Australia’s Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance has condemned the continued targeted killing of media workers in Gaza and the baseless smearing of working journalists as “terrorists”, following the deaths of five Al Jazeera staff over the weekend.

Al Jazeera journalists Anas Al Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and assistant Moamen Aliwa were killed on Sunday when Israel bombed a tent housing journalists in Gaza City, near Al-Shifa Hospital.

Shockingly, the Israeli military confirmed the targeted killing on social media, with a post to X accompanied by a target emoji.

• READ MORE:  RSF calls for emergency UN Security Council meeting after targeted Israeli strike kills six media professionals
• Why Israel’s assassination of Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif and crew threatens all journalists
• Tributes, condemnation pour in for slain Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza
• ‘A very dark morning’: Pain and grief as funerals held for Al Jazeera staff killed by Israel in Gaza
• Another Gaza injustice. Israel targets Anas in Al Jazeera media crew of 5
• Silencing the messenger: Israel kills journalists, while the West merely censors them
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

The latest deaths come after Israel had conducted a long smear campaign of unsubstantiated allegations against Al Sharif and other journalists, labelling them “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists”, which the International Federation of Journalists has condemned.

As Al Jazeera has said, this was a “dangerous attempt to justify the targeting of journalists in the field”.

“Tragically, these warnings have now come to fruition,” the MEAA said in a statement.

“The targeting of journalists is a blatant attack on press freedom, and it is also a war crime.

“It must stop.”

Stop killing journalists message from MEAA                      Video: MEAA

Call for ‘unfettered coverage’
MEAA also said the Israeli ban preventing the world’s media from accessing the region and providing unfettered coverage of the worsening humanitarian crisis must stop.

The silencing of Palestinian journalists via a rising death toll that the Gaza Media Office puts at 242 must also stop, the union said.

“In his final words, Al-Sharif said he never hesitated for a single day to convey the truth as it is — without distortion or falsification,” said MEAA

“His reports brought to the world the reality of the horrors being inflicted by the Israeli government on the civilians in Gaza.

“He asked the world to not forget Gaza and to not forget him.”

MEAA said it stood up against attacks on press freedom around the world.

• Pacific Media Watch says there has been no equivalent condemnation by New Zealand journalists, who have mostly remained silent during the 22 months of Israel’s war on Gaza.

The reported plea bargain between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the United States government brings to a close one of the darkest periods in the history of media freedom, says the union for Australian journalists.

While the details of the deal are still to be confirmed, MEAA welcomed the release of Assange, a Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance member, after five years of relentless campaigning by journalists, unions, and press freedom advocates around the world.

MEAA remains concerned what the deal will mean for media freedom around the world.

• READ MORE: The Free Julian Assange RSF campaign file

The work of WikiLeaks at the centre of this case — which exposed war crimes and other wrongdoing by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan — was strong, public interest journalism.

MEAA fears the deal will embolden the US and other governments around the world to continue to pursue and prosecute journalists who disclose to the public information they would rather keep suppressed.

MEAA media federal president Karen Percy welcomed the news that Julian Assange has already been released from Belmarsh Prison, where he has been held as his case has wound its way through UK courts.

“We wish Julian all the best as he is reunited with his wife, young sons and other relatives who have fought tirelessly for his freedom,” she said.

‘Relentless battle against this injustice’
“We commend Julian for his courage over this long period, and his legal team and supporters for their relentless battle against this injustice.

“We’ve been extremely concerned about the impact on his physical and mental wellbeing during Julian’s long period of imprisonment and respect the decision to bring an end to the ordeal for all involved.

Julian Assange boards flight at London Stansted Airport at 5PM (BST) Monday June 24th. This is for everyone who worked for his freedom: thank you.#FreedJulianAssange pic.twitter.com/Pqp5pBAhSQ

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 25, 2024

“The deal reported today does not in any way mean that the struggle for media freedom has been futile; quite the opposite, it places governments on notice that a global movement will be mobilised whenever they blatantly threaten journalism in a similar way.

Percy said the espionage charges laid against Assange were a “grotesque overreach by the US government” and an attack on journalism and media freedom.

“The pursuit of Julian Assange has set a dangerous precedent that will have a potential chilling effect on investigative journalism,” she said.

“The stories published by WikiLeaks and other outlets more than a decade ago were clearly in the public interest. The charges by the US sought to curtail free speech, criminalise journalism and send a clear message to future whistleblowers and publishers that they too will be punished.”

Percy said was clearly in the public interest and it had “always been an outrage” that the US government sought to prosecute him for espionage for reporting that was published in collaboration with some of the world’s leading media organisations.

Julian Assange has been an MEAA member since 2007 and in 2011 WikiLeaks won the Outstanding Contribution to Journalism Walkley award, one of Australia’s most coveted journalism awards.

British gender activist Posie Parker has left New Zealand, calling it the “worst place for women she has ever visited”.

Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, also known as Posie Parker, shared a photo on social media showing her being escorted by police through Auckland Airport.

She left her rally at Albert Park in Auckland yesterday without speaking, after being overwhelmed by thousands of heckling counter-protesters and pelted with tomato juice.

• READ MORE: RNZ Mediawatch on the coverage of Posie Parker, the provocateur

Controversial Harry Potter author JK Rowling took to Twitter to brand the protest scenes in Auckland yesterday “repellent”.

During a series of Tweets, she said a mob “had assaulted women standing up for their rights”.

Parker posted to Twitter and said she was leaving ‘the worst place for women she has ever visited’.

The activist also claimed she was a victim of a campaign to assassinate her character, boosted by a “corrupt media populated by vile dishonest cult members”.

No Wellington rally
Her departure means her planned rally for Wellington today will not go ahead.

A local group supporting her visit Speak Up For Women NZ had already announced the scheduled rally today in Wellington had been cancelled due to security concerns.

Auckland Pride rejected the idea that the activist had abandoned her Wellington plans due to threats of violence.

There is a narrative quickly taking hold amongst anti-trans groups and individuals that Parker abandoned her event because of violence from our community.

— Auckland Pride (@AucklandPride) March 25, 2023

The group Tweeted: “There is a narrative quickly taking hold amongst anti-trans groups and individuals that Parker abandoned her event because of violence from our community.

“We reject this narrative. We are of the firm belief that the demonstration of unity, celebration, and acceptance alongside joyous music, chanting, and noise of 5,000 supporters was too loud to overcome and the reason for her departure – and not the actions of any one individual.”

NZ First leader Winston Peters said violence and cancel culture did not represent “the majority of New Zealanders who want an open and free Western democracy that values freedom of speech”.

Irony of ‘disgrace’
He tweeted: “Whether you agree with her views or not, the irony of the disgraceful situation that occurred at the Posie Parker event, is that violence, hatred, and intimidation is coming from the very group who claim to be the ones standing up for inclusivity and freedoms.”

While Parker’s planned rally in Wellington today is off, groups opposing her views still plan to turn out, with the city’s annual CubaDupa festival also taking place today.

Police say they will be out in central Wellington to monitor and respond to any problems.

Parker arrived at the Albert Park event yesterday morning to speak with supporters at a rally.

Her presence and comments infuriated rights advocates, and the reception she received in Auckland yesterday left Parker visibly shaken.

Neo-Nazis in Australia
The controversial British activist’s Melbourne rally days before was attended by neo-Nazis, a fact widely reported in New Zealand before she was allowed into the country by Immigration NZ and Immigration Minister Michael Wood.

Parker was critical of what she said was a lack of police presence at the Auckland event, with her security team struggling to separate her from hostile crowds of protesters.

After being escorted to a police car through the crowd, Parker requested to be driven to the police station, because she feared for her safety.

Media had reported she was seen checking in for an international flight out of Auckland last night.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There’s been a huge wake up call.”

Diversity was a winner at AUT’s School of Communication Studies annual awards last night with several Pacific Media Centre contributors taking out top prizes.

Digital postgraduate student Sri Krishnamurthi was awarded the RNZ Pacific Prize for Asia-Pacific Journalism for his coverage of the Fijian general elections last year.

“It means a lot to me and it means a lot to Pacific people, in particular Pacific journalism,” he said.

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

A strong sports news journalist working with a news agency for many years, last year was his first foray into Pacific political journalism.

He said there was a lack of awareness about the Pacific and its problems.

However, he plans to continue developing journalism in the region through doctoral studies.

“Asia-Pacific journalism is something that is very dear to my heart,” he said.

A veteran journalist from Fiji, Krishnamurthi praised Dr David Robie and the Pacific Media Centre, which he said was invaluable to AUT and to New Zealand.

Coveted award
A former postgraduate student Blessen Tom was awarded the coveted Oceania Media’s SPASIFIK Magazine Prize and the PMC Storyboard Award for diversity reporting.

Tom, who reported on a range of diversity stories lst year and also co-produced the climate change documentary Banabans of Rabi for the PMC’s Bearing Witness project, said the award came as a surprise but it felt fantastic all the same.

“To get an award for diversity reporting is amazing because I never knew I could do it, and the New Zealand media is pretty white so I’m very proud.”

Tom is now working as a junior producer for the TVNZ show Fair Go. He said he would use the experience to pursue his passion as a documentary filmmaker.

Geraldine Lopdell Prize
Perhaps the most auspicious award of the night was the new Geraldine Lopdell prize for Diversity in Communication, named after the teacher, artist and kitemaker who passed away a year ago.

She was a “captivating story teller” and a firm believer in the stories and views of Pasifika women.

The award was set up by her partner, Colin McKay, and daughters Alex and Anne Woodley, to celebrate her “life well lived” and to encourage Pasifika women to share their stories and pursue communication studies.

“We just felt that we should honour her in a way that would be appropriate,” McKay said.

“And we feel a bit of sadness and a good deal of happiness today.”

Reward for hard work
The inaugural winner of the $1200 award was Malia Latu, a master’s student whose work explores the representation of Pasifika women and talanoa journalism.

She said winning the award made all her hard work worthwhile.

“It means everything, it means to push forward and it means to never give up even when you feel like nothings there. There is always something.”

She said it was important to be vocal and to encourage Pasifika woman to speak up and share their stories, as many of them feared the judgment of others.

She also planned to continue her work and projects through doctoral studies.

Alex Woodley said that although the night was tough and full of mixed emotions, her mother, Geraldine, would have been honoured to see Malia receive the award.

“I think that mum and our whole family would be really excited that this incredible, vibrant, clever, gorgeous young woman is doing research on women in the Pacific. We are totally honoured.”

PMC director Professor David Robie said he was delighted the Lopdell family had initiated this prize and the centre was able to play a part in supporting diversity awards.

He also thanked the AUT Foundation for its support.

• New award encourages Pasifika women in communication
• Geraldine Lopdell Award criteria
• The full 2018 award winners list

Bearing Witness climate change project students won big last night at the annual awards ceremony for AUT’s School of Communication Studies last night.

Julie Cleaver and Kendal Hutt took out the Spasifik Magazine Prize and Pacific Media Centre Storyboard Award for Diversity Reporting for their work on the Bearing Witness climate change project last year.

Hele Ikimotu was awarded the John Foy Memorial Award for broadcast journalism and will be flying to Fiji tomorrow to continue the Bearing Witness climate change project this year.

READ MORE: Bearing Witness climate project stories

‘Great honour’
Cleaver and Hutt both travelled to Fiji last year where they created a multimedia feature on the Fijian village of Tukuraki, which was hit by a deadly landslide and two cyclones in the space of five years.

The project also won the Dart Asia-Pacific Prize for Journalism and Trauma at the annual Ossie Awards for Student Journalism at Newcastle, NSW, last December.

Cleaver is now editor of Debate Magazine and Hutt is a reporter with the North Shore Times.

Hutt said it was a great honour to receive this award.

“This award is not just our award, it is also Tukuraki’s award for letting us come up to the community and let us tell their story. I think it had only been told in Fijian media and ABC Australia,” said Hutt.

‘Journalism highlight’
Cleaver said her time in Fiji was a moving experience. “It was a privilege to be a journalist and hear these people’s stories. When else would you get to hear these people’s personal testimonies from someone who has been through so much as well.”

“The Pacific Media Centre has been so supportive to both of us throughout this process. Thanks so much to Professor David Robie and everyone else involved,” said Cleaver.

“The trip was a journalism highlight. This is why I wanted to get into journalism.”

“It’s so awesome that Dr Robie is driving this PMC project. It needs someone passionate to keep it going and it’s such a privilege to be a part of that.”

Ikimotu ‘excited’
Bearing Witness climate change project participant Hele Ikimotu received the John Foy Memorial Award.

Louise Matthews, curriculum leader of AUT’s journalism programme, presented the award to Ikimotu and said he “aced” his undergraduate courses and stayed on to do postgraduate study this year.

