Fiji’s media workers finally got to celebrate their World Press Freedom Day this week 11 days late — on Thursday, May 14.

The event was pushed back from its traditional May 3 global date — which fell on a Sunday this year — to accommodate a packed news cycle dominated by parliamentary sittings and the Coca-Cola Games.

The events across Suva and Savusavu highlighted both the grit of local journalists and the very real threats still hovering over the industry.

• READ MORE: Other World Press Freedom Day reports

In the capital Suva, the day started before sunrise. At 5am journalists met at the Bowling Club for a morning walk down to My Suva Park and back, catching up over a networking breakfast.

Later that evening, the focus shifted to Gordon House at the British High Commissioner’s Residence for a reception backed by BBC Media Action, Women in Media Fiji, and the Fijian Media Association (FMA).

Permanent Secretary for Information Eseta Nadakuitavuki described reporters as “real warriors” who required courage and “a very thick skin”.

While she praised the media’s fearless role in holding the powerful accountable, she also pointed to modern digital threats. She warned that while AI brought innovation, the rise of fake news and deepfakes meant ethical journalism and rigorous fact-checking were more crucial than ever.

BBC Media Action mentorship
The night also carved out time to recognise seven local journalists who completed a BBC Media Action content production mentorship under seasoned journalist Elenoa Baselala.

Up North, a different kind of gathering took place at the Hot Springs Hotel in Savusavu. FMA general secretary Stanley Simpson joined journalists for a dinner supported by the Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (PACMAS).

The Savusavu event was an acknowledgment of the mental toll carried by reporters outside the capital who usually “survive on roti and bean between assignments”.

Remembering the heavy weight these journalists carry, it was highlighted that in 2017, Northern reporters had to cover two back-to-back tragedies involving children: a fatal house fire, followed just two days later by a father drowning his three kids and himself.

With no debrief rooms or on-call counselors in the North, these reporters — including Peceli, Shratika, Naca, Feroz, Sampras, Nitesh, and Josese — just had to file their heartbreaking stories and keep going.

There was plenty of reason to celebrate on a national level, as Fiji recently jumped 16 spots to 24th globally on the 2026 Reporters Without Borders (RSF) World Press Freedom Index — a massive climb from 84th place in 2023.

However, the FMA made it clear that Fiji’s press freedom gains remained fragile.

Navigating complexities
The industry is still navigating the complexities of Fiji’s hard-drugs crisis and dealing with disquieting developments like journalists being summoned to testify in court. There is also ongoing friction with government officials; recently, Minister for Information Lynda Tabuya criticised the media in Parliament over “mal-information” regarding a broken lift at the CWM Hospital, subsequently calling for an end to “doorstop-style” interviews.

The FMA firmly defended the practice as a necessary tool for holding officials accountable in a democracy.

Despite the challenges, the media fraternity is already looking ahead to its next major gathering. In September, the focus will return to Fiji as it hosts the region for the Pacific Media Summit.

Republished from the Fijian Media Association FB page.

The anti-mandate protests in New Zealand’s capital Wellington and around the country have also contained a strong anti-media sentiment with reporters abused and threatened.

But one far-right activist has gone a step further and as part of a targeted attack on the media has published a graphic image of public executions of Nazi war criminals.

The disturbing image shows a dozen Nazi war criminals being hanged following World War II.

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It has become a popular meme with the online far-right ecosphere, where it is often accompanied by a caption: “Photograph of Hangings at Nuremberg, Germany. Members of the Media, who lied and misled the German People were executed, right along with Medical Doctors and Nurses who participated in medical experiments using living people as guinea pigs”.

Disinformation Project lead Dr Kate Hannah said the poster’s intention was clear.

“It’s incredibly unsubtle. Even if all they do is march outside… it is still incredibly disturbing, it is still incredibly upsetting to have their work [media and health workers] targeted in such a manner.”

