacious plan: deliberately getting themselves arrested and spending time in Boroko Jail.

Their goal? To delve into the conditions of a prison cell in Port Moresby and report on it firsthand. However, their scheme didn’t escape the notice of chief-of-staff Blaise Nangoi and editor Oseah Philemon, who, upon discovering their intentions, expressed concern.

“They almost sidelined us for getting bailed out with company money – BUT, we got our story,” she gladly remarked.

As one of Post-Courier’s prominent writers, Kenneth has faced numerous hurdles during her time as a journalist. She faced threats and legal disputes from unsatisfied readers and grappled with “ethical dilemmas” while covering sensitive topics — she has encountered her fair share of challenges.

Moreover, she has confronted issues surrounding gender and diversity during her career.

In addition to these personal and professional obstacles, Kenneth highlights the impact of “digital disruption” on the newspaper industry. The transition from traditional print media to digital platforms, including the widespread use of social media and streaming services, has significantly challenged newspaper companies like the Post-Courier in recent years.

Fortunately, Kenneth managed to power through these challenges with the support of training and supervision provided by Post-Courier. She applauds the company for its unwavering support during trying times.

Additionally, she took proactive steps to enhance her understanding of journalistic issues, demonstrating her commitment to growth and professional development.

Continuing to persevere, Gorethy forged a distinguished career marked by championing significant projects and advocating for social change. Armed with the ability to influence public opinion, she found her work as a journalist immensely rewarding.

Her career afforded her the opportunity to travel both locally and internationally, and she reported on stories rife with conflict and controversy. Furthermore, she finds fulfillment in the role of mentoring future journalists, cherishing the chance to impart her knowledge and experience onto the next generation.

When asked about what she is proud of, she says . . .  “I am still 16 at heart – don’t tell me I’m old among my young journo colleagues.”

During her free time, she enjoys sipping on her whisky and reading. She continues to support her family, friends, enemies and her community at a personal level and at a professional level as a senior journalist.

• Papua New Guinea rose 13 places to 78th out of 180 countries surveyed by the RSF 2025 World Press Freedom Index

Republished from the Post-Courier with permission.

SPECIAL REPORT: By Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon

On February 12 this year, former prime minister Scott Morrison’s principal private secretary Yaron Finkelstein, and former Labor NSW Treasurer Eric Roozendaal, met in the plush 50 Bridge St offices in the heart of Sydney’s CBD.

The powerbrokers were there to discuss election strategies for the astroturfing campaign group Better Australia 2025 Inc.

Finkelstein now runs his own discreet advisory firm Society Advisory, while also a director of the Liberal Party’s primary think-tank Menzies Research Centre. Previously, he worked as head of global campaigns for the conservative lobby firm Crosby Textor (CT), before working for Morrison and as Special Counsel to former NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet.

• READ MORE: Albanese ignored Palestinian and Arabic background Australians in his own electorate – now they speak out
• Rightwing astroturfers infiltrate Australian local councils, fire up unrest over Israel
• Other Australian election reports

Roozendaal earned a reputation as a top fundraiser during his term as general secretary of NSW Labor and a later stint for the Yuhu property developer. He is now a co-convenor of Labor Friends of Israel.

The two strategists have previously served together on the executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, where Finkelstein was vice-president (2010-2019) and Roozendaal was later the chair of public affairs (2019-2020).

Better for whom?
Better Australia chairperson Sophie Calland, a software engineer and active member of the Alexandria Branch of the Labor party attended the meeting. She is a director of Better Australia and carries formal responsibility for electoral campaigns (and partner of Israel agitator Ofir Birenbaum).

Also present at the meeting was Better Australia 2025 member Alex Polson, a former staffer to retiring Senator Simon Birmingham and CEO of firm DBK Advisory. Other members present included another director, Charline Samuell, and her husband, psychiatrist Dr Doron Samuell.

Last week, Dr Samuell attracted negative publicity when Liberal campaigners in the electorate of Reid leaked Whatsapp messages where he insisted on referring to Greens as Nazis. “Nazis at Chiswick wharf,” Samuell wrote, alongside a photograph of two Greens volunteers.

The Better Australia group already have experience as astroturfers. Their “Put The Greens Last” campaign was previously directed by Calland and Polson under the entity Better Council Inc. in the NSW Local government elections in September 2024.

The Greens lost three councillors in Sydney’s East but maintained five seats on the Inner West Council.

But the group had developed bigger electoral plans. They also registered the name Better NSW in mid-2024. By the time the group met for the first time this year on January 8, their plans to play a role in the Federal election were already well advanced.

They voted to change the name Better NSW Inc. to Better Australia 2025 Inc.

Calland and Birenbaum
Group member Ofir Birenbaum joined the January meeting to discuss “potential campaign fundraising materials” and a “pool of national volunteers”. Birenbaum is Calland’s husband and member of the Rosebery Branch of the Labor Party.

But by the time the group met with Finkelstein and Roozendaal in February, Birenbaum was missing. The day before the meeting, Birenbaum’s role in the #UndercoverJew stunt at Cairo Takeaway cafe was sprung.

This incident focused attention on Birenbaum’s track record as an agitator at Pro-Palestine events and as a “close friend” of the extreme-right Australian Jewish Association. The former Instagram influencer has since closed his social media accounts and disappeared from public view.

The minutes of the February meeting lodged with NSW Fair Trading mention a “discussion of potential campaign management candidates; an in-depth presentation and discussion of strategy; a review and amendments of draft campaign fundraising materials”. All of this suggests that consultants had been hired and work was well underway.

The group also voted to change Better Council’s business address and register a national association with ASIC so they could legally campaign at a national level.

On March 4, Calland registered Better Australia as a “significant third party” with the Australian Electoral Commission. This is required for organisations that expect their campaign to cost more than $250,000.

Three weeks later, Prime Minister Albanese called the election, and Better Australia’s federal campaign was off to the races.

Labor or Liberal, it doesn’t matter…
According to its website, Better Australia’s stated goals are non-partisan: they want a majority government, “regardless of which major party is in office”.

“In Australia, past minority governments have seen stalled reforms, frequent leadership changes, and uncertainty that paralysed effective governance.”

No evidence has been provided by either Better Australia’s website or campaigning materials for these statements. In fact, in its short lifetime, the Gillard Labor minority government passed legislation at a record pace.

Instead, it is all about creating fear.  A stream of campaigning videos, posts, flyers and placards carrying simple messages tapping into fear, insecurity, distrust and disappointment have appeared on social media and the streets of Sydney in recent weeks.

Wentworth independent Allegra Spender wasted no time posting her own video telling voters she was unfazed, and for her electorate to make their own voting choices rather than fall for a crude scare campaign.

Spender is accused of supporting anti-Israel terrorism by voting to reinstate funding for the United Nations aid agency UNRWA. Better Australia warns that billionaires and dark money fund the Teal campaign, alleging average voters will lose their money if Teals are reelected.

It doesn’t matter that most Teal MPs have policies in favour of increasing accountability in government or that no information is provided about who is backing Better Australia.

Anti-Green, too
The anti-Greens angle of Better Australia’s campaign sends a broad message to all electorates to “Put the Greens Last”. It aims to starve the Greens of preferences. The campaign message is simple: the Greens are “antisemitic, support terrorism, and have abandoned their environmental roots”.

It does not matter that calls unite the peaceful Palestine protests for a ceasefire, or that the Greens have never stopped campaigning for the environment and against new fossil fuel projects.

Better Australia promotes itself as a grassroots organisation. In February, Sophie Calland told The Guardian that “Better Australia is led by a broad coalition of Australians who believe that political representation should be based on integrity and action, not extremist or elite activism”.

It has very few members and its operations are marked by secrecy, and voters will have to wait a full year before the AEC registry of political donations reveals Better Australia’s backers.

It fits into a patchwork of organisations aiming to influence voters towards a framework of right-wing values, including

“support for the Israel Defence Force, fossil fuel industries, nationalism and anti-immigration and anti-transgender issues.”

Advance Australia (not so fair)
Advance is the lead organisation in this space. It campaigns in its own right and also supports other organisations, including Minority Impact Coalition, Queensland Jewish Collective and J-United.

Advance claims to have raised $5 million to smash the Greens and a supporter base of more than 245,000. It has received donations up to $500,000 from the Victorian Liberal Party’s holding company, Cormack Foundation.

In Melbourne, ex-Labor member for Macnamara, Michael Danby, directs and authorises “Macnamara Voters Against Extremism”, which pushes voters to preference either Liberals or Labor first, and the Greens last. Danby has spoken alongside Birenbaum at Together With Israel rallies.

The message of Better Australia — and Better Council before it — mostly aligns with Advance. These campaigns target women aged 35 to 49, who Advance claims are twice as likely to vote for the Greens as men of the same age.

The scare campaign targets female voters with its fear-mongering and Greens MPS, including Australia’s first Muslim Senator Mehreen Faruqi, and independent female MPS with its loathing.

Meanwhile, Advance is funded by mining billionaires and advocates against renewable energy.

Labor standing by in silence
Better Australia is different from Advance, which is targeting Labor because it is an alliance of Zionist Labor and LIberal interests. Calland’s campaign may be effectively contributing to the election of a Dutton government. In the face of what would appear to be betrayal, the NSW Labor Party simply stands by.

The NSW Labor Rules Book (Section A.7c) states that a member may be suspended for “disloyal or unworthy conduct [or] action or conduct contrary to the principles and solidarity of the Party.”

Following MWM’s February exposé of Birenbaum, we sent questions to NSW Labor Head Office, and MPs Tanya Plibersek and Ron Hoenig, without reply. Hoenig is a member of the Parliamentary Friends of Israel and has attended Alexandria Branch meetings with Calland.

MWM asked Plibersek to comment on Birenbaum’s membership of her own Rosebery Branch, and on Birenbaum’s covert filming of Luc Velez, the Greens candidate in Plibersek’s seat of Sydney. Birenbaum shared the video and generated homophobic commentary, but we received no answers to any of our questions.

According to MWM sources, Calland’s involvement in Better Australia and Better Council before that is well known in Inner Sydney Labor circles. Last Tuesday night, she attended an Alexandria Branch meeting that discussed the Federal election. She also attended a meeting of Plibersek’s campaign.

No one raised or asked questions about Calland’s activities. MWM is not aware if NSW Labor has received complaints from any of its members alleging that Calland or Birenbaum has breached the party’s rules.

After all, when top Liberal and Labor strategists walk into a corporate boardroom, there is much to agree on.

It begins with a national campaign to keep the major parties in and independents and Greens out.

• MWM has sent questions to Calland, Finkelstein, and Roozendaal, regarding funding and the alliance between Liberal and Labor powerbrokers but we have yet to receive any replies.

Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was professor of journalism at UTS. She has worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism. She is not a member of any political party but is a Greens supporter and long-term supporter of peaceful BDS strategies.

Yaakov Aharon is a Jewish-Australian living in Wollongong. He enjoys long walks on Wollongong Beach, unimpeded by Port Kembla smoke fumes and AUKUS submarines. This article was first published by Michael West Media and is republished with permission of the authors.

EDITORIAL: By the OCCRP editors

“OCCRP is a deep state operation.
“OCCRP is connected to the CIA.
“OCCRP was tasked by USAID to overthrow President Donald Trump.”

How did we end up getting this kind of attention? Old fashioned investigative journalism.

We wrote a simple story in 2019 about how Rudy Giuliani went to Ukraine for some opposition research and ended up working with people connected to organised crime who misled him.

Unbeknown to us, a whistleblower found the story online and added it to a complaint that was the basis of President Trump’s first impeachment. We also wrote a story about Hunter Biden‘s business partners and their ties to organised crime but that hasn’t received the same attention.

• READ MORE: Trump’s foreign aid freeze throws independent journalism into chaos
• Other Pacific media freedom reports

Journalism has become a blood sport. It’s harder and harder to tell the truth without someone’s interests getting stepped on.

OCCRP prides itself on being independent and nonpartisan. No donor has any say in our reporting, but we often find ourselves under attack for our funding.

It’s not just political interests but organised crime, businesses, enablers, and other journalists who regularly attack us. What’s common in all of these attacks is that the truth doesn’t matter and it will not protect you.

Few attack the facts in our reporting. Instead we’re left perplexed by how to respond to wild conspiracy theories, outright disinformation, and hyperbolic hatred.

At the same time, we’ve lost 29 percent of our funding because of the US foreign aid freeze. This includes 82 percent of the money we give to newsrooms in our network, many of which operate in places [Pacific Media Watch: Such as in the Pacific] where no one else will support them.

This money did not only fund groundbreaking, prize-winning collaborative journalism but it also trained young investigative reporters to expose wrongdoing. It’s money that kept journalists safe from physical and digital attacks and supported those in exile who continued to report on crooks and dictators back in their home countries.

OCCRP now has 43 less journalists and staff to do our work.

No attack or funding freeze will stop us from trying to fulfill our mission. Just in the past week, OCCRP and its partners revealed how Russia’s shadow fleet sources its ships, how taxes haven’t been paid on Roman Abramovich’s yachts, and how Syrian intelligence spied on journalists.

Next week, we’ll take on another set of powerful actors to defend the public interest. And another set the week after that.

We are determined to stay in the fight and keep reporting on organised crime and the corrupt who enable and benefit from it. But it’s getting harder and we need help.

• How to donate to the OCCRP project.

For 30 years, Filipino journalist Manny “Bok” Mogato covered the police and defence rounds, and everything from politics to foreign relations, sports, and entertainment, eventually bagging one of journalism’s top prizes — the Pulitzer in 2018, for his reporting on Duterte’s drug war along with two other Reuters correspondents, Andrew Marshall and Clare Baldwin.

For Mogato it was time for him to “write it all down,” and so he did, launching the autobiography It’s Me, Bok! Journeys in Journalism in October 2024.

Mogato told Rappler, he wanted to “write it all down before I forget and impart my knowledge to the youth, young journalists, so they won’t make the same mistakes that I did”.

• READ MORE: Killing as policy: Duterte’s bloody drug war that Marcos will inherit
• PHOTOESSAY: Buried in debt only to have their loved ones get a burial — Pacific Journalism Review
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His career has spanned many organisations, including the Journal group, The Manila Chronicle, The Manila Times, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, and Rappler. Outside of journalism, he also serves as a consultant for Cignal TV.

Recently, we sat down with Mogato to talk about his career — a preview of what you might be able to read in his book — and pick out a few lessons for today’s journalists, as well as his views on the country today.

You’ve covered so many beats. Which beat did you enjoy covering most? 

Manny Mogato: The military. Technically, I was assigned to the military defence beat for only a few years, from 1987 to 1992. In early 1990, FVR (Fidel V. Ramos) was running for president, and I was made to cover his campaign.

When he won, I was assigned to cover the military, and I went back to the defence beat because I had so many friends there.

‘We faced several coups’
I really enjoyed it and still enjoy it because you go to places, to military camps. And then I also covered the defence beat at the most crucial and turbulent period in our history — when we faced several coups.

Rappler: You have mellowed through the years as a reporter. You chronicled in your book that when you were younger, you were learning the first two years about the police beat and then transferred to another publication.

How did your reporting style mellow, or did it grow? Did you become more curious or did you become less curious? Over the years as a reporter, did you become more or less interested in what was happening around you?

How would you describe your process then?

MM: Curiosity is the word I would use. So, from the start until now, I am still curious about things happening around me. Exciting things, interesting things.

But if you read the book, you’ll see I’ve mellowed a lot because I was very reckless during my younger days.

I would go on assignments without asking permission from my office. For instance, there was this hostage-taking incident in Zamboanga, where a policeman held hostages of several officers, including a general and a colonel.

So when I learned that, I volunteered to go without asking permission from my office. I only had 100 pesos (NZ$3) in my pocket. And so what I did, I saw the soldiers loading bullets into the boxes and I picked up one box and carried it.

Hostage crisis with one tee
So when the aircraft was already airborne, they found out I was there, and so I just sat somewhere, and I covered the hostage crisis for three to four days with only one T-shirt.

Reporters in Zamboanga were kind enough to lend me T-shirts. They also bought me underpants. I slept in the headquarters crisis. And then later, restaurants. Alavar is a very popular seafood restaurant in Zamboanga. I slept there. So when the crisis was over, I came back. At that time, the Chronicle and ABS-CBN were sister companies.

When I returned to Manila, my editor gave me a commendation — but looking back . . . I just had to get a story.

Rappler: So that is what drives you?

MM: Yes, I have to get the story. I will do this on my own. I have to be ahead of the others. In 1987, when a PAL flight to Baguio City crashed, killing all 50 people on board, including the crew and the passengers, I was sent by my office to Baguio to cover the incident.

But the crash site was in Benguet, in the mountains. So I went there to the mountains. And then the Igorots were in that area, living in that area.

I was with other reporters and mountaineering clubs. We decided to go back because we were surrounded by the Igorots [who made it difficult for us to do our jobs]. Luckily, the Lopezes had a helicopter and [we] were the first to take photos.

‘I saw the bad side of police’
Rappler: Why are military and defense your favourite beats to cover?

MM: I started my career in 1983/1984, as a police reporter. So I know my way around the police. And I have many good friends in the police. I saw the bad side of the police, the dark side, corruption, and everything.

I also saw the military in the most turbulent period of our history when I was assigned to the military. So I saw good guys, I saw terrible guys. I saw everything in the military, and I made friends with them. It’s exciting to cover the military, the insurgency, the NPAs (New People’s Army rebels), and the secessionist movement.

You have to gain the trust of the soldiers of your sources. And if you don’t have trust, writing a story is impossible; it becomes a motherhood statement. But if you go deeper, dig deeper, you make friends, they trust you, you get more stories, you get the inside story, you get the background story, you get the top secret stories.

Because I made good friends with senior officers during my time, they can show me confidential memorandums and confidential reports, and I write about them.

I have made friends with so many of these police and military men. It started when they were lieutenants, then majors, and then generals. We’d go out together, have dinner or some drinks somewhere, and discuss everything, and they will tell you some secrets.

Before, you’d get paid 50 pesos (NZ$1.50) as a journalist every week by the police. Eventually, I had to say no and avoid groups of people engaging in this corruption. Reuters wouldn’t have hired me if I’d continued.

Rappler: With everything that you have seen in your career, what do you think is the actual state of humanity? Because you’ve seen hideous things, I’m sure. And very corrupt things. What do you think of people? 

‘The Filipinos are selfish’
MM: Well, I can speak of the Filipino people. The Filipinos are selfish. They are only after their own welfare. There is no humanity in the Filipino mentality. They’re pulling each other down all the time.

I went on a trip with my family to Japan in 2018. My son left his sling bag on the Shinkansen. So we returned to the train station and said my son had left his bag there. The people at the train station told us that we could get the bag in Tokyo.

So we went to Tokyo and recovered the bag. Everything was intact, including my money, the password, everything.

So, there are crises, disasters, and ayuda (aid) in other places. And the people only get what they need, no? In the Philippines, that isn’t the case. So that’s humanity [here]. It isn’t very pleasant for us Filipinos.

Rappler: Is there anything good?

MM: Everyone was sharing during the EDSA Revolution, sharing stories, and sharing everything. They forgot themselves. And they acted as a community known against Marcos in 1986. That is very telling and redeeming. But after that… [I can’t think of anything else that is good.]

Rappler: What is the one story you are particularly fond of that you did or something you like or are proud of? 

War on drugs, and typhoon Yolanda
MM: On drugs, my contribution to the Reuters series, and my police stories. Also, typhoon Yolanda in 2013. We left Manila on November 9, a day after the typhoon. We brought much equipment — generator sets, big cameras, food supply, everything.

But the thing is, you have to travel light. There are relief goods for the victims and other needs. When we arrived at the airport, we were shocked. Everything was destroyed. So we had to stay in the airport for the night and sleep.

We slept under the rain the entire time for the next three days. Upon arrival at the airport, we interviewed the police regional commander. Our report, I think, moved the international community to respond to the extended damage and casualties. My report that 10,000 people had died was nominated for the Society Publishers in Asia in Hong Kong.

Every day, we had to walk from the airport eight to 10 kilometers away, and along the way, we saw the people who were living outside their homes. And there was looting all over.

Rappler: There is a part in your book where you mentioned the corruption of journalists, right? And reporters. What do you mean by corruption? 

MM: Simple tokens are okay to accept. When I was with Reuters, its gift policy was that you could only accept gifts as much as $50. Anything more than $50 is already a bribe. There are things that you can buy on your own, things you can afford. Other publications, like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Associated Press [nes agency], have a $0 gift policy. We have this gift-giving culture in our culture. It’s Oriental.

If you can pay your own way, you should do it.

Rappler: Tell us more about winning the Pulitzer Prize.

Most winners are American, American issues
MM: I did not expect to win this American-centric award. Most of the winners are Americans and American stories, American issues. But it so happened this was international reporting. There were so many other stories that were worth the win.

The story is about the Philippines and the drug war. And we didn’t expect a lot of interest in that kind of story. So perhaps we were just lucky that we were awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In the Society of Publishers in Asia, in Hong Kong, the same stories were also nominated for investigative journalism. So we were not expecting that Pulitzer would pay attention.

The idea of the drug war was not the work of only three people: Andrew Marshal, Clare Baldwin and me. No, it was a team effort.

Rappler: What was your specific contribution?

MM: Andrew and Clare were immersed in different communities in Manila, Tondo, and Navotas City, interviewing victims and families and everybody, everyone else. On the other hand, my role was on the police.

I got the police comments and official police comments and also talked to police sources who would give us the inside story — the inside story of the drug war. So I have a good friend, a retired police general who was from the intelligence service, and he knew all about this drug war — mechanics, plan, reward system, and everything that they were doing. So, he reported about the drug war.

The actual drug war was what the late General Rodolfo Mendoza said was a ruse because Duterte was protecting his own drug cartel.

Bishops wanted to find out
He had a report made for Catholic bishops. There was a plenary in January 2017, and the bishops wanted to find out. So he made the report. His report was based on 17 active police officers who are still in active service. So when he gave me this report, I showed it to my editors.

My editor said: “Oh, this is good. This is a good guide for our story.” He got this information from the police sources — subordinates, those who were formerly working for him, gave him the information.

So it was hearsay, you know. So my editor said: “Why can’t you convince him to introduce us to the real people involved in the drug war?”

So, the general and I had several interviews. Usually, our interviews lasted until early morning. Father [Romeo] Intengan facilitated the interview. He was there to help us. At the same time, he was the one serving us coffee and biscuits all throughout the night.

So finally, after, I think, two or three meetings, he agreed that he would introduce us to police officers. So we interviewed the police captain who was really involved in the killings, and in the operation, and in the drug war.

So we got a lot of information from him. The info went not only to one story but several other stories.

He was saying it was also the police who were doing it.

Rappler: Wrapping up — what do you think of the Philippines?

‘Duterte was the worst’
MM: The Philippines under former President Duterte was the worst I’ve seen. Worse than under former President Ferdinand Marcos. People were saying Marcos was the worst president because of martial law. He closed down the media, abolished Congress, and ruled by decree.

I think more than 3000 people died, and 10,000 were tortured and jailed.

But in three to six years under Duterte, more than 30,000 people died. No, he didn’t impose martial law, but there was a de facto martial law. The anti-terrorism law was very harsh, and he closed down ABS-CBN television.

It had a chilling effect on all media organisations. So, the effect was the same as what Marcos did in 1972.

We thought that Marcos Jr would become another Duterte because they were allies. And we felt that he would follow the policies of President Duterte, but it turned out he’s much better.

Well, everything after Duterte is good. Because he set the bar so low.

Everything is rosy — even if Marcos is not doing enough because the economy is terrible. Inflation is high, unemployment is high, foreign direct investments are down, and the peso is almost 60 to a dollar.

Praised over West Philippine Sea
However, the people still praise Marcos for his actions in the West Philippine Sea. I think the people love him for that. And the number of killings in the drug war has gone down.

There are still killings, but the number has really gone so low, I would say about 300 in the first two years.

Rappler: Why did you write your book, It’s Me, Bok! Journeys in Journalism?

MM:  I have been writing snippets of my experiences on Facebook. Many friends were saying, ‘Why don’t you write a book?’ including Secretary [of National Defense] Gilberto Teodoro, who was fond of reading my snippets.

In my early days, I was reckless as a reporter. I don’t want the younger reporters to do that. And no story is worth writing if you are risking your life.

I want to leave behind a legacy, and I know that my memory will fail me sooner rather than later. It took me only three months to write the book.

It’s very raw. There will be a second printing. I want to polish the book and expand some of the events.

Republished with permission from Rappler.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Syria, where tens of thousands of people gathered at the Great Mosque of Damascus for the first Friday prayers since longtime authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad was toppled by opposition fighters.

DAMASCUS RESIDENT: [translated] Hopefully this Friday is the Friday of the greatest joy, a Friday of victory for our Muslim brothers. This is a blessed Friday.

AMY GOODMAN: Syria’s new caretaker Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir was among those at the mosque. He’ll act as prime minister until March.

This comes as the World Food Programme is appealing to donors to help it scale up relief operations for the approximately 2.8 million displaced and food-insecure Syrians across the country. That includes more than 1.1 million people who were forcibly displaced by fighting since late November.

Israel’s Defence Minister has told his troops to prepare to spend the winter holding the demilitarized zone that separates Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Earlier today, Prime Minister Netanyahu toured the summit of Mount Haramun in the UN-designated buffer zone. Netanyahu said this week the Golan Heights would “forever be an inseparable part of the State of Israel”.

On Thursday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for an urgent deescalation of airstrikes on Syria by Israeli forces, and their withdrawal from the UN buffer zone.

In Ankara, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Turkey’s Foreign Minister and the President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Blinken said the US and Turkey would [work] to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State group in Syria. Meanwhile, Erdoğan told Blinken that Turkey reserves the right to strike the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, led by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Turkey considers “terrorist”.