Ikimotu thanked God, the John Foy Memorial Trust sponsors and his “supportive and inspiring” journalism tutors in his acceptance speech.

“I’m so excited and nervous to go over there. I come from an ancestry of storytellers. There are times I doubted I had the ability to be a good storyteller but this award has affirmed I have what it takes, and I’m so excited to see where journalism takes me.

“I’m so excited to use it as a platform for my people and continue being a voice for the Pacific. I was born in the Islands and I know my family back home are proud that I’m doing it and representing them.”

Ikimotu leaves for Fiji tomorrow with fellow participant Blessen Tom to carry on this year’s version of the Bearing Witness project.

Ikimotu and Tom will be heading on a two-week climate change mission to the main island of Viti Levu where they will be interviewing local people who are directly affected by the devastating effects of climate change in the Pacific.

Ikimotu and Tom will be searching for stories, interviewing people directly affected by climate change and reporting directly for Asia Pacific Report, Wansolwara and other media.

• Wansolwara report on the climate change project in Fiji
• Tukuraki disaster village multimedia report

Full 2017 School of Communication Studies awards:
School of Communication Studies Award for Top Student in the Certificate in Communication Studies: Schumacher Liuvaie

School of Communication Studies Award for Top Year One Bachelor of Communication Studies: Amy Wang

School of Communication Studies Award for Top Year Two Bachelor of Communication Studies: Jamie Ensor

School of Communication Studies Award for Excellence in Communication Theory: Adam Szentes

Communication Studies Postgraduate Scholarships: India Fremaux, Yulia Khan, Malini Radkrishna, Jayakrishnan Sreekumar

Dean’s Award for Best Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies: Elizabeth Osborne

Dean’s Award for Excellence in Master of Communication Studies – Thesis: Ximena Smith

Oceania Media’s Spasifik Magazine Prize and the Pacific Media Centre’s Storyboard Award for Diversity Reporting: Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt

The Radio Bureau Award for Top of Research Project: Radio: Georgina Cain-Treleaven

The Radio Bureau Award for Top Radio Student: Maxene London

John Foy Memorial Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism: Hele Ikimotu

Bauer Award for Excellence in Magazine Journalism: Nicole Barratt

New Zealand Herald Award for Top Post Graduate Diploma Student in Creative Practice – Journalism: Arun Jeram

National Business Review Award for the Outstanding Graduate in the BCS Journalism Major: Nicole Barratt

New Zealand Geographic award for Excellence in Photojournalism: Adam Szentes

Public Relations Institute of New Zealand Award for the Top Year 2 Public Relations Student: Jamie Ensor

The winners of the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand Paul Dryden Tertiary Award 2017: Boyan Buha, Jodealyn Cadacio, Simon Cooper, and Georgia Ward

Highly Commended Public Relations Institute of New Zealand Paul Dryden Tertiary Award 2017: Abby Berry, Emma Hilton, Morgan MacFadyen

Public Relations Institute of New Zealand President’s Award for the Top Academic Student in the Public Relations Major: Adam Szentes

The Postgraduate Public Relations Global Virtual Team Winner (2017): Alex Ubels

FCB Change Agency Award for Digital Media Excellence: Stefanee Chua

School of Communication Studies joint Award for Academic Excellence in the Creative Industries Major: Kaylah Burke and Laura Reid

QMS Awards for Advertising Creativity:
QMS Art Director of the Year – Holly Smith
QMS Account Executive of the Year – Ella Bilham
QMS Team of the Year – Will Macdonald and Adam Ramsdale

Francis Porterfield Memorial Award for Excellence in Multicamera Production: Steven Yee

MediaWorks Award for Best Producer: McKay Carroll

Human rights activists say that the conduct of both physical and communication surveillance is prone to abuse and is a violation of a citizen’s right to privacy. If left unchecked, it can lead to ‘far worse attacks.’

• Human rights groups say the administrations of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Rodrigo Duterte are similar in their “intensity” of use of state surveillance
• The conduct of state surveillance can lead to abuse and violate a citizen’s right to privacy
• The secrecy surrounding state surveillance in the Philippines makes it hard to hold accountable state agents who violate the right to privacy
• The Commission on Human Rights can help those placed under state surveillance without probable cause because they can conduct investigations and issue subpoenas to state agents

READ MORE: State surveillance – a necessary evil?

State surveillance is not new to the Philippines. Administrations across history have engaged in this monitoring to protect national security – to prevent terrorism, rebellions, and attacks.

The conduct of both physical and communication surveillance, however, can lead to abuse and violation of a citizen’s rights to privacy when left unchecked. It also plays a role in silencing dissent and valid criticism, according to human rights activists.

Two administrations post-Marcos stand out when it comes to state surveillance – those of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and President Rodrigo Duterte.

While the Arroyo administration allegedly had a so-called “Order of Battle” (OB), Amnesty International Philippines chairperson Ritz Lee Santos said that the Duterte version is reportedly called “persons of interest”.

The list allegedly includes activists and individuals the administration deemed to be critical.

There are several ways by which surveillance can be carried out, such as through wiretapping, bugging, or physical monitoring.

Human rights groups forced to go ‘old-school’
“We have monitored several instances of physical surveillance,” said Kaparatan secretary general Cristina Palabay. “May nagmamanman, may naghihintay sa amin sa labas (there are people on tailing us, waiting outside) so we had to cancel some meetings, of course, because you can never tell what’s next.”

One of these incidents includes the discovery of a tracking device in Karapatan’s service van. It was discovered after they got the vehicle back from custody at the Manila Police District during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in November 2017.

There were also many hacking attempts of the social media accounts of several human rights activists, according to Santos.

“There are attempts to hack my account, even my email address,” Santos recalled in a mix of English and Filipino. “Because I have this setting on my phone, I get informed if there are attempts to open my email or social media account.”

Karapatan, meanwhile, now refers to their office as a “fixed point” – or a place vulnerable to electronic and physical surveillance. The group fears that their cellphones and landlines have been compromised, exposing their conversations with clients and other groups.

Because of these threats, Palabay said that as much as possible, they do everything “old school.”

“Kapag may mga bagay na tingin namin ay hindi na dapat sinasabi online, we go old school (If there are things that we think shouldn’t be said online, we go old school),” she said. “Offline. No phones, landline, internet.”

Laws and terrorism
Under the 1987 Philippine Constitution, the privacy of communication and correspondence shall be inviolable “except upon lawful order of the court, or when public safety or order requires otherwise, as prescribed by law.”

There are also laws such as the Anti-Wiretapping law and the Cybercrime Prevention Act that prevent instances of communication interference without a court order.

However, human rights defenders point out the Human Security Act which says that interception and recording of “any communication, message, conversation, discussion, or spoken or written words,” with the use of any type of surveillance equipment or any means suitable is allowed in cases of terrorism.

This is what scares members of progressive groups – especially with the latest move of the Philippine government seeking to tag at least 600 individuals as terrorists. The list includes alleged leaders and members of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA).

The government also wants to label as terrorist several human rights workers such as United Nations rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples Victoria Tauli Corpuz, Karapatan national executive committee member Elisa Tita Lubi, and Jose Molintas, former Asia representative to the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP), among others.

Privacy violations, watchdog role compromised
For many critics, this reflects the Duterte administration’s overall stance against dissent. Human rights organisations and those who have called out government policies – especially the violent war on drugs – have been continually threatened and demonised by the President himself.

Human rights workers main job is to ensure that people – and the government – realise the importance of following due process and protecting rights enshrined in the 1987 Philippine Constitution and various international treaties.

Because they act as watchdogs of the state, placing them under state surveillance is not just a violation of their rights but also an interference of their work, according to Santos.

“If there’s really surveillance and those who are placed under it have no records of criminal offence, are not enemies of the state, and are just exercising their right to say something for or against the government, then there are insecurities,” he said.

Palabay, meanwhile, said that vilifying human rights defenders often goes hand in hand with surveillance. In many cases, several of these incidents lead to far worse attacks just to silence dissent and beyond an act of intimidation by state agents.

“Palaging may physical tapos kasabay niyan ‘yung public vilification sa amin (There’s always physical surveillance partnered with public vilification),” she said. “Kapag hindi na nila mapatahimik (when they know people cannot be silenced), they will try to file cases, and if that doesn’t work, they go on to worst forms of attacks like attempted murder. Sometimes they succeed.”

This was echoed by Jam Jacob, legal and policy adviser for technology and rights advocacy group Foundation for Media Alternatives.

“Surveillance is a violation of privacy, a prelude to more human rights violations like desaparacidos, those abducted,” he explained. “Sa umpisa, tinitiktikan sila, minamanmanan, paano iyong routine nila (At first, they’ll being tailed, monitored, what their routines are).”

READ MORE: ‘Demonizing’ human rights under Duterte

Philippines dangerous for human rights defenders

The Philippines is often referred to as one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a human rights defender. In 2017, Front Line Defenders said in its annual report that 80% of deaths of human rights defenders took place in 4 countries: Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and the Philippines.

Meanwhile, at least 4 human rights workers have been killed under the Duterte administration so far: Karapatan Negros Oriental coordinator Elisa Badayos, Bicol paralegal Edwin Pura, Catholic priest Father Marcelito Paez, and Moro human rights activist Billamin Turabin Hasan.

Since 2001, at least 40 human rights workers of Karapatan have been killed.

It doesn’t help that the President himself have threatened human rights workers in the past.

“One of these days, kayong human rights, kayo ang imbestigahin ko, totoo, conspiracy,” he said on August 16, 2017. “Sabihin mo pulis, barilin mo na ‘yang kasali diyan. If they are obstructing justice, you shoot them. Para makita talaga kung anong klaseng human right… Galit ako sa inyo. Because hindi niyo tinitimpla kung anong klaseng papasukan ninyo. Basta human rights.”

(One of these days, I will investigate you human rights, conspiracy. Tell them, ‘Police, shoot those who are part of it’ so they can see the kinds of human rights. I’m mad at you; you don’t look at what you’re getting into, all about human rights.)

Where to go?
The cloak of secrecy surrounding state surveillance and how it is done in the Philippines makes it hard to fully realize how capable the government is in monitoring individuals and groups. This makes it difficult to hold accountable state agents who violate the right to privacy.

Santos recalled there were several times during formal gatherings or national conferences where they tried to confront state agents about surveillance. They, however, always refuse to admit or deny they engage in this act.

The lack of accountability mechanism, according to Jacob, makes the whole system of state surveillance prone to abuse. It can even lead to others – such as journalists, students, and any individual or groups seen as “destabiliser” by the government – to being monitored.

“So if it is necessary, to some extent yes but is it prone to abuse? Yes, also, especially if it continues to operate the way it is,” he explained. “It’s okay if it’s used to monitor legitimate internal threats to the state, but not individuals or groups who voice out valid criticism.”

“It should not be free rein, like without at all mechanisms to keep things in check,” Jacob added.

What can be done?
According to the Commission on Human Rights, individuals who feel like they are placed under state surveillance can avail of their help.

Mandated by the Constitution to investigate alleged human rights violations by the state, it can issue subpoenas on state agents who can in turn produce documents that can help their case buildups.

“Malalaman natin kung lawful ba ang operation na surveillance on a person or group,” said Richard Laron of CHR’s legal department. “Are they armed with a mission order? Baka naman intimidation iyan? Legitimate ba? Lawful ba? May basis ba yan?”

(We can find out if the surveillance operation on a person or group is lawful. Are they armed with a mission order? Maybe that’s only intimidation? Is it legitimate? Lawful? Is there any basis?)

But the fact still stands that conducting state surveillance on a person without probable cause or “verified information” is tantamount to violating his or her rights.

“If there’s no probable cause or certain specific or verified information you’re engaging in any unlawful activity, the conduct of state surveillance is unlawful or arbitrary,” CHR lawyer Arlene Ven said.

Privacy violation only counts if ‘life-threatening’
Another remedy that can be invoked is the writ of habeas data. A petition for this writ, a remedy against “gathering, collecting or storing of data or information” through surveillance, can be filed before a regional trial court.

Jacob, however, warns that securing this writ can be very hard.

“Kung mapu-prove mo lang na na-violate ang iyong privacy pero wala naman corresponding threat to your life, liberty, and security, walang writ na ibibigay sa’yo (If you can only prove that your right to privacy was violated but it has no corresponding threat to your life, liberty, and security, the courts will not issue a writ),” he said.

While legal remedies is always on the table, human rights organisations often resort to more safety protocols in line with the continuous threats and state surveillance.

Karapatan, example, ramped up their physical and digital security through trainings. Sweeps for any bug or listening device in their office are conducted more frequently, and they’ve worked out ways to protect the data they use for work.

Going through the principle of strength and security in numbers, between 50-100 people join the group’s fact-finding missions – especially in militarised areas in the Philippines.