But in a twist of irony — considering the fake news such far-right groups claimed to despise — only one member of the media was actually executed following the war; high-ranking Nazi politician Julius Streicher, publisher of the far-right Der Stürmer tabloid.

And the photo in question was not even taken in Nuremberg — instead it shows executions in Kiev.

‘Hideous media language’
But, errors aside, Dr Hannah said the far-right’s seizing of ill-feeling against the media was cause for concern.

“There has been a concerted effort in these spaces over the last 18 months to frame mainstream media as agents of the state, as the ‘lying press’ which is obviously from lügenpresse which is Nazi terminology for left-wing press,” she said.

“There’s been some hideous language used around journalists — the use of the [word] ‘presstitute’ to describe female journalists.

“So this is very much an attempt to shift the place where people get their information from, from being say the mainstream media to fringe media outlets.”

The ultimate goal of far-right activists was destabilising democracy, Dr Hannah said.

Media commentator Dr Gavin Ellis said there had been a concerted effort to target the foundations of democracy — including freedom of the press.

It was an orchestrated rather than an organised movement, Dr Ellis said, with some of those pulling the strings doing so from a distance.

“Some of these people won’t even be at the protest – their orchestration is behind the scenes. But they are intent on undermining the institutions of democratic government,” he said.

Most protesters not violent
Most protesters were not violent and were simply frustrated with the ongoing effects of the pandemic on their lives.

But they were being harnessed by far more nefarious actors, and their anger at the media was a case of shooting the messenger, he said.

“That’s a large part of it — that reality flies in the face of what they stand for. So they forge their own alternate reality and anything that doesn’t match that worldview that they might have is seen as not only wrong, but inherently malevolent — that the truth is something that must not be tolerated,” Dr Ellis said.

While the anger directed at the media was unprecedented in New Zealand, he did not believe it was based on any genuine criticism of the current health or quality of the industry.

However, he feared such tactics could have a chilling effect on the media and journalists, and reporters must continue to do their work in the face of such intimidation.

The other aspect of using such imagery was how offensive it was to victims of Nazi persecution.

Disgusted by poster
Holocaust Centre of New Zealand chair Deborah Hart said she was disgusted by the poster.

There was no comparison of the rollout of a potentially life-saving vaccine by the New Zealand government to the industrial murder of six millions Jews and millions of others by the Nazis, Hart said.

“The Nuremberg trials where military tribunals after World War II for senior Nazis who participated in the Holocaust. To compare that to the vaccine mandates is ridiculous,” she said.

“The intention of these two things was different; the scale was different; the policies were different; and the outcomes were profoundly different.”

It is also worth noting that where possible Hitler withheld vaccines from populations the Nazis persecuted.

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

For journalists who cover Afghanistan, the bombing that killed nine local reporters last week in Kabul was a sober reminder of the dangers the media continue to face in the country’s seemingly endless conflict.

The victims were not well-known foreign correspondents, but a group of courageous Afghan photographers, reporters and cameramen who had gone to report on another bomb blast that had exploded about 40 minutes earlier.

They included a photographer from the French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), as well as contributors to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and several local media companies.

READ MORE: Free media week killings underscore crimes of impunity against journalists

Elsewhere on the same day, a 10th journalist was shot dead – a reporter for the BBC’s Pashto service, Ahmad Shah.

According to Reporters Without Borders, it was the deadliest single day for journalists in the country since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.

The principal way we receive news from conflict zones like Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq is via eyewitnesses on social media and the global news agencies – AFP, Associated Press and Reuters. Agency reporters are often the first “media responders” to deadly incidents like suicide bombings and terror attacks. They also negotiate with local reporters on the ground to secure the best pictures, which then get relayed to the thousands of media companies around the world who subscribe to their services.

To feed this beast of global 24/7 news coverage, there is still an expectation that agency journalists will dare to tread where others will not.

Journalists as targets
Increasingly, this has become even more dangerous, as extremist groups like the Islamic State have shifted tactics to specifically target journalists.