For more, we go to Damascus for the first time since the fall of longtime authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad, where we’re joined by the Associated Press investigative reporter Sarah El Deeb, who is based in the Middle East, a region she has covered for two decades.

Sarah, welcome to Democracy Now! You are overlooking —

SARAH EL DEEB: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: — the square where tens of thousands of Syrians have gathered for the first Friday prayers since the fall of Assad. Describe the scene for us.

Report from Damascus: Searching for loved ones in prisons and morgues.  Video: Democracy Now!

SARAH EL DEEB: There is a lot of firsts here. It’s the first time they gather on Friday after Bashar al-Assad fled the country. It’s the first time everyone seems to be very happy. I think that’s the dominant sentiment, especially people who are in the square. There is ecstasy, tens of thousands of people. They are still chanting, “Down with Bashar al-Assad.”

But what’s new is that it’s also visible that the sentiment is they’ve been, so far, happy with the new rulers, not outpour — there is no criticism, out — loud criticism of the new rulers yet. So, I’d say the dominant thing is that everyone is happy down there.

AMY GOODMAN: Sarah El Deeb, you recently wrote an AP article headlined “Thousands scour Syria’s most horrific prison but find no sign of their loved ones.” On Tuesday, families of disappeared prisoners continued searching Sednaya prison for signs of their long-lost loved ones who were locked up under Assad’s brutal regime.

HAYAT AL-TURKI: [translated] I will show you the photo of my missing brother. It’s been 14 years. This is his photo. I don’t know what he looks like, if I find him. I don’t know what he looks like, because I am seeing the photos of prisoners getting out. They are like skeletons.

But this is his photo, if anyone has seen him, can know anything about him or can help us. He is one of thousands of prisoners who are missing. I am asking for everyone, not only my brother, uncle, cousin and relatives.”

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about this mad search by Syrians across the country.

SARAH EL DEEB: This is the other thing that’s been dominating our coverage and our reporting since we arrived here, the contrast between the relief, the sense of relief over the departure of Bashar al-Assad but then the sadness and the concern and the no answers for where the loved ones have gone.

Thousands — also, tens of thousands of people have marched on Sednaya [prison]. It’s the counter to this scene, where people were looking for any sign of where their relatives have been. As you know really well, so many people have reported their relatives missing, tens of thousands, since the beginning of the revolt, but also before.

I mean, I think this is a part of the feature of this government, is that there has been a lot of security crackdown. People were scared to speak, but they were — because there was a good reason for it. They were picked up at any expression of discontent or expression of opinion.

So, where we were in Sednaya two, three days ago, it feels like one big day, I have to say. When we were in Sednaya, people were also describing what — anything, from the smallest expression of opinion, a violation of a traffic light. No answers.

And they still don’t know where their loved ones are. I mean, I think we know quite a lot from research before arriving here about the notorious prison system in Syria. There’s secret prisons. There are security branches where people were being held. I think this is the first time we have an opportunity to go look at those facilities.

What was surprising and shocking to the people, and also to a lot of us journalists, was that we couldn’t find any sign of these people. And the answers are — we’re still looking for them. But what was clear is that only a handful — I mean, not a handful — hundreds of people were found.

Many of them were also found in morgues. There were apparent killings in the last hours before the regime departed. One of them was the prominent activist Mazen al-Hamada. We were at his funeral yesterday. He was found, and his family believes that — he was found killed, and his family believes his body was fresh, that he was killed only a few days earlier. So, I think the killing continued up until the last hour.

AMY GOODMAN: I was wondering if you can tell us more about —

SARAH EL DEEB: What was also — what was also —

AMY GOODMAN: — more about Mazen. I mean, I wanted to play a clip of Mazen’s nephew, Yahya al-Hussein.

YAHYA AL-HUSSEIN: [translated] In 2020, he was taken from the Netherlands to Germany through the Syrian Embassy there. And from there, they brought him to Syria with a fake passport.

He arrived at the airport at around 2:30 a.m. and called my aunt to tell her that he arrived at the airport, and asked for money. When they reached out to him the next day, they were told that air intelligence had arrested him.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Mazen’s nephew, Yahya al-Hussein. Sarah, if you can explain? This was an activist who left Syria after he had been imprisoned and tortured — right? — more than a decade ago, but ultimately came back, apparently according to assurances that he would not be retaken. And now his body is found.

SARAH EL DEEB: I think it’s — like you were saying, it’s very hard to explain. This is someone who was very outspoken and was working on documenting the torture and the killing in the secret prisons in Syria. So he was very well aware of his role and his position vis-à-vis the government. Yet he felt — it was hard to explain what Mazen’s decision was based on, but his family believes he was lured into Syria by some false promises of security and safety.

His heart was in Syria. He left Syria, but he never — it never left him. He was working from wherever he was — he was in the Netherlands, he was in the US — I think, to expose these crimes. And I think this is — these are the words of his family: He was a witness on the crimes of the Assad government, and he was a martyr of the Assad government.

One of the people that were at the funeral yesterday was telling us Mazen was a lesson. The Assad government was teaching all detainees a lesson through Mazen to keep them silent. I think it was just a testimony to how cruel this ruling regime, ruling system has been for the past 50 years.

People would go back to his father’s rule also. But I think with the revolution, with the protests in 2011, all these crimes and all these detentions were just en masse. I think the estimates are anywhere between 150,000 and 80,000 detainees that no one can account for. That is on top of all the people that were killed in airstrikes and in opposition areas in crackdown on protest.

So, it was surprising that at the last minute — it was surprising and yet not very surprising. When I asked the family, “Why did they do that?” they would look at me and, like, “Why are you asking this question? They do that. That’s what they did.” It was just difficult to understand how even at the last minute, and even for someone that they promised security, this was — this would be the end, emaciated and tortured and killed, unfortunately.

AMY GOODMAN: Sarah, you spoke in Damascus to a US citizen, Travis Timmerman, who says he was imprisoned in Syria. This is a clip from an interview with Al Arabiya on Thursday in which he says he spent the last seven months in a prison cell in Damascus.

TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: My name is Travis.

REPORTER: Travis.

TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: Yes.

REPORTER: So, [speaking in Arabic]. Travis, Travis Timmerman.

TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: That’s right.

REPORTER: That’s right.

TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: But just Travis. Just call me Travis.

REPORTER: Call you Travis, OK. And where were you all this time?

TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: I was imprisoned in Damascus for the last seven months. … I was imprisoned in a cell by myself. And in the early morning of this Monday, or the Monday of this week, they took a hammer, and they broke my door down. … Well, the armed men just wanted to get me out of my cell. And then, really, the man who I stuck with was a Syrian man named Ely. He was also a prisoner that was just freed. And he took me by the side, by the arm, really. And he and a young woman that lives in Damascus, us three, exited the prison together.

AMY GOODMAN: Sarah El Deeb, your AP report on Timmerman is headlined “American pilgrim imprisoned in Assad’s Syria calls his release from prison a ‘blessing.’” What can you share about him after interviewing him?

SARAH EL DEEB: I spent quite a bit of time with Travis last night. And I think his experience was very different from what I was just describing. He was taken, he was detained for crossing illegally into Syria. And I think his description of his experience was it was OK. He was not mistreated.

He was fed well, I mean, especially when I compare it to what I heard from the Syrian prisoners in the secret prisons or in detention facilities. He would receive rice, potatoes, tomatoes. None of this was available to the Syrian detainees. He would go to the bathroom three times a day, although this was uncomfortable for him, because, of course, it was not whenever he wanted. But it was not something that other Syrian detainees would experience.

His experience also was that he heard a lot of beating. I think that’s what he described it as: beating from nearby cells. They were mostly Syrian detainees. For him, that was an implicit threat of the use of violence against him, but he did not get any — he was not beaten or tortured.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Sarah, if you could also —

SARAH EL DEEB: He also said his release was a “blessing.” Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: If you could also talk about Austin Tice, the American freelance journalist? His family, his mother and father and brothers and sisters, seem to be repeatedly saying now that they believe he’s alive, held by the Syrian government, and they’re desperately looking for him or reaching out to people in Syria. What do you know?

SARAH EL DEEB: What we know is that people thought Travis was Tice when they first saw him. They found him in a house in a village outside of Damascus. And I think that’s what triggered — we didn’t know that Travis was in a Syrian prison, so I think that’s what everyone was going to check. They thought that this was Tice.

I think the search, the US administration, the family, they are looking and determined to look for Tice. The family believes that he was in Syrian government prison. He entered Syria in 2012. He is a journalist. But I think we have — his family seems to think that there were — he’s still in a Syrian government prison.

But I think, so far, we have not had any sign of Tice from all those released. But, mind you, the scenes of release from prisons were chaotic, from multiple prisons at the same time. And we’re still, day by day, finding out about new releases and people who were set free on that Sunday morning.

U.N. Calls on Israel to Stop Bombing Syria and Occupying Demilitarized Zone https://t.co/iHNIkKKOrs

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) December 13, 2024

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Sarah El Deeb, you’ve reported on the Middle East for decades. You just wrote a piece for AP titled “These Palestinians disappeared after encounters with Israeli troops in Gaza.” So, we’re pivoting here. So much attention is being paid to the families of Syrian prisoners who they are finally freeing.

I want to turn to Gaza. Tell us about the Palestinians searching for their family members who went missing during raids and arrests by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip. And talk about the lack of accountability for these appearances. You begin your piece with Reem Ajour’s quest to find her missing husband and daughter.

SARAH EL DEEB: I talked to Reem Ajour for a long time. I mean, I think, like you said, this was a pivot, but the themes have been common across the Middle East, sadly. Reem Ajour last saw her family in March of 2024. Both her husband and her 5-year-old daughter were injured after an Israeli raid on their house during the chaotic scenes of the Israeli raids on the Shifa Hospital.

They lived in the neighborhood. So, it was chaotic. They [Israeli military] entered their home, and they were shooting in the air, or they were shooting — they were shooting, and the family ended up wounded.

But what was striking was that the Israeli soldiers made the mother leave the kid wounded in her house and forced her to leave to the south. I think this is not only Reem Ajour’s case. I think this is something we’ve seen quite a bit in Gaza. But the fact that this was a 5-year-old and the mom couldn’t take her with her was quite moving.

And I think what her case kind of symbolises is that during these raids and during these detentions at checkpoints, families are separated, and we don’t have any way of knowing how the Israeli military is actually documenting these detentions, these raids.

Where do they — how do they account for people who they detain and then they release briefly? The homes that they enter, can we find out what happened in these homes? We have no idea of holding — I think the Israeli court has also tried to get some information from the military, but so far very few cases have been resolved.

And we’re talking about not only 500 or 600 people; we’re talking about tens of thousands who have been separated, their homes raided, during what is now 15 months of war in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Sarah El Deeb, we want to thank you for being with us, Associated Press investigative reporter based in the Middle East for two decades, now reporting from Damascus.

Next up, today is the 75th day of a hunger strike by Laila Soueif. She’s the mother of prominent British Egyptian political prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fattah. She’s calling on British officials to pressure Egypt for the release of her son. We’ll speak to the Cairo University mathematics professor in London, where she’s been standing outside the Foreign Office. Back in 20 seconds.

This article is republished from the Democracy Now! programme under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders has condemned the assassination of Cambodian investigative environmental journalist Chhoeung Chheng who has died from his wounds.

He was shot by an illegal logger last week while investigating unlawful deforestation in the country’s northwest.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has urged the Cambodian government make sure this crime does not go unpunished, and to take concrete measures to protect journalists.

• READ MORE: Other reports of violence against environmental journalists

On 7 December 2024, journalist Chhoeung Chheng died in a hospital in Siem Reap, a city in northeastern Cambodia, from wounds suffered during an attack two days prior, RSF said in a statement.

The 63-year-old reporter, who worked for the online media Kampuchea Aphivath, had been shot in the abdomen while reporting on illegal logging in the Boeung Per nature reserve.

The Siem Reap regional government announced the arrest of a suspect the day after the attack, reports RSF.

Local media report that the suspect admitted to shooting the journalist after being photographed twice while transporting illegally logged timber.

“This murder is appalling and demands a strong response. We call on Cambodian authorities to ensure that all parties responsible for the attack are severely punished,” Cédric Alviani, RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director in Taipei.

“We also urge the Cambodian government to take concrete actions to end violence against journalists.”

Journalists face violence
Journalists covering illegal deforestation in Cambodia face frequent violence. In 2014, reporter Taing Try was shot dead while investigating links between security forces and the timber trade in the country’s south, reports RSF.

Press freedom in Cambodia has been steadily deteriorating since 2017, when former Prime Minister Hun Sen cracked down on independent media, forcing prominent outlets such as Voice of Democracy to shut down. The government revoked the outlet’s licence in February 2023.

One year into his rule, Prime Minister Hun Manet appears to be perpetuating the media crackdown started by his father, Hun Sen, reports RSF.

According to a recent CamboJA report, cases of legal harassment against journalists — particularly those covering environmental issues — are on the rise in Cambodia.

Having fallen nine places in two years, Cambodia is now ranked 151st out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2024 World Press Freedom Index, placing it in the category of nations where threats to press freedom are deemed “very serious”.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

The incoming Trump administration will bring a dangerous brew of Christian nationalism and anti-Palestinian racism

Things can always get worse. Much worse.

The Biden/Harris administration has bank-rolled and funded Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza, the sight of the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world.

• READ MORE: Just who is profiting from Israel’s wars? — Antony Loewenstein

Israeli soldiers wilfully post their crimes online for all the globe to see. Palestinian journalists are being deliberately targeted by Israel in an unprecedented way.

Every day brings new horrors in Gaza, Lebanon and beyond. And that’s not ignoring the catastrophes in Syria, Sudan and Myanmar.

But we can’t despair or disengage. It can be hard with an incoming Trump White House stuffed with radicals, evangelicals and bigots but now is not the time to do so.

We must keep on reporting, investigating, sharing, talking and raising public awareness of the real threats that surround us every day (from the climate crisis to nuclear war) and finding ways to solve them.

Always find hope.

New global project
Here’s some breaking news. I’ve said nothing about this publicly. Until now.

I’ve spent much of the year working on a documentary film series inspired by my best-selling book, The Palestine Laboratory. I’ve travelled to seven countries over many months, filming under the radar due to the sensitivity of the material.

I can’t say much more at this stage except that it’s nearly completed and will be released soon on a major global broadcaster.

The photo at the top of the page is me in a clip from the series in an undisclosed location (after I’d completed a voice-over recording session.)

Stay tuned for more. This work will be ground-breaking.

My recent work has largely focused on the worsening disaster in the Middle East and I’ve spoken to media outlets including CNN, Al Jazeera English, Sky News and others.

You can see these on my website and YouTube channel.

I’m an independent journalist without any institutional backing. If you’re able to support me financially, by donating money to continue this work, I’d hugely appreciate it.

You can find donating options in the menu bar at the top of my website and via Substack.

In the expansive landscape of Pacific journalism, one magazine stands for unwavering command and unfiltered truth. Islands Business, with its roots deep beneath Fijian soil, is unafraid to be a voice for the Pacific in delivering forward-thinking analysis of current issues.

Established in Fiji’s capital, Suva, Islands Business has carved out a niche position since the 1970s and is now the longest surviving monthly magazine for the region.

With Fiji’s restrictive Media Industry Development Act (MIDA) only repealed in April 2023 following a change in government, the magazine can now publish analytical reporting without the risks it previously faced.

• READ MORE: Other QUT Journalism reports
• Islands Business website

With a greater chance for these stories to shine, communities have a greater chance that their voices will be heard and shared.

Islands Business general manager Samantha Magick notes the importance of digging below the surface of issues and uncovering injustices with her work.

“I feel like that time where you have to be objective and somehow live above the reality of the world is gone,” Samantha says.

“Quite often I can go into a story thinking one thing and come out saying, ‘I was completely wrong about that.’

‘Objective openness’
“Maybe it’s about going in with an objective openness to hear things, but then saying at some point ‘we as a publication, platform or nation should take a position on this.’”

Magick provides the example of the climate change issue.

“Our position from the start was that climate change is real. We need to be talking about this, we need to be holding these discussions in our space,” she says.

“As long as you declare that this is our position and where we stand on it, why would I give a climate denier space? Because it’s going to sell more magazines or create more of a stir online? That’s not something that we believe in.”

Despite the magazine’s dedication to probing coverage of business and social issues, new waves of digital journalism continue to affect its reach.

With an abundance of free news readily available online, media outlets around the world have seen a significant reduction in demand for paid content, recent research shows.

Despite this being a global phenomenon, the impact appears to be harsher on smaller outlets such as Islands Business compared to large media corporations.

‘Younger people expect to not pay’
“Younger people expect to not pay for their media content, due to having so much access to online content,” Magick says.

“We need to be able to demonstrate the value of investigative reporting, big picture sort of reporting, not the day-to-day stuff, and to be able to do that, we need to be able to pay high quality reporters and train them up in future writing.”

Islands Business’s newest recruit, Prerna Priyanka, agrees that this very style of reporting attracted her to work for the publication.

“Their in-depth writing style was something new for me compared to other media outlets, so learning and adapting as a rookie journalist was something that drew me to work with them,” Prerna says.

Prerna notes she has some say over the topics she can cover and strives to incorporate important issues in her work.

“I believe it’s essential to shed light on pressing issues like gender equality and environmental sustainability, and I actively seek out opportunities to do so in my work,” she says.

As Islands Business looks forward, Samantha Magick aims to ensure the diverse Pacific voices remain centred in every discourse and are an active part of the magazine’s raw, unfiltered storytelling.

Dominique Meehan is a student journalist from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT who travelled to Fiji with the support of the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan Mobility Programme. This article is republished by Asia Pacific Report in collaboration with the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), QUT and The University of the South Pacific.

High in the forested mountains of Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville Island lies an abandoned, kilometer-wide crater cut deep into the earth.

Formerly one of the world’s largest gold and copper mines, the open pit now serves as an unsightly monument to the environmental and social chaos that underground riches can create.

Run for years by a subsidiary of Anglo-Australian giant Rio Tinto, the Panguna mine earned millions for Papua New Guinea (PNG) and helped bankroll its newfound independence. But it also poured waste into local waterways and fuelled anger among locals who felt robbed of the profits.

• READ MORE: Other Pangune mine reports

When an armed uprising ultimately shuttered the mine in 1989, the impoverished island was left reeling.

Nearly three decades later, in late 2022, human rights activists, the local government, and the mine’s former operators joined forces to produce a definitive assessment of the mine’s toxic legacy.

Their report, due to be released later this month, will become the basis for negotiations aimed at getting the mining companies to finally clean up the mess and compensate affected communities.

But its supporters now worry their efforts will be undermined by a class-action lawsuit launched in May against the mine’s erstwhile operators. The legal effort is being championed by former rebel leaders — and backed by anonymous offshore investors who stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars if it succeeds.

Worldwide litigation boom
The lawsuit is part of a worldwide boom in litigation financing that seeks to take multinational companies to task for ecological or social damage while potentially reaping a fortune for lawyers and funders.

Critics in Bougainville worry the lawsuit will reopen old wounds at a time when the island is making a push to break free of Papua New Guinea and become the world’s newest sovereign nation. Many Bougainvilleans are hoping to reopen the mine, using its wealth to fund their own independence this time around.

The region’s government and many local leaders believe the class action could put the mine’s revival at risk. There are also concerns the lawsuit would leave many Bougainvilleans empty handed, while the anonymous foreign investors would walk away with a significant share of the payout.

Unlike the official assessment, which seeks to identify everyone who needs to be compensated, the class action will only share its winnings — which could potentially be in the billions of dollars — with the locals who have signed on. Others will get nothing.

“There’s already fragmentation in the community and families are already divided,” said Theonila Roka Matbob, who represents the area around Panguna in the local Parliament and has helped lead the government-backed assessment process as a minister in the Autonomous Bougainville government.

She speaks from personal experience. The chief litigant in the class-action lawsuit, Martin Miriori, is her uncle. The two are no longer on speaking terms.

A losing deal
Gouged from Bougainville’s lush volcanic heart, the Panguna mine in its heyday supplied as much as 45 percent of PNG’s export revenue, providing it with the financial means to achieve independence from Australia in 1975.

The windfall, however, did not extend to Bougainvilleans themselves. Ethnically and culturally distinct from the rest of PNG’s population, they saw Panguna as a symbol of external domination.

The mine delivered only a miserly 2-percent share of its profits to their island — along with years of environmental havoc.

During the 17 years of Panguna’s operation — from 1972 to 1989 — over a billion metric tons of toxic mine waste and electric blue copper runoff flooded rivers that flowed downstream towards communities of subsistence farmers. The result was poisoned drinking water, infertile land, and children who were drowned or injured trying to cross engorged waterways.

In 1989, enraged Bougainville locals launched an armed rebellion against the PNG government. The mine was shut down, closing off a vital source of revenue for the national government in Port Moresby.

A brutal civil war raged on for nearly a decade, leaving more than 15,000 people dead, while a naval blockade by PNG’s military obliterated the island’s economy.

A peace deal in 2000 granted Bougainville substantial autonomy. But nearly a quarter-century later, the legacy of Panguna and the war it provoked is still deeply felt.

Few paved roads, bridges
There are few paved roads and bridges in the island’s interior. Residents earn a modest living through cocoa and coconut farming, or by unregulated artisanal mining in and around the abandoned Panguna crater.

Rivers polluted by years of runoff are still an otherworldly shade of milky blue.

At least 300,000 people are estimated to live on Bougainville, including as many as 15,000 who live downstream of the mine. Of those, some 4500 have joined Miriori — Roka’s estranged uncle and a tribal leader whose brother, Joseph Kabui, served as the first president of autonomous Bougainville — in seeking restitution through the class-action suit.

“We’ve got to make people happy,” Miriori said. “They’ve lost their land forever, environment forever. Their hunting grounds. Their spiritual, sacred grounds.”

‘Alert to opportunities’
Miriori took many by surprise when he became the public face of the suit filed in PNG’s National Court in May against Rio Tinto and its former local subsidiary, Bougainville Copper Limited.

While the tribal leader and former rebel is a well-known figure in Bougainville, the funders of the lawsuit are not. They have managed to keep their identities secret in part because the company behind the suit, Panguna Mine Action LLC, is registered on Nevis, a small Caribbean island that does not require companies to publicly disclose their shareholders and directors.

Miriori declined to comment on who was behind the company, saying, “I will not tell you where the funding is based … you can source that from our people down there [in Australia].”

James Sing, an Australian based in New York, is Panguna Mine Action’s chief public representative. He initially agreed to an interview, but later referred reporters back to a London-based public relations agency, Sans Frontières Associates.

The agency declined to reveal Panguna Mine Action’s investors.

Litigation funding documents obtained by OCCRP, however, shed some light on the history of the case. The documents show that Panguna Mine Action began to investigate the possibility of a class-action suit as early as July 2021.

The Bougainvillean claimants, led by Miriori, were formally brought into an agreement with the company and its Australian and PNG lawyers in November 2022. The suit was publicly announced this May.

Handsome profit
The lawsuit’s investors stand to profit handsomely from any eventual settlement: Panguna Mine Action is poised to receive a cut of 20 to 40 percent of any payout resulting from the suit, with the percentage increasing the longer the process takes, the funding documents show.

In interviews and statements, both Miriori and Panguna Mine Action have put the potential value of any award in the billions of dollars.

The lawsuit’s financiers defend their substantial share of the potential benefits as standard practice.

“The costs of launching and running the class action against a global miner are significant, and almost certainly could not be met from within Bougainville without funding from an external party,” the company said in its statement.

Panguna Mine Action added it would bear sole responsibility for costs if the lawsuit is unsuccessful.

According to Michael Russell, a Sydney-based class action defence lawyer, such funding arrangements are typical in the burgeoning world of litigation finance, where investors seek out cases that promote virtuous social causes while offering huge potential payoffs.

A similar case is unfolding in Latin America, where more than 720,000 Brazilians are seeking $46.5 billion as part of a gargantuan class action against mining giant BHP and its local subsidiary for their role in a 2015 dam collapse.

In such cases, funders can justify walking away with significant cuts of any winnings because of the substantial risk they face of losing their investment if a case fails, Russell said.

Such cases were rarely initiated at the grassroots level by the victims themselves, he added.

“Most of the time, either the plaintiff firms or the funders will be the catalyst for a claim,” he said. “They are very alert to opportunities.”

Rival restitution plans
Government officials including Miriori’s niece, Roka, say the class-action case, which is due to hold opening arguments in October, threatens to derail the ongoing impact assessment aimed at calculating the full cost of the mine’s environmental impact and developing recommendations for addressing the damage.

The assessment, which counts community members among its stakeholders and bills itself as an independent review, is supported by Australia’s Human Rights Law Centre, which has hailed the project as “an important step” towards rectifying the mine’s devastating impact on thousands of Bougainvilleans.

However, while Rio Tinto and Bougainville Copper are both funding the project, they have not yet committed to paying for any compensation or cleanup. Roka said she was concerned the lawsuit could reduce the company’s willingness to engage with the process, since it could view the assessment as a tool that could be used against them in the courtroom.

Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama backs the impact assessment and has lambasted the class action suit as the work of “faceless investors . . .  taking advantage of vulnerable groups.” (His office did not respond to an interview request.)

He also expressed concern that the court proceedings threaten to “disrupt” his government’s efforts to reopen the mine, which still holds an estimated $60 billion in untapped deposits.

Bougainville’s leaders see the mine as key to securing the island’s economic future as it sets out to form an independent state — a dream that drew overwhelming public support in a 2019 referendum.

Exploration licence
Earlier this year Toroama’s government granted Bougainville Copper a five-year exploration licence for the Panguna site.

The lack of media and polling in Bougainville make it hard to measure public opinion on plans to reactivate the mine, but many locals appear to support reopening it under local control as an essential tool for achieving independence.