Human rights organisations will continue to fight
But despite the danger heightened by the administration’s continuous threats, human rights organisations say they will not stop doing their job in depending the rights of marginalised communities under what critics call a “repressive” regime.

“Siyempre hindi na mawawala iyong takot at palaging nandoon iyon,” Palabay said. “Pero sa totoo lang, kaya medyo hindi kami ganoon katakot, wala ito sa mga naranasan ng mga tinutulungan namin.“(Fear is always there but these are nothing compared to the abuses the people we help experience.)

But in a country where democracy is reportedly backsliding, it might only be a matter of time before state surveillance starts targeting ordinary citizens.

Jodesz Gavilan and Sofia Tomacruz have compiled this article as part of a special report series for the independent website Rappler. The website is fighting for survival against a “war on press freedom” being waged by the Duterte government in the Philippines. Read the full series here. Rappler has been running a campaign under the slogan “Support a free and fearless media” for the past six months.

• RSF condemns new threats to outspoken media outlets
• RSF condemns President Duterte’s palace ban on Rappler reporter
• ‘This isn’t the time to be silent,’ say writers defending Rappler
• What you need to know about state surveillance
• You think your data, communications device are safe? Think again
• PMC’s director David Robie on ‘e-martial law’ in the Philippines

A New Zealand journalist and associate of the Pacific Media Centre has been killed in a fall from a building in Istanbul, reports the Turkish-based news service TRT World.

Media industry sources have cited police as treating the death of Yasmine Ryan, 34, in a five-storey fall as “suspicious”.

Her death has shocked colleagues and friends around the world.

A colleague, Ashfaaq Carim, at TRT World said Ryan had left behind a “rich legacy of stories that have left a deep impact on people and journalists”.

“This morning, I woke up to the tragic news that a trusted friend, colleague, and fellow journalist, Yasmine Ryan, had passed away,” he wrote in a TRT opinion blog.

“I have been blessed to know Yasmine for more than eight years. Throughout she had been an epitome of courage,” he wrote.

“A selfless human. A fearless woman.”

Tragedy at friend’s house
The journalist was staying at a friend’s house when the tragedy happened, according to news reports.

“The pair had retired for the day and gone to sleep in separate rooms. The friend was awoken at 2pm by a noise,” said The New Zealand Herald.

“They discovered an open window and Ryan on the ground below.
RT World reported emergency services were called but declared her dead at the scene.

Police were now investigating the death.

A Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson said the ministry was aware of the death of a New Zealander in Istanbul and was providing consular assistance to the family.

Zaoui book
One of her colleagues in New Zealand, independent journalist Selwyn Manning, recalls her early work in a collaborative book,  I Almost Forgot About The Moon – about the disinformation campaign against refugee Algerian theologian Ahmed Zaoui.

“Her research and writing of various chapters in the book were so exact and thorough,” Manning said.

“Her passion for human rights shone through and led her, I believe, to pursue a career reporting in North Africa and the Middle East.

“Early on, when I was editor of Scoop, I assigned her to report in the Solomons when unrest became evident after some arson attacks in Honiara.

“We flew her and Jason Dorday up there to cover events. She immediately was in her element.”

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie described Ryan as one of the most professional New Zealand journalists he had encountered working as a foreign correspondent.

He paid tribute to her Arab Spring reportage from Tunisia for Al Jazeera.

“Her reporting broke the mould and alerted the world to the forces of would-be change heralded by the Arab Spring, even if the early hopes dwindled in the end.”

• TRT World report
• ‘The world a better place’ because of Kiwi journalist who died in Turkey
• ‘Her journalism lives on, her legacy is strong’. Kamahl Santamaria on Yasmine Ryan

An interview with Yasmine Ryan by media commentator Gavin Ellis.

You have to go a long way to find anything remotely resembling Australia’s current treatment of New Zealand.

For a supposedly friendly government to deliberately inject inflammatory disinformation into the political bloodstream of its supposedly closest neighbour is an extraordinarily provocative act. Not quite an act of war, but the sort of intervention that can all-too-easily provoke a catastrophic loss of trust.

It’s the sort of thing that the Soviets and the Americans used to do to one another all the time during the Cold War. Except, of course, those two superpowers were ideological and geopolitical rivals of the first order. It takes a real effort to re-cast the relationship between New Zealand and Australia in similar terms. Nevertheless, it’s an effort we are now obliged to make.

So, what is it that Australia has done? Essentially, its national security apparatus (presumably at the instigation of their political leaders) has released, mostly through media surrogates, a number of related stories calculated to inflame the prejudices of a certain type of New Zealander.

Like Australia, New Zealand harbours a frighteningly large number of racists. Politically-speaking, such people are easily aroused and have few qualms about setting-off ugly, racially-charged, debates on talkback radio, in the letters columns of the daily newspapers and across social media. These individuals are trouble enough when all they have to fight with are their own stereotypes and prejudices. Arm them with the carefully assembled disinformation of “fake news” and they instantly become quite dangerous.

Planting stories
And yet, this is exactly what the Australian authorities have done. Planting stories in their own press (knowing they will be picked up almost immediately by our own) about at least four boatloads of illegal immigrants that have set out for New Zealand only to be intercepted and turned back by the ever-vigilant officers of the Royal Australian Navy and their Coast Guard comrades.

The purpose of this story (unsourced and lacking in detail, making it, almost certainly, fake news) was to paint New Zealand’s prime minister as an ill-informed and ungrateful diplomatic naïf: an inexperienced young idealist who doesn’t know which way is up when it comes to dealing with real-world problems.

This, alone, was an extraordinary intervention. To gauge how extraordinary, just turn it around. Imagine the reaction in Australia if some unnamed person in New Zealand’s national security apparatus leaked a memo to one of this country’s daily newspapers in which the negative diplomatic and economic consequences of being tainted by association with Australia’s flouting of international law is set forth in clinical detail. If the memo also contained a collection of highly critical assessments of Turnbull’s cabinet colleagues, allegedly passed-on by a number of unnamed western diplomats, then so much the better!

Canberra would not be impressed!

If the Australians had left it at just one intervention, then perhaps New Zealanders could simply have shrugged it off as yet another case of bad behaviour from the land of the under-arm bowlers. But when have the Aussies ever left it at “just one”?

Former guard’s ‘intervention’
The next intervention came in the form of “Ian” – formerly a guard (or so he said) at both the Nauru and Manus Island detention centres. For reasons it has yet to adequately explain, RNZ’s Checkpoint programme provided “Ian” with nearly ten, largely uninterrupted, minutes of air-time during which he poured-forth a stream of accusations and characterisations which, to put it mildly, painted the protesters occupying the decommissioned Manus Island facility in the most lurid and disquieting colours. The detainees were criminals, drug-dealers – paedophiles even! Not at all the sort of people New Zealanders would want in their country.

“Ian”, it turns out, is a “witness” well-known to the many Australian NGOs that have taken up the cause of the detainees on Manus and Nauru. They have noted the curious similarities between “Ian’s” supposedly personal observations and experiences, and the inflammatory talking-points constantly reiterated by Australia’s hard-line Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton. A cynic might describe the grim “testimony” of “Ian” and Dutton as mutually reinforcing.

No matter. New Zealand’s racist, Islamophobic and militantly anti-immigrant community had been supplied with yet another truckload of Australian-manufactured ammunition.

Enough? Not hardly! Only on Friday morning New Zealanders were fed the shocking “news” that the protesting Manus Island detainees are harbouring within their ranks an unspecified number of men guilty of having debauched and prostituted local girls as young as 10 and 13!

Too much? Over the top? Redolent of the very worst instances of the murderous racial-incitement for which the Deep South of the United States was so rightly infamous? It sure is! Which is why we must hope that the internet does not operate on Manus Island. Because, if the local inhabitants were to read on-line that the detainees were responsible for prostituting their daughters, what might they NOT do?

Disinformation campaign
One almost feels that the Australian spooks behind this extraordinary disinformation campaign would actually be delighted if the locals burned down the Manus Island detention centre with the protesting detainees inside it.

“This is what comes of 37-year-old Kiwi prime ministers meddling in matters they know nothing about!” That would be the consistent theme of the right-wing Australian media. It would not take long for the same line to be picked up here: first on social media, and then by more mainstream media outlets.

Right-wing outrage, mixed with a gleeful “we told you so!”, could not, however, be contained within the news media for very long. Inevitably, the more outré inhabitants of the Opposition’s back bench would take possession of the controversy, from there it would cascade down rapidly to Opposition politicians nearer the front.

Before her enemies could say: “It’s all your fault!”, Jacinda would find herself under withering political fire from both sides of the Tasman. Canberra would register her increasingly fragile government’s distress with grim satisfaction.

As the men and women responsible for organising “Operation Stardust” deleted its final folder, and fed the last incriminating document into the paper-shredder, one or two of them might even have voiced a judiciously muted “Mission Accomplished!”

This essay, by Chris Trotter, was originally posted on the Bowalley Road blog of Saturday, 18 November 2017, under the title: “Not quite an act of war: Analysing Australia’s push-back against Jacinda’s Manus Island outreach.  It is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the permission of the author.

• RNZ believed Manus Island staff but why should we?

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

The Media Council of Papua New Guinea is calling for an investigation into the untimely death of senior journalist and Post-Courier business editor Rosalyn Albaniel Evara.

“While the council respected the wishes of her immediate family to proceed with her burial, it acknowledges that the pain that Late Rosalyn had to endure is no longer just hers, and a pain that many more women in the country may be going through every day,” the MCPNG said in a statement.

Evara, 41, was rushed to hospital last week on October 15 after collapsing in her home.

She died in Port Moresby General Hospital later that day.

READ MORE: Pacific Media Watch coverage on this issue

Pacific Media Watch reports Evara’s funeral on Monday was overshadowed by abuse allegations, after her aunt, Mary Albaniel, said her niece had been a victim of violence.

The MCPNG is now calling on PNG’s media fraternity to push for justice for the victims of gender-based violence.

“It has happened to one of our own, and it is time to acknowledge that it needs to stop.

Domestic violence ‘cancer’
“More needs to be said about this cancer, which thrives behind closed doors and breeds on fear,” it said.

The MCPNG said many female journalists in PNG suffered from violent and abusive relationships, which affected their work and families.

It said the media could no longer keep silent and must continue to report on the issue “despite cultural and social challenges”.

“It is not too late to help those who are living with the same fear she had to endure,” the MCPNG stated.

Human Rights Watch has stated PNG’s government has taken insufficient steps to address gender-based violence.

Described as an “emergency” which needs addressing in their 2015 report “Bashed Up: Family violence in Papua New Guinea”, domestic violence rates in PNG remain among the highest in the world and are rarely prosecuted.

• Funeral of Post-Courier journalist overshadowed by abuse allegations
• PNG journalist death sparks anger over violence against women
• Media Council of Papua New Guinea
• More PNG stories

West Papua has experienced a “significant aggravation” of the human rights situation in the past two years compared to previous years, says a new report from more than 40 faith-based and civil rights organisations.

“Reports by local human rights defenders describe an alarming shrinking of democratic space,” says the report.

“Although Indonesian President Joko Widodo pushed economic development and granted clemency to five long-term political prisoners, the police strictly limited even the most peaceful dissident political activities.”

READ MORE: Pacific Media Watch on Indonesia’s hit back at Oceania nations

The report says that Indigenous Papuans – particularly women – “continued to have a high risk of becoming victims of human rights violations.”

It adds that “racist attitudes toward West Papuans among the police and military, insufficient legal protection, the lack of proper law enforcement, inconsistent policy implementation and corruptive practices among government officials contributed to the impunity of security forces.”

Local journalists in West Papua also continued to face “intimidation and obstruction” from the security forces.

This is the fifth report of the International Coalition for Papua (ICP) covering events from January 2015 until December 2016.

Human rights analysis
More than 40 organisations in West Papua, Jakarta, and worldwide have brought their analysis on the human rights and conflict situation in West Papua together.

The executive summary of the 218-pages report explains how several human rights standards have deteriorated over the last two years.

The report is compiled by the International Coalition for Papua (ICP) and the German Westpapua-Netzwerk (WPN). The executive summary says:

“The years 2015 and 2016 were characterised by a significant aggravation of the human rights situation in West Papua compared to previous years. The term West Papua refers to the Indonesian easternmost provinces of ‘Papua’ and ‘Papua Barat’. Reports by local human rights defenders describe an alarming shrinking of democratic space.

“Although Indonesian President Joko Widodo pushed economic development and granted clemency to five long-term political prisoners, the police strictly limited even the most peaceful dissident political activities.

“Indigenous Papuans, particularly women, continued to have a high risk of becoming victims of human rights violations. Racist attitudes toward West Papuans among the police and military, insufficient legal protection, the lack of proper law enforcement, inconsistent policy implementation and corruptive practices amongst government officials contributed to the impunity of security forces.