The Afghan Journalists Safety Committee warned of “an unprecedented increase in threats and violence against journalists” in a 2017 report:

Increased threats from DAESH to media and journalists have created a new wave of concerns about the security of journalists and media. What is seriously worrying is the group’s direct attacks against media, which in 2017 is responsible for the vast majority of journalists’ deaths.

Reporters Without Borders says 34 journalists and media workers have died in attacks by the Islamic State and Taliban in Afghanistan since the start of 2016. The situation has become so dire that the group has called on the United Nations to appoint a special representative dedicated to protecting the lives of journalists. The proposal has been backed by French President Emmanuel Macron and the German Parliament.

Without adequate security provisions, journalists have also been abandoning countries that have become too dangerous, Reporters Without Borders notes in its 2017 annual report on reporters killed in the line of duty.

AFP continues to operate with a team of two or three foreign journalists in Kabul, backed up by seven full-time Afghan journalists and various stringers working across the country. Reuters employs just one foreign correspondent and one local journalist in Kabul, and AP has two local reporters and two local photographers.

Former BBC journalist Bilal Sarwary, who now works as a freelancer, tells me there are very few Western journalists left in Afghanistan because “Iraq and then Syria have commanded their attention” in recent years. He said The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post still have reporters based in the country, but now rely almost entirely on freelance photographers.

Responding to the new reality
Under global news director Michèle Léridon, AFP has been highly innovative at adapting to news gathering challenges, but also strict in its policy of not being made stooges by terrorists. According to Phil Chetwynd, AFP’s global editor-in-chief, the company is constantly evaluating its security procedures.

We have always been cautious about rushing to the scene of attacks. We have moved our office several times in Kabul to find a better location as the threat level has changed. We have sent security experts to review our procedures and to recommend physical reinforcements and measures to our buildings.

We have also sent reporters on hostile environment courses and sent trainers to Kabul to train all staff including non-journalists. The message to all our reporters remains that security comes first.

Chetwynd notes the suicide bomber who killed the nine Afghan journalists in Kabul last week – a group that included AFP photographer Shah Marai – had apparently been posing as a fellow reporter, a new tactic by terror groups.

“We are already changing and reacting to this appalling new reality,” he says.

It’s clear that all media organisations need to constantly rethink their strategies when it comes to reporting in conflict zones.

Media scholars, too, are tackling the issue. At the upcoming International Communications Association conference in Prague later this month, I will be joining other academics on a panel titled “Voices in journalism: Local news staff producing international news” to discuss the latest research examining the working conditions of stringers, fixers and local journalists.

Researched challenges
One of the panellists, Saumava Mitra, has researched the work of photojournalists in Afghanistan and co-authored an essay last week on the challenges they face:

We have seen that local journalists usually have much poorer access to hostile-environment training, work-hazard insurance or even medical benefits from their employers. They face different threats and risks than those who parachute into the conflict and have nowhere to go if the situation escalates.

They are also much more prone to reprisals. The first step to help prevent their deaths is to acknowledge that the news we consume is often produced by journalists working under precarious conditions in hostile places.

Marai, for one, always knew the dangers of working in Kabul, as his blog on the AFP website so devastatingly shows. In it, he recounts how life changed for the worse when the Taliban returned to stage attacks in Kabul in the mid-2000s:

“I don’t dare to take my children for a walk. I have five and they spend their time cooped up inside the house. Every morning as I go to the office and every evening when I return home, all I think of are cars that can be booby-trapped, or of suicide bombers coming out of a crowd. I can’t take the risk. So we don’t go out.

“I have never felt life to have so little prospects and I don’t see a way out. It’s a time of anxiety.”

Dr Colleen Murrell is undergraduate coordinator for journalism at Monash University, Melbourne, and the author of Foreign Correspondents and International Newsgathering: The role of fixers.This article was first published by The Conversation and is republished on Asia Pacific Report under a Creative Commons licence.

• Journalists in war zones tread a fine line between safety and freedom of speech