Bougainville Copper’s brand is still toxically associated with Rio Tinto and its past abuses, despite the fact that the international mining giant gave away its majority stake for no money in 2016.

The publicly traded company is now majority co-owned by the governments of PNG and Bougainville, and Port Moresby has pledged to hand over all its shares to the autonomous region in the near future.

Panguna Mine Action acknowledges that its effort could stand in the way of the mine’s reopening — but the company says that is a good thing.

“It is our understanding that the people of Bougainville do not wish mining to be recommenced under any circumstances or, alternatively, unless Rio Tinto and Bougainville Copper acknowledge the past, pay compensation and remediate the rivers and surrounding valley,” the company said in a statement.

Rio Tinto declined to comment. Mel Togolo, the chairman of Bougainville Copper, told OCCRP that the lawsuit was the work of “a foreign funder who no doubt is seeking a return on an investment.”

View of the tailings located downstream of the Panguna mine. Photo: OCCRP / Aubrey Belford

‘Only those who have signed will benefit’
The fight over Panguna adds even more uncertainty to long-running anxiety over Bougainville’s future.

With global copper prices soaring on high demand for renewable energy and electric vehicles, the Panguna mine would be an attractive prize for both Western mining companies and firms from China, which is dramatically expanding its influence in the South Pacific.

Since a future Bougainvillean state would be economically dependent on the mine’s revenue, some have raised concerns that control of the mine could become a proxy battle for geopolitical influence in the broader region.

For his part, Miriori expressed little concern that a multibillion-dollar payout might stir resentment by reaching only a fraction of the people affected by the mine’s environmental destruction.

“Only those who signed will benefit,” he said, adding that the opportunity was made “very clear to people” through awareness campaigns.

“Those who have not signed, it’s their freedom of choice.”

Among those who did not sign is Wendy Bowara, 48, who lives in Dapera, a bleak settlement built on a hill of mine waste. Bowara said she is looking to the government-backed assessment, not the lawsuit, to deliver compensation and clean up Panguna’s toxic legacy.

“We are living on top of chemicals,” she said. “Copper concentration is high. I don’t know if the food is good to eat or if it’s healthy to drink the water.”

But while it may seem odd given her grim surroundings, Borawa says she strongly supports reopening the mine.

“It funded the independence of Papua New Guinea,” Bowara said. “Why can’t we use it to fund our own independence?”

Allan Gioni contributed reporting.

Aubrey Belford is the Pacific editor for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting project (OCCRP). Republished with permission.

Papua New Guinean journalist Sincha Dimara, news editor at the online publication InsidePNG, is one of seven recipients of this year’s East-West Center Journalists of Courage Impact Award.

Pakistani journalist Kamal Siddiqi, former news director at Aaj TV, also received the award last night at the EWC’s International Media Conference in Manila, the organisation announced.

He was also the first Pakistani to win the biennial award, which honours journalists who have “displayed exceptional commitment to quality reporting and freedom of the press, often under harrowing circumstances”.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific media reports

The five other recipients are Tom Grundym, editor-in-chief and founder of Hong Kong Free Press, Alan Miller, founder of the News Literacy Project in Washington DC, Soe Myint, editor-in-chief and managing director at Mizzima Media Group in Yangon, Myanmar, John Nery, columnist and editorial consultant at Rappler in Manila and Ana Marie Pamintuan, editor-in-chief of The Philippine Star.

Six InsidePNG staff are in Manila at the conference. They were invited to engage in discussions on several different panels relating to the work of InsidePNG in investigative journalism.

InsidePNG is part of the Pacific Island contingent, supported by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

Global media event
The global event brings media professionals from around the world to discuss current trends and challenges faced by the media industry.

“We are excited to represent InsidePNG at this prestigious international media conference in Manila,” said Charmaine Yanam, chief editor and co-founder of InsidePNG.

“We are grateful to OCCRP for recognising the importance of an independent newsroom that transmits through it’s continued support in pursuing investigative reporting.”

This is the second time for InsidePNG to attend this event, the first was in 2022 where only two representatives attended.

Journalists, publishers, academics, diplomats and NGO representatives from throughout the Asia-Pacific region will gather for the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference hosted by The University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, next month.

A notable part of the conference on July 4-6 will be the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the journal Pacific Journalism Review — founded by the energetic pioneer of journalism studies in the Pacific, Professor David Robie, who was recently honoured in the NZ King’s Birthday Honours list as a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

I have been on the editorial board of PJR for two of its three decades.

• READ MORE: PJR to celebrate 30 years of journalism publishing at Pacific Media 2024
• Other Pacific Media Conference reports
• Dr Lee Duffield on 20 years of PJR
• Other Mark Pearson media law blog items

As well as delivering a keynote address titled “Frontline Media Faultlines: How Critical Journalism can Survive Against the Odds”, Dr Robie will join me and the current editor of PJR, Dr Philip Cass, on a panel examining the challenges faced by journalism journals in the Global South/Asia Pacific.

We will be moderated by Professor Vijay Naidu, former professor and director of development studies and now an adjunct in the School of Law and Social Sciences at the university. He is also speaking at the PJR birthday event.

In addition, I will be delivering a conference paper titled “Intersections between media law and ethics — a new pedagogy and curriculum”.

Media law and ethics have often been taught as separate courses in the journalism and communication curriculum or have been structured as two distinct halves of a hybrid course.

Integrated ethics and law approach
My paper explains an integrated approach expounded in my new textbook, The Communicator’s Guide to Media Law and Ethics, where each key media law topic is introduced via a thorough exploration of its moral, ethical, religious, philosophical and human rights underpinnings.

The argument is exemplified via an approach to the ethical and legal topic of confidentiality, central to the relationship between journalists and their sources.

After defining the term and distinguishing it from the related topic of privacy, the paper explains the approach in the textbook and curriculum which traces the religious and philosophical origins of confidentiality sourced to Hippocrates (460-370BC), via confidentiality in the priesthood (from Saint Aphrahat to the modern Catholic Code of Canon Law), and through the writings of Kant, Bentham, Stuart Mill, Sidgwick and Rawls until we reach the modern philosopher Sissela Bok’s examination of investigative journalism and claims of a public’s “right to know”.

This leads naturally into an examination of the handling of confidentiality in both public relations and journalism ethical codes internationally and their distinctive approaches, opening the way to the examination of law, cases and examples internationally in confidentiality and disclosure and, ultimately, to a closer examination in the author’s own jurisdiction of Australia.

Specific laws covered include breach of confidence, disobedience contempt, shield laws, whistleblower laws and freedom of information laws — with the latter having a strong foundation in international human rights instruments.

The approach gives ethical studies a practical legal dimension, while enriching students’ legal knowledge with a backbone of its philosophical, religious and human rights origins.

Details about the conference can be found on its USP website.

Professor Mark Pearson (Griffith University) is a journalist, author, academic researcher and teacher with more than 45 years’ experience in journalism and journalism education. He is a former editor of Australian Journalism Review, a columnist for 15 years on research journal findings for the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association Bulletin, and author of 13 books, including The Communicator’s Guide to Media Law and Ethics — A Handbook for Australian Professionals (Routledge, 2024). He blogs at JournLaw.

New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) awardee Professor David Robie has called on young journalists to see journalism as a calling and not just a job.

Dr Robie, who is also the editor of Asia Pacific Report and deputy chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network, was named in the King’s Birthday Honours list for “services to journalism and Asia Pacific media education”.

He was named last Monday and the investiture ceremony is later this year.

• READ MORE: 50 years of challenge and change: David Robie reflects on a career in Pacific journalism – RNZ Pacific
• King’s Birthday Honours: Journalist reflects on work in the Pacific – PMN News
• Other reports

The University of the South Pacific’s head of journalism Associate Professor Shailendra Singh told Wansolwara News: “David’s mountain of work in media research and development, and his dedication to media freedom, speak for themselves.

“I am one of the many Pacific journalists and researchers that he has mentored and inspired over the decades”.

Dr Singh said this recognition was richly deserved.

Dr Robie was head of journalism at USP from 1998 to 2002 before he resigned to join the Auckland University of Technology ane became an associate professor in the School of Communication Studies in 2005 and full professor in 2011.

Close links with USP
Since resigning from the Pacific university he has maintained close links with USP Journalism. He was the chief guest at the 18th USP Journalism awards in 2018.

He has also praised USP Journalism and said it was “bounding ahead” when compared with the journalism programme at the University of Papua New Guinea, where he was the head of journalism from 1993 to 1997.

Dr Robie has also co-edited three editions of Pacific Journalism Review (PJR) research journal with Dr Singh.

He is a keynote speaker at the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference which is being hosted by USP’s School of Pacific Arts, Communications and Education (Journalism), in collaboration with the Pacific Island News Association (PINA) and the Asia-Pacific Media Network (APMN).

The conference will be held from 4-6 July at the Holiday Inn, Suva. This year the PJR will celebrate its 30th year of publishing at the conference.

The editors will be inviting a selection of the best conference papers to be considered for publication in a special edition of the PJR or its companion publication Pacific Media.

Referring to his recognition for his contribution to journalism, Dr Robie told RNZ Pacific he was astonished and quite delighted but at the same time he felt quite humbled by it all.

‘Enormous support’
“However, I feel that it’s not just me, I owe an enormous amount to my wife, Del, who is a teacher and designer by profession, and a community activist, but she has given journalism and me enormous support over many years and kept me going through difficult times.

“There’s a whole range of people who have contributed over the years so it’s sort of like a recognition of all of us, especially all those who worked so hard for 13 years on the Pacific Media Centre when it was going. So, yes, it is a delight and I feel quite privileged.”

Reflecting on his 50 years in journalism, Dr Robie believes that the level of respect for mainstream news media has declined.

“This situation is partly through the mischievous actions of disinformation peddlers and manipulators, but it is partly our fault in media for allowing the lines between fact-based news and opinion/commentary to be severely compromised, particularly on television,” he told Wansolwara News.

He said the recognition helped to provide another level of “mana” at a time when public trust in journalism had dropped markedly, especially since the covid-19 pandemic and the emergence of a “global cesspit of disinformation”.

Dr Robie said journalists were fighting for the relevance of media today.

“The Fourth Estate, as I knew it in the 1960s, has eroded over the last few decades. It is far more complex today with constant challenges from the social media behemoths and algorithm-driven disinformation and hate speech.”

He urged journalists to believe in the importance of journalism in their communities and societies.

‘Believe in truth to power’
“Believe in the contribution that we can make to understanding and progress. Believe in truth to power. Have courage, determination and go out and save the world with facts, compassion and rationality.”

Despite the challenges, he believes that journalism is just as vital today, even more vital perhaps, than the past.

“It is critical for our communities to know that they have information that is accurate and that they can trust. Good journalism and investigative journalism are the bulwark for an effective defence of democracy against the anarchy of digital disinformation.

“Our existential struggle is the preservation of Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa  — protecting our Pacific Ocean legacy for us all.”

Dr Robie began his career with The Dominion in 1965, after part-time reporting while a trainee forester and university science student with the NZ Forest Service, and worked as an international journalist and correspondent for agencies from Johannesburg to Paris.

In addition to winning several journalism awards, he received the 1985 Media Peace Prize for his coverage of the Rainbow Warrior bombing. He was on a 11-week voyage with the bombed ship and wrote the book Eyes of Fire about French and American nuclear testing.

He also travelled overland across Africa and the Sahara Desert for a year in the 1970s while a freelance journalist.

In 2015, he was awarded the AMIC Asian Communication Award in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Geopolitics, climate crisis and decolonisation
Dr Robie mentions geopolitics and climate crisis as two of the biggest issues for the Pacific, with the former being largely brought upon by major global players, mainly the US, Australia and China.

He said it was important for the Pacific to create its own path and not become pawns or hostages to this geopolitical rivalry, adding that it was critically important for news media to retain its independence and a critical distance.

“The latter issue, climate crisis, is one that the Pacific is facing because of its unique geography, remoteness and weather patterns. It is essential to be acting as one ‘Pacific voice’ to keep the globe on track over the urgent solutions needed for the world. The fossil fuel advocates are passé and endangering us all.

“Journalists really need to step up to the plate on seeking climate solutions.”

Dr Robie also shared his views on the recent upheaval in New Caledonia.

“In addition to many economic issues for small and remote Pacific nations, are the issues of decolonisation. The events over the past three weeks in Kanaky New Caledonia have reminded us that unresolved decolonisation issues need to be centre stage for the Pacific, not marginalised.”

According to Dr Robie concerted Pacific political pressure, and media exposure, needs to be brought to bear on both France over Kanaky New Caledonia and “French” Polynesia, or Māohi Nui, and Indonesia with West Papua.

He called on the Pacific media to step up their scrutiny and truth to power role to hold countries and governments accountable for their actions.

Monika Singh is editor-in-chief of Wansolwara, the online and print publication of the USP Journalism Programme. Published in partnership with Wansolwara.

Television New Zealand Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to investigative journalism and Pacific communities in a ceremony at Government House, reports 1News.

She has been the Pacific correspondent for 1News since 2002, breaking many stories uncovering social and economic issues affecting Pacific people living in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.

Her investigative journalism has exposed major fraud, drug smuggling, corruption and human trafficking that has led to multiple arrests and government action.

• READ MORE: Pacific journalists are strong and ‘it’s up to us’, says honoured Barbara Dreaver — Khalia Strong
• Other Barbara Dreaver reports

Dreaver said it was “quite emotional” to receive the honour.

“I didn’t realise how special it was going to be until it actually happened. I’m so honoured, it’s hard to put it into words which is unlike me.”

Dreaver received the honour for services to investigative journalism and Pacific communities in a ceremony at Government House today.

‘Incredible’ family
Receiving the honour in front of her family “meant everything”, she said.

“You don’t get what you get without friends and family. My family are just incredible and my parents right from the beginning have been there for me, and I think that’s a big part of it.”

When asked what was next, Dreaver told 1News it was “back to work”.

“Keep doing what we do, telling New Zealand stories, telling Pacific stories is something we have to keep doing, and I will.”

Republished from 1News.

A New Zealand investigative journalist and author says the US spy system hosted by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) appears to be a controversial intelligence system used in global capture-kill operations.

Writing a commentary for RNZ News today, Nicky Hager, author of Secret Power, a 1996 book on New Zealand’s role in global spy networks, said the controversial and unidentified foreign intelligence operation cited in a report by New Zealand’s Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) last week appeared to be an “intelligence system with a ghostly codename”.

“The IGIS report said the GCSB decision to host a foreign system from 2012-2020 was ‘improper’ and that the GCSB ‘could not be sure the tasking of the capability was always in accordance with… New Zealand law’,” he wrote.

• READ MORE: Hager: Spy system hosted by GCSB likely to be one used in capture-kill operations
• Te Kuaka calls for urgent law change on spy agency, warns over Pacific
• Other GCSB spy base reports

“The Inspector-General said: ‘I have found some of the GCSB’s explanations about how the capability operated and was tasked to be incongruous with information in GCSB records at the time’,” Hager wrote.

But the Inspector-General could not reveal details of the system to the public because they were “highly classified”.

“The name and function of the foreign spy spying equipment, the identity of the ‘foreign partner agency’ and the location of the ‘GCSB facility’ where foreign equipment was hosted all remained secret,” Hager wrote.

Hager argued that the mystery spy equipment appeared strongly to be a top secret US surveillance system that had been installed at the GCSB’s Waihopai base at the same time as the equipment in the IGIS investigation was installed at a “GCSB facility”.

25 years of investigations
Hager has worked as an investigative journalist for the past 25 years, and has been a New Zealand member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists for 20 of those years.

In 2018, he was part of a reference group established by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.

Hager wrote that the top secret NSA spy equipment had the ghostly codename “APPARITION” and fitted with all the details presented in the IGIS report.

“APPARITION was owned by and controlled by the US National Security Agency — the world’s largest intelligence gathering agency and head of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance that includes the GCSB,” he wrote.

According to Hager, the NSA internal report, written after the launch of the APPARITION system in 2008, said that it “builds on the success of the GHOSTHUNTER prototype . . .  a tool that enabled a significant number of capture-kill operations against terrorists”.

“Capture-kill operations involve lethal attacks on targeted people using drones, bombs and special forces raids,” wrote Hager.

“Human rights organisations have documented numerous deaths of civilians during capture-kill operations — many of them ‘algorithmically targeted’ by electronic surveillance systems such as APPARITION.

‘Extra-judicial killings’
“They are also criticised as being ‘extra-judicial killings’.”

For decades, protesters had been calling for the GCSB’s iconic radomes at Waihopai Valley spy base in rural Marlborough to be dismantled, saying that when that intelligence was shared with Five Eyes partners — the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia — it made New Zealand complicit in the military campaigns of those countries, among other criticisms.

However, Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) organiser Murray Horton said at the time of news of the domes’ redundancy in 2021 was nothing to celebrate, since the base itself would continue to operate at the site, “albeit without its most conspicuous physical features that stick out like dogs’ balls”.

The out-of-date domes were removed in 2022.

• Nicky Hager’s full article at RNZ

The War on Gaza will be etched in the memories of generations to come — the brutality of Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack, and the ferocity of Israel’s retaliation.

In this Four Corners investigative report, The Forever War, broadcast in Australia last night, ABC’s global affairs editor John Lyons asks the tough questions — challenging some of Israel’s most powerful political and military voices about the country’s strategy and intentions.

The result is a compelling interview-led piece of public interest journalism about one of the most controversial wars of modern times.

• WATCH ABC FOUR CORNERS: The Forever War, reporter John Lyons

Former prime minister Ehud Barak says Benjamin Netanyahu can’t be trusted, former Shin Bet internal security director Ami Ayalon describes two key far-right Israeli ministers as “terrorists”,  and cabinet minister Avi Dichter makes a grave prediction about the conflict’s future.

Is there any way out of what’s beginning to look like the forever war? Lyons gives his perspective on the tough decisions for the future of both Palestinians and Israelis.

‘The Forever War’ – ABC Four Corners.      ABC Trailer on YouTube

Television New Zealand is proposing to axe its long-running and award-winning current affairs programme Sunday, hosted by veteran broadcaster Miriama Kamo.

It is part of plans to cut dozens of jobs at the public broadcaster.

Staff were learning which programmes will be affected at a series of meetings today.

• READ MORE: TVNZ to cut up to 68 jobs in restructure – ‘dire for democracy’
• Other TVNZ and Newshub reports

TVNZ said a proposal had been presented to Sunday staff which could result in cancellation of the programme.

The show was named Best Current Affairs Programme at the Voyager Media Awards and the New Zealand Television Awards last year.

It first aired in 2002 and has run for more than two decades, showcasing a mix of New Zealand stories and reports from overseas.

One award-winning investigation looked into the 2008 Chinese poisoned milk scandal, and how patients were treated at Porirua Hospital.

Veteran journalists like John Hudson, Janet McIntyre and Ian Sinclair have contributed to the show.

News bulletins may be canned
RNZ understands the 1News Midday and Tonight bulletins may also be canned, and consumer affairs programme Fair Go could to be cut too.

Its understood four out of 10 roles at youth platform Re: News are set to go — head of Re: News, head of content, production manager, and a journalist.

Its understood four out of 10 roles at youth platform Re: News are set to go — head of Re: News, head of content, production manager, and a journalist.

The remaining five staff will have a change in reporting line, reporting to TVNZ digital news and content general manager Veronica Schmidt.

RNZ has been told there will be a shift away from social media in a bid to drive more traffic to the Re: News website. Its documentary series funded by NZ On Air is also set to be canned.

The digital media platform was launched in 2017 as a current affairs platform aimed at audiences under-served by mainstream news.

It produces documentary videos, articles and podcasts particularly relevant to youth, Māori, Pasifika, rainbow communities, and migrant and regional audiences.

The platform won four awards at last year’s Voyager Media Awards, including best news, current affairs or specialist publication; video journalist of the year; best video documentary series; and best original podcast — seasonal/serial.

On average, Re: News receives more than a million video views each month.

Difficult choices
TVNZ chief executive Jodi O’Donnell said in a statement that difficult choices had to be made to ensure the broadcaster remained sustainable.

It comes just a week after rival Newshub announced it had proposed to axe its entire news operation of 300 staff.

A hui for all news and current affairs staff is due to be held at 1pm, following the individual programme meetings.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, speaking at a press conference in Whangārei, said he was concerned about reports of job cuts and that it was a “pretty tough time if you’re a TVNZ employee”.

Luxon said consumers are consuming news in different ways and advertising and revenue models are changing.

He said it was a pretty tough time for people working in the media but he had travelled the country and many other sectors were doing it tough.

Media companies needed to evolve and innovate in order to adapt, he said.

Fair Go
Fair Go is one of New Zealand’s longest running and most popular television series.

The consumer affairs show, which investigates complaints from viewers, first aired in April 1977 and is just shy of its 47th birthday.

During a 2021 interview with RNZ’s Afternoons programme, original host and creator Brian Edwards said he was inspired by a BBC programme called That’s Life.

“One particular segment was on consumers and I think that was the germ of the idea, that we could do a programme in New Zealand where we could look at protecting people right there in their normal daily lives from rip offs and scams by various people and it it just soared from the beginning. I mean, it was tremendous,” Edwards said.

“I suppose my main function was to grill the villains, and because I’m a really quite unpleasant person, this fit in my my personality very well.”

Well-known presenter Kevin Milne hosted the show for almost three decades, from 1983 to 2010.

“It was beautifully set up, really, and it didn’t require any change as much and still hasn’t, you know, 44 years later,” he told Afternoons during the same interview.

‘Good deal of cynicism’
“I remember that there was a good deal of cynicism in the early days from the newsroom journalists who thought that because there was an element of entertainment on the show that you couldn’t call it real journalism, which was nonsense because it ended up leading the way in terms of investigative journalism.”

The show broke new ground, Milne said.

“It’s hard to believe now that back then, at the time when Brian set up those programmes, most broadcasters never named names. I can remember now hearing news stories which could say a well-known department store in Lambton Quay appeared in court this morning. No mention [of name], and when Fair Go started up, it was decided it would name names.”

Edwards said that was an “absolutely critical” aspect of the show.

“The thing would have been pointless I think, if you couldn’t name names. The thing was to expose the wrong doers if you like . . . what was the point in in doing that if you couldn’t name names?

“And I think we probably, together, our team, won some battles there and being able to do that. It took a while and I think there was a degree of nervousness by the broadcaster and eventually it turned out all right.”

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

Sydney-born investigative journalist, author and filmmaker John Pilger died on December 31, 2023.

He should be remembered and honoured not just for his impressive body of work, but for being a brave — and at times near-lone — voice for truth against power.

In early 2002, the “war on terror”, launched by then United States President George W Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attack, was in full swing.

• READ MORE: Daily Mirror legend John Pilger awoke world to great injustices as tributes pour in

After two decades, more than 4 million would be killed in Iraq, Libya, Philippines, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere under this bloody banner, and 10 times more displaced.

The propaganda campaign to justify this ferocious, US-led, global punitive expedition cowed many voices, not least in the settler colonial state of Australia.

But there was one prominent Australian voice that was not silenced — and it was John Pilger’s.

‘Breaking the silence’
On March 10 that year, Sydney Town Hall was packed out with people to hear John speak in a Green Left public meeting titled “Breaking the silence: war, propaganda and the new empire”.

Outside the Town Hall, about 100 more people, who could not squeeze in, stayed to show their solidarity.

Pilger described the war on terror as “a war on world-wide popular resistance to an economic system that determines who will live well and who will be expendable”.

He called for “opposition to a so-called war on terrorism, that is really a war of terrorism”.

The meeting played an important role in helping build resistance in this country to the many US-led imperial wars that followed the US’ bloody retribution exacted on millions of Afghans who had never even heard of the 9/11 attacks, let alone bore any responsibility for them.

That 2002 Sydney Town Hall meeting cemented a strong bond between GL and John.

GL is proud to have been the Australian newspaper and media platform that has published the most articles by John Pilger over the years.

Shared values
For much of the last two decades, the so-called mainstream media were always reluctant to run his pieces because he refused to obediently follow the unspoken war-on-terror line.

He refused to go along with the argument that every military expedition that the US launched (and which Australia and other loyal allies promptly followed) to protect privilege and empire were in defence of “shared democratic values”.

The collaboration between GL and John was based on real shared values, which he summed up succinctly in his introduction to his 1992 book Distant Voices:

“I have tried to rescue from media oblivion uncomfortable facts which may serve as antidotes to the official truth; and in doing so, I hope to have given support to those ‘distant voices’ who understand how vital, yet fragile, is the link between the right of people to know and to be heard, and the exercise of liberty and political democracy …”

GL editors have had many exchanges with John over the years. At times, there were political differences. But each such exchange only built up a mutual respect, based on a shared commitment to truth and justice.

The last two decades of John’s moral leadership against Empire were inadvertently confirmed a few weeks before his passing when US President Joe Biden warned Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu not to repeat the US’ mistakes after 9/11.

“There’s no reason we did so many of the things we did,” Biden told Netanyahu.

Focus on Palestine struggle
John had long focused on Palestine’s struggle for self-determination from the Israeli colonial settler state. He condemned Israel’s most recent genocidal campaign of Gaza and, on X, praised those marching for “peaceful decency”.

He urged people to (re)watch his 2002 documentary film Palestine is Still The Issue, in which he returned to film in Gaza and the West Bank, after having first done so in 1977.

John was outspoken about Australia’s treatment of its First Peoples; he didn’t agree with Labor’s Voice to Parliament plan, saying it offered “no real democracy, no sovereignty, no treaty between equals”.

He criticised Labor’s embrace of AUKUS, saying it was about a new war with China, a campaign he took up in his documentary The Coming War on China. While recognising China’s abuse of human and democratic rights, he said the US views China’s embrace of capitalist growth as the key threat.