“Government critics and activists faced legal prosecution with varying charges. Using a charge of treason (‘makar’) remained common against non-violent offenders.

Increasing ‘incitement’ charges
“West Papuan political activists also faced an increasing number of charges incitement or violence despite the non-violence of protest and almost all activism.

“The deterioration of the political and civil rights situation in West Papua during the past two years was most obvious in the sheer number of political arrests.

“Those arrests drastically increased to 1083 in 2015, and then quadrupled in 2016 to 5361 arrests, in tandem with growing political protest for self-determination.

“Almost all of the arrests came during peaceful protest in support of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP). In addition, the Indonesian government and the regional police in West Papua increasingly restricted the right to freedom of opinion and expression using official statements (Makhlumat) issued by the Papuan Regional Police in 2016.

“Local journalists in West Papua faced continued intimidation and obstruction from the security forces. In comparison to previous years, the number of reported cases against local journalists has slightly decreased throughout the reporting period 2015 and 2016.

“President Joko Widodo’s promise in May 2015, to make West Papua freely accessible to foreign journalists and international observers was not implemented. Foreign journalists were in an increasing number of cases prevented from entering West Papua or when permitted to enter, they faced obstruction, surveillance, intimidation and physical violence.

“International human rights organisations and humanitarian organisations such as the Inter­national Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) remained banned from freely accessing West Papua.

Threatened, obstructed
“Human rights defenders in West Papua had to work under fear of being monitored, threatened and obstructed by the security forces. The killing of well-known human rights defender Joberth Jitmau, marked the sad highlight of attacks against human rights defenders during these two years.

“The police termed Jitmau’s killing a traffic accident and did not conduct a criminal investigation. Jitmau’s case was a representative example of the widespread impunity in West Papua.

“Only in rare instances were security forces prosecuted in public or military trials. Two of the three cases of prosecution resulted in considerably low sentences for the perpetrators in view of the severity of the criminal offences.

“Security force members also continued to use torture and ill-treatment as a common response to political protest or incidents of alleged disturbance of public order. Extra-judicial killings occurred particularly often as an act of revenge or retaliation for violent acts or other non-violent interactions with members of the security forces.

“The situation with regard to economic, social and cultural rights in West Papua was stagnant. The quality of education in West Papua remained considerably low, due to poor management of the education system, inadequate competencies, high absence rates amongst teachers, and inadequate funding. (Less than 1 percent of Papua Province’s annual budget goes to education.)

“There is still no culturally appropriate curriculum in place, which is capable of improving the educational situation of indigenous Papuan children and of preserving local cultures.

“Health care and education remained in a devas­tating condition, far below the national average, despite the large amount of special autonomy funds that flow to the two administrative provinces Papua and Papua Barat.

Strong imbalance
“There is a strong imbalance in the fulfillment of minimum standards in terms of health, education, food and labor rights between the urban areas and the remote inland areas of West Papua.

“Indigenous Papuans, who mostly reside outside the urban centres, suffer the most of this imbalance. Both Papuan provinces are amongst the regions with the highest prevalence rate for HIV/AIDS infections and child mortality of any ‘Indonesian province’, while the quality of health services is alarmingly low.

“Insufficient equipment in rural health care institutions and a lack of adequate health monitoring and response mechanisms remained strikingly evident. These shortcomings were highlighted when a pertussis epidemic broke out in the remote highland regency of Nduga, killing least 51 children and three adults within a span of three months in late 2015. Malnutrition enabled the rapid spread of the epidemic.

“The case also mirrors the government’s growing challenge to guarantee indigenous Papuans right to food. Palm oil plantations and other agri­cultural mega-projects have led to the destruction of local food sources, livestock and access to clean drinking water.

“Cases of domestic violence are often settled in non-legal ways, which fail to bring justice for the victims and lack a deterrent effect for perpetrators. Women living with HIV/AIDS are particularly often facing discrimination and stigmatization.

“The very existence of West Papuans is threatened by the uncontrolled migration from other parts of Indonesia. This particularly applies to the urban centers where they have largely become a marginalised minority facing strong economic competition.

“In most rural areas, where indigenous Papuans are still the majority, government-promoted large-scale natural resource exploitation projects attract migrants and continue to cause severe environmental degra­dation as well as the destruction of live­ stock of indigenous communities.

“Govern­ment institutions continued to facilitate the interests of private Indonesian and foreign companies. This practice negatively impacts indigenous people’s right to their ancestral lands and resources as well as their right to determine their development.

“Resource extraction often means clearing large forest areas and polluting of water resources, thereby forcing indigenous communities to change their very way of life. Destruction of forests and hunting grounds as a life source puts an additional burden on women, in particular.”

• Read the full report here
• Banned West Papua independence petition handed to UN

The Cook Islands is part of a 12-nation research project to comprehensively map Pacific Islands journalism culture at a time of immense political, economic, technological and cultural change.

Part of the baseline research project entitled “Study of journalists, journalism culture and climate change reporting in 12 University of the South Pacific (USP) member countries”, the Cook Islands leg was conducted last week.

The high-powered research team includes Professor Folker Hanusch (University of Vienna), Professor David Robie (director of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology) and Dr Baljeet Singh, a specialist in social and economic survey methods at USP.

The researchers envisage that the study will provide media companies, journalism academics and policy makers a deeper appreciation of the worldviews and changes taking place in the professional orientation of Pacific journalists.

Research team leader and project manager Dr Shailendra Singh, journalism coordinator at USP in Suva, Fiji, was in the Cook Islands last week collecting data relevant to the research.

He said the news media sector in the Cook Islands had been co-operative and responded strongly to the survey.

Dr Singh said that in his time in the Cook Islands he had noted how the national news media faced many challenges in terms of human and technological capacity, but at the same time it was fairly robust and resourceful.

Committed media sector
“The media sector is driven by some very committed and technologically adept individuals investing personal time and funds for sometimes very little return. They see it as a hobby, a calling and a labour of love,” said Dr Singh.

Journalism, considered to be a crucial pillar of any democracy, was changing radically throughout the world, said Dr Singh.

He said rapid technological advancements and other influences, such as social media and citizen journalism were transforming the role, functions and very meaning of journalism.

Pacific news media had not been spared, even if the changes may be occurring at a slower pace, added Dr Singh.

“In this climate, the USP research seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of journalists’ professional views in order to better understand Pacific journalists and journalism.”

Factors include the conditions under which journalists operate, the kinds of pressures they face and how they might deal with them, and the social functions of journalism in a changing world.

“Such research is crucial during a time of major upheavals taking place within the institution of journalism globally and the Pacific news sector cannot be left behind during this history-making period,” said Dr Singh.

So far Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Tuvalu have been surveyed, with Fiji and Vanuatu to follow shortly.

Besides USP, the research has received funding from the United States Embassy in Suva (Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga, Tuvalu); the Australian government-sponsored Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (PACMAS), administered by Australian Broadcasting Corporation; and the Pacific Media Centre (Auckland University of Technology).

Rashneel Kumar is a Cook Islands News journalist and a graduate of the University of the South Pacific regional journalism programme.

• Pacific-wide media study aims to examine climate change

Pacific exchange journalists kicked off their two-week internship in New Zealand with a visit to the Pacific Media Centre.

Sponsored by the Pacific Cooperation Foundation (PCF), Shivika Mala, Linda Filiai and Joshua Lafoai will take an inside look at local media organisations during their stay.

Mala and Filiai from the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, along with Michelle Curran, project manager of PCF’s media programme were welcomed by Pacific Media Centre (PMC) director Professor David Robie.

“Kia ora and great to have you here with us,” he said.

Dr Robie then went on to explain the work the Pacific Media Centre does in the Asia-Pacific region, and its place within the university.

“We’re the university that specialises in the Pacific, a lot comes out of this tiny little place,” he said during this week’s visit.

Curran said: “Thanks for having us, the girls are looking forward to it and they’ve got their questions all ready for you. The best way to kick off their internship.”

Inside look
The award-winning students then joined Pacific Media Watch freedom project editor Kendall Hutt on a tour of the Auckland University of Technology led by TV and radio technician Scott Creighton, where they had an inside look at AUT’s School of Communication Studies’ media facilities.

The students explored the television studios, where they discovered the ins-and-outs of a green screen, and student radio station Static 88.1.

They also visited the Media Centre and spoke to Te Waha Nui web editor Natalie Brittan about the student newspaper and the number of journalism students at the university.

Curran told Asia Pacific Report while on the tour that the PMC served as the right opening for their internship.

“Every time we’ve been here the students have really enjoyed it, learnt a lot and just taken in the exceptional facilities AUT offers. It’s great to have that connect for the students coming from the Pacific,” she said.

Curran said the aim of the internship was to raise the media’s consciousness about the Pacific and in turn enable student journalists to learn about another country’s industry.

“It’s to create awareness about Pacific media, so New Zealand journalists will be more aware of what is going on in the Pacific and Pacific journalists coming into New Zealand will be more aware of how we do things here and hopefully learn things to take back to the Pacific,” she said.

Awareness of Pacific
This was also reflected by Mala and Filiai on PMC’s weekly radio programme Southern Cross.

Mala and Filiai told host Amanda Robinson their motivations behind applying for the internship. They both recognised the opportunity they had been given to take an inside look at New Zealand’s media industry.

“If we were to compare New Zealand to the Pacific, we are less fortunate, so we are so eager to take up this opportunity to experience, to learn and to share these experiences with our classmates and journalists in Tonga and the Pacific,” Filiai said.

Yesterday the team was working at Pacific Media Network, but will spend time with Tiki Lounge Productions, NZME, TVNZ and Tagata Pasifika over the course of their internship.

• Brandon Ulfsby, a final year Auckland University of Technology Bachelor of Communication Studies student journalist,  is on a two-week Pacific Cooperation Foundation internship in Samoa as part of the exchange. His first story is here.
• Pacific Cooperation Foundation internship
• PMC to host visiting Pacific exchange student journalists
• Pacific media internship offers chance to follow regional issues

The Pacific Media Centre will host three student journalists today in the opening session of a two-week attachment media programme sponsored and organised by the Auckland-based Pacific Cooperation Foundation.

>>> LISTEN TO LINDA AND SHIVIKA ON PMC’S SOUTHERN CROSS RADIO @95bFM TODAY

Students Linda Filiai and Shivika Mala, who were editors of University of the South Pacific’s award-winning student journalist newspaper Wansolwara, will be in New Zealand for two weeks, working with several media organisations to enhance their journalism skills, reports USP News.

They expect to be joined by Joshua Kirihua of PNG’s Divine Word University and Joshua Lafoai of the National University of Samoa journalism school.

This is a “once in a lifetime” opportunity, says Filiai.

“I am very proud to be part of this media internship. It will be an opportunity to develop a network with professional journalists, exchange ideas and to learn from one another.”

Mala says she applied for the internship in the hope of broadening her knowledge and skills and experience of how the New Zealand media industry works.

“I love listening to people’s stories because what may affect them, may affect us as well,” she says.

The pair say “this will further develop our skills, which will be helpful when we start work next year”.

Striking partnerships
Dr Shailendra Singh, coordinator of USP Journalism, says the internship is the outcome of efforts to strike partnerships and strategic alliances with organisations to help broaden student experiences and learning.

He says Mala and Filiai are top students who deserve the award.

Last year, Mala won the Fiji Times Award for the Best News Reporter while Filiai scooped the Communications Fiji Limited Best Radio Student Award.

Two New Zealand students will be going to the Pacific Islands, including AUT’s Brandon Ulfsby, who is off to Samoa on Sunday.

Next month, on his return to New Zealand, Ulfsby and a fellow New Zealand Pasifika student journalist at AUT, Hele Ikimotu, will embark on a media internship with the NZ Institute for Pacific Research organised by the PMC.

Last year, former Wansolwara editor Sonal Singh was selected to take part in the internship.

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie says he is pleased that the PMC has been able to give support to the initiative project since the beginning.

“For three years in a row we have had AUT Pacific student journalists selected for this exchange and it demonstrates the quality of our students,” he says.

Today, the exchange students will visit AUT’s state-of-the-art television studios, media centre and the PMC. They will also feature on the PMC’s weekly radio programme Southern Cross on Radio 95bFM.

• The Pacific Cooperation Foundation internship
• Pacific media internship offers chance to follow regional issues

Doctoral student Stephanie Sageo-Tapungu of Papua New Guinea tries out the green screen effect in Auckland University of Technology’s television studio today.

Auckland University of Technology has appointed a new head of the School of Communication Studies, the largest in New Zealand, the university has announced.

She is Professor Berrin Yanikkaya, currently professor in communication science at Yeditepe University in Istanbul, Turkey.

The acting dean of the Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies, Pro-Vice Chancellor Philip Sallis, said Professor Yanikkaya had an admirable record of teaching, curriculum development, research and management.