John campaigned hard for WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange’s release; he visited him several times in Belmarsh Prison and condemned a gutless Labor Prime Minister for refusing to meet with Stella Assange when she was in Australia.

He spoke out for other whistleblowers, including David McBride who exposed Australian war crimes in Afghanistan.

Did not mince words
John did not mince words which is why, especially during the war on terror, most mainstream media refused to publish him — unless a counterposed article was run side-by-side. He never agreed to this pretence of “balance”.

John wrote about his own, early, conscientisation.

“I was very young when I arrived in Saigon and I learned a great deal,” he said on the anniversary of the last day of the longest war of the 20th century — Vietnam.

“I learned to recognise the distinctive drone of the engines of giant B-52s, which dropped their carnage from above the clouds and spared nothing and no one; I learned not to turn away when faced with a charred tree festooned with human parts; I learned to value kindness as never before; I learned that Joseph Heller was right in his masterly Catch-22: that war was not suited to sane people; and I learned about ‘our’ propaganda.”

John Pilger will be remembered by all those who know that facts and history matter, and that only through struggle will people’s movements ever have a chance of winning justice.

Republished with permission from Green Left Magazine.

• The operator of a Pacific-wide network of pharmacy companies, Aiyaz Mohammed Musa Umarji, was sentenced to four years prison in New Zealand in August for illegally importing millions of dollars worth of pseudoephedrine, a precursor chemical of methamphetamine.
• Umarji, a Fijian national, had long been a target of police in his home country but had for years escaped justice thanks to what Fijian and international law enforcement say was an unwillingness by the previous authoritarian government of Voreqe Bainimarama to seriously tackle meth and cocaine trafficking.
• Fiji’s new government, which was elected last December, is now investigating donations that Umarji and his family made to the previous ruling party, as well as “potential connections” to top law enforcement officials.

Until recently, Aiyaz Mohammed Musa Umarji was — in public at least — a pillar of Fiji’s business community.

With ownership of a Pacific-wide pharmacy network, Umarji and his family were significant donors to the party that repressively ruled the country until it lost power in elections last December. He was also a major figure in sports, serving as a vice president of the Fiji Football Association and as a committee member in soccer’s global governing body, FIFA.

And he did it all as an internationally wanted drug trafficker.

• READ MORE: Fall of a Fijian trafficker – the full OCCRP report
• Other OCCRP investigations

Umarji’s fall finally came in August this year, after he ended a period of self-imposed exile in India and surrendered himself to authorities in New Zealand to face years-old charges. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years in prison for importing at least NZ$5-$6 million (US$2.9-3.5 million) worth of pseudoephedrine — a precursor for methamphetamine – into the country.

His sentencing was hailed by Fijian police as a blow against a “mastermind” whose operations stretched across the region.

But behind the conviction of Umarji, 47, lies a far murkier story of impunity, a joint investigation by an Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), The Fiji Times, The New Zealand Herald and Radio New Zealand has found.

Umarji was able to thrive for years amid a failure by senior officials of Fiji’s previous authoritarian government to confront a rise in meth and cocaine trafficking through the Pacific Island country.

And when New Zealand authorities finally issued an international warrant for his arrest, Umarji was able to flee Fiji under suspicious circumstances.

Reporters found that Umarji and his family donated at least F$70,000 (US$31,000) to the country’s former ruling party, FijiFirst, in the years after he was first put under investigation. This included F$20,000 (US$8,700) given to the party ahead of last December’s election — roughly three years after he was first charged.

The party’s general secretary, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, was Fiji’s long-serving attorney-general and justice minister at the time.

Reporters also found that the Umarji family’s business network has continued to expand despite his legal troubles, and currently operates in three Pacific countries. The newest of these pharmacy companies, in Vanuatu, was founded just last year.

Fiji’s Minister for Immigration and Home Affairs, Pio Tikoduadua, told OCCRP an investigation has been opened into how Umarji was able to flee the country.

He said authorities are also investigating donations Umarji and his family made to FijiFirst, and any “potential connections” he may have had to top officials in the former government, including Sayed-Khaiyum and the now-suspended Police Commissioner, Sitiveni Qiliho.

“Certainly, I am deeply concerned about the potential influence of drug traffickers in Fiji, especially over officials and law enforcement,” Tikoduadua said.

“The infiltration of these criminal elements poses a significant risk to our society and institutions.”

Umarji declined a request for an interview and did not respond to follow-up questions. His Auckland lawyer, David PH Jones, said a request from reporters contained “numerous loaded questions which contain unsubstantiated assertions, a number of which have little or nothing to do with Mr Umarji’s prosecution”.

Sayed-Khaiyum and Qiliho did not respond to written questions.

‘A hub of the Pacific’
The rise in drug trafficking through Fiji is just one part of a booming trans-Pacific trade that experts and law enforcement say has become one of the world’s most profitable.

In Australia, the most recent data shows that drug seizures have more than quadrupled over the last decade, and Australians now consume 4.7 tonnes of cocaine and 8.8 tonnes of meth a year. In much smaller New Zealand, drug users strongly prefer meth to cocaine, consuming roughly 720 kilograms a year.

Consumers in both countries pay some of the highest prices on earth for cocaine and meth, much of it exported from the Americas. Lying in the vast blue expanse between the two points are the Pacific Islands.

“Fiji is a hub of the Pacific. You’ve got the ports, you’ve got the infrastructure, and you’ve got the ability to come in and out either by [water] craft or by airplane,” said Glyn Rowland, the New Zealand Police senior liaison officer for the Pacific.

“So that really leaves Fiji quite vulnerable to be in that transit route off to New Zealand and off to Australia.”

Fiji has long been eyed by international organised crime for its strategic location close to Australia and New Zealand’s multi-billion dollar drug markets.

In the early 2000s, for example, an international police operation took apart a “super lab” in Fiji’s capital, Suva, run by Chinese gangsters with enough precursor chemicals to produce a tonne of meth.

But after early successes, Fiji in recent years went cold on the fight against hard drugs.

The previous government of Voreqe Bainimarama, who first took power in a 2006 coup, showed little interest in tackling meth and cocaine trafficking, according to current and former law enforcement officers from Fiji and the US. Despite recent signs that trafficking was increasing, the police force under Bainimarama’s hand-picked commissioner, Qiliho, seemed to overlook the problem, the officers told OCCRP.

Bainimarama did not respond to questions.

Ernie Verina, the Oceania attaché for US Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), said his agency had become worried about trafficking through Fiji.

In mid-2022, HSI assigned an agent to be based in the country. But when the agent raised the issue of meth with top officials from Bainimarama’s government, he was met with total pushback, Verina said.

“Categorically, like, ‘There is no meth’,” Verina said of the Fijian response.

“That’s what they told the agent.”

A lot of influence
Despite high-level denials, Fiji’s narcotics police were very much aware of the country’s drug trafficking crisis. In fact, they had long had Umarji in their sights. But he was a difficult target.

As far back as 2017, Umarji was identified as “one of the tier one” suspected traffickers in the country, said Serupepeli Neiko, the head of the Fiji Police’s Narcotics Bureau.

While the drug trade through Fiji is also the domain of transnational organised crime groups, Umarji was suspected of having carved out a niche for himself by using his network of pharmacies, Hyperchem, to legally import pseudoephedrine and divert it onto the black market, Neiko said.

In early 2017, Umarji and one of his colleagues were charged with weapons possession after scores of rifle bullets were found on his yacht, moored in his hometown of Lautoka. But the charges were “squashed in court,” Neiko said.

“So that gave a red flag to us that a [drug trafficking] case against Umarji would have been challenging as well.”

A former senior Fijian officer, who declined to be identified because he is not authorised to speak to the media, put it more bluntly: “Umarji had a lot of influence with the previous government.”

Reporters found no evidence that any senior Fijian officials intervened against investigations into Umarji. But the perception that he had influence was powerful, current and former police officers said.

Indeed, since the fall of Bainimarama’s government last year, multiple senior officials have faced charges that they abused their positions, but none have been convicted.

The suspended police commissioner, Qiliho, and the former prime minister, Bainimarama, were both acquitted by a court on October 12 of charges that they had illegally interfered in a separate police investigation.

Former Attorney-General Sayed-Khaiyum is also currently facing prosecution in another unrelated abuse of office case.

Despite becoming a top-level police target, Umarji continued to expand his influence in Fiji.

Company records show that, in 2015, he and his wife, Zaheera Cassim, opened Hyperchem companies in Fiji, Solomon Islands, and a now-defunct branch in Samoa.

In May 2017, Umarji opened a new company, Bio Pharma, in New Zealand.

Ahead of elections the following year, Umarji and his relatives donated a total of at least F$50,000 to the FijiFirst party, declarations from the Fiji Elections Office show.

Umarji also made a name for himself in soccer, getting elected a vice-president of the Fiji Football Association in December 2019.

Pills and cash
By 2019, it was clear that avenues for a Fijian investigation were closed. So police in New Zealand stepped in instead. Reporters were able to reconstruct what happened next via court records and interviews.

While seconded that year to Fiji’s Transnational Crime Unit, New Zealand detective Peter Reynolds heard whispers about Umarji’s alleged criminal activity from his local colleagues. On returning to New Zealand, he decided to take things into his own hands.

Digging through police files, Reynolds found a lucky break in a case from nearly two years prior.

In late 2017, an anonymous member of the public had reached out to an anti-crime hotline with a tip that a businessman, Firdos “Freddie” Dalal, had a suspicious amount of money in his home in suburban Auckland.

Acting on a warrant, police made their way inside and found NZ$726,190 in cash and 4000 boxes of Actifed, a cold and flu medicine that contains pseudoephedrine.

Known as Operation Duet, the investigation that led to Dalal’s conviction provided the information that Reynolds needed to go after Umarji. It turned out that Dalal, who owned an Auckland-based freight forwarding company, was also listed as the director of Umarji’s New Zealand company, Bio Pharma.

Reynolds soon figured out how it all worked. Using his Pacific-wide Hyperchem network, Umarji ordered Actifed pills to be delivered from abroad to his pharmacies in Fiji and Solomon Islands. The shipments were set to transit through New Zealand, where Dalal’s forwarding company was responsible for the cargo.

While the drugs sat in a restricted customs holding area, Dalal simply went inside and swapped them out for other other medicine, such as anti-fungal cream, which was then sent on to their island destinations. The purloined pseudoephedrine was sold on New Zealand’s black market.

Dalal did not respond to questions.

In just three shipments between January and October 2017, Umarji’s operation brought in an estimated 678,000 Actifed pills containing about 40.7 kilograms of pseudoephedrine, Auckland District Court would later find.

But if deciphering Umarji’s operation was straightforward, arresting him would prove anything but.

New Zealand Police filed charges against Umarji in December 2019, but Reynolds told the Auckland court that he believed they faced little chance of getting Umarji to voluntarily fly to Auckland and show up in court.

“If the summons were to be served it would likely result in Umarji fleeing [Fiji] to a country that has no extradition arrangements with New Zealand,” the detective said in an affidavit.

So New Zealand authorities decided to go through the arduous process of requesting extradition. In November 2021, a Fijian court agreed to the request, and New Zealand Police issued an Interpol red notice.

Despite all the effort, within days Fiji Police had to contact their New Zealand counterparts with an embarrassing admission: Umarji had fled the country, and was in India.

New Zealand Police’s Pacific liaison, Rowland, declined to comment on how Umarji was able to flee Fiji, but added: “The reality is, sometimes corruption isn’t about what you do. Sometimes corruption is about what you don’t do, or turn a blind eye to.”

Despite his legal troubles, Umarji remained a respectable public figure in Fiji, thanks in part to a restrictive media environment that made it difficult for reporters to look into him in detail.

In May 2021, while Umarji was still in Fiji and his extradition case was pending, he was elected to FIFA’s governance, audit and compliance committee. He kept the position even after his flight abroad later that year, and was re-elected unopposed as Fiji Football Association vice president this June. He only resigned both positions on August 7, two days before his sentencing.

FIFA and the Fiji Football Association did not respond to questions.

Umarji also made little effort to hide during his exile in India. At one stage last year, he recorded an online video testimonial for a stem cell clinic outside of Delhi where he said he was getting treatment for diabetes.

His family’s second round of donations to FijiFirst, F$20,000 ahead of last December’s elections, were similarly made while Umarji was on the run.

But the drug trafficker eventually tired of exile.

In early 2022, he first contacted his high-powered Auckland lawyer, Jones, to arrange his surrender to New Zealand Police. He pleaded guilty to the Auckland court earlier this year and was allowed to return to Fiji to sort his affairs before handing himself in for sentencing.

New focus
With Umarji now in prison, Fijian authorities say they are continuing to investigate his operations.

Umarji’s pharmaceutical business continues to run with his wife, Cassim, at its head. Cassim has for years been a significant public face for the businesses, including publicising its charitable work. She declined to respond to reporters’ questions.

OCCRP visited Umarji’s companies in Lautoka in late June, during the period in which he was allowed by the New Zealand court to briefly return to Fiji. Reporters found a bustling network of businesses, including a well-staffed warehouse and office on the edge of town for Hyperchem.

Reporters contacted Umarji by phone from the warehouse’s reception area, but he declined to come out for an interview and referred reporters to his lawyer.

Homeland Security Investigations’ Verina said the new government of Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has since removed roadblocks to investigating these sort of trafficking operations.

“We have started to see enforcement operations and arrests and holding individuals accountable for the methamphetamine smuggling,” Verina said.

An Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) investigation. Additional reporting by Lydia Lewis (RNZ) and George Block (New Zealand Herald). This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) says it is “deeply concerned” at reports that Western Australian police are demanding the ABC hand over footage about climate protesters filmed as part of a Four Corners investigation.

“As researchers and teachers of journalism, we uphold the ethical obligation of journalists to honour any assurances given to protect sources,” said JERAA president Associate Professor Alexandra Wake in a statement.

“This obligation is imperative in supporting the Western democratic tradition of journalism and to investigative journalism in particular.”

• READ MORE: Media union condemns WA police demand for footage
• Escalation: Climate, protest and the fight for the future

The ABC case relates to an investigation due to be broadcast on Four Corners tonight: “Escalation: Climate, protest and the fight for the future”.

“I’m going to remember this for the rest of my life.” Video: ABC Four Corners

WA police are reported to have demanded footage via “Order to Produce” provisions of the WA Criminal Investigations Act. The law compels organisations to comply.

One of JERAA’s core aims was to promote freedom of expression and communication, said the statement.

“The association is concerned that the WA police action represents a direct threat to media freedom and the practice of ethical investigative journalism,” Dr Wake said.

“We join the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) in urging the ABC to stand firm and not hand over footage which could potentially undermine assurances by the Four Corners team to their sources.”

The union for Australian journalists said it was alarmed at the reports that WA police were demanding the ABC hand over footage featuring climate activists filmed as part of the television investigation before it had even aired.

• MEAA support petition for the ABC
• “Escalation” reported by Hagar Cohen goes to air tonight, Monday, 9 October 2023, at 8.30pm AEST on ABC TV and ABC iview.

Barely a day passes without a story in the British or Australian media that ramps up fear about the rulers in Beijing, reports the investigative website Declassified Australia.

According to an analysis by co-editors Antony Loewenstein and Peter Cronau, the Australian and British media are ramping up public fear, aiding a major military build-up — and perhaps conflict — by the United States and its allies.

The article is a warning to New Zealand and Pacific media too.

• READ MORE: China and the Pacific

Citing a recent article in the Telegraph newspaper in Britain headlined, “A war-winning missile will knock China out of Taiwan – fast”, says the introduction.

“Written by David Axe, who contributes regularly to the outlet, he detailed a war game last year that was organised by the US think-tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“It examined a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and concluded that the US Navy would be nearly entirely obliterated. However, Axe wrote, the US Air Force ‘could almost single-handedly destroy the Chinese invasion force’.

“‘How? With the use of a Lockheed Martin-made Joint Air-to-Surface Strike Missile (JASSM).

“‘It’s a stealthy and highly accurate cruise missile that can range hundreds of miles from its launching warplane,’ Axe explained.

“‘There are long-range versions of the JASSM and a specialised anti-ship version, too — and the USAF [US Air Force] and its sister services are buying thousands of the missiles for billions of dollars.’

“Missing from this analysis was the fact that Lockheed Martin is a major sponsor of the CSIS. The editors of The Telegraph either didn’t know or care about this crucial detail.

“One week after this story, Axe wrote another one for the paper, titled, ‘The US Navy should build a robot armada to fight the battle of Taiwan.’

“‘The US Navy is shrinking,’ the story begins. ‘The Chinese navy is growing. The implications, for a free and prosperous Pacific region, are enormous.'”

Branding the situation as “propaganda by think tank”, the authors argue that some sections of the news media are framing a massive military build-up by the US and its allies as necessary in the face of Chinese aggression.

“These repetitive media reports condition the public and so allow, or force, the political class to up the ante on China,” Loewenstein and Cronau write.

• The full report – ‘The media are targeting the public for a war with China’

The International Press Institute (IPI) has condemned the arrest and interrogation of French journalist Ariane Lavrilleux and demanded her immediate release. She was released after 39 hours in custody.

IPI has also called on French law enforcement authorities to ensure full respect for international media freedom standards on source protection.

Lavrilleux, a journalist with French non-profit investigative platform Disclose was taken into custody last Tuesday, September 19, after a dawn raid on her home by officers from France’s domestic intelligence agency, the DGSI, said an IPI statement.

• READ MORE: The Moruroa Files – how cutting edge science, secret documents and journalism exposed a Pacific lie
• State secrets: Disclose journalist taken into custody
• The Disclose website

Her apartment was searched and her computer was confiscated, in the presence of a judge, according to news media reports.

Journalists at Disclose played a key role in a major investigation of French nuclear tests secrecy in the South Pacific in March 2021.

Lavrilleux was taken to the DGSI headquarters in Marseille and questioned for several hours in the presence of her lawyer as part of an investigation into the publication of highly confidential documents in the investigative series, the “Egypt Papers”. She remained in custody overnight and into Wednesday, September 20.

In November 2021, Lavrilleux had co-authored and published the Egypt Papers, about the Sirli operation, an investigative series based on hundreds of leaked documents which revealed how information gathered by French counter-intelligence bodies was abused by the Egyptian military to carry out a campaign of bombings and arbitrary killings of alleged smugglers and innocent civilians.

French state’s potential complicity
At the time, Disclose had issued a statement justifying its decision to publish the confidential information, citing the evidence of the French state’s potential complicity in serious human rights abuses committed by a foreign regime, and the public’s right to know about such matters of public interest.

In July 2022, prosecutors in Paris opened an investigation that was later handed over to the DGSI. They alleged the publication had compromised national defence secrets and revealed information that could lead to the identification of a protected agent.

It is unclear whether any intelligence official was compromised.

“IPI is highly alarmed by the continued detention and interrogation of Ariane Lavrilleux and urges the General Directorate for Internal Security to proceed with extreme caution and full respect for French law and international legal standards regarding journalistic source protection”, IPI executive director Frane Maroevic said.

“Any charges against Lavrilleux must be dropped immediately and all pressure on Disclose and its journalists related to their investigative work must cease.

“The arrest of an investigative journalist is extremely serious, as it has major ramifications for press freedom”, he added.

“Journalists’ right to protect their sources is enshrined in national and international law as it essential for journalists to expose wrongdoing and hold power to account. The public interest defence of revealing the information published in Disclose’s investigative reporting on the Egyptian military is clear.

“IPI and our global network stand behind Lavrilleux and her colleagues at Disclose and will continue to monitor the situation closely.”

First home search since 2007
The arrest of Lavrilleux is believed to be the first time since 2007 that the home of a French journalist had been searched by police.

In a statement released immediately after the arrest, Disclose said: “The aim of this latest episode of unacceptable intimidation of Disclose journalists is clear: to identify our sources that revealed the Sirli military operation in Egypt.

“In November 2021, Disclose revealed an alleged campaign of arbitrary executions orchestrated by the Egyptian dictatorship of President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, with the complicity of the French state, based on several hundred documents marked ‘defence – confidential”.

IPI’s Maroevic added that the institute had been in contact with staff at Disclose after the arrest and has offered to help provide legal support through the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), a European consortium which offers legal aid.

He noted that the arrest was the latest in a number of worrying incidents involving the interrogation of journalists from Disclose in relation to their reporting on the Egyptian government, and its sources for those stories.

This statement by IPI is part of the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), a Europe-wide mechanism which tracks, monitors and responds to violations of press and media freedom in EU Member States, Candidate Countries, and Ukraine. The project is co-funded by the European Commission.

Research on climate crisis as the new target for disinformation peddlers, governance and the media, China’s growing communication influence, and journalism training strategies feature strongly in the latest Pacific Journalism Review.

Byron C. Clark, author of the recent controversial book Fear: New Zealand’s Hostile Underworld of Extremists, and Canterbury University postgraduate researcher Emanuel Stokes, have produced a case study about climate crisis as the new pandemic disinformation arena with the warning that “climate change or public health emergencies can be seized upon by alternative media and conspiracist influencers” to “elicit outrage and protest”.

The authors argue that journalists need a “high degree of journalistic ethics and professionalism to avoid amplifying hateful, dehumanising narratives”.

• READ MORE: The July 2023 PJR table of contents
• Other PJR editions

PJR editor Dr Philip Cass adds an article unpacking the role of Pacific churches, both positive and negative, in public information activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Several articles deal with media freedom in the Pacific in the wake of the pandemic, including a four-country examination by some of the region’s leading journalists and facilitated by Dr Amanda Watson of Australian National University and associate professor Shailendra Singh of the University of the South Pacific.

They conclude that the pandemic “has been a stark reminder about the link between media freedom and the financial viability of media of organisations, especially in the Pacific”.

Dr Ann Auman, a specialist in crosscultural and global media ethics from the University of Hawai’i, analyses challenges facing the region through a workshop at the newly established Pacific Media Institute in Majuro, Marshall Islands.

Repeal of draconian Fiji law
The ousting of the Voreqe Bainimarama establishment that had been in power in Fiji in both military and “democratic” forms since the 2006 coup opened the door to greater media freedom and the repeal of the draconian Fiji Media Law. Two articles examine the implications of this change for the region.

An Indonesian researcher, Justito Adiprasetio of Universitas Padjadjaran, dissects the impact of Jakarta’s 2021 “terrorist” branding of the Free West Papua movement on six national online news media groups.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, media analyst Dr Gavin Ellis discusses “denying oxygen” to those who create propaganda for terrorists in the light of his recent research with Dr Denis Muller of Melbourne University and how Australia might benefit from New Zealand media initiatives, while RNZ executive editor Jeremy Rees reflects on a historical media industry view of training, drawing from Commonwealth Press Union reviews of the period 1979-2002.

Across the Tasman, Griffith University communication and journalism programme director Dr Kasun Ubayasiri presents a powerful human rights Photoessay documenting how the Meanjin (Brisbane) local community rallied around to secure the release of 120 medevaced refugee men locked up in an urban motel.

Monash University associate professor Johan Lidberg led a team partnering in International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) studies about “the world according to China”, the global media influence strategies of a superpower.

The Frontline section features founding editor Dr David Robie’s case study about the Pacific Media Centre which was originally published by Japan’s Okinawan Journal of Island Studies.

A strong Obituary section featuring two personalities involved in investigating the 1975 Balibo Five journalist assassination by Indonesian special forces in East Timor and a founder of the Pacific Media Centre plus nine Reviews round off the edition.

Pacific Journalism Review, founded at the University of Papua New Guinea, is now in its 29th year and is New Zealand’s oldest journalism research publication and the highest ranked communication journal in the country.

It is published by the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) Incorporated educational nonprofit.

A major daily newspaper in Solomon Islands received nearly US$140,000 in funding from the Chinese government in return for pledges to “promote the truth about China’s generosity and its true intentions to help develop” the Pacific Islands country, according to a leaked document and interviews.

The revelation comes amid Western alarm over growing Chinese influence over the strategically located country, which switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 2019 and then signed a surprise security agreement with Beijing last year.

Solomon Islands journalists have complained of a worsening media environment, as well as what is perceived to be a growing pro-China slant from local outlets that have accepted funding from the People’s Republic.

• READ MORE: How China’s creeping influence undermines Pacific media freedom — Shailendra Singh
• Other Pacific media and China reports
• The OCCRP website

A document obtained by OCCRP shows how one of these outlets, the Solomon Star newspaper, received Chinese assistance after providing repeated and explicit assurances that it would push messages favorable to Beijing.

Reporters obtained a July 2022 draft funding proposal from the Solomon Star to China’s embassy in Honiara in which the paper requested SBD 1,150,000 (about $137,000) for equipment, including a replacement for its aging newspaper printer and a broadcast tower for its radio station, PAOA FM.

The Solomon Star said in the proposal that decrepit equipment was causing editions to come out late and “curtailing news flow about China’s generous and lightning economic and infrastructure development in Solomon Islands.”

The document shows the Chinese embassy had initially offered SBD 350,000 in 2021, but revised this number upward in recognition of the newspaper’s needs.

A dozen pledges
In total, the proposal contains roughly a dozen separate pledges to use the Chinese-funded equipment to promote China’s “goodwill” and role as “the most generous and trusted development partner” in Solomon Islands.

In interviews, both the Solomon Star’s then-publisher, Catherine Lamani, and its chief of staff, Alfred Sasako, confirmed the paper had made the proposal, but declined to speak in detail about it.

Sasako said the newspaper maintained its independence. He said any suggestion it had a pro-Beijing bias was “a figment of the imagination of anyone who is trying to demonise China.”

Sasako said the paper had tried unsuccessfully for more than a decade to get assistance from Australia’s embassy in the country. Other Western countries, such as the United States, had neglected Solomon Islands for decades and were only now showing interest because of anxiety over Chinese influence, he added.

“My summary on the whole thing is China is a doer, others are talkers. They spend too much time talking, nothing gets done,” he said.