“She comes highly recommended for her leadership and ability to bring staff together in the pursuit of academic excellence. Among her experiences as an academic she has been a member of the Turkish National Curriculum Accreditation Authority and numerous professional community organisations.”

Professor Yanikkaya takes over the role as head of the School of​ Communications Studies from Associate Professor Alan Cocker who in July will take his long-overdue sabbatical leave.

Pro-Vice Chancellor Phillip Sallis said Dr Yanikkaya was chosen from a field of well-qualified and able applicants and went through two formal interviews and gave a presentation to the school and the appointments advisory committee.

She also met with the Vice-Chancellor and Deputy-Vice Chancellor as part of this process.

“Berrin stood out among the candidates for her energy of purpose, clarity of vision for the school and an obvious grasp of these issues and challenges it faces”, he said.

Professor Yanikkaya will begin her role in July. ​

AUT’s School of Communication Studies is a leading academic and media producer, publishing the news websites Asia Pacific Report and Te Waha Nui, and the SCOPUS-ranked research journal Pacific Journalism Review.

• AUT School of Communication Studies news

Climate change is at the heart of a unique regional study into journalism culture in the Pacific.

The study, focusing on journalism’s role in democracy amid cultural, economic, environmental, political and technological changes throughout the University of the South Pacific’s 12 member states, aims to assess journalists’ understanding and reportage of climate change.

“The goal is to assess journalists’ capacity for reporting climate change to help formulate approaches to training programmes in this area,” says USP’s senior journalism lecturer and programme leader Dr Shailendra Singh, the study’s project manager and one of its lead authors.

Climate change journalism
Researchers hope to learn how prepared journalists are in reporting climate change, which is one of the most imminent threats facing the Pacific.

Dr Singh says the media’s role in accurately conveying this threat will also be considered by the study.

“Journalists play a very important role in educating the population about the science of climate change, and how it may affect them in their daily lives.”

More importantly, the study is one of only a few to address the issue of climate change in the context of Pacific journalism, Dr Singh adds.

“This study will therefore contribute valuable knowledge about journalists’ understanding of climate change, allowing us to identify potential training requirements.”

The study, a partnership between the University of the South Pacific (USP), Pacific Islands’ News Association (PINA), Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and the Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (PACMAS), also aims to involve young researchers.

“Besides the lead researchers, we have a team of young USP tutors who are doing the field work and gathering data. This is part of their development. It’s part of capacity building for our upcoming academics and researchers.”

‘At our doorstep’
Eliki Drugunalevu, a teaching assistant in journalism at USP, is one of the researchers. He says having the opportunity to be involved in a project which focuses on climate change means a lot.

“Climate change is at our doorstep. And reporting, highlighting it is critical in telling the stories of people who are affected by climate change.

“Not only in that, but helping people, particularly people in influential places, such as policy makers, fully understand that every decision that they make has consequences to those that are on the ground.”

Drugunalevu, who works as both a research assistant and research coordinator for the study, says the regional project is unique in its focus on climate change because it focuses on the issue from a media, rather than scientific, perspective.

“People have this perception that doing research on climate has to do with the sciences – measuring the rise of the sea level, rainfalls and so on – but this project is quite different by looking at it from the media’s perspective and how much attention the media gives to climate change in a vulnerable region like ours.”

Drugunalevu explains he and his fellow researchers are attempting to grasp journalists’ levels of understanding in what he says is “actually dissecting a story that deals with climate change rather than just looking at it as another climate change story”.

He says the current trend on climate change is reporting it “as it is and then moving onto the next story”, which is alarming.

Greater recognition needed
“Climate change means loss of land. It means loss of livelihood. It means potential loss of identity. We’ve heard of stories of people being relocated from a place where they have been settled for generations.

“While it may not mean much to the outside world, to us and to those who experience this, it means the world to them having to move from a place they have called home for generations to a new place. It can quite be an overwhelmingly emotional experience having to witness it and read it as well.”

Drugunalevu and his colleagues would like to see an understanding of how journalists’ report climate change come out of the project, but also hope their findings encourage greater recognition of climate change on the political scale.

“Getting policy makers and people in influential places to recognise the role of the media and see the bigger picture and the impact of the decisions they make on the people on the ground and with regards to climate change is important.”

The study is expected to be completed within the next two years, with research on Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu carried out by the end of this year.

Research on Samoa and Tonga has already been completed.

Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt have been in Fiji for the Bearing Witness project. A collaborative venture between the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme, the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), the Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and documentary collective Te Ara Motuhenga, Bearing Witness seeks to provide an alternative framing of climate change, focusing on resilience and human rights.

That was one strange weekend Malcolm Turnbull just spent in Papua New Guinea on his first official visit, even if at first glance the running sheet looked typical enough.

The usual Aussie-prime-minister-in-PNG schedule was dusted off trotting out a tête-à-tête with the PNG PM, a Bomana-Kokoda experience and a business breakfast dominated by expats. Nothing new there.

But otherwise there were some bizarre deviations, including a mix-up which left the PNG media believing it hadn’t been invited to a Turnbull press conference.

As ABC PNG correspondent Erik Tlozek put it in a Facebook post:

“I am disappointed and embarrassed that my PNG media colleagues felt they were not allowed to attend this morning’s press conference with Malcolm Turnbull at Bomana.

“If Australia wants to show that its government is open to media scrutiny, surely it should welcome journalists to a presser held in their own country.”

Later SBS journalist Stefan Armbruster added to this by tweeting:

“Hear from sources [that] PNG journalists excluded from Turnbull presser post-Kokoda wreath-laying. [They] were told it’s an ‘Australian thing’.”

An Australian thing?

This was later rendered by New Zealand journalist Michael Field as:

“Some Australian journos now using Facebook to say sorry for the Whites-Only press briefing Turnbull had in PNG: Melanesians journos were excluded”

– not quite on the money but an understandable interpretation.

The Australian High Commission in PNG later apologised for what was described as

“a misunderstanding”.

As Radio New Zealand International’s Johnny Blades reported,

“the fact that only Australian journalists had access to Mr Turnbull during this leg says a lot about how Canberra conducts its business in PNG.”

Manus asylum seekers
Turnbull further raised the ire of Papua New Guineans and refugee support groups by sidling away from one of the key issues in the Australia-PNG relationship – the future of asylum seekers stranded on Manus Island.

He didn’t address the issue front on, preferring to use the evasive words, “one step at a time.”

This prompted Manus MP Ron Knight to tweet: “He hasn’t even the courtesy of meeting the Manus leaders or coming here to see himself the problem. No respect.”

Turnbull’s Immigration Minister Peter Dutton was not as reticent as his boss, airily telling PNG the refugees were its problem, not Australia’s,

This provoked a sharp rebuff from Transparency PNG’s gritty chairman Lawrence Stephens: “You haul people illegally into PNG. Now they become PNG’s problem? Come on!”

Dutton doubled down with what read like a “stuff you PNG” statement: “We’ll be withdrawing the assets from Manus Island. We are not going to have a detention centre there for other uses. We’re not going to have facilities being used or repurposed. The centre will be dismantled.”

So there, PNG. We’ll trash all the stuff we gave you and go home.

Turnbull had earlier run into criticism about the timing of his trip from former PNG prime minister Sir Mekere Morauta.

‘Dangerous position’
Morauta said Turnbull had placed himself in a “dangerous position”, especially “with the prospect of a new government just around the corner”.

Turnbull dismissed the complaint, saying the timing of his visit was “entirely unrelated” to any domestic political events in PNG and that the election was a matter for the people of PNG “absolutely”.

Before departing Port Moresby for India, Turnbull also was forced to deflect questions about Papua New Guinea’s poor economic performance.

Asked if it was a concern to Australia that the PNG government was “broke”, Turnbull said this was a matter for the PNG government.

Not entirely the case, though, as just a couple of weeks ago Australia effectively refused to bail out PNG who had asked that the half billion dollars of tied Australian aid be used instead to prop up its budget.

Australia had said no.

Oh, and a footnote to that business breakfast with Malcolm Turnbull. Christine Aiwa – executive assistant to the managing director of the Post-Courier – paid K900 for four senior journalists to attend.

“But the waiters were instructed not to serve our journalists any breakfast; one was only given an orange juice,” she wrote on Facebook.

“That’s discriminating. I will not stop until I get the full refund of K900 back, and I want an apology.”

It was, all in all, quite a weekend.

Keith Jackson blogs at PNG Attitude where this column was first published. It is republished with the permission of the author.

Under a multi-year agreement starting tomorrow, the British public broadcaster BBC will receive edited live video feeds from AFPTV for use on all its platforms – television channels, websites and mobile applications as well as radio for audio production.

AFPTV, the video news division of the French news agency AFP, has developed over 15 years into a major international player with a monthly English-language production of 2500 edited videos and 200 live videos from around the world.

The BBC already receives AFP’s photo and English, French and Arabic text news services.

Jonathan Munro, BBC’s head of newsgathering, said: “We are delighted to be working even more closely with AFP in the years ahead. The BBC’s coverage of the world will benefit enormously from the growing firepower of AFP, including its strengths in regions which are underserved by the mainstream media.

“We hope that the BBC’s new relationship with AFP will prove enduring and positive for both organisations.”

Emmanuel Hoog, chairman and chief executive of AFP, described the partnership as “an emblematic recognition of everyone’s efforts to make video a top priority”.

Investment strategy
He added: “It encourages us in our long-term investment strategy to extend and consolidate AFPTV’s unique positioning in Europe and worldwide.”

AFPTV has developed rapidly since its launch in France in 2002.

It started international news production in 2007 and then began a process of substantial expansion on every continent from 2011.

AFPTV is now at the forefront in covering top world news as well as offering its clients in-depth features, file images and stockshots in six languages.

Since 2015, it has successfully developed live video production. Journalists working for AFPTV have notably won Rory Peck awards for coverage of the migrant crisis in Greece (Will Vassilopoulos – 2015-2016); rebel-held Aleppo (Zein Al-Rifai – 2014-15); and civil war in the Central African Republic (Pacome Pabandji – 2013-14).

Besides the BBC, AFPTV has some 300 clients, a number that is steadily increasing. The further development of AFPTV is a strategic priority for the agency.

• AFPTV on YouTube

The Storyboard and Spasifik Magazine prize went to a young Indian engineer-turned-journalist, Ami Dhabuwala, for her role in the Bearing Witness climate change project in Fiji and as part of a team covering diversity at the World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC) conference in Auckland last year.

The Storyboard was presented to her last night by PMC advisory board chair Associate Professor Camille Nakhid and the Spasifik prize by editor-in-chief Innes Logan.

Recently graduated, Dhabuwala takes up a job at the Greymouth Star next week.

She appealed for more international students to be taken into the AUT journalism course.

“Every journalist should be able to expand his or her horizon to be a global journalist,” she said, adding there should be a wider acceptance of other cultures – “we need more international students who don’t want to be restricted to Kiwi or any regional media.

“Many times, I felt like an alien.”

‘Giving me hope’
Dhabuwala praised staff, facilities and classmates but said more diversity was needed. She also praised the staff at the Pacific Media Centre for “giving me hope”.

Pacific Media Watch editor Kendall Hutt won the Radio New Zealand International Award for the top Asia-Pacific Journalism Studies student.

This was presented by RNZ journalist Alex Perrottet, himself a former Pacific Media Watch editor.

Hutt described her RNZI award as an “honour” and she thanked the radio station.

“I would also like to thank Professor David Robie and Del Abcede. Without your passion for the Asia-Pacific region, and the work the Pacific Media Centre does, I wouldn’t be standing here today,” she said.

Hutt described how in one semester the postgraduate Asia-Pacific Journalism studies course had “really opened my eyes to diversity”.

Travel posters
She said the region was not all about the images on travel posters, because “behind these lie climate change, media freedom issues and human rights violations”.

Julie Cleaver won the School of Communication Studies Award for excellence in communication theory.

Cleaver and Hutt head for Fiji next month on the Bearing Witness climate change project.

A Pacific student, Hulu Tu’inukuafe, won the FCB Change Agency Award for digital media excellence.

Postgraduate scholarships were awarded to a diverse range of students:  Shirin Brown, Jayakrishnan Sreekumar, Rebecca Trelease and Chao Zhang.

• Full list of award winners

By Quintina Naime in Port Moresby

Papua New Guinea’s famous radio legend, Roger Hau’ofa, has died with courage, dignity and grace, says daughter Michelle Hau’ofa.

Michelle Hau’ofa spoke out following her father’s death at the weekend at Iare village in Kairuku District, Central Province.

The late Hau’ofa, originally from Tonga, was 73 years old and had been broadcasting in Papua New Guinea for more than 50 years.