Press delivered
OCCRP was able to confirm that the printing equipment the Solomon Star had requested was indeed purchased and delivered earlier this year.

“I can confirm what was quoted was delivered in February and the payments came from the Solomon Star,” said Terry Mays, business development manager of G2 Systems Print Supply Division, the Brisbane, Australia, based supplier named in the proposal.

The Solomon Star funding is just one part of a regional push to get China’s message out in the Pacific Islands, as well as build relationships with the region’s elites, reporters have found.

Earlier this month, OCCRP reported on an aborted deal in the northern Pacific nation of Palau involving the publisher of the country’s oldest newspaper and a Chinese business group with links to national security institutions.

Bernadette Carreon and Aubrey Belford report for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). OCCRP is funded worldwide by a variety of government and non-government donors. OCCRP’s work in the Pacific Islands is currently funded by a US-government grant that gives the donor zero say in editorial decisions.

The launch of a New Zealand project to produce more Pacific news and provide a “voice for the voiceless” on the islands has highlighted the neglect of that field by Australia and New Zealand — and also problems in universities.

The new development is the non-government, non-university Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), a research base and publishing platform.

Its opening followed the cleaning-out of a centre within the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) — in an exercise exemplifying the kind of micro infighting that goes on hardly glimpsed from outside the academic world.

• READ MORE: Media and academia: the intriguing case of the Pacific Media Centre — Media Asia
• Future of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre under spotlight following director’s departure
• Pacific Media Centre must break free to survive
• Future of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre still up in the air
• Māori and Pacific academics at AUT concerned about impact of job cuts
• Other Pacific Media Centre reports

Cleaning out media centre
The story features an unannounced move by university staff to vacate the offices of an active journalism teaching and publishing base, the Pacific Media Centre, in early February 2021.

Seven weeks after the retirement of that centre’s foundation director, Professor David Robie, staff of AUT’s School of Communication Studies turned up and stripped it, taking out the archives and Pacific taonga — valued artifacts from across the region.

Staff still based there did not know of this move until later.

The centre had been in operation for 13 years — it was popular with Pasifika students, especially postgrads who would go on reporting ventures for practice-led research around the Pacific; it was a base for online news, for example prolific outlets including a regular Pacific Media Watch; it had international standing especially through the well-rated (“SCOPUS-listed”) academic journal Pacific Journalism Review; and it was a cultural hub, where guests might receive a sung greeting from the staff, Pacific-style, or see fascinating art works and craft.

Its uptake across the “Blue Continent” showed up gaps in mainstream media services and in Australia’s case famously the backlog in promoting economic and cultural ties.

The PMC Project — a short documentary about the centre by Alistar Kata in 2016. Video: Pacific Media Centre

Human rights and media freedom
The centre was founded in 2007, in a troubled era following a rogue military coup d’etat in Fiji, civil disturbances in Papua New Guinea, violent attacks on journalists in several parts, and endemic gender violence listed as a priority problem for the Pacific Islands Forum.

Through its publishing and conference activity it would take a stand on human rights and media freedom issues, social justice, economic and media domination from outside.

The actual physical evacuation was on the orders of the communications head of school at AUT, Dr Rosser Johnson, a recently appointed associate professor with a history of management service in several acting roles since 2005. He told the Australia Asia Pacific Media Initiative (AAPMI) in response to its formal complaint to AUT that it was “gutting” the centre that the university planned to keep a centre called the PMC and co-locate its offices with other centres — but that never happened.

His intervention caused predictable critical responses, as with this comment by a former New Zealand Herald editor-in-chief, Dr Gavin Ellis, on dealing with corporatised universities, in “neo-liberal” times:

“For many years I thought universities were the ideal place to establish centres of investigative journalism excellence … My views have been shaken to the core by the Auckland University of Technology gutting the Pacific Media Centre.”

Conflicts over truth-telling
The “PMC affair” has stirred conflicts that should worry observers who place value on truth-finding and truth-telling in university research, preparation for the professions, and academic freedom.

The centre along with its counterpart at the University of Technology Sydney, called the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ), worked in the area of journalism as research, applying journalistic skills and methods, especially exercises in investigative journalism.

The ACIJ produced among many investigations, work on the reporting of climate policy and climate science, and the News of the World phone hacking scandal. It also was peremptorily shut-down, three years ahead of the PMC.

Both centres were placed in the journalism academic discipline, a “professional” and “teaching” discipline that traditionally draws in high achieving students interested in its practice-led approach.

All of which is decried by line academics in disciplines without professional linkages but a professional interest in the hierarchical arrangements and power relations within the confined space of their universities.

There the interest is in theoretical teaching and research outputs, often-enough called “Marxist”, “postmodern”, “communications” or “cultural studies”, angled at a de-legitimisation of “Western-liberal” mass media. Not that journalism education itself shies away from media criticism, as Dr Robie told Independent Australia:

“The Pacific Media Centre frequently challenged ‘ethnocentric journalistic practice’ and placed Māori, Pacific and indigenous and cultural diversity at the heart of the centre’s experiential knowledge and critical-thinking news narratives.”

Yet it can be seen how conflict may arise, especially where smaller journalism departments come under “takeover” pressure. It is a handy option for academic managers to subsume “journalism”, and get the staff positions that can be filled with non-journalists; the contribution the journalists may make to research earnings (through the Australian Excellence in Research process, or NZ Performance Based Research Fund), and especially government funding for student places.

There, better students likely to excel and complete their programmes can be induced to do more generalised courses with a specialist “journalism” label.

Any such conflict in the AUT case cannot be measured but must be at least lurking in the background.

What is ‘ideology’?
Another problem exists, where a centre like the former PMC will commit to defined values, even officially sanctioned ones like inclusivity and rejection of discrimination.

Undertakings like the PMC’s “Bearing Witness” projects, where students would deploy classic journalism techniques for investigations on a nuclear-free Pacific or climate change, can irritate conservative interests.

The derogatory expression for any connection with social movements is “ideological”. This time it is an unknown, but a School moving against an “ideological” unit, might get at least tacit support from higher-ups supposing that eviscerating it might help the institution’s “good name”.

What implications for future journalism, freedom and quality of media? Hostility towards specific professional education for journalism exists fairly widely. The rough-housing of the journalism centre at AUT is indicative, where efforts by the out-going director to organise succession after his retirement, five years in advance, received no response.

The position statement was changed to take away a requirement for actual Pacific media identity or expertise, and the job left vacant, in part a covid effect. The centre performed well on its key performance indicators, if small in size, which brought in limited research grants but good returns for academic publications:

“On 18 December 2020 – the day I officially retired – I wrote to the [then] Vice-Chancellor, Derek McCormack … expressing my concern about the future of the centre, saying the situation was “unconscionable and inexplicable”. I never received an acknowledgement or reply.”

Pacific futures
Journalism education has persisted through an adverse climate, where the number of journalists in mainstream media has declined, in New Zealand almost halved to 2061, (2006 – 2018). AUT celebrated 50 years of journalism teaching this week.

Also, AUT is currently in turmoil over the future of Māori and Pacific academics and the status of the university with an unpopular move to retrench 170 academic staff.

However new media are expanding, new demands exist for media competency across the exploding world “mediascape”, schools cultivating conscionable practices are providing an antidote to floods of bigotry and lies in social media.

The new NGO in Auckland, the APMN, has found a good base of support across the Pacific communities, limbering up for a future free of interference, outside of the former university base.

It will be bidding for a share of NZ government grants intended to assist public journalism, ethnic broadcasting and outreach to the region. While several products of the former centre have closed, the successful 28-year-old research journal Pacific Journalism Review has continued, producing two editions under its new management.

The operation is also keeping its production-side media strengths, such as with the online title Asia Pacific Report.

Independent Australia media editor Dr Lee Duffield is a former ABC correspondent and academic. He is a member of the editorial advisory board of Pacific Journalism Review. This article is republished with the author’s permission.

Pacific Media Centre gutted in blow to journalism on the Pacific Islands ~ Dr Lee Duffield https://t.co/lvLMm6lCmk @independentaus

— IndependentAustralia (@independentaus) December 3, 2022

A recent revival of local prime-time TV documentaries has highlighted some thorny social issues and raised awkward questions about justice and equality.

Among them was a revealing investigation this week showing the cost of white-collar crime dwarfs that of welfare fraud, but draws lighter punishments and gets a lot less scrutiny in the media than the kind of crimes that play out in public.

For years, the heyday of New Zealand TV documentary and current affairs seemed to be in the past.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MEDIAWATCH: ‘Uncovering injustice and inequities’

Gone are the days of Mike McRoberts’ mellifluous voice introducing local investigative stories on 60 Minutes after a few seconds of distinctive clock-ticking. The popular franchise stopped producing local content some years ago.

20/20, while still on air, mainly releases repackaged content from the US these days and in spite of the continuing long-form journalism of TVNZ’s Sunday, documentaries have been fading from New Zealand screens for some time.

Lately though, TVNZ has revived the strand Documentary New Zealand with a series of eight new NZ On Air-funded films for TVNZ1 on Tuesday nights between Eat Well For Less and Coronation Street, and on the on-demand service TVNZ+.

Among the most engaging and often moving ones was No Māori Allowed, which aired last week.

Pukekohe discrimination
The documentary delves into the history of Pukekohe, where for decades Māori were subject to discrimination and sometimes, violence.

It deftly navigates several tensions — first between local Pākehā and Māori who lived though an era of segregated movie theatres, but also between the people trying to bring the area’s past to light and the kuia and kaumatua who lived through it, and still bear the scars.

While No Māori Allowed highlighted historic racism and the legacy it has left, this week’s documentary Crime: Need vs Greed trains its eye on a more modern form of racial and economic injustice.

Host Tim McKinnel argues we’ve “sleepwalked” into a $5 billion white collar crime wave of costly fraud and deception offences while the attention of our justice system and media is turned toward often low level street crime.

“While society and the media fixate on gang crimes, ram raids, and other forms of street crime, white collar criminals have been robbing us blind. We’ve sleepwalked into a $5 billion crime wave that no-one wants to talk about. Instead we’re tough on crime and spend billions locking up the poor,” he says in Need vs Greed.

Not only have white collar criminals been robbing us blind — the documentary presents evidence they’ve been getting away with it.

Tax law specialist Lisa Marriot delivers some staggering statistics on the double standard. Her research found people convicted of tax fraud crimes averaging $287,000 have a 22 percent chance of receiving a prison sentence — while those convicted of welfare fraud worth an average of $67,000 are imprisoned 60 percent of the time.

The lack of consequences for white collar crime belies its scale and impact.

$1.7 billion fraud prosecution
A 2014 investigation by New Zealand Herald journalist Matt Nippert helped trigger a $1.7 billion fraud prosecution against the company South Canterbury Finance.

In Crime: Need vs Greed, he says it’s “more than every Treaty settlement combined in New Zealand’s history” or “a hundred years of benefit fraud in one go”.

Given the relative figures involved, it’s worth asking why benefit fraud or street crime like ram raids get so much more attention.

Nippert says part of the reason is obvious: street crime is visceral and a lot more understandable to audiences.

“It’s the comparison between a Jerry Bruckheimer action flick and something much more slow and sedate like a documentary spread across, say, six episodes.

“I think ram raids are quite a violent, shocking act and should be covered. But they are also effectively a pre-scripted sort of action heist movie — with car crashes and getaways and splitting the loot — all condensed down to this one moment of action.

“But the white collar financial crimes often occur very subtly, very carefully, very deceptively over years, sometimes decades,” he says.

Fraud story legal threats
Fraud stories also pose legal difficulties, partly because the perpetrators can afford to hire lawyers and threaten defamation action.

Nippert is routinely threatened with legal action over his investigations. The Herald‘s lawyers have to check almost everything that he writes.

Meanwhile, street crime is more likely to come before the courts, and reporting on it is less likely to be subject to suppression orders and legal challenges from defendants.

“A lot of reporting comes from courts are a reflection of wider problem,” Nippert says.

“You will tend to get far more disadvantaged people in the District Court facing charges. On the other side of it, when you’re looking at sort of white collar crimes . . . I’ve run into suppression orders many, many times. So that not only maybe dampens down the reporting, but also slows it down enormously.”

Journalists have been highlighting inequities in the court system recently, with NZME running the Open Justice project and RNZ’s Is This Justice, which revealed — among other things — that Pākehā are discharged without conviction and granted name suppression at higher rates than Māori, that 90 percent of High Court and Court of Appeal judges are Pākehā, and that judges could be presiding over the cases of people they know.

Human brain ‘and zeros’
Another issue contributing to the comparative dearth of fraud reporting is that the “human brain does funny things when it sees zeroes,” Nippert says.

“The difference between $10 million and $100 million becomes quite ethereal. But everyone can understand what $1000 in the hand looks like.”

Despite the inherent disadvantages fraud stories have in a click-based media economy, Nippert says more reporters should cover them because of the huge costs these crimes impose on victims and society.

That might mean doing a basic accountancy paper at university or downloading Google Sheets onto their phone, but the barriers to entry aren’t as high as some reporters might think, he says.

“I used to think I didn’t have that sort of brain [for numbers]. But then I was made redundant and the only job I could get was a business reporter in the NBR and you know, if you give it a go, I think you’ll find it’s a lot more straightforward than you’ve conditioned yourself to fear,” he says.

“It’s important to point out for readers that some of these cases are alarming and we should be paying close attention because that $100 million isn’t just $100 million from some insurance company — that’s likely to be a thousand families who have lost their nest egg, and whose financial future is extraordinarily precarious, probably for the rest of their lives.”

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

In the mid-1990s I started working with New Zealand investigative writer Nicky Hager. I have had the most singular of all my authorial relationships with Nicky, the result of the potent, usually red-hot subject matter that is his stock-in-trade.

I knew Nicky from our early days in forest conservation — he had been a fellow campaigner — but he also had a long interest in security issues. In 1996 he came to us with a nearly completed book that, for the first time, revealed the existence of the highly secret ECHELON surveillance programme run between the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, now commonly known as the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.

This alliance effectively means that New Zealand does the bidding of its more powerful allies. It raises myriad moral and sovereignty issues about who we are spying on, and why.

• READ MORE: Other Nicky Hager reports

We published what became Secret Power, with a great deal of trepidation — a prominent QC and expert on media law had expressly warned us off the project, making chillingly clear the potential for jail time if we published state secrets, which we obviously intended to do.

But in an early demonstration of Nicky’s strategic nous, no one came knocking. In this, and in all future publishing decisions with him, it became a careful weighing up of whether the subject of the book — in this case the government and its intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau — would want the scrutiny and public exposure of a court case, even if they were likely to win it.

The other issue that applied to Secret Power and, again, with all Nicky’s subsequent books, was both ethical and practical — is the exposure of secret or private information justified? It is, only if it is clearly in the public interest, which is also the primary legal defence should that be necessary.

In the process of publishing Secret Power we developed our own organic publishing model, used a number of times over the next 20 years to get Nicky’s risky books successfully into readers’ hands and to minimise the danger of being stifled by a High Court injunction, the most likely tool the subject of a book would use to prevent publication. This involved producing the books at breakneck speed to reduce the chance of being discovered.

Printed in absolute secrecy
After the book had been written, Nicky would work intensively alongside an editor over a week or two; I would lay out and proofread the book in two or three days, and then print in absolute secrecy.

When printed, we would drop them via overnight courier into bookshops nationwide without any prior warning, explaining to booksellers why we were doing this and offering to take back at our expense any they didn’t want. It meant that the book was already available to readers just as Nicky started to create a media firestorm thereby significantly reducing the window for legal action to be successfully launched: by the time an injunction could be drawn up and submitted to the court, widespread availability meant it would be pointless and therefore unlikely to be granted.

Secret Power proved to be an internationally significant book — it led to an enquiry in the European Parliament at which Nicky testified, and could be regarded as the forerunner to Edward Snowden’s revelations about the workings of the US National Security Agency in 2013 and the subsequent global debates about mass surveillance and information privacy.

Three years later Nicky came to me again with Secrets and Lies: The Anatomy of an Anti-environmental PR Campaign, which he co-authored with the Australian environmentalist Bob Burton. Based on a leak from a concerned whistleblower, the book exposed how the government-owned Timberlands was secretly using taxpayer money to run an undercover public relations campaign to justify its logging of native forest on the West Coast.

This greenwashing broke a fundamental public service rule — government departments and state-owned enterprises cannot secretly run campaigns to help further their own agendas — and the story blew up exactly as the authors and I hoped.

By complete coincidence, we happened to publish on the same day as the launch of the National Party’s 1999 election campaign. It completely destroyed their media splash, and they were furious — I know this because [co-publisher] Craig Potton happened to meet a National Cabinet minister, with close ties to our area, in Wellington airport the next morning. He lost it, and had to be physically restrained by his aides after he shoved Craig in the chest.

Then, when Helen Clark and her Labour government came to power later in the year, the logging of native forest on the West Coast was stopped. Timberlands had badly overreached.

Things didn’t go well
Nicky’s next book, Seeds of Distrust, published in 2002, which detailed how the then Labour government had covered up the illegal planting of GE corn in New Zealand after intense lobbying from big business; the controversy known as Corngate. Seeds of Distrust was essentially about accountability and transparent government, but while the book was accurate, things did not go well for us.

TV3’s John Campbell ambushed Prime Minister Helen Clark about the issue in a television interview, and she responded by calling Campbell a “sanctimonious little creep”. It was a lesson in the perils of crossing a furious Clark, and her government managed very effectively to cloud the issue with technical arguments.

The book was a distressing and sobering experience as we lost the PR battle, with the media uncertain about the veracity of Nicky’s work.

I went on to publish a number of other important books with Nicky, all of them focused on speaking truth to power. The Hollow Men, in 2006, was an inside look at then leader of the opposition, Don Brash, and the questionable tactics he and others in the National Party employed as they sought to gain power. Brash had heard rumours that someone was leaking his personal emails, so he successfully sought an over-arching injunction preventing publication of this material.

He had no idea, however, that only a few kilometres away in Kaiwharawhara, we were just finishing printing 5000 copies of The Hollow Men, based in large part on these leaked emails.

The injunction was a disaster for us, as it meant that we could not sell the books and would potentially have to pulp them, so with nothing to lose we decided to try to pressure Brash to lift the injunction. Nicky called a press conference, and he and I fronted the Wellington media.

With a small pile of printed copies of The Hollow Men on display, we explained that people were not able to read this book even if it was in the public interest that they should. The tactic worked spectacularly — the frenzied response by the media, and the pressure bought to bear on Brash, forced him not only to resign as leader of the National Party but also to lift the injunction.

We were then able to release the book, an instant bestseller, which revealed, among many other things, that Brash had misled the public about his relationship with the Exclusive Brethren, who had secretly given the National Party a substantial donation.

Exposing john Key’s ‘dark tactics’
Nicky’s next book, the equally explosive Dirty Politics, was published in the middle of the election campaign in 2014, and exposed the dark tactics of John Key’s National government. An anonymous hacker, Rawshark, had been so enraged by the behaviour of Cameron Slater, the right-wing blogger behind the Whale Oil blog, that he managed to hack into his Facebook account and extract a large tranche of Slater’s communications.

After a long process of winning Rawshark’s trust, Nicky was given this information, and it became the foundation of the book. Dirty Politics laid out in startling detail how unscrupulous Key and his operators were in feeding Slater with inside information and using him to attack their political enemies. It remains a shameful stain on the Key government.

It also led to another grubby incident when, in the wake of the book’s publication, the police, perhaps in an attempt to please their political masters, raided Nicky’s house and illegally obtained his personal financial records, all in a fruitless attempt to discover Rawshark’s identity. Nicky took action in the High Court, winning an apology and substantial damages from the police.

We have published two others of Nicky’s books on security issues: Other People’s Wars in 2011, a large, supremely well researched book on New Zealand’s unseen role in the so-called war on terror; and, with Jon Stephenson, Hit & Run in 2017, detailing a Defence Force cover-up of a New Zealand SAS operation that killed civilians in Afghanistan.

For me, this strand of publishing has frequently been terrifying, given the potential for legal action lurking behind every book that could destroy the company. It has always been ameliorated, however, by the privilege of being able to publish Nicky’s remarkable books. Having the freedom to take them on feels like the ultimate gift of being an independent publisher.

It says everything about Nicky’s extraordinary dedication and research skills, quite apart from his courage, that despite the endless vitriol from his detractors, we have never ended up in court over one of his books — the passage of time has always revealed the accuracy of his work. Consequently, my trust in him is absolute.

His most powerful weapon, and one that lies behind everything he does, is his integrity. His sole motivation is to make the world a better place, and money and power simply do not matter to him. In my view he is a national treasure.

• An extract reprinted with permission from the newly published Bushline: A Memoir, by Robbie Burton (Potton & Burton, $39.99).

Every journalist that “outs” a conspiracy theorist or extremist paints a target on their own back.

The anti-truth brigade thrives in dark places and shining a light on it and its associates is doing a public service. Yet it comes at a cost.

The tone of abuse that it generates is even darker than the places from which it emanates. New Zealand journalists — particularly female journalists — are being subjected to taunts and threats on an unprecedented scale and in forms that are deeply disturbing.

• READ MORE: A NZ media conundrum over how to cover the ‘dangerous’ conspiracists
• Other conspiracy theorist reports

Paula Penfold of the Stuff Circuit team that produced the documentary Fire and Fury, which unmasked many of those behind the February-March protest in Parliament grounds, revealed in the Sunday Star Times last weekend that since its appearance she has been targeted with death threats, abuse “and, unsurprisingly, conspiracy theories”.

She told the newspaper: “I’ve had lots before but never as many or as ugly or as threatening than after this documentary.”

Penfold’s situation was outlined in an article about the abuse three female Stuff journalists had endured for doing their jobs. Alongside Penfold were Kirsty Johnston, who revealed MP Sam Uffindell’s record at King’s College, and Andrea Vance, currently revealing the anti- brigade’s associations with local body candidates.

“You can’t fight crazy,” Vance told the SST. “It’s exhausting. Half their tactics are to tie you up in pointless circular arguments but if people honestly think we’re being paid by the government they’re not well.”

Attitude about media
Her latter point was a reference to an all-too-popular suggestion that the media en masse had been suborned by the Public Interest Journalism Fund. Anyone who thinks New Zealand’s media can be instantly brought to heel by $55 million spread among all of them over a period of four years is, indeed, not well.

Then again, the attitude toward journalists is “not well” either.

I felt immensely saddened to see this quote from Kirsty Johnston about the spread of trolling and abuse: “All reporters know it. They go to parties and don’t say what they do.”

When I was young, the only people who had that attitude were undertakers and the people who worked in the local VD clinic. We were proud to say we were journalists, reporters, photographers, sub-editors and so on.

Our broadcasting colleagues were equally open about their profession.

What went wrong, and when?

Fire and Fury – the documentary.                      Video: Stuff Circuit

It has been a long time since the public put journalists on a pedestal. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the last statue to a journalist in Auckland was erected in 1901 (remembering George M Reed and still standing in Albert Park).

Slow decline
There was a slow decline over the years but in the 40 years I spent in daily journalism I never felt despised. Yes, I received two death threats in that time but the first was written in crayon and the second wasn’t aimed only at me, or even only at journalists (which was why it was reported to the police). What journalists are now experiencing is either something new or something old harnessed to something new.

I think it may well be the latter. The old component is anarchy and the new is digital communication. Together they are dynamite (excuse the pun).

Anarchy is basically the repudiation of existing systems of government and ordered society, represented by institutions such as Parliament and the media (the latter is seen as the mouthpiece of politicians). In the past it had a capital A and was an intellectual breeding grounds for socialism, communism, and other then-radical politics.

However, even then, it had its hangers-on who were drawn to its sometimes-violent rhetoric with little understanding or interest in its philosophy. The crazy bombers and assassins were seldom actually card-carrying members of an anarchist body.

Today, anarchy has a small a. We use the term to denote disorder and disarray. And it underlies much of the anti-this and anti-that ranting that permeates social media.

Put simply, there are people out there who want to see the institutions of civil society brought down. They have no clear idea what should replace it and they don’t care. In a way, they are calling for destruction for its own sake. That is at the core of conspiracy theories.

Social media has become the new explosive. Much easier to come by than volatile nitro-glycerine or the “safer” dynamite, it can carry a destructive force over a far greater distance.

Digital bomb-throwers
The digital bomb-throwers use it in two ways. The first is by undermining truth, which casts doubt over the legitimacy of institutions. The second is by discrediting those who represent those institutions. They reserve special attention, however, for those who would presume to unmask, undermine and discredit them.

So, it came as no surprise that the verbal attacks on journalists rose to a new pitch after the appearance of Fire and Fury on the Stuff website and the series of revelations about local body candidates’ undisclosed affiliations with groups that spread conspiracy theories.

The crescendo of hate requires fortitude on the part of the journalists exposing conspiracy theorists and other bad agents. They can take some comfort from the fact that media organisations take seriously their duty of care toward staff — and freelancers — facing threats.

RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson told me the abuse was taking its toll.

“We have responded with improved security and health and safety planning, at our offices and in the field. We also have set up improved process for dealing with inappropriate and abusive feedback and social media. There are things we can do to mitigate the effects of the abuse but we cannot reduce the impact or risk to zero.”

Television New Zealand’s head of news, Phil O’Sullivan, is similarly conscious of the risks and effects.

“TVNZ has not made any changes to security arrangements due to recent incidents. But we have many existing safety precautions for reporters in place. Depending on the story, this can include traveling with extra security when covering certain events, reporting from safe locations and from a distance if a situation feels volatile and using technology solutions – for example drone footage, or footage recorded on mobile phones rather than a camera set up where needed.

“We have a responsibility to report on all the stories impacting New Zealanders — but ultimately, we need to do that in a safe way. At the forefront of this is the wellbeing and safety of our people and we have a number of measures in place to support this.”

Probing anti-fact organisations
He makes an important point: Media organisations must not let these diatribes and threats stay their hands. Investigation into anti-fact and extremist organisations and individuals must continue and are no more important than during election periods, be they local or national.

There is, however, a caveat. Journalists who call out conspiracy theorists and latter-day anarchists also have a duty of care. They have a duty to ensure they have the facts and that what they say is fair.

Last Saturday, the Wairarapa Times-Age investigated “local government candidates with controversial links” under the heading “Who is pulling the strings?” It “outed” a mayoral candidate, Tina Nixon, saying she “had been promoted by conspiracy website Resistance.Kiwi” and on Facebook had followed people associated with far-right groups.

Its source was FACT Aotearoa, a group that exposes conspiracy theorists.

However, the newspaper did not make direct contact with Nixon (it left an email saying she had two hours to respond but she did not see it within the required timeframe). Her only link with Resistance.Kiwi had been in giving them permission — along with several other websites — to reprint her submission on the 3 Waters proposals.

Like many of us, she follows hundreds of websites and social media users but does not support what many of them say. FACT Aotearoa offered Nixon an apology, saying there appeared to be a “miscommunication” with the Wairarapa Times-Age. In my view, the newspaper failed her and electors by not substantiating information.

There is potential here for witch-hunting or, as my former colleague Fran O’Sullivan put it on social media when calling out the mistake, McCarthyism.

In addition to fact-checking, media should give their targets an opportunity to explain their position before a decision is made to publish or broadcast. Tina Nixon is an object lesson.

There is a further reason why media must take great care in “outing” conspiracy theorists and extremists. Get one wrong and it might be seen as an unfortunate error. Get more wrong and the conspiracy theorists and extremists will say gleefully (and, irritatingly, with a very small amount of justification) that the media can’t be believed.

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

The potential extradition and prosecution of Australian whistleblower Julian Assange raises concerns for media freedom and could have a “chilling effect” on investigative journalism, says UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet.

Assange, who has been held in a high-security London prison since 2019, has filed an appeal against his extradition from Britain to the United States.

The WikiLeaks founder is wanted to face trial for allegedly violating the US Espionage Act by publishing classified US military and diplomatic files in 2010 related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

• READ MORE: Other reports on the Julian Assange case

The 51-year-old could face decades in jail if found guilty, reports Agence France-Presse. But supporters portray him as a martyr to press freedom after he was taken into British custody following nearly seven years inside Ecuador’s Embassy in London.

“I am aware of health issues which Mr Assange has suffered during his time in detention, and remain concerned for his physical and mental well-being,” Bachelet said in a statement at the weekend after meeting with the WikiLeaks founder’s wife and lawyers on Thursday.

“The potential extradition and prosecution of Mr Assange raise concerns relating to media freedom and a possible chilling effect on investigative journalism and on the activities of whistleblowers.

“In these circumstances, I would like to emphasise the importance of ensuring respect of Mr Assange’s human rights, in particular the right to a fair trial and due process guarantees in this case.

“My office will continue to closely follow Mr Assange’s case.”

Term ending
Bachelet’s term as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights finishes on Wednesday, after four years in the post. The former Chilean president’s successor has not yet been appointed.

The US-based Assange Defence Committee coalition fighting to free the former computer hacker said the legal battle over his extradition was heating up on multiple fronts.

“Assange’s attorneys stressed the legal and human rights implications of the case, while Stella Assange updated Bachelet on the impact years of confinement have had on Julian’s health and family,” the statement said.

The Assange case has become a cause celebre for media freedom and his supporters accuse Washington of trying to muzzle reporting of legitimate security concerns.

The Solomon Islands government has threatened to ban or deport foreign journalists “disrespectful” of the country’s relationship with China, according to a statement released by the Prime Minister’s Office this week.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned this “grave infringement on press freedom” and has called on Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare to ensure all journalists remain free to report on the Solomon Islands.

The ABC has soundly condemned the Solomon Islands Office of the Prime Minister for a series of “factual errors” in a statement released which criticised the Four Corners investigative report Pacific Capture: How Chinese money is buying the Solomons.

In a rare statement defending its independent journalism, it said today the ABC “stood by the accuracy and integrity” of the reporting in this programme.

• READ MORE: The ABC defence
• The Solomon Islands government criticism
• ABC 4 Corners: The documentary
• Other China in the Solomon Islands reports

It said about the programme broadcast on August 4:

The ABC wishes to correct the following factual errors in the press release issued by the Solomon Islands Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet regarding the Four Corners report Pacific Capture, which examined the impact of China’s growing presence across Solomon Islands.

At no point did the program rely on “misinformation and distribution of pre-conceived prejudicial information”.

It was not our intention to “cause division between the governments of Australia and Solomon Islands”, rather to highlight issues of concern to all Solomon Islanders.

We completely reject the offensive notion of “racial profiling that is bordering racism and race stereotyping”. In fact, we were determined to tell the story from the perspective of Solomon Islanders and the program reflected their concerns. Its main interviews were with two eminent Solomon Islanders, rather than relying on “foreign experts” as is often the case. The ABC rejects the idea that we were “putting words into the mouths of the interviewees” and sees this as insulting to the Solomon Islanders who appeared in the program.

On the issue of Kolombangara, the ABC did not say that the “shareholders have made a decision to sell off the company to a Chinese firm”. Rather, the program accurately reported that the issue had been discussed at board level and that the Australian directors were so concerned about a potential sale to a Chinese state-owned company that they twice wrote to the Federal Government expressing concerns that the purchase could be used by Beijing to establish a base under the cover of a commercial enterprise. Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s office confirmed it was aware of the issue. Her office has also not ruled out intervening. The ABC also notes that the plantation on Kolombangara is owned 85 per cent by the Nien Family of Taiwan and 15 percent by the government of the Solomon Islands, not the 60/40 split claimed in the press release.

It is incorrect to claim that the program did not acknowledge that Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare “repeatedly reaffirmed to Solomon Islanders and the Pacific region that there will be no military or naval base in Solomon Islands”.

The program said: “At a meeting in Fiji, Sogavare assured the new Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that Beijing won’t be allowed to establish a military base in the Solomons.” It went on to say that one of the main concerns was that a commercial enterprise controlled by Beijing could one day be used to house military assets.

The ABC stands by the accuracy and integrity of the reporting in this program.

Former prime ministers, an opposition leader, and an ex-central bank governor have added their voices to a growing chorus of concerns about the Fiji government’s “close association” with a Korean doomsday Christian cult that has reportedly benefited from millions of dollars from a state-backed institution.

Award-winning investigative journalism organisations, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Korean Centre for Investigative Journalists (KCIJ), published a major exposé this week, that zeros in on the rapid expansion of the controversial Grace Road Church business empire through Prime Minister Voreqe  Bainimarama’s FijiFirst government’s help.

The two groups have revealed that Grace Road, whose leader Ok-joo Shin is in a Korean prison for “assault, child abuse, and imprisoning church members” and whose top executives remain under international police warrants, has received at least FJ$8.5 million (NZ$6.1m) in loans from the Fiji Development Bank (FDB) since 2015.

• LISTEN T0 RNZ PACIFIC WAVES:  The Grace Road cult investigation
• South Korean cult leader who held 400 people captive in Fiji jailed for six years

The FDB is a government-backed institution established to develop the country’s economy by providing finance to local small and medium agricultural enterprises. But Grace Road, which established as a foreign investor in 2014, started getting FDB loans just a year after it began operations.

According to the OCCRP-KCIJ, that money has helped the sect propel itself into a major entity in the Fijian economy, spreading its footprint throughout the main island of Viti Levu, with plans to develop further.

“The sect now operates the country’s largest chain of restaurants, controls roughly 400 hectares of farmland, owns eight supermarkets and mini marts, and runs five Mobil petrol stations. Its businesses also provide services such as dentistry, events catering, heavy construction, and Korean beauty treatments,” the two investigative groups report.

‘Red carpet treatment’
The investigations also uncovered Fijian police’s failure to investigate and charge the top leaders of the sect who were arrested four years ago on allegations of human rights abuses of its followers, but were released soon after when “a local court temporarily blocked their deportation”.

“The South Korean police said that the Fijian police had released the Grace Road members after a high-level meeting that included Fiji’s late immigration chief, the prime minister’s personal private secretary, the solicitor-general, and the country’s top prosecutor,” according to OCCRP-KJIC.

OCCRP’s Pacific editor, Aubrey Belford, told RNZ Pacific the core issue with Grace Road in Fiji was the perception it had been given the red carpet treatment by the government.

“They showed up in the country less than 10 years ago and in that time they have managed to build what is now one of the biggest business empires in the country,” Belford said.

“We counted 54 business establishments currently running in the country — 55 If you count the huge farm they have in Navua. They’re really everywhere.”

He said the OCCRP was able to uncover “that no one knew” that FDB provided Grace Road millions of dollars in loans to finance its business aspirations.

Belford said the police investigation into the alleged abuses of its members in Fiji had been ongoing for several years but had “gone nowhere” despite Fijian police officers travelling to Seoul to collect victim statements from key witnesses.

Former church member Yoon-jae Lee with two Fiji police officers. Image: Yoon-jae Lee

Government dismisses claims
“There is no conspiracy or cover-up here,” Fiji’s Director of Public Prosecution Christopher Pryde told OCCRP-KCIJ.

OCCRP-KCIJ said the South Korean Embassy in Suva declined to be interviewed, citing “the sensitive issues of the matter on Grace Road Church and ongoing Korean-Fijian law enforcement cooperation”.

Fijian authorities have remained quiet about the claims made in the report, but Attorney-General and Economy Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Kahiyum deflected media questions on Tuesday, telling reporters the investigations were “done by some organisation who we have never heard about”.

RNZ Pacific has contacted Grace Road for comment.

But with an election looming, Fijian political leaders are calling for Bainimarama and Sayed-Khaiyum to “come clean” about their dealings with the Korean group.

Former prime ministers Sitiveni Rabuka and Mahendra Chaudhry, who lead the People’s Alliance and the Labour Party respectively; the leader of the major opposition SODELPA, Viliame Gavoka; as well as former Reserve Bank of Fiji Governor Savenaca Narube are all calling for an official inquiry.

Rabuka has labelled the close links between the government and Grace Road a “disgrace”.

“It is a disgrace that this foreign sect whose founder is serving jail time in Korea for abusing its adherents has been given the red carpet treatment by the FijiFirst government,” Rabuka said.

“What equity did they bring as part of the deals to justify the $8.5m lending?” he asked, adding: “It seems that this government will willingly leave Fijians behind for the sake of assisting their own rich foreign friends.”

Rabuka said his People’s Alliance would launch an investigation into the operations of Grace Road Church if the alliance formed a government after the 2022 election.

Chaudhry said he hoped the findings uncovered by OCCRP would “bring out the truth”.

“Many here have questioned whether the Fiji police investigations into the complaints against the group have been hamstrung by political interference,” Chaudhry said.

“It is believed that a number of powerful people may have personally benefited from the activities of the Grace Road group in return for favours extended to it.”

Chaudhry said the Fiji police investigation was “just a joke”.

“We have raised this issue many times before but without results, because the group appears to have the backing of the government top brass who have not hesitated to defend them even in Parliament,” the Labour leader added.

‘Gravely concerned’
SODELPA’s Gavoka said he was “gravely concerned with revelations” of the investigations.

“There have been unspoken concerns among our people with respect to the fast-growing expansion of the Grace Road business in Fiji, while many are aware of past reports alleging gross abuse of human rights and workers’ rights,” he said.

“SODELPA demands the FijiFirst Government and local authorities act and come clean; and put all these to an end.”

Gavoka is calling on Bainimarama’s government to “declare its interest on Grace Road”.

“We cannot allow such incidences on allegations of criminal conduct on gross violations of human and workers’ rights on our land.”

Former Reserve Bank of Fiji governor and leader of the Unity Fiji party Narube said they had “watched with great concern” the friendly relations between the Bainimarama government and the sect.

“We have seen the rapid expansion of Grace Road into sectors that are reserved for the Fiji citizens and companies,” Narube said.

“We have been informed of the rapid processing of their business applications compared to others. We have seen many foreign workers in jobs that would be easily filled by locals. We are concerned about the allegations of physical and mental abuses within the sect.”

With a general election looming, Narube said a Unity Fiji government would apply the laws fairly and uniformly.

“A Unity Fiji government would therefore investigate the ties between the government and Grace Road to clear all the allegations and perceptions.”

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

Anything concerning the Catholic Church is extremely sensitive in Timor-Leste, as Raimundos Oki, the editor of The Oekusi Post website can confirm, reports the Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders.

Oki is facing a possible six-year jail sentence under article 291 of the penal code after being questioned about his coverage of the case by the Criminal Investigation Scientific Police in the capital Dili on June 30.

“The story that Raimundos Oki covered is so sensitive that the justice system cannot suddenly accuse him of violating judicial confidentiality without taking account of broader public interest concerns,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk. “It is perfectly healthy in a mature democracy for a journalist to question how a judicial investigation is conducted. We therefore ask justice minister Tiago Amaral Sarmento to order the withdrawal of the charges against Raimundos Oki.”

• READ MORE: Other reports on Raimundos Oki
• The Richard Daschbach case
• Timor-Leste media freedom

The article that Oki published in The Oekusi Post in June 2021 revealed that 30 girls under the age of 18 had been detained on a prosecutor’s orders a year earlier in Oecusse, a western exclave of Timor-Leste, and had been subjected to forced vaginal examinations.

One of the girls subsequently died from a vaginal infection.

Sensitive case against priest
The examinations were ordered with the aim of getting more evidence against Richard Daschbach, an American missionary priest who was finally convicted in December 2021 of raping at least four girls.

This now defrocked priest, who had run Topu Honis orphanage since its creation in 1991, was a long-standing supporter of Timor’s independence and had many high-level connections in both political and Catholic Church circles — connections that made the paedophilia case against him even more sensitive.

Oki’s story revealed that some of the girls were detained by the prosecutor and police and subjected to forced genital examinations although they had denied having been sexually assaulted by Daschbach.

Oki, who is himself from Oecusse, told RSF he had wanted to draw attention to the lasting and irreversible trauma that had been inflicted on the girls he interviewed.

“No journalist had talked to the victims of these virginity tests,” he said.

“If the priest is found guilty, let him go to prison. But it is my duty as a journalist to publish this public interest story.

“I refuse to allow these young girls, who have been the victims of sexual abuse, real human rights violations, to be forgotten.”

Two years ago, RSF criticised a proposed law in Timor-Leste under which anyone “offending the honour and prestige” of a representative of the state or church would face up to three years in prison.

• Timor-Leste was ranked 17th out of 180 countries in the 2022 RSF World Press Freedom Index, and is now higher than any Pacific Island nation.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate and press freedom champion Maria Ressa wasn’t intending to make breaking news when she planned her keynote address at the East-West Center’s 2022 International Media Conference in Honolulu this week.

But late the night before she got disturbing word from her lawyers that the Philippines government’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had issued an order for her online news organisation Rappler to shut down.

“You are the first to hear this,” Ressa said, as she told the combined in-person and online audiences of around 450 international journalists and media professionals gathered for the conference about the commission’s order.

Under now-former President Rodrigo Duterte, Ressa and Rappler have faced multiple charges, widely believed to be retaliation for her critical reporting on Duterte’s deadly drug war and abuses of power.

Ressa vowed to continue fighting the commission’s order, even as new President Ferdinand Marcos Jr — son of the late Philippines dictator who was forced to flee the country in 1986 — prepared to be sworn into office yesterday.

In the meantime, she said, “It is business as usual for Rappler. We will adapt, adjust, survive, and thrive. As usual, we will hold power to account. We will tell the truth.”

Safeguarding freedom of expression
Ressa’s struggle to thwart the government’s efforts to shut down her groundbreaking news outlet and imprison her for cyber-libel led to Ressa becoming the first Filipino recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace,” as the Nobel Committee put it.

In her address to the media conference, Ressa bemoaned the fact that the global environment for quality journalism has deteriorated so quickly, in part because at least initially there was a reluctance to accept just how much damage the online world can do to the real one.

“Online violence is real-world violence,” she said. “They’re not separate. Digital impunity is real-world impunity.

“There is only one world that we live in, and for the platforms and legislators to think that these are two systems has weakened the rule of law in the real world.”

After being brutally attacked online by Duterte backers, Ressa has campaigned tirelessly against what she called a “tyranny of trends.” Through their algorithms, social media platforms have created a new information ecosystem that prioritises “lies laced with anger and hate” over “boring” facts, she said.

“These platforms are determining the future of news, and yet their driver is profit, right? The platform’s profit — not the public’s, not journalism’s.”

That system has made it more difficult for humans to listen to their better angels, Ressa said, because “social media gave the devil a megaphone. And this is why we are seeing the worst of human nature.”

The problem, she said, is that the forces of manipulation do not need to convince the public of anything. They only need to sow doubt and uncertainty in order to create distrust of the facts.

Pillars of trust
Ressa said Rappler was built on a foundation of three pillars to rebuild trust in the news media: technology, journalism and community.

“Tech has to be first because this was the spark that ignited the world, and not for good,” she explained.

“Journalism, because we must continue independent journalism despite what it costs us, and we must let our societies know that. And finally community, because journalists can’t do this alone.”

The importance of maintaining independent journalism outlets is intensified by the fact that this year there are more than 30 elections globally, according to Ressa: “I said this in the Nobel lecture: If you don’t have integrity of facts, how can you have integrity of elections? You can’t, and that’s the problem.”

The consequences can be catastrophic, she said. “When real people who are insidiously manipulated online then democratically elect an illiberal leader and the balance of power of the world shifts, how much more time do we have before we move into a fascist world?”

Banding together against disinformation
Ressa counsels independent journalists around the world to build their courage, commitment and, most importantly, community, saying the only way to stand up to the forces of disinformation is to join hands.

Before the recent elections in the Philippines, for example, 16 news organisations agreed to collaborate on fact-checking campaign statements.

“We shared each with other,” Ressa said. “We made the content agnostic. We’re not competing against each other; we’re competing against evil and lies.”

That experience helped inform Ressa’s vision of a world in which trust in facts and institutions can be rebuilt on four levels. The first and most basic is independent journalism as exemplified by news organisations like hers.

The second she calls “the mesh”, elements of civil society that can take the facts news outlets and share them with emotion and inspiration.

The third level is academic research designed to help better understand the societal challenges, which continue to evolve. The final level is a proactive legal approach in which lawyers engage in both tactical and strategic litigation, rather than simply waiting to defend against the latest attacks.

Still, Ressa admitted that she is extremely worried about the future of objective journalism and the societies that rely on it.

The world does have the resources to fight back, she but not as individuals: “We really must work together,” she concluded. “And a global coalition is the best way to do this.”

It is common practice for journalists to share contact details and locations in hostile environments such as war zones. Something is very wrong when news organisations in New Zealand share those details about their staff covering a story in downtown Wellington.

Stuff’s head of news Mark Stevens disclosed last Friday that “competing media have shared contacts of journalists in the field to provide a safety network if things get dangerous”.

It followed incidents during the “Convoy 2022” protest in the grounds of Parliament when journalists were abused, spat on, and assaulted. A Stuff reporter was pushed and shoved and a protester abused a Newshub news crew member and threatened to destroy his video camera.

• READ MORE: Police to act against NZ protester vehicles but admit tow truck operators unwilling to help
• Other NZ covid outbreak media reports

Protesters told reporters to “watch your backs on the street tonight” and that they would be “executed” for their reporting. Placards read “Media is the Virus”, “Fake News”, and accused journalists of treason.

One placard parodied a covid-19 health message: “UNITE AGAINST MEDIA 22”.

Anti-media sentiment is nothing new. The 2020 Acumen-Edelman Trust Barometer showed New Zealanders scored media poorly — and below the global average — in terms of competence and ethics and only 28 percent thought they served the interests of everyone equally and fairly.

Those results did make me wonder what news media Kiwis were actually seeing and hearing but, in such things, perception is everything.

Journalists reasonably thick-skinned
But journalists are reasonably thick-skinned: They can take criticism and even insults. I doubt there is a reporter in the country who hasn’t been on the receiving end. Even death threats are something that goes with the territory.

I’ve received a few in my career. Most were of the “Drop Dead” or “You don’t deserve to be here” variety and only one was a credible threat. That one could have endangered others and was not specifically directed at me (it was reported to the police).

However, something has changed.

A reporter I hold in high regard told me last week that he had received more death threats in the last three months of 2021 than in the previous three decades. I’m not going to name him because to do so will simply increase the likelihood of further attempts at intimidation.

He told me reporters had become the focus of a great deal of anger and resentment:

“A few recent events I’ve covered have seen members of the anti-crowd deliberately moving to within a foot of me, maskless, and breathing or coughing at me, or trying to physically rub against me. That’s not an uncommon experience for those out in the field. And there’s the odd occasion, too, where the threat of physical violence is such that I’ve needed to back-peddle quickly.”

We are seeing a migration of behaviour. The US Press Freedom Tracker recorded 439 physical attacks on journalists in that country in 2020 (election year) and a further 142 in 2021. That compared with 41 in 2018 and 2019.

Tightened security
Last June the BBC tightened security around its staff after an escalation in the frequency and severity of abuse from anti-vaxxers. During Sydney anti-mandate protests last September, 7News reporter Paul Dowsley was sprayed with urine and hit in the head by a thrown drink can.

Then, in November, it came here. A 1News camera operator on the West Coast graphically recorded a foul-mouthed middle-aged man carrying an anti-vaxx placard who shoved him backwards and tried to dislodge his camera: “Do you want this [expletive] camera smashed in your face, you [expletive]?”

The current anti-vaxx movement in Canada has generated similar behaviour. Brent Jolly of the Canadian Association of Journalists said several reporters covering the trucker convoy in Ottawa have said they have been harassed on the scene and online and feel like they have a “target on their backs”.

Evan Solomon, a reporter for CTV, told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that he had a full can of beer thrown at his head. It missed but exploded inside a camera case. All CTV crews now have a security person with them when filming outside, no longer use lights or tripods, and in one province have removed CTV identification from vehicles.

In Ottawa people have asked reporters to remove their names from stories because they are getting death threats. Broadcasting journalists have been targeted – probably because their presence is more obvious – although one print reporter told the CPJ that she does not wear a mask during protests because it draws attention to her (she is triple vaccinated), does not go into protest crowds at night, and liaises with other reporters to advise current locations and risks.

None of this should suggest a coherent and organised anti-media campaign is sweeping the globe. We are seeing something that is a good deal more orchestrated than organised, in which the anti-vaccination movement is no more than a rallying point, and the media are a target because they are messengers for inconvenient truth.

The proof of that became apparent while I was watching the live feed of the protest in the grounds of Parliament.

‘End the Mandate’ signs
A string of images spelled out how incoherent it was. There were printed “End the Mandate” signs, “My body, my choice” t-shirts, a loony sign saying natural immunity was 99.6 per cent effective, Canadian flags, a figure in Black Power regalia wearing a full-face plastic mask, someone wearing a paramilitary “uniform”, and a man waving the ultimate conspiracy theory sign: “Epstein didn’t kill himself”.

Then there were the actions of the protesters. A few were gesticulating to police and the media, uttering things I could not (and arguable did not want) to hear. Many more were gyrating to rhythms playing over loudspeakers, beaten out on the plastic barriers on the forecourt, or generated in their own heads. It was a sort of group euphoria.

And in a perverse sort of way I think that is what is behind the attitude toward media. 1News reporter Kristin Hall had been reporting the protest and wrote a commentary on the broadcaster’s website. In it she said that despite their varying opinions and causes, the protesters were “united in their distaste for the press”. Then she gave an example of just how incoherent this united front can be:

“‘You’re all liars,’ a man told me today. When I asked if he could be more specific, he said he doesn’t consume mainstream media. People have asked me why I’m not covering the protests while I’m in the middle of interviewing them.”

Unfortunately, it is this lack of logic that makes abuse of media so hard to counter. Media cannot make peace with leaders of a movement because it is a moving feast and the orchestrators are hidden from sight. It cannot be remedied simply by stating facts because these people accept only what supports and ennobles their own disinformation-fuelled world view, a view fed by inflammatory social media that conflates then amplifies discontent on a global scale.

Nor can media offer immediate solutions to pent-up anger aggravated by two years of pandemic.

What media can — and must — do is prevent contagion. They need an inoculation campaign to ensure that the malaise infecting a small group of people does not spread.

Duty of care a priority
Mark Stevens alluded to cooperation between media to keep staff safe and that duty of care is a priority. However, media organisations need to go further. They must, on the one hand, earn the trust of a population that does not generally hold them in high regard. It is best done by demonstrating that journalists are following best professional practice and that means quality reporting and presentation.

On the other hand, they must ensure that the community understands that journalists have a right (indeed, a duty) to report on events in its midst — irrespective of whether or not its members agree with what they are being told.

The United States has an excellent track record in openly discussing professional standards and the role of media in society. We should take some leaves from their book and bring the community more into the conversation.

That is challenging, because the problem does not lie solely with the media but with the system of democracy of which it is a vital part.

Rod Oram, in a commentary on the Newsroom website last weekend, discussed the need for democratic reform:

“We have really struggled, though, to conceive, plan and execute deep systemic change, let alone get as many people as possible involved in that and benefiting from it. But that’s the only way we’ll tackle our deeply rooted economic, social and environmental failures.”

That democratic reform must include the media rethinking how it engages with the public. They must introduce open industry-wide governance to replace anachronistic and sometimes self-serving structures. They must demonstrate their commitment to accuracy, fairness and balance. They must find new ways to be inclusive and pluralistic. They must secure recognition as trusted independent sources of verified facts.