READ MORE: Family plans Roger Hau’ofa Kidney Centre

Michelle Hau’ofa said he had passed on peacefully on Saturday surrounded by family at his village home.

“He was as strong as a lion until the very end and went out on his own terms with courage, dignity and grace,” she said.

“Dad had suffered for more than a year now and had spent a month in intensive care at the Pacific International Hospital.

“In the end, he was just tired of the needles and tubes as it was a very painful experience for him.

“He said he didn’t want to die in the hospital and he asked to stop all treatment and he wanted to go home to mum’s village at Iare,” Michelle Hau’ofa said.

She said her late father wanted to spend his last days there so they consulted with the family and all agreed that if that’s what he wanted, then that is what they would support.

Roger Hau’ofa was flown by a Helifix helicopter to Iare Village on Thursday, March 2, at 4.30pm.

“He’s been in pain for such a long time and suffered weeks of being in agony and just wanted to be out of hospital.

“He was as strong as a lion and went peacefully on his own terms where he wanted to be, surrounded by family and by those who loved him and those that he loved.

“Like the hero and the great man he is, he did it on his own terms,” Michelle Hau’ofa said tearfully.

The body of the late Hau’ofa is now at the Dove Funeral Home and details of the funeral arrangements will be announced later this week.

Roger Hau’ofa was brother of the late sociologist and writer Epeli Hau’ofa, founder of the Oceania Centre of Arts and Culture at the University of the South Pacific.

Quintina Naime is a journalist with Loop PNG.

In Papua New Guinea, the Post-Courier featured a front-page story with the headline “PNG tops world in ‘porn’ search” on January 17. In previous years, there have also been similar stories asserting that PNG beats all other countries when it comes to internet searches for pornography.

For any nation, this accolade would be unwelcome. As PNG prides itself on being a Christian country with strong traditional cultures and values, coupled with tough laws banning importation of pornographic magazines and movies, the headline has produced consternation.

The ruling political party in PNG has released a statement and the competing newspaper has also published a response. Both reactions argue that the Post-Courier’s front page story is inaccurate.

The front-page article included the assertion that 100 percent of all internet searches in Western Highlands Province are for the term ‘porn’. Clearly, not every internet search in that province includes this term.

So, what is going on? My blog examines the source of the newspaper story and assesses its credibility. It also discusses internet access trends in PNG.

The source of the media reports is Google Trends. This is an interactive website run by Google, probably the world’s most popular internet search engine, which presents information about the searches that are conducted through Google.

For instance, a user can type in the word “car” and see information about how popular the search term is over time and also where it is popular, comparing regions, countries and cities.

First glance
At first glance, the site appears to suggest that 100 percent of all searches conducted using Google in the United Kingdom feature the word “car”. But this is not possible. There’s no way that all of the people in Wales, Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom only ever use Google when they want to find out information about different kinds of motor vehicles.

Instead, the way it works is that the figures represent rankings, not percentages. The Post-Courier’s story was misleading in that it included percentage symbols alongside bar graphs. As Google Trends explains: “100 is the location with the most popularity as a fraction of total searches in that location”.

In other words, the United Kingdom had more searches during the time period for the word “car” compared to other countries, as a percentage of the total number of searches, which would also have included many other words, including “weather”, “news”, “school”, “restaurant”, “bank” and more.

Another example is the term “Highlands”. When inserted into Google Trends, bar graphs appear showing 75 for PNG. Again, this does not mean that 75 percent of the Google searches conducted by people in PNG are for this word.

Instead, it means that compared to other countries – where, for example, the term “mountains” might be more commonly used – the term “Highlands” is searched for fairly frequently in PNG.

Now, turning to the term “porn”, when looking at trends over the past five years, PNG is not listed in the top 25 countries. In fact, when the author visited the Google Trends website shortly after the Post-Courier story was published, it proved difficult to replicate the Post-Courier’s results.

I changed the time period to the past 12 months and the results revealed that once again PNG did not feature in the top 25 nations. I generated similar results for other time periods, as is shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Country rankings: Google Trends enquiries on 26 January 2017 using the term ‘porn’

Difficult to check
It’s important to note that the Post-Courier’s findings were not easy to duplicate and that in fact PNG does not feature in the top 25 listing for most time periods. Google Trends results are constantly being updated in real time and therefore it is very difficult to check or verify the Post-Courier’s story.

In addition, the tool only presents the top 25 countries – therefore it is not possible to determine a country’s actual ranking if it does not appear in the top 25.

It’s also helpful to point out that the size of a country’s population does not impact upon the ranking, as the ranking refers to the frequency of use of a word, for instance “porn”, as compared to all other words inserted into Google in that place, including “school”, “highway”, “buai”, “election”, “Highlands”, “Australia”, etc.

In other words, the word “Highlands” is used in PNG more often as a percentage of all searches, compared to the word “mountains”. It’s also worth noting that some users may have blocked their location, meaning that Google cannot tell where they are based, and this would of course make any data regarding locations of searches somewhat inaccurate.

Western Highlanders might also be curious to know how their province rates. While the Post-Courier showed a graph suggesting that the Western Highlands is the province with the most searches for the term “porn” versus other words used, compared to other provinces of PNG, the results are inconsistent.

As is shown in Table 2, Western Highlands Province (WHP) moves around the rankings a great deal, depending on the time period in question. For instance, in the past 7 days, WHP didn’t feature at all in the top ten provinces, whereas it’s in the top position when looking at the last 5 years.

When focusing on other provinces, their positions also move around a great deal. In short, the author feels that the rankings vary so much when comparing provinces in PNG as to be meaningless.

Table 2: Western Highlands Province (WHP): Google Trends enquiries on 26 January 2017 using the term ‘porn’

Note: Google Trends results are only showing for the first four provinces in the “past 30 days” time period, for the first eight provinces in the ‘past 4 hours’ category and for the first five provinces in the “past hour” time period.

Significant improvement
In the last couple of years there has been a significant improvement in the accessibility of the internet in PNG, due to mobile network upgrades and expansions, as well as availability of cheap smartphone handsets.

While most people in PNG still do not have access to electricity, many do now live within mobile network coverage. The majority of this coverage is second generation (2G) which is suitable only for voice calls and text messaging.

But around urban centres, both Digicel and bmobile Vodafone now offer third generation (3G) service, which can be used to surf the internet, correspond through email and use social media platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp.

In Port Moresby and Lae, Digicel offers 4G service. Telikom PNG is in the process of launching a new, digital mobile phone service which will aim to compete with the other players.

All these changes have meant that a growing number of people in PNG are accessing the internet for the first time. In particular, the number of Facebook users based in PNG continues to rise. Interest in and use of Facebook is fuelled by mobile phone companies offering special promotions through which Facebook use is either free or very cheap.

Nonetheless, many people in PNG still use basic handsets and rarely access the internet, if ever.

In short, this context means that many of the internet users in PNG have only had internet access for a year or two. As people in PNG are among the latest in the world to gain access to the internet, they may be unaware of the range of activities or kinds of searches that they could undertake through this medium.

Alarmist reports not helpful
Publication of alarmist, misleading reports suggesting that online porn consumption is sky-high in PNG is not going to help to strengthen understanding about the medium or how to use it.

Having examined the recent Post-Courier article and the Google Trends website, it’s now clear that the Post-Courier article was incorrect and that PNG does not necessarily rank highly for internet porn searches.

The assertion in the newspaper’s sub-heading that “almost all Papua New Guineans look up the word ‘porn’” is not supported by the evidence. It also seems plain that any comparison of provinces within PNG is unhelpful.

Even if patterns could be determined in the Google Trends material, given limited internet access and use by most people across PNG, it would be unwise to draw conclusions regarding how provinces compare to one another.

Further research will be required to unpack whether Google Trends does convey some useful data. Academic research would also be valuable in order to learn about the internet use of groups of people in PNG.

Amanda H A Watson is a lecturer in Public Policy at the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG), based in Port Moresby under the UPNG-ANU partnership. She is also a visiting fellow with the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program at the Australian National University (ANU). This article was first published on the Development Policy Centre’s blog DevPolicy and is republished here with permission.

Media freedom is everyone’s freedom. We can’t take it for granted.

My education in the challenges of reporting the news began in a hurry. I got my first threatening lawyer’s letter less than half an hour after sitting down at my desk. The next day, I found myself at the receiving end of an angry harangue from someone whose name had just appeared on our front page. He accused me of sensationalising the news just to sell papers.

It’s a common insult, and one that many journalists learn to wear like a badge of honour. You simply can’t report the news responsibly without upsetting people. If you’re going to speak truth to power, if you’re going to confront society’s challenges, if you’re simply going to tell it as it is… you’ve got to be willing to make people uncomfortable.

Back in May last year, I gave a talk on Media Freedom Day. I described a news reporter as “the honest friend who tells you ‘yeah, your butt does look big in that.’ He’s the friend who stands between you and that bully and says, ‘You don’t have the right to speak to her like that!’ And then turns to you and says, ‘And neither do you.’

“The reporter is the friend that tells you what your other friends are saying about you. Whether you want to hear it or not.

“The reporter is the friend who tells you what you did was wrong, and who still visits you in jail. They don’t hate you when you don’t agree; they don’t like you just because you do.”

Headline shock, good news or bad
I ended with a realisation:

“It never struck me until I started working at a newspaper just how it felt for people to see their name in the headline. Good news or bad, it’s a shock.”

Good news or bad. It’s not easy being the centre of attention. The lesson really landed when friends and colleagues of mine were faced with misfortune, and I found our relationship tested by my duty to put my personal feelings aside and respect the public’s right to know.

If it hadn’t been for the example set by the Vanuatu Daily Post over the years, I would have fewer friends today than when I started. Happily, the opposite is true. Thanks to the trailblazing work of Marc Neil-Jones and the dozens of fearless journalists whose blood, sweat and tears have graced these pages, every fair-minded, reasonable person in this country accepts that the news should challenge us.

As long as it’s fair, that is. This is the challenge that keeps us awake at night, the thing that drives us to re-litigate—again and again—the means by which we prepared our stories, how we sourced them, who we talked to, what we can fairly say.

We don’t always get it right. That’s a statistical impossibility. And reporting in Vanuatu, a notoriously information-starved environment, the challenges are often immense.

At the end of March last year, I wrote: “Access to information is critical to a healthy society, and when it works, its benefits are crystal-clear.”

And later in the same piece: “Vanuatu has never lacked for communication, in every kitchen, in every bar and nakamal, in the cess of social media, in the press and on the airwaves. Some say there’s too much of it. I don’t; I just think it’s often ill-informed.

“Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if we could finally talk about what we actually know?”

Getting the facts straight
Getting the facts straight is a challenge for everyone here in Vanuatu. It makes decision-making difficult, and our understanding is often driven as much by instinct and bitter experience than actual data.

The challenge is even greater in the media. If we are to maintain the trust of our reading audience, especially in the face of a cynical global campaign to discredit the news and its purveyors, we have to work harder than anyone else. We have to scrupulously cleave to the Media Code of Conduct. We have to bend over backwards to ensure that our stories are fair, that they are as complete as they can reasonably be, and—most importantly of all—we have to be guided by the facts.

The current tidal wave of cynical detachment from events is being driven by unprincipled people in positions of power—and in the media itself. It’s a matter of great shame to me that some of my colleagues would be willing to allow pettiness and partisan affiliation to define their portrayal of the facts.

Shortly after starting work at the Daily Post, I tried to draw a distinction between scepticism, the stock in trade of any self-respecting journalist, and cynicism: “A cynic thinks he knows all the answers already, and often has to be dragged kicking and screaming toward the truth.

“A sceptic, on the other hand, doesn’t quite trust anything to be true. Not even her own knowledge. A sceptical approach to social media is nothing less than a survival tool. Above all, it’s the only way to be fair about things.

“A sceptic doesn’t speak beyond her own knowledge. A famous novel by Robert Heinlein has a character whose job it is to be a Fair Witness. Asked what colour the house in front of her was, she replied, ‘It’s white on this side.’

“That is the kind of healthy scepticism that we should be applying to every information source. We should question, and we should not take the answers on faith. We should fairly evaluate both good and bad.

“It’s neither useful nor healthy always to assume the worst, or to trust anything based only on someone’s say-so. Evidence matters, no matter where it points.”

Sense of human decency
It gives me comfort, therefore, to note how the Vanuatu public’s engagement with facts, and its abiding sense of human decency is successfully holding back the tide of cynicism, character assassination and lying innuendo that has washed over more ‘developed’ countries.

At the end of last year, I noted that “We are by nature a gossipy, jealous, petty and spiteful species. It’s just how our herd mentality expresses itself. We are also empathic and quick to unite in the face of a threat.

“Media organisations know this. Some governments and politicians know this. And whether motivated by greed or lust for power, they are willing to leverage that knowledge to the fullest extent.

“In the right hands, sensational fictionalising gives us The Grapes of Wrath and It’s A Wonderful Life. It gives us Game of Thrones as an allegory of a society breaking down into anarchy. In the wrong hands, it gives us American cable news, the Fiji Sun, PNG’s Post-Courier and an actual descent into anarchy.

“Vanuatu, on the other (other) hand, has somehow managed to maintain a balance between emotion and respect for human dignity. In spite of numerous loud complaints—and a few vividly noticeable exceptions—we manage to maintain a relatively decent sense of decorum in our discussion groups. And we do it in the face of concerted efforts to rile people up.

“The Daily Post—and I personally—have been defamed in social media. The good name of our newspaper has been tarnished by people ranging from former Prime Ministers to basement dwelling nobodies. That just comes with the territory. We deserve to be held to a higher standard, and when—not if—we get something wrong, it has to be noted loudly and visibly. It’s a basic responsibility for those who report the news.

“And we’re happy to see that Vanuatu’s online community is showing the same reputability. While scurrilous accusations and petty, ill-informed comments are still rife, what matters is how they’re received. Nearly every time an accusation is made, the poster is challenged either to provide proof or to remove their post. Fake news is outed almost as quickly as it appears.”

State of Vanuatu media healthy
The state of the media in Vanuatu is healthy. And its health can be directly attributed to the particular amalgam of fearless confrontation and respect for human dignity that has been the hallmark of the Daily Post since its first print run.

We have a great deal still do to. Media freedom and healthy public discourse are organic things. They are landscape, not architecture. They need to be tended, respected and protected from erosion over time.

It gives me immense pleasure and pride to say: So far, so good.

With a generous application of blood, toil, sweat and tears, the next 5000 issues will support and sustain a reputable, respectful and fearless media just as well as the first 5000 have.

It’s an honour to be part of this team.

Dan McGarry is media director of the Vanuatu Daily Post; Royson Willie is the editor.

• Vanuatu Daily Post marks 5000 issues

On 24 November 2016, the Vanuatu Parliament unanimously passed an Act tabled by Prime Minister Charlot Salwai on the right to information.

The Act will provide for the guarantee of the right to information of all persons in Vanuatu.

The MAV described the RTI as “a ‘home-grown’ RTI – a major development and achievement not only for Vanuatu’s growing media industry but for the Vanuatu government also”.

In a statement, MAV said: “MAV understands that it takes many years for some countries in the world to have RTI. However, MAV is so grateful that the government can acknowledge the very important benefit of RTI and to provide all the necessary support for it.”

“This newly passed legislation will enable the people of Vanuatu access to government information, except information that is classified as ‘state secret’.

“It will also help government officers to keep records of government information… that [will] empower people to make decisions in the future so they can actively participate and contribute effectively to the development of the nation.”

In the lead up to the drafting of the Act, nationwide community consultations were conducted by Transparency International Vanuatu (TIV) to inform citizens of the Act and how it would impact on society as a law. TIV spent a year hosting public forums about the RTI policy in communities and schools throughout the islands of Vanautu, encouraging people to ask their MPs to vote for the Act.

The IFJ said: “The passing of the RTI Act in Vanuatu is a significant milestone in this country’s history. Public access to information is crucial for democracy. Enshrined in law, this will ensure that the Vanuatuan media will be able to report more accurately and responsibly on government activities, and that the public will be better equipped to engage in democratic processes.”

International Federation of Journalists

Thirty-three of New Zealand’s most senior editors have urged the Commerce Commission to rethink its plan to reject the proposed NZME-Fairfax merger, reports The New Zealand Herald.

They are at loggerheads with a group of 11 former editors who say the Commerce Commission got it right.

The current editors, all in senior roles at both companies, say the commission has “misinterpreted the state of New Zealand journalism” and believe a merger is the best option to sustain quality journalism.

They say that editorial independence would not be lost under a merger – it is “at the core of what we do”.

The editors have also addressed concerns that plurality of voice would be lost.

“Ensuring that a diversity of views, perspectives, experiences and issues are covered is an editor’s most fundamental task. It is our privilege and responsibility, not the job of shareholders,” their open letter said, published in full in the Weekend Herald.

The editors say rejecting a merger will not solve the real issue: the stability and sustainability of the business that funds journalism.

“We believe – no, we know – that the rapid dismantling of local newsrooms and journalism at scale in this country is inevitable if this merger does not proceed.”

Opposed go ahead
On Friday, a group of 11 former daily and Sunday newspaper editors said they backed the commission’s preliminary view that a merger should not go ahead.

“Though we acknowledge that such a merger is seen by some of us as a pragmatic response to the singular challenges that newspapers face, we all accept that the destruction of great mastheads and all that they have stood for at the heart of our communities since New Zealand settlement cannot possibly enhance content – it can only diminish it,” said the former editors, including Radio NZ media commentator Dr Gavin Ellis, Tim Pankhurst, Suzanne Carty and Suzanne Chetwin.

“Newspapers – across their print and digital sites – have been subject to waves of redundancies that have seen experienced staff culled, a severe loss of institutional knowledge and a pandering to the lowest common denominator…

“At the same time television has all but abandoned current affairs and our public discourse is increasingly glib.”

The open letter of current editors

The empires strike back: Media merger partners push their point in public

‘Atenisi Institute’s academic dean Dr Michael Horowitz has joined the Pacific Media Centre this month as visiting research fellow and the Tongan university plans to establish a media school on its second campus next year.

Dr Horowitz holds US postgraduate degrees in social science from the New School in New York and the College of Public Affairs at Oregon’s Portland State University.

His analyses of US politics and culture have appeared in the Village Voice, Playboy, and the Psychiatric Times, among other periodicals, while academic articles and reviews have been regionally published in Sites, Journal of Pacific History and Journal of Pacific Affairs.

This week he delivered a seminar with AUT’s Institute of Public Policy on the impact of businessman and reality television magnate Donald Trump being elected as US President-elect earlier this month on democracy in his home country.

Under the pen name V.O. Blum, he authored the speculative novella DownMind (2013), which was favourably reviewed by the Listener soon after publication by Steam Press in Wellington.

Since 2015, Dr Horowitz has directed the university at ‘Atenisi Institute in Tonga, which is planning to establish a media academy on its second campus in the ‘Isileli district of Nuku’alofa.

The academy would train journalists, cinematographers, and thespians, among other talent, for media careers in Western Polynesia.

Part of Dr Horowitz’ agenda at PMC is to recruit specialists here in New Zealand to serve on the academy’s board prior to its launch.

PMC director Professor David Robie, who is currently on sabbatical, welcomed Dr Horowitz, saying: “We are fortunate to have a Pacific academic of the calibre of Dr Horowitz with us and we look forward to working with ‘Atenisi in the future.”

Dr Horowitz will be at AUT’s PMC from the middle of this month until early February 2017.

‘Atenisi: Six terms of reference for an Athens in the Pacific

People stories
CNN Philippines editor Jose Maria Carlos says more “people stories” need to be told in the media to bring better interest and awareness to climate change.

“That is identifying families or individuals who have done something to deal with the impact of climate change. Whether it’s flooding, planting new types of crops that are resilient to the impacts of climate change, or simply moving out from dangerous areas to new locations.

“Your viewers are people, and they’re interested in people. If you use that approach first, then you can put in the hard stuff like statistics,” Carlos told Asia Pacific Report.

Carlos quoted from the Philippines Climate Change Commission which reported climate change awareness was high but the depth of understanding was lacking.

Local dialects
He said scientific terms and language barriers are part of the problem.

“You can’t have complex terms in your story, news has to be understood by all types of people,” Carlos said.

“If you are targeting fishermen or families in the coastal areas in the Philippines you won’t use English, you have to use their dialect so they will understand what climate change is all about and how they can deal with it.”

Youth voice
The head of media and communications at the National University of Samoa (NUS), Misa Vicky Lepou, talked to Asia Pacific Report about the importance of having the youth voice at the forefront of the issue.

“They are the future leaders of the [media] industry and the country,” Lepou says.

“Having that new voice in the media, they would of course progress this and take this to the next generation.”

Communication lecturer Dr Hermin Indah Wahyuni of Gadja Mada University in Indonesia encouraged young journalists to inspire their communities.

“They can do this by observing and offering them refreshing insights on climate change,” she says.

“Always offer new perspectives, irritate the society in a positive way and always rejuvenate the issue.

“Only media can keep society on their toes.”

Listen to TJ Aumua’s full audio podcast on the Pacific Media Centre’s SoundCloud channel.

Journalism education is challenged by issues in all regions of the world and the South Pacific is no different. At the 4th World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC), held at the Auckland University of Technology this week, four educators from different countries in the Pacific put forward their issues and challenges.

To set the tone for the session, panel chair Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre, showed a “citizen media” video clip of police opening fire on students at the University of Papua New Guinea last month, wounding at least 23.

PNG: Traumatised
Emily Matasororo, journalism and public relations strand leader at the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) gave some insights into the incident.

She said the majority of students in UPNG come from rural backgrounds and are trying to get into tertiary education to support their families, tribes and communities in search of a better life.

“I was there among the students when the police opened fire and I was really traumatised by that,” Matasororo said.

The students had burnt newspapers in front of the campus gate because they thought the media was taking sides and promoting the government’s agenda.

Matasororo said one of the student leaders told her that they had seen newspaper reports and found them “shallow and biased”.

“For me that was a very strong statement coming from a student leader,” Matasororo said.

Fiji: Home grown media
Dr Shailendra Singh, head of journalism at the University of South Pacific (USP), highlighted the lack of journalism training in the region, saying the situation was “critical”.

He said the Pacific faced major threats like climate change, overfishing and corruption on a grand scale.

“There is lack of support throughout the region for journalism education and for tertiary teaching in journalism,” Dr Singh said.

Dr Singh expressed his concern over the many expatriates that are teaching journalism in the Pacific.

“[It’s important to have] home grown media educators who understand the terrain and also have a stake in it.”

Giving advice to journalism lecturers, he said: “Educators should take up research topics for the sake of their own intellectual and professional development and enhance teaching through their research.

“USP is encouraging a lot of research, including with cash incentives and opportunities to attend conferences if you publish material.

“Cross-discipline research with people of other universities can also work wonders,” he said.

Samoa: Bridge the gap
Misa Vicky Lepou, head of journalism at the National University of Samoa (NUS), said answers were needed to “bridge the gap” between the media industry and journalism education.

“Another important requirement is building trust between the media and the community. I wonder if the community respects media as a honourable profession?” she asked the audience.

According to Misa, Samoan media outlets need a lot of training in ethics.

Vanuatu: Work in progress
Charlie David Mandavah, course coordinator of journalism at the Vanuatu Institute of Technology (VIT), said although the success rate of the course was high, the school lacked qualified trainers.

“There is a success rate of 60 percent of students finding jobs in the media industry.

But we haven’t been able to find qualified trainers or journalists to take up the role of teaching and the evolution of the course remains a work in progress.”

Other issues Mandavah highlighted was the “fraught” relationship between the media and the government in Vanuatu, computer illiteracy which leaves students unprepared for the real world, and the “subdued” role of females, meaning they often lacked confidence to ask the hard questions.

For years, journalism education and training in the Pacific has relied on donor-funded short courses and expatriate media educators.

But in recent times, this has been changing with the growth of more journalism schools at both universities and technical institutes and more homegrown academically qualified staff and proliferating research programmes.

These changes have been reflected with the establishment of the new advocacy group Media Educators Pacific (MeP) chaired by Misa Vicky Lepou of the National University of Samoa (NUS).

This body has a mission to “promote and deliver the highest professional standards of training, education and research in media and journalism relevant to the Pacific and beyond”.

In a region, where the news media and journalism education have been forced to confront major hurdles such as military coups (Fiji), ethnic conflict (Solomon Islands) and two rival governments and more recently the stand-off between students and the government climaxing in the police opening fire on students on June 8 (Papua New Guinea), along with critical development issues such as climate change and resources degradation, what are the challenges ahead for teaching journalists?

Some of the issues that might be considered:

• Academic freedom in a journalism context
• Political pressures on journalism schools
• Ethics in news media and on campus – the paradoxes?
• Bias in the industry work place
• Court reporting and journalism accuracy
• Digital challenges for media education
• Media education and censorship
• Qualification and resource constraints at both TVETs and universities
• Drain of quality j-graduates to NGOs because of low industry pay

Chair: David Robie, Pacific Media Centre, AUT (New Zealand)

Panelists: Shailendra Singh: University of the South Pacific (Fiji)

Misa Vicky Lepou: President of the Media Educators Pacific (MeP) , and head of journalism at the National University of Samoa (Samoa)

Emily Matasororo: University of Papua New Guinea (Port Moresby, PNG)

Charlie David Mandavah: Vanuatu Institute of Technology (Vanuatu)

Responder: Irene Manarae (University of the South Pacific)

Saturday, 9-10.30am, WG126, Auckland University of Technology

• Live streaming link

They are both at the 4th World Journalism Education Congress (WEC) meeting at Auckland University of Technology.

Dr Maslog is chairman of the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre in Manila and Dr Wahyuni is Head of the Masters in Media and Communication Science programme at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta.

AUT Pacific Media Centre photographer Del Abcede took the pictures.

Asia NZ Foundation team

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Media experts from around the Pacific region held a series of discussion panels at the preconference leading up to the 4th World Journalism Education Congress held at the Auckland University of Technology this week. They spoke to audiences about the media challenges in their homeland in hope to raise the quality of the Fourth Estate in the South Pacific.

Pitfalls of PNG coverage
The president of Papua New Guinea’s media council highlighted ongoing challenges facing the government and media educators in the panel discussion.

In touching on the challenges to journalism education in Papua New Guinea, Alexander Rheeney, also the editor-in-chief of the Post-Courier, addressed pitfalls in the reportage of the shooting of several University of Papua New Guinea students by police last month.

Rheeney said the reportage was a question of quality from the media and he highlighted the need for investigative reporting.

“It has been a good wake-up call for the industry and we need to pull up our socks.”

Rheeney’s comments come after this week’s “twist” made by the Supreme Court, ordering Parliament reconvene to vote on the no-confidence motion lodged against Prime Minister Peter O’Neill regarding allegations of corruption

Media reports say O’Neill remains confident he will survive the motion scheduled for this Friday.

Rheeney also touched on challenges facing journalism educators in Papua New Guinea, namely the flow-on effects from a “drastic” decline in the quality of high school graduates over the past 20 years in areas such as literacy.

Anonymous source risks
Solomon Star reporter, Eddie Osifelo, talked about the challenges faced by local newspapers publishing anonymous sources in their stories.

According to Osifelo,  journalists are forced to do stories on anonymous sources because government officials do not want their names published as they fear their job might be at risk.

He pointed out that as many as 133 stories with anonymous sources were published in two big Solomon Island newspapers between the periods of October and December 2014.

Osifelo said some of the ways articles had referred to anonymous sources were, “close sources”, “eyewitness” or an “insider”.

“In certain kinds of stories, informants would not talk unless they are assured of anonymity,” Osifelo said.

He explained politicians and individuals did not want to see anonymous sources appearing on stories because it questioned the credibility and ethics of journalists.

But he added that there was no Freedom of Information law in the Solomon Islands that enabled media to access confidential information from the government.

The Solomon Star and Island Sun have been faced with many challenges ranging from legal threats, compensation, harassment and court battles because of publishing anonymous sources in their stories.

He said media would still continue to rely on anonymous sources in years to come if nothing was done to improve the situation.

Digital Divide
Maria Sagrista, a lecturer at Divine Word University, gave insights into the digital divide and its effects on journalism education in Papua New Guinea.

“There are 350,000 Facebook users in PNG,” Sagrista said.

However, they are lacking content related skills that include ability to access information needed and efficient use of these platforms to achieve specific targets or solutions. she explained.

“Some tertiary institutes do not have free internet access for students. They have limited availability of computers and their academic staff admit they have no experience with the internet.”

Sagrista said digital literacy is crucial to become engaged with the new information age and knowledge-based society.

There are many issues in PNG that creates problems to integrate the new technologies into teaching and learning practice.

Power structure
“Technology challenges the traditional power structure. Lecturers feel threatened by the use of technology because [in most cases] students are more digitally literate which challenges their authority and status power.”

According to Sagrista, who acknowledged this was not a specialist area for her, uncertain infrastructure, political power and different understanding of priorities and redefinition of appropriate pedagogy are a few of them.

As the numbers of online news users are increasing, she emphasised “reinventing curriculum for journalism education”.

Sagrista concluded with some solutions like having libraries/mobile libraries, internet advisor, sharing devices and connections, changing perceptions of lectures and students, adapting journalism education curriculum in PNG.

Professionalism in Vanuatu
Dave Mandavah, coordinator of the Vanuatu Institute of Technology (VIT) journalism school presented his research paper, which focuses on the two-year Journalism and Media diploma course at the institute.

Starting in 2009 with funding from the Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (PMAS) the course was originally intended to improve and continue the professional development of current media practitioners.

However a challenge since the beginning has been the large intake of students with little or no media experience, Mandavah said.

“Working journalists said the course was too expensive and the time schedule was ‘off’.”

Despite the “missmatch” between the course content and the student’s needs, Mandavah said the hard work and dedication of the students had meant they had been able to tailor the course to suit their needs.

But suitable media candidates were vital to help improve the current media climate in the island.

Breaking ‘societal gender power’
Mandavah said a positive outcome has been that most students had been females.

Something he described as the course’s “biggest challenge but also its biggest success”.

This is because females are dominated by a male patriarchy, he said adding “they [females] are voiceless in Vanuatu”.

He explained that despite the males’ “societal gender power”, the course had given the female students the skills to be represented and play a significant role in society.

The president of Papua New Guinea’s media council has highlighted the ongoing challenges facing the government and media educators in a panel discussion during the preconference of the 4th World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC).

In touching on the challenges to journalism education in Papua New Guinea, Alexander Rheeney, also the editor-in-chief of the Post Courier, addressed pitfalls in the reportage of the shooting of several University of Papua New Guinea students by police last month.

Rheeney said the reportage was a question over quality from the media and highlighted the need for investigative reporting.

“It has been a good wake-up call for the industry and we need to pull up our socks.”

Rheeney’s comments come after this week’s “twist” made by the Supreme Court, ordering Parliament to reconvene to vote on the no-confidence motion lodged against Prime Minister Peter O’Neill regarding allegations of corruption

O’Neill told media he remained confident he would survive the motion scheduled for this Friday.

Rheeney also touched on challenges facing journalism educators in Papua New Guinea, namely the flow-on effects from a “drastic” decline in the quality of high school graduates over the past 20 years in areas such as literacy.

• Protesting students shot in crackdown over UPNG march
• PNG’s PM confident he can survive motion

The traditional welcome was led by AUT students and staff and the conference is bringing together media and journalism educators from around the world for three days of discussions about global media challenges and education.

More than 220 people from 42 countries are attending.

The WJEC officially begins tomorrow and ends on Saturday.

More than 220 journalism educators and journalists are participating in the 4th World Journalism Education Congress that will open tomorrow night in Auckland, New Zealand.

They represent 43 different countries.

Kick-starting the programme will be a day-long “pre-conference” for journalists and journalism educators in the Pacific feeding into the main global conference.

The Pacific pre-conference is being opened on Wednesday morning by Toeolesulusulu Associate Professor Damon Salesa, director of the newly created NZ Institute for Pacific Research, which sponsored five media people from the Pacific to attend.

The main WJEC conference will be opened by Ian McKinnon, chair of the New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO.

Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre in Auckland, said a “very exciting” programme had been planned. It was the first time such a huge group of journalists and journalists’ educators from around the Pacific and all over the world would be gathering like this.

“The Pacific participants actually have the opportunity to meet some of the leading educators and journalism educators presenting their findings from digital media developments to investigative journalism – all sorts of methods of journalism, and doing journalism research around the world.

‘Rare opportunity’
“It’s very rare that we have this opportunity, especially in the southern hemisphere – never has there been a journalism conference on this scale in New Zealand before or even in the Pacific,” Dr Robie said.

He said organisers are excited about the programme because many talented people would attend the main conference and pre-conference.

The likes of Misa Vicky Lepou, head of journalism from National University of Samoa and president of Media Educators Pacific (MeP), and Dr Shailendra Singh, Head of the journalism programme at the University of South Pacific, are attending.

“Over three days we will have 16 panels, 10 syndicates, 46 paper sessions,  and a number of special events,” said WJEc conference convenor Associate Professor Verica Rupar. “Keynote speakers are Divina frau Meigs of France and Kalafi Moala of Tonga, and invited speakers include Simon Cottle, Steve Reese, Karin Wahl Jorgensen, Agnes Gulyas, Dan Gilmore, and Cait McMahon.”

Dr Robie said all the participants were expected to arrive over the next couple of days before the start of the conference proper on Thursday morning.

The first WJEC was held in Singapore, followed by second in South Africa and third in Belgium.

Tonight will feature an Oceania Interrupted korero communications event and a welcome at the Pacific Media Centre.

• World Journalism Education Congress

The Fiji government has called for expressions of interest from public relations firms since the contract for the US-based Qorvis Communications, which handles the state’s public relations, is nearing expiry.

Economy Minister and Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum told Parliament this following a motion by National Federation Party leader Professor Biman Prasad to remove the F$1 million allocation in the 2016-2017 National Budget for the public relations firm.

Professor Prasad told Parliament this week that the nature of the firm itself was questionable.

“They [Qorvis Communications] have worked with countries, with regimes, which have tried very hard to hide information which have used propaganda,” he said.

“I think some of the things which we see in this country today and some coming from the government, is actually a reflection of the kind of work, the kind of advice that this PR firm is giving to the government,” he said.

Dr Prasad said while the $1 million allocation would appear to be a small amount, it was an unnecessary expenditure since the government had only allocated $300,000 for kidney dialysis.

“I call upon the government to do away with this PR firm.

“They have the whole Communication Ministry, they have an Information Department, government has all the resources to take its activities — its PR — whatever they do more than they should be doing and so I don’t understand why they need this firm anymore.”

Telling government stories
Sayed-Khaiyum said a PR firm was needed to tell government’s stories not only in the local media, but internationally as well.

“We need our stories to be told in The New York Times, Huffington Post, The Guardian and that obviously requires people who operate in that space.

“We need our stories picked up by not just only the Australian and New Zealand media.

“We need our stories told in other parts of the world where they help us to be able to spread our public relations in all aspects of government and investment opportunities.”

He said in this light it was a very small price to pay.

“A lot of companies have applied, including Qorvis itself. The contract is expiring and we will then be able to either renew the contract or select someone else, or maybe select a panel of people.”

Nasik Swami is a Fiji Times reporter

The group of Pacific educators will host a series of panel discussions at the WJEC Pacific preconference held on July 13 at the Auckland University of Technology.

Eliki Drugunalevu, a journalism broadcast tutor from the University of the South Pacific in Suva, says he is excited to be presenting a panel about broadcast education in Fiji.

“Being a part of WJEC will expose me to a whole range of issues out there and I’ll be able to meet academics, researchers, journalists who have done so much contribution in this field.”

Drugunalevu, who is also manager of Radio Pasifik, says the audience could expect a thorough look at how student radio stations are offering real world journalism experience to students, which is important under Fiji’s strained media climate.

“The existence of such a facility is critical in engaging students in discussion through a broad range of community, educational and cultural programmes.”

Eddie Osifelo, a journalist from the Solomon Star, will be presenting about some of the challenges in the Solomon Islands media.

“As a journalist I have experienced harassment, verbal abuse and court challenges,” he told Pacific Media Watch.

His presentation will focus on the use of anonymous sources, particularly in political and business articles.

‘Digital divide’
Another journalism lecturer, Maria Sagrista, from Divine Word University (DWU) in Papua New Guinea, will present a discussion on the “digital divide” in PNG.

She told Pacific Media Watch that the digital divide presents many challenges for students transitioning from university to “real world” media organisations.

“The first one of them is the lack of equipment and resources at the university level that do not allow students to become familiar with the current technologies used in “real world” media organisations.”

Access to new technology is crucial for developing countries to play an active role in a knowledge-based society, she says.

“New technologies and the internet have the potential to enhance access to information for people and to bring countries such as Papua New Guinea to a position of active producers of knowledge, shifting away from the traditional role of passive silent consumers,” she says.

Other Pacific contingent members speaking at the preconference include Emily Matasororo (University of Papua New Guinea) and Dave Mandavah (Vanuatu Institute of Technology).

They are all being sponsored to attend by the New Zealand Institute of Pacific Research.

NZIPR director Toeolesulusulu Associate Professor Damon Salesa says the conference aligns with the goals of the institute by providing a place for the sharing of knowledge that will help improve the role of the Fourth Estate in the Pacific.

“It allows for the Pacific to get to know more about New Zealand and world media, and for New Zealand media to better understand the Pacific,” Toeolesulusulu says. “We are really excited and looking forward to this conference.”

Corruption and bribery
A special panel topic about corruption and the media in the South Pacific has been organised by Transparency International and will be streamed live on Asia Pacific Report.

Panelists include Alex Rheeney (editor-in-chief of the Post-Courier in PNG), Dr Shailendra Singh (USP) and Kalafi Moala (Taimi ‘o Tonga media group and deputy chair of the Pasifika Media Association-PasiMA