Calling out manipulation
That will take time. Meanwhile the problem of media abuse will continue. The short-term solutions will include calling out those who seek to manipulate a minority to destabilise our society. Here are two good examples:

• New Zealand Herald investigative reporter David Fisher’s (paywalled) enquiry into the activities of one of the rallying voices behind the protest at Parliament, Kelvyn Alp and his use of the Counterspin website.
• Kevin Norquay’s profile of the protest in the Sunday Star-Times that included this resonating quote from Hone Martin of Kaitaia as he was leaving the protest: “We’re not getting solutions here. We’re all in the waka paddling in different directions”.

The short term also requires media organisations to continue to meet that duty of care toward their staff. The Committee to Protect Journalists has developed a four-part “Safety Kit” to provide journalists and newsrooms with basic safety information on physical, digital and psychological safety. It’s a good starting point for any journalist.

Of course, journalists also need to keep matters in perspective. The threats represented by a group of disorganised protesters remains relatively small and, with the right training, journalists can judge the level of risk they face in most situations.

When it came to death threats, for example, I soon learned that I could bin the ones that were written in crayon.

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

• Read the full Gavin Ellis article here:

https://knightlyviews.com/2022/02/15/copycat-media-abuse-from-ragtag-bag-of-protesters/

Following the publication of the book Toxic some 9 months ago and President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to French Polynesia last July, the response from the French administration has been to send French nuclear experts to Tahiti.

Their mission was to give clear and transparent answers about the state of former nuclear test sites among other topics. It was a way to counter the book’s anti-official version of the CEA’s (Centre d’Experimentation Atomique) claim of “clean and non-contaminating radioactivity” on both atolls.

The Commission of information created for those former sites of nuclear tests of the Pacific, was made up of 3 French civil servants involved in the controversial Paris roundtable — also called Reko Tika — organised by President Macron last July.

• READ MORE: The Moruroa Files – how cutting edge science, secret documents and journalism exposed a Pacific lie
• Thousands rally in Tahiti over nuke legacy
• France reassures Tahiti about nuclear legacy

In a media conference, they talked about radiological and geo-mechanical surveillance of the Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls. They came with more scientific expertise and data that seemed to dispel the original idea of “clear and transparent answers”.

As far as the environment was concerned around those former nuclear sites, the conclusion was that the sites were much safer now after the presence of caesium-137 (a radioactive isotope of caesium formed as one of the more common products of nuclear fission) was noticed to be less year by year in all parts of the environment.

To “prove” their case of an independent and transparent study, they took samples of beef meat, whole milk or coconut juice from both atolls and are readily available to the population and analysed those samples.

Their results showed that the levels of radioactive concentration were far less than the “maximum levels admissible” — or whatever that means for the Ma’ohi who are not versed in the scientific jargon.

Artificial radioactive fallout level ‘low’
As for the health of the population, they reassured the people from the atolls that the level of toxicity of artificial radioactive fallout measured from 2019 to 2020 was extremely low, according to the data collected by the Institute of Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety (IRNS).

They established that the overall efficient dose (external exposition, internal exposition by ingestion and inhalation) of radioactivity was evaluated at 1,4 mSv (the measure of radiation exposure) in Mā’ohi Nui — which is two times lower than in France.

An even stronger reassurance was offered to the media when the question of a possible collapse of the northern part of the atoll of Moruroa was mentioned. The French experts replied that such a disastrous scenario was extremely unlikely, because the geo-mechanical system Telsite 2 put in place in 2000, would detect signs of unusual activities weeks beforehand.

Notwithstanding their initial answer, they added that even in the worst-case scenario, preventative measures would be taken to evacuate the population of Moruroa, and Tureia would not be hit by this improbable landslide.

A reassurance that clearly leaves doubt on whether Moruroa is at all safe.

When asked by one of the local journalists, Vaite Pambrun, why the atolls were not “retroceded” (ceded back) to their people now that it is “safe”, the delegate to Nuclear Safety M. Bugault was at pains to explain that it was not possible because plutonium was not buried deep enough under the coral layer, and for safety reasons the French state still needed to monitor the atolls.

A somehow contradictory response that does not surprise the people who are used to the rhetoric used by the French state for the last 50 years.

France seems to offer very reassuring measures and answers, but the populations have learnt in the past that the word of the French state must be taken with a lot of mistrust and scepticism especially when it comes to nuclear matters.

France trying to wipe out nuclear traces from Polynesian memory

Independence leader Oscar Temaru, and former president of Tahiti, was quick to organise a press conference where he criticised the conclusions reached by the nuclear experts who seemed to contradict their findings about the safety of the atolls that still needed more monitoring, hence the refusal to retrocede.

After the last Paris roundtable, Temaru accused the French state and the local government — which he calls the local “collabos” (alluding to the French who collaborated with the Germans during the Second World War) to try “to wipe out the last evidence and vestiges that constitute the history of nuclear colonisation by the army and the money”.

According to Temaru, there is a trust crisis against the local government of territorial President Eduard Fritch and the French state that is going to last for a long time.

Those strong words also came after the decision was taken to completely destroy the last nuclear concrete shelter on the atoll of Tureia, wiping out for ever any traces of nuclear presence.

This decision is reminiscent of the one taken by the same French state to raze to the ground the two nuclear shelters used by the army on Mangareva.

By the same occasion, the hangar with the flimsy protection of corrugated iron used for the local population during the nuclear tests was also demolished. All those structures were pulled down in the early 2000s.

Father Auguste Ube Carlson, president of the anti-nuclear lobby Association 193, has also denounced the rhetoric used by the French state which “pretends’ to bring some new answers that have a “sound of deja-vu and that do not fool any of the populations who have suffered through the nuclear era”.

According to one of the Association 193 spokespeople, France is telling local populations that all is well in the best of worlds and there is nothing to worry about.

A more mitigated reaction

Local historian Jean-Marc Regnault conceded that it has been a struggle to get the French state to give access to files that at one point were declassified and then re-classified to now be reopened to the public which he considers a victory.

He does not share the same stance taken by Oscar Temaru regarding the wiping out of the last atomic shelter in Tureia. According to the historian, the shelter is a hazard to the population of Tureia as it contains asbestos and therefore needs to be destroyed.

Regnault positions himself as a researcher who, like any other member of the public, will be able to write the history of the nuclear era thanks to all those thousands of documents now available to be consulted, unless classified as state secrets.

He sees the history of a nation not in terms of buildings but in terms of what can be written and taught to the younger generations. The destruction of the building does not equal the wiping-out of a nation’s memory.

He finds it remarkable that teachers will have the material to teach the history of the atomic tests in Mā’ohi Nui, which was one the tenants of the Tavini party when they were at the helm of the country in 2004.

It is up to the women and men of Ma’ohi Nui to realise their dreams of writing the history of their islands by consulting those archives, especially the military ones and not be forced to only hear one narrative, that of the French state.

There is a movement toward more transparency, according to Regnault.

What about the conclusions drawn by the book Toxic?
The Delegate to Nuclear Safety M. Bugault, has been particularly dismissive of the book Toxic. He says that it is clear that the calculations based on the simulations are wrong and he rejected the deductions made by the book that the French state have played down the impacts of nuclear tests fallout on the Polynesians.

However, he admitted that 6 nuclear tests did not have favourable weather forecasts and generated radioactive fallout that led to doses “below the limit accepted by those working on the nuclear sites” but “higher than the doses accepted by the public”.

This is the reason why it is absolutely legitimate for people who have been contaminated to seek compensation.

He tells the press that the calculations and the investigation by Disclose wrongly contradict those made by the CEA in 2006 where the data and the mode of calculations were extremely technical and scientific and 450 pages long.

He suggested that those who were involved in the research and the publishing of Toxic were not versed enough in the technical jargon of the final document released by the CEA.
It is not enough to tell the truth but it must be accessible to the public, according to Bugault.

The book Toxic fails to explain in a clear and simple way how its calculations were carried out and achieved. He promised that in April 2022 the anti-Toxic book will be published by the CEA on Tahiti.

Ena Manuireva, born in Mangareva (Gambier islands) in Ma’ohi Nui (French Polynesia), is a language revitalisation researcher at Auckland University of Technology and is currently completing his doctorate on the Mangarevan language. He is also a campaigner for nuclear reparations justice from France over the 193 tests staged in Polynesia over three decades and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

Keynote speakers professor David Robie and Glenda Gloria, executive editor of Rappler, addressed “truth and justice” on the opening day of the Asian Media Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) conference in Auckland.

Dr Robie opened the conference yesterday with his topic “Journalism education ‘truth ’ challenges in an age of growing hate, intolerance and disinformation” while Gloria spoke about the difficulties of doing investigative journalism amid this covid-19 pandemic.

Founding director of the Pacific Media Centre, Dr Robie began with a tribute “to two extraordinary and inspirational journalists, who have shed light on dark places and given the rest of us hope”.

• READ MORE: Other ACMC media conference reports

The first of these was to Maria Ressa, chief executive of the Filipino investigative website Rappler, who, along with Russian editor Dimitry Muratov, was named a Nobel Peace prize laureate last month for safeguarding “freedom of expression”.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee described them as “representatives of all journalists who stand up for this ideal in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions”.

Julie Posetti, global director of research at the International Centre for Journalists (ICJ), said the choice had been very timely and she pointed to the fact that it had been 85 years since the first working journalist had won the Nobel prize.

German investigative editor Carl von Ossietsky won the Nobel prize for his “burning love for freedom and expression”’

Award in jail
Ossietsky, was incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp at the time he won the award and later died in jail.

As Gloria told the conference hosted at Auckland University of Technology, the Nobel prize put a “global spotlight on the extraordinary dangers that we journalists face today”.

“You and I are no stranger to threats to media freedom – from repressive laws to libel suits to imprisonment to death threats,” she said.

“To many of us in the Global South, journalism has always been considered a dangerous profession long before media watchdogs started ranking countries around the world according to the freedoms enjoyed by their press.

“And yet, despite all that we have seen and experienced, it’s no exaggeration to say that this is the most challenging period for journalism. At stake today is our very existence, our relevance, and our ability to speak truth to power.

“Not only are journalists under attack. Truth is under attack,” Gloria said.

Optimism for Rappler
She gave three reasons for the Filipino publication Rappler to be optimistic in spite of dealing with 11 lawsuits aimed at silencing the website.

“Every crisis is an opportunity. In the last two years, we at Rappler managed to bounce back and continue holding power to account and exposing wrongdoing,” she said.

“Part of the reason is how our ownership structure was set up. Rappler is the only journalist-owned and journalist-led media company in the Philippines. We make decisions for the public interest even if it’s bad for business.

“Second reason to be hopeful is — for journalism to matter, the community must be a part of it. In our crisis years, our community stayed with us.

“We realised that we had a core base of audience that, while not massive, shared the same value that we believe in, which is the public’s need for transparency and accountability on the part of those who lead and government them.

“At Rappler, we learned that when the going gets tough, hold the line, stick to your core, and have faith in your community of readers.

“The third reason to be hopeful is that crisis challenges our mindsets. The attacks on Rappler scared away advertisers but also compelled us to diversify our revenue stream so that today, our revenues come not just from advertising but business research, grants, membership, programmatic ads, and special projects.

Postive net income
“We have not paywalled our site but we have content and activities exclusive to paying subscribers. Thankfully, we are now entering our third year of positive net income,” Gloria said.

Dr Robie’s second tribute was to Max Stahl whom he described as a “courageous journalist and filmmaker who sadly died at the age of 66 from cancer”.

From Timor-Leste, he made the controversial film footage of the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre in the capital Dili which eventually led to Timorese independence.

British-born Stahl returned to East Timor in 1999 and made the documentary In Cold Blood: Massacre of East Timor, for which he was decorated with the Order of Timor-Leste, the country’s highest honour and he was awarded Timor-Leste citizenship in 2019.

“The common thread linking all four of these media communicators – Maria Ressa, Dimitry Muratov, Carl von Ossietsky and Max Stahl – has been their courageous, determined relentless pursuit of ‘truth and justice’,” Dr Robie told the virtual conference.

“ ‘The truth’ – this supreme goal of journalists in holding power to account is hugely under threat by politicians, demagogues and charlatans peddling fake news and disinformation,” he said.

Dr Robie spoke about covid-19 and the “disinfodemic” – described by UNESCO as “falsehoods fuelling the pandemic”, leading to civil disobedience and attacks on medical staff the world over, including in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Violence pervaded South Pacific
The violence had pervaded the South Pacific and was noticeable in Fiji and Papua New Guinea despite the high number of people being infected.

Dr Robie highlighted PNG where health authorities were forced to cancel vaccinations for fear of attacks, hence the rate is incredibly low this month, sitting at 2.5 percent,

He also addressed the infodemic and the rise of “disinformation” and the challenges it brought to the media.

Dr Robie spoke about climate change “and the disproportionate impact this is having on our Asia-Pacific region”.

A key component of the disinfodemic was the lack of fact-checking and as veteran Pacific journalist and consultant Bob Howarth had asked, why had the basics of fact-checking not “become part of journalism training in our universities and colleges?”.

Dr Robie also spoke about climate change “and the disproportionate impact this is having on our Asia-Pacific region”.

Climate ‘catastrophe’
He outlined the challenges of climate change, preferring to call it climate “catastrophe”.

“I am stressing the word catastrophe rather than merely change, That is because for the microstates of the Pacific it is already viewed as an impending catastrophe,” he told the conference.

Dr Robie said he had developed several theories and models of journalism such as “talanoa journalism”, a concept developed through a Pacific approach.

“My emphasis has been on ‘project journalism’, creating high quality coverage of issues and challenging assignments on university platforms with high standards of journalistic integrity and to foster multi-university collaboration across national boundaries.”

The conference concludes tomorrow.

• The ACMC conference programme

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

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

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

• READ MORE: The ACMC 2021 conference

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The conference begins this afternoon and ends on Saturday.

• The conference programme

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and more than 60 environmental journalists of 34 different nationalities have appealed for respect for the right to cover environmental issues.

These journalists — who are from every part of the world and every kind of media, and who have all kinds of backgrounds and political views — have joined RSF in signing an unprecedented appeal coinciding with COP26 entitled “Climate emergency, journalism emergency”.

Men and women, some of them environmental experts and some of them more general reporters, some with a long history of covering “green” issues and some covering the environment more recently as it has become an increasingly alarming news story, they have denounced the obstacles that limit the right to provide information about these issues.

• READ MORE: Red alert for green journalism — 10 environmental reporters killed in 10 years
• Other COP26 climate reports

Climate change is crucial for all humankind.

The petitioners are asking governments to officially recognise that the right to information about these issues is inherent in the right to a healthy environment and the right to health.

The first journalists signing the appeal include Gaëlle Borgia, a 2020 Pulitzer Prize winner based in Madagascar, France’s Morgan Large, a food industry specialist, Russia’s Grigory Pasko, an RSF Press Freedom laureate who was awarded the Sakharov Prize in 2002, India’s Soulik Dutta, an expert in energy and land issues, South Africa’s Khadija Sharife, who investigates environmental crimes, and Lucien Kosha, a freelancer covering mining in the DRC.

Most of them have signed on an individual basis but the staff at some news organisations have wanted to sign collectively.

Environmental teams
This was the case with Afaq Environmental Magazine, a Palestinian media outlet, and Reporterre, a French news site covering environmental issues.

Crucially, the appeal points out that, although the right to cover environmental issues was established as a principle as early as the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, this right is still not being respected.

The signatories report that, in many countries, it is still very difficult to obtain information and scientific data about the environment, although such information is of paramount public interest. Their coverage can help change behaviour and help combat the unprecedented threat posed by global warming.

“Nearly 30 years after the right to cover environmental issues was proclaimed in the United Nations Earth Summit declaration in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, this right must finally become a reality, it must finally be applied and respected without exception, as something that is self-evident,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.

“At the hour of the climate emergency, this is a journalistic emergency. Environmental coverage is now vital.”

The dangers linked to covering environmental issues in some parts of the world has led to the killing of at least 21 journalists in the past 20 years for investigating these sensitive issues.

RSF and the journalists signing the appeal have also called for concrete implementation of international law on the protection of journalists.

For more information, see RSF’s report on the persecution of environmental journalists.

Auckland-based Pacific Media Watch is a collaborating project with Reporters Without Borders.

• Sign the citizen petition in support of the appeal Climate emergency, information emergency!

The dilemma facing whistleblowers, journalists and publishers who risk it all to help the world’s people to become more informed. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange finds himself crushed between these two counterbalances — the asserted right of powerful nations to operate in secret, and the right of the press to reveal what goes on in the public’s name.

Article sponsored by NewzEngine.com

This week, on October 27-28, Julian Assange appeared before a United Kingdom court defending himself against an appeal that, if successful, would see him extradited to the United States to face a raft of indictments that ultimately could see him spend the rest of his life in prison.

The US lawyers argued largely that human rights reasons that caused the UK courts to reject extradition to the US could be mitigated. That Julian Assange’s case could be heard in Australia and if found guilty serve out jail time in his home country rather than the US.

Assange’s defence lawyer Edward Fitzgerald QC argued: “In short there is a large and cogent body of extraordinary and unprecedented evidence… that the CIA has declared Mr Assange as a ‘hostile’ ‘enemy’ of the USA, one which poses ‘very real threats to our country’, and seeks to ‘revenge’ him with significant harm.” The lawyers said the United States assurances were “meaningless”.

• READ MORE: Julian Assange must be freed, now
• Other Julian Assange case reports

“It is perfectly reasonable to find it oppressive to extradite a mentally disordered person because his extradition is likely to result in his death.” Fitzgerald QC added that a court must have the power to “protect people from extradition to a foreign state where we have no control over what will be done to them”.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde, said: “You’ve given us much to think about and we will take our time to make our decision.”

The judges then reserved their decision. It is expected Assange’s fate will be revealed within weeks.

In this Special Report, we examine why the US wants this man. And we detail the space between whistleblowers, journalists and publishers who risk it all to help the world’s people to become more informed. Julian Assange finds himself crushed between these two counterbalances: the asserted right of powerful nations to operate in secret, and the right of the press to reveal what goes on in the public’s name.

Should Julian Assange be extradited from the UK to face indictments in the United States? Or should he be set free and offered a safe haven in a country such as Russia or even New Zealand?

It was always going to come down to this: Is Julian Assange captured by the assumptions people have of him, or a blurred line between a public’s right and a state’s wrong.

‘Manhunt Timeline’
The United States effort to capture or kill Assange goes back to 2010. But his inclusion in what’s called the “Manhunt Timeline” soon lost its sting when, under US President Barack Obama, it was believed if charges against Assange were brought before the US courts for his publishing activity, then he would be found not guilty due to the US First Amendment “freedom of the press” constitutional protections.

But everything changed with a new president, and a massive leak to Wikileaks of CIA secret information on 7 March 2017.

That leak of what was called Vault 7 information “detailed hacking tools the US government employs to break into users’ computers, mobile phones and even smart TVs.”

CBS News reported at the time: “The documents describe clandestine methods for bypassing or defeating encryption, antivirus tools and other protective security features intended to keep the private information of citizens and corporations safe from prying eyes.” (CBS News)

The Vault 7 leak (and earlier leaks going back to 2010) also revealed information that the US security apparatus argued compromised the safety of its personnel around the world. This aspect is vital to the US Justice Department’s case against Julian Assange.

Among a complex web of indictments and superseding indictments, the US alleges Wikileaks and Assange conspired with whistleblowers (significant among them Chelsea Manning) in what it argues was a conspiracy against the US interest. It also argues that Wikileaks and Julian Assange failed to satisfactorily redact leaked documents before dissemination or publication of the same — including details that put US personnel and agents at risk.

Prominent New Zealand investigative journalist Nicky Hager had knowledge of Wikileaks’ processes, and, going back to 2010, spent time working with Wikileaks on redacting documents.

Hager testified at The Old Bailey in London in September 2020 before a hearing of the Assange case and, according to The Australian, said: “My main memory was people working hour after hour in total silence, very concentrated on their work and I was very impressed with efforts that they were taking (to redact names).” Hager added that he himself had redacted “a few hundred” Australian and New Zealand names.

On cross examination, The Australian reported: “Hager referred in his testimony to the global impact of the publication of the collateral murder video, which shows civilians being gunned down in Iraq from an Apache helicopter, which led to changes in US military policies. He claimed it had a ‘similar galvanising impact as the video of the death of George Floyd’.” (The Australian)

But it was the Vault 7 leak that triggered the then Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Mike Pompeo to act. After that leak, Pompeo set out to destroy Wikileaks and its publisher Julian Assange.

Pompeo vs Assange

Mike Pompeo was appointed as CIA director in January 2017. The Vault 7 leak occurred on his watch. It was personal, and in April 2017 he defined Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service”.

That definition triggered a shift of approach. The US intelligence apparatus and its Justice Department counterpart then re-asserted that Wikileaks and its publisher and editor-in-chief Julian Assange were enemies of the United States.

Pompeo’s definition paved the way for a more targeted operation against Assange. But, for the time being, the US public modus operandi was to ensure extradition proceedings, through numerous hearings and appeals, were dragged out while stacking an increasing number of complex indictments on the charge-sheet.

The definitions ensured the UK’s corrections system regarded Assange as a high risk and dangerous prisoner hostile to the UK’s special-relationship partner, the USA.

The tactic is well used by governments and states around the world. But in this case it appears beyond cold and calculated. As the US applied a figurative legal-ligature around the neck of Julian Assange it knew his circumstances — that he was imprisoned, isolated, in solitary confinement, on a suicide watch, handled by prison guards under a repetitive high security risk protocol. It knew the psychological impact was compounding, causing legal observers, his lawyers, his supporters — even the judge overseeing the extradition proceedings — to fear that the wall before Assange of ongoing litigation, compounded with the potential for extradition and possible life imprisonment, would overwhelm him.

Let’s detail reality here. In real terms, being on suicide-watch as a high security risk prisoner, meant every time Assange left his cell for any reason (including when meeting his lawyers), on return he would be stripped, cavity searched (which includes being forced to squat while his rectum is digitally searched, and a mouth and throat search).

This was a similar security search protocol that was used against Ahmed Zaoui while he was held at New Zealand’s Paremoremo maximum security prison. At that time Zaoui was regarded as a security risk to New Zealand. He was of course later found to be a man of peace and given his liberty. Sometimes things are not what they initially seem.

In the UK, for Assange the monotonous grind of total solitude and indignity ticked on. In the US in March 2018, Mike Pompeo was set to be promoted. He received the then US President Donald Trump’s nomination to replace Rex Tillerson as US Secretary of State. The US Senate confirmed Pompeo’s nomination and he was sworn in on 26 April 2018.

Pompeo quickly became one of Trump’s most trusted and powerful White House insiders. As Secretary of State, Pompeo toured the globe’s foreign affairs circuit asserting the Trump Administration’s position on governments throughout the world. As such, Pompeo was regarded as one of the world’s most powerful men.

Looking back, Pompeo wasn’t the first high ranking US official to regard Assange as an enemy of the state. The Edward Snowden leaks of 2014 revealed that the US government had in 2010 added Assange to its “Manhunting Timeline” — which is an annual list of individuals with a “capture or kill” designation.

This designation came during the early stages of the Obama Administration years. However, US investigations into Wikileaks then suggested Assange had not acted in a way that excluded him from being defined as a journalist and therefore it was likely Assange, if tried under US law, would be provided protections under the First Amendment constitutional clauses.

But when Pompeo advanced toward prominence, Obama was gone. And under Donald Trump, the US appeared to ignore such constitutional rocks in the road. Trump had his own beef with the US Fourth Estate, and the conditions for respecting First Amendment privilege had deteriorated.

Did Trump stop the CIA kidnap or kill plan?

Perhaps we understand the Trump Administration’s mindset more now in the wake of the 6 January 2021 insurrection where supporters of Trump stormed the US House of Representatives seeking to overturn the election result and reinstate Trump as President. Throughout much of that destructive day, Trump reportedly remained at the White House while the mob erected a gallows and sought out Vice-President Mike Pence. The mob’s reason? Because Pence had begun the process of certifying electoral college writs, an essential step toward swearing in as President the newly elected Joe Biden.

It may reasonably be argued that Trump and some members of his Administration displayed a disregard for elements of the US Constitution. But, it must also be said, that Trump had at times displayed an empathy for Julian Assange’s situation.

This week The Hill reported on Trump’s view of Assange through an interview with the former president’s national security advisor, Keith Kellogg (who is also a retired US Army Lieutenant General.

Kellogg told The Hill: “He (Trump) looked at him (Assange) as someone who had been treated unfairly. And he kind of related him to himself … He said there’s an unfairness there and I want to address that.”

Kellogg added that Trump saw similarities between Assange and himself in that Trump would not back down in the face of media attacks: “I think he kind of saw that with Julian in the same way, like ‘ok, this guy’s not backing down’.” (The Hill)

Kellogg’s account seems incongruous to what we now know. On 26 September 2021, a Yahoo News media investigation delivered a bombshell. It revealed how the CIA had planned to kidnap or kill Assange.

But more on the detail of that below. First, let’s look at a confusing picture of how former President Trump’s words do not meet his Administration’s actions.

We know that “someone” in the Trump Administration put a halt to the CIA’s kill or capture plan. We just do not know whether Trump commanded its cessation, or whether Pompeo or Trump’s attorney-general/s operated outside the former president’s orbit. But we do know the US Justice Department pursued Assange through an intensifying relentless application of indictments of increasing severity and complexity. If it is an MO, then it is reasonable to suggest the legal wall of indictments and the CIA’s plan to kill or capture were potentially one of the same.

Which segues back to the details of the US case against Assange.

The US Justice Department vs Assange
In March 2019, The Washington Post reported that US Whistleblower Chelsea Manning had been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in the investigation of Julian Assange. The Post correctly suggested that the US Justice Department appeared interested in pursuing Wikileaks before a statute of limitations ran out.

Washington Post reported: “Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, said the Justice Department likely indicted Assange last year to stay within the 10-year statute of limitations on unlawful possession or publication of national defense information, and is now working to add charges.” (Washington Post)

Then, On April 11 2019, after high-level bilateral meetings between the US and Ecuador, the Ecuadorian Government revoked Assange’s asylum. The UK’s Metropolitan Police were invited into Ecuador’s London embassy and Assange was arrested. 

Once Assange was in custody (pending the outcome of a court ruling of what eventually became a 50 week sentence for breaching bail) the United States made its move. On 11 April 2019 (the same day Ecuador evicted him) US prosecutors unsealed an indictment against Assange referring back to information that Wikileaks had released in stages from 18 February 2010 onwards. (US Justice Department)

This video, known as the collateral murder video, was among the Wikileaks release. The video is of US military personnel killing what they initially thought were Iraqi insurgents. It also displays an apparent indifference by US personnel when, shortly after, it was revealed by ground troops that there were civilians killed, including women and children (and also what were later found to be journalists). The leaked video exposed the United States to potential allegations of war crimes.

The video, and the accompanying dossier of US classified documents, shocked the world and revealed what had been covered up by US secrecy. The information that was leaked by then US Military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, and published by Wikileaks and provided to a select group of the world’s most prominent media, was arguably a tipping point for public sentiment regarding the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. It was, in the <2010 decade, on a par with revelations of abuses of detainees by US personnel at Abu Ghraib prison.

In a release to the US press, the Justice Department’s office of international affairs stated: “According to court documents unsealed today, the charge relates to Assange’s alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.”

It connected to how Wikileaks had acquired documents from US whistleblower Chelsea Manning. The leak contained 750,000 documents defined as “classified, or unclassified but sensitive” military and diplomatic documents. The documents included video. The sum of the leaks detailed what were regarded generally as atrocities committed by American armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The leaked material was also published by The New York Times, Der Spiegel and The Guardian. In May 2010, Manning was identified then charged with espionage and sentenced to 35 years in a US military prison. Later, in January 2017, just three days before leaving office, US President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence.

On 23 May 2019, the US Justice Department issued a statement confirming Assange had been further charged in an 18-count superseding indictment that alleged violation of the Espionage Act 1917. It specifically alleged (among other charges) that Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning in late 2009 and that: “… Assange and WikiLeaks actively solicited United States classified information, including by publishing a list of ‘Most Wanted Leaks’ that sought, among other things, classified documents. Manning responded to Assange’s solicitations by using access granted to her as an intelligence analyst to search for United States classified documents, and provided to Assange and WikiLeaks databases containing approximately 90,000 Afghanistan war-related significant activity reports, 400,000 Iraq war-related significant activities reports, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs, and 250,000 US Department of State cables.” (US Justice Department)

The superseding indictment added: “Many of these documents were classified at the Secret level.”

It’s also important to note, a superseding indictment, in this context carries heavy weight. It isn’t merely a charge lodged by an investigative wing of government, but issued by a US grand jury.

The May 2019 superseding indictments ignited a stern rebuttal from powerful media institutions.

The Washington Post and The New York Times, as well as press freedom organisations, criticised the government’s decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act, characterising it as an attack on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees freedom of the press. On 4 January 2021, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled against the US request to extradite him and stated that doing so would be “oppressive” given his mental health. On 6 January 2021, Assange was denied bail, pending an appeal by the United States. (Wikipedia.org)

In normal times an assault on the US First Amendment through a clever legal move would destroy a presidency. But these were not normal times.

Ultimately, the powerful US Fourth Estate fraternity failed to ward off the Trump Administration’s men. Trump himself was by this time already hurling attacks on the credibility and purpose of the United States media. And, he tapped in to a constituency that distrusted what it heard from journalists.

Then on 24 June 2020, the US Justice Department delivered more charges against Assange, this time with an additional superseding indictment that included allegations he conspired with “Anonymous” affiliated hackers: “In 2010, Assange gained unauthorised access to a government computer system of a NATO country. In 2012, Assange communicated directly with a leader of the hacking group LulzSec (who by then was cooperating with the FBI), and provided a list of targets for LulzSec to hack.” (US Justice Department)

As the Trump presidency ran out of steam, and arguably created its own attacks on the US national interest, Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden won the election and became the 46th President of the United States.

Why Assange was imprisoned in the UK

Julian Assange was tried before the UK courts and convicted for breaching the Bail Act. He was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison. He was expected to have been released after five to six months, but due to the US extradition proceedings and appeal he was held indefinitely.

The initial bail conditions (of which Assange was found to have breached) were set resulting from an alleged sexual violence allegation made in Sweden in 2010. Assange had denied the allegations, and feared the case was designed to relocate him to Sweden and then onto the US via a legal extradition manoeuvre — hence this is why he sought asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy. Assange was never actually charged by Swedish authorities nor their UK counterparts, but rather the initial bail breach related to a move to extradite him to Sweden.

Also, as a side-note: in November 2019, Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation into allegations of sexual violence crime. The BBC reported that Swedish authorities dropped the case as it had: “Weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed since the events in question.”

Meanwhile, Assange was imprisoned at London’s Belmarsh maximum-security prison where he was incarcerated indefinitely pending the outcome of US extradition proceedings.

There is an irony that in January 2021, the week Assange was denied bail pending the outcome of the US-lodged appeal, back in the US a mob loyal to Trump attempted a coup d’etat against the US constitution.

Out with Trump, in with Biden
On 20 January 2021, Joe Biden was sworn in as US President. Around the world a palpable mood of change was anticipated. It’s fair to say those involved or observing the Assange case were hopeful the United States under Joe Biden’s presidency would withdraw the initial charges and superseding indictments.

But, that was not to be.

Then on 26 September 2021, a Yahoo News media investigation delivered a bombshell. It revealed how the CIA had planned to kidnap or kill Assange.

The investigation’s timeline revealed a plan was developed in 2017 during Pompeo’s tenure at the CIA and considered numerous scenarios where Assange could be liquidated while he resided at the Ecuadorian Embassy. The investigation was backed by “more than 30 US official sources”. (Yahoo News)

The media investigation stated: “… the CIA was enraged by WikiLeaks’ publication in 2017 of thousands of documents detailing the agency’s hacking and covert surveillance techniques, known as the Vault 7 leak.” 

It added that Pompeo: “was determined to take revenge on Assange after the (Vault 7) leak.”

Apparently, the CIA believed Russian agents were planning to remove Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy and “smuggle” him to Russia: “Among the possible scenarios to prevent a getaway were engaging in a gun battle with Russian agents on the streets of London and ramming the car that Assange would be smuggled in.”

It appears a wise-head in the Trump Administration ordered a halt to the CIA plan due to legal concerns. Officials cited in the investigation suggested there were: “Concerns that a kidnapping would derail US attempts to prosecute Assange.”

It would also be reasonable to suggest that a prosecution would be difficult should Assange be dead.

As the US extradition appeal loomed, Julian Assange’s US-based lawyer Barry Pollack reportedly said: “My hope and expectation is that the UK courts will consider this information (the CIA plot) and it will further bolster its decision not to extradite to the US.”

Assange’s partner Stella Morris, on the eve of the US extradition appeal proceedings also said reports of the CIA’s plan “was a game-changer” in his fight against extradition from Britain to the United States. (Reuters)

Greg Barnes, special council and Australian human rights lawyer and advocate spoke this week to a New Zealand panel (A4A via the internet): “Now we know that the CIA intended effectively to murder Assange. For an Australian citizen to be put in that position by Australia’s number one ally is intolerable. And I think in the minds of most Australians the view is that the Australian Government ought to intervene in this particular case and ensure the safety of one of its citizens.”

Barnes added that the Assange case is now a human rights case: “I can tell you that the rigours of the Anglo-American prison complex which we have here in Australia and in which Julian is facing at Belmarsh (prison in London) are such that very few people survive that system without having severe mental and physical pain and suffering for the rest of their lives.

“This should not be happening to an Australian citizen, whose only crime, and I put quotes around the word crime, has been to reveal the war crimes of the United States and its allies.” (A4A YouTube)

The respected journalist advocacy organisation Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières, or RSF), this week called for the US case against Assange to be closed and for Assange to be “immediately released”. (Reporters Without Borders)

RSF added: “During the two-day hearing, the US government will argue against the 4 January decision issued by District Judge Vanessa Baraitser, ruling against Assange’s extradition to the US on mental health grounds. The US will be permitted to argue on five specific grounds, following the High Court’s decision to widen the scope of the appeal during the 11 August preliminary hearing. An immediate decision is not expected at the conclusion of the 27-28 October hearing, but will likely follow in writing several weeks later.”

RSF concluded: “If Assange is extradited to the US, he could face up to 175 years in prison on the 18 counts outlined in the superseding indictment… (If convicted) Assange would be the first publisher pursued under the US Espionage Act, which lacks a public interest defence.”

RSF recently joined a coalition of 25 press freedom, civil liberties and international human rights organisations in calling again on the US Department of Justice to drop the charges against Assange.

Beyond Belmarsh Prison – human rights and asylum options

There remains a logical and considered question as to what will become of Julian Assange should his legal team successfully defend moves of extradition to the United States.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden has found relative safety living inside the Russian Federation. But beyond Russia there are few safe-haven options available to Julian Assange.

This week a group called A4A (Aotearoa for Assange) coordinated an online panel of human rights advocates and whistleblowers to consider whether New Zealand should become involved.

It was a serious move. The panel included the United States’ highly respected Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. (Pentagon Papers, Wikipedia)

Daniel Ellsberg told the panel: “A trial under (the Espionage Act) cannot be a fair trial as there is ‘no appeal to motives, impact or purposes’.”

“A trial under the Espionage Act could not permit that person to tell the jury why they did what they did,” Daniel Ellsberg said. “It is shameful that President Biden has gone in the footsteps of President Trump. It is shameful for President Biden to have continued that appeal.

“To allow this to go ahead is to put a target on the back of every journalist in the world who might consider doing real investigative journalism of what we call the National Defence or National Security…”

It’s a valid point for those that work within the sphere of Fourth Estate public interest journalism. While in New Zealand, there are rudimentary whistleblower protections, they fail to protect or ensure anonymity. For journalists, if a judge orders a journalist to reveal her or his source(s), then the journalist must consider breaching the code of ethics required from the profession, or acting in contempt of court.

In the latter case, a judge can, in New Zealand, order the journalist to be held in custody for contempt, and it should be pointed out there is no time limit of incarceration. Defamation law is equally as draconian. In New Zealand (unlike the United States) a journalist accused of defamation shoulders the burden of proof — to prove a defamation was not committed.

The chill factor (a reference to pressures that cause journalists to abandon deep and meaningful reportage) is real.

Daniel Ellsberg knows what this means. And he fears, that if the US wins its appeal against Assange, it will erode the Fourth Estate from reporting on what goes on behind the scenes with governments: “… there will be more Vietnams, more Iraqs, more acts of aggression… A great deal rides (on this case) on the possibility of freedom.”

His comments connect remarkably with those of former New Zealand prime minister, and former administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Helen Clark.

In a previous online discussion, Clark was asked what she thought of Julian Assange’s case. In a considered reply she said: “You do wonder when the hatchet can be buried with Assange, and not buried in his head by the way.

“I do think that information that’s been disclosed by whistleblowers down the ages has been very important in broader publics getting to know what is really going on behind the scenes.

“And, should people pay this kind of price for that? I don’t think so. I felt that Chelsea Manning for example was really unduly repressed.

“The real issue is: the activities they were exposing and not the actions of their exposure,” Helen Clark said.

The US appeals case this week is not litigating the merits of its indictments. But rather it has attempted to mitigate the reasons Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied extradition in January 2021. The US legal team has suggested to the UK court that Assange’s human rights issues could be minimised should he face trial in his native Australia, that if found guilty that he could serve out his sentence there. It gave, however, no assurances that this would occur.

On the eve of the appeal, and appearing before the A4A online panel was Dr Deepa Govindarajan Driver.

Dr Driver is an academic with the University of Reading (UK) and a legal observer very familiar with the Assange case. The degree of human rights abuses against Assange disturb her.

Dr Driver detailed what she had observed: “Julian Assange was served the second superseding indictment on the first day of trial. When he took his papers with him, back to the prison, his privileged papers were taken from him. He was handcuffed, cavity searched, stripped naked on a daily basis. [This is] a highly intelligent human being who we already know is on the Autism Spectrum. To be put through the indignities and arbitrariness of the process which is consistently working in a way that doesn’t stand with normal process…

“For somebody who has gone through all of this for a number of years, it has its psychological impact. But it is not just psychological, the physical effects of torture are pretty severe including the internal damage that he has.”

She added: “We expect the high court will recognise the kind of serious gross breaches of Julian’s basic rights and the inability for him to have a fair trial in the UK or in the US and that this case will be dismissed immediately.”

On the merits of whistleblowers, Dr Driver said: “You can see through the Vault 7 leaks how much the state knows about what is going on in your daily lives… As an observer in court I see how he (Julian Assange) is being tortured on a day to day basis. His privileged conversations with his lawyers were spied on.”

Dr Driver said the Swedish allegations were never backed up with charges. In fact the allegations were dropped due to time and insufficient evidence.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, concluded after his investigation of the Swedish allegations that Assange was never given the opportunity to put his side of the case.

Dr Driver said: “In any situation where there is violence against women, and I say this as a survivor myself, people are meant to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. And, this new trend which is accusation-equal-to-guilt is a bad trend because it undermines the cause of women, and it prevents women from getting justice — just as it happened in Sweden because indeed nobody will ever know what happened between Julian and those women other than the two parties there.”

A crime left undefended or a case of weaponising violence against women?
Dr Deepa Driver said: “If cases like this are not brought to court, then neither the women nor those accused like Julian get justice. And it is Lisa Longstaff at Women Against Rape who has said time and again, ‘this is the state weaponising women in order to achieve its own ends and hide its own war crimes’. And this is what Britain and America have done in weaponising the case in Sweden, because Sweden was always about extraditing Julian (Assange) to America.”

She suggested Assange’s situation was a human rights case where he was the victim. The view has validity.

The United Nations’ special rapporteur Nils Melzer issued a statement on 5 January 2021 welcoming the UK judge’s ruling that blocked his extradition to the United States (a ruling that this week was under appeal).

Melzer went on: “This ruling confirms my own assessment that, in the United States, Mr. Assange would be exposed to conditions of detention, which are widely recognised to amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Melzer said the judgement set an “alarming precedent effectively denying investigative journalists the protection of press freedom and paving the way for their prosecution under charges of espionage”.

“I am gravely concerned that the judgement confirms the entire, very dangerous rationale underlying the US indictment, which effectively amounts to criminalizing national security journalism,” Melzer said.

In summary Melzer said: “The judgement fails to recognise that Mr Assange’s deplorable state of health is the direct consequence of a decade of deliberate and systematic violation of his most fundamental human rights by the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Ecuador.”

He added: “The failure of the judgment to denounce and redress the persecution and torture of Mr Assange, leaves fully intact the intended intimidating effect on journalists and whistleblowers worldwide who may be tempted to publish secret evidence for war crimes, corruption and other government misconduct”. (UNCHR)

A call for New Zealand to provide asylum
This week, US whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg applauded New Zealand’s independent global identity. And, he called for New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to provide an asylum solution should Julian Assange be released.

Dr Ellsberg’s call was supported by Matt Robson, a former cabinet minister in Helen Clark’s Labour-Alliance government and whom currently practices immigration law in Auckland.

Matt Robson said: “We can support this brave publisher and journalist who has committed the same crime, in inverted commas, as Daniel Ellsberg — to tell the truth as a good honest journalist should do. Our letter to our (New Zealand) government is a plea to do the right thing. To say directly on the line that is available, to (US) President Biden, to free Julian Assange.”

Australian-based lawyer Greg Barnes said: “New Zealand plays a prominent and important role in the Asia-Pacific region and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the New Zealand government could offer Julian Assange what Australia appears incapable of doing, and that is safety for himself and his family.”

So why New Zealand?

Daniel Ellsberg said: “There are many countries that would have been supportive of Assange, none of whom wanted to get into trouble with the United States of America. Of all the countries in the world I think you can pick out New Zealand that has dared to do that in the past. I remember the issue over whether they would allow American warships into New Zealand harbours.

“Julian Assange should not be on trial,” Daniel Ellsberg said. “And given he is indicted, he should not be extradited. It is extremely important, especially to journalists.

“To allow this to go ahead is to put a target, a bull’s eye, on the back of every journalist in the world who might consider doing real investigative journalism of what we call national security. It’s to assure every journalist that he or she as well as your sources can be put in prison, kidnapped if necessary to the US.

“That is going to chill (journalists) to a degree that there will be more Vietnams, more Iraqs, more acts of aggression such as we have just seen. The world cannot afford that. A great deal rides on the policy matters on the possibility of freedom,” so said Daniel Ellsberg — the US whistleblower who blew the lid off atrocities that were committed in Vietnam.

Conclusion
Of course there are always complications, such as executive government leaders involving themselves in judicial matters. But sometimes a leader does the right thing, simply because it is the right thing to do — as Helen Clark did early on in her prime ministership when she extended an olive branch to people fleeing tyranny onboard a ship called the Tampa, which was under-threat of sinking off the coast of Australia. Helen Clark brought the Tampa refugees home to a new place called Aotearoa New Zealand, and we have been better off as a nation because of it.

Investigative journalist Selwyn Manning is editor of Evening Report. a partner of Asia Pacific Report.

How strange that an Australian should have emerged as the face of Samoa in the Pandora Papers leak.

Accountant Graeme Briggs’ role in establishing Samoa’s reputation as an international tax haven – a sunny place for shady people – is without parallel.

His Asiaciti group advised rich people worldwide about how to minimise their tax burdens and he put Samoa on the map for these clients, in favour of traditional places such as the Canary and British Virgin Islands.

• READ MORE: The Pandora Papers – The secret keeper
• Other Pandora Papers reports

Samoa had a lot going for it, clients were told, including secret trusts and an effective tax rate for offshore companies of zero.

For his services to raising Samoa’s offshore profile, the government made Briggs Honorary Consul to Singapore for 25 years.

But the latest release of data from the International Consortium of International Journalists (ICIJ) includes thousands of files from Asiaciti and shows just how he managed to help already wealthy bank executives and businessmen pay nothing to their governments.

He denies any legal wrongdoing – and he is most likely right.

Tax minimisation is not illegal, nor is doing business internationally.

Many of the names you are reading in connection to the investigation – the King of Jordan, Vldimir Putin, former British PM Tony Blair – will face no consequences. Their accountants and lawyers will have made perfectly sure of that.

The complexity of tax codes in wealthy countries make complex maneouvres such as blind and investment trusts, shell companies and other tax evasion moves possible.

Why haven’t more Samoans been exposed on this list?

It’s a good question with some simple answers. Living in a tax haven only requires an overseas business partner to acquire the benefits of offshore banking. But more practically, as Samoa is officially listed as a tax haven by bodies like the European Union every business in the country, down to innocent non-profits are flagged in the ICIJ’s system; Australians who do their banking in Samoa, by contrast, stick out like sore thumbs.

That places a huge burden on Samoan journalists in identifying the financial maneouvres of those in the top one percent.

This raises questions about the government’s goose that laid the golden egg: the Samoan International Finance Authority (SIFA) – an agency which assures us it is cleaning its act up.

Ads currently on the internet offer users the ability to establish an offshore company in Samoa virtually instantly for prices as low as US$900.

Last fiscal year the authority recorded a profit of $23 million. Ten years ago the authority was bringing in close to $20 million a year. It is not a soaring growth industry.

At what cost do we price our reputation and dignity?

We doubtlessly have a tax code that has in-built favourability for tax evasion, precisely because it appears to have been designed, at least in part by Briggs himself.

Two leaked emails reported on by Australia’s public broadcaster tell the story of Briggs’ pivotal role in tax policy. One came from a senior public servant in Samoa, who described Briggs as the “grandfather” of Samoa’s offshore Industry.

In another, an Asiaciti employee brags that Briggs was involved in “setting up the structure and legislation of the Samoa offshore finance centre”.

That second email may have been a bit of hyperbole but it is hardly stretching the imagination to think that his influence was substantial, if not total.

Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mataafa’s call for a review of the entire tax code is highly welcome.

But before we get too harsh on ourselves, we must ask who are the biggest tax minimisers and money launderers in the world and from which countries do they operate?

The most significant corporate tax crimes take place in countries such as America and aided by big banks and the world’s “big four” accountancy firms registered in England and Holland.

They have helped clients avoid tax for years. Banks and accountants are safe in the knowledge that a slap on the wrist awaits them if caught.

Nobody’s hands are clean. But other countries’ rule-breaking far outweighs our island nation’s because of its volume and sheer disregard for the law.

In the last year alone, many of Credit Suisse’s executives were criminally charged for accepting proceedings of drug dealing while the Spanish Banco Santander was fined €5.6 billion for failing to investigate the source of clients’ wealth.

Perhaps the most infamous case involved American firm Goldman Sachs agreeing to wholesale defraud the people of Malaysia by creating a secret fraudulent future fund.

Goldman helped the government steal US$1.2 billion which was spent on private planes, dozens of crocodile skin Hermes handbags, apartments in New York, London and Paris and even financing the film The Wolf of Wall Street before it was exposed.

These scams are nothing compared to the money brought in by SIFA. Like climate change the problem is global but Samoa has contributed to only a tiny fraction of it and has received undue attention for doing so.

Nonetheless we believe that we should cease our reputation as a go-to country for tax evasion as soon as possible because it is the right thing to do.

But we should also diplomatically remind our development partners that they are saying one thing and doing another on tax evasion.

It would take a comparatively tiny contribution of less than US$10 million to replace SIFA’s profits and go toward funding a programme to develop technical expertise that would create a new, legitimate financial services industry long into the future.

The Samoa Observer editorial on 8 October 2021. Republished with permission.

Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

Rappler chief executive Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov have been jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2021 in an unprecedented recognition of journalism’s role in today’s world.

They won the prize “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace”, reports Rappler.

Ressa has been the target of attacks for her media organisation’s critical coverage of President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration and a key leader in the global fight against disinformation.

• READ MORE: Other Asia Pacific Report stories on Maria Ressa’s global fight for a free press

Ressa is the first Filipino to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the past, two Filipinos were part of international teams that won the Nobel as a group.

Franz Ontal was one of the officers of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that won the prize in 2013, while former Ateneo de Manila University president Father Jett Villarin was part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won in 2007 together with former US Vice-President Al Gore.

The award-giving body also acknowledged Muratov, one of the founders and the editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Novaja Gazeta, for his decades of defending “freedom of speech in Russia under increasingly challenging conditions”.

Combating ‘troll factories’
Announcing the award today, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said the newspaper was “the most independent newspaper in Russia,” publishing critical articles on “corruption, police violence, unlawful arrests, electoral fraud and ‘troll factories,’ to the use of Russian military forces both within and outside Russia”.

He is the first Russian to win the Nobel Peace Prize since Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev – who himself helped set up Novaya Gazeta with the money he received from winning the award in 1990.

“Free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda,” the committee said in a press release.

“The Norwegian Nobel Committee is convinced that freedom of expression and freedom of information help to ensure an informed public. These rights are crucial prerequisites for democracy and protect against war and conflict.

“The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov is intended to underscore the importance of protecting and defending these fundamental rights.”

Ressa and Muratov are the latest journalists to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the world’s most prestigious political accolade.

In February, Norwegian labour leader and parliamentary representative Jonas Gahr Støre nominated Ressa, Reporters Without Borders, and the Committee to Protect Journalists for the 2021 Prize.

Symbol for thousands of journalists
“She is thus both a symbol and a representative of thousands of journalists around the world. The nomination fulfills key aspects of what is emphasized as peace-promoting in Alfred Nobel’s will.

“A free and independent press can inform about and help to limit and stop a development that leads to armed conflict and war,” Støre said in his nomination.

Skei Grande, former leader of Norway’s Liberal Party, also nominated the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at the Poynter Institute for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Rappler is one of the two verified signatories of IFCN’s Code of Principles in the Philippines – the other being Vera Files.

Here is Rappler’s statement on Friday’s announcement:

“Rappler is honoured – and astounded – by the Nobel Peace Prize Award given to our CEO Maria Ressa. It could not have come at a better time – a time when journalists and the truth are being attacked and undermined.

“We thank the Nobel for recognising all journalists both in the Philippines and in the world who continue to shine the light even in the darkest and toughest hours.

“Thank you to everyone who has been part of the daily struggle to uphold the truth and who continues to hold the line with us. Congratulations, Maria!”

Under attack
The attacks against Ressa and Rappler have reached the world stage. When Duterte assumed office in 2016 and launched his signature bloody drug war, Rappler cast a harsh light on the extrajudicial killings the President himself encouraged.

In June 2020, Ressa and former researcher Reynaldo Santos Jr. were convicted of cyber libel – a judgment Rappler regards as a failure of justice and democracy.

Ressa and Santos are out on bail, and have filed their appeal with the Court of Appeals.

This is one of at least seven active cases pending in court against Rappler as of August 10, 2021.

An award-winning documentary A Thousand Cuts, released in 2020 by Filipino-American filmmaker Ramona Diaz, outlines Rappler’s journey and the fight for press freedom in the country.

Before founding Rappler, she focused on investigating terrorism in Southeast Asia as she reported for CNN’s Manila and Jakarta bureaus.

A Rappler report with news agency coverage. Republished with permission.

Ang pagkapanalo ni Maria Ressa bilang unang Pilipinong Nobel Peace Prize laureate ay para sa lahat ng mga mamamahayag na pinaglalaban ang katotohanan. #NobelPrize #CourageON #HoldTheLine #DefendPressFreedomhttps://t.co/Xtr0VsgbzH pic.twitter.com/AJsqKEIGbq

— Rappler (@rapplerdotcom) October 8, 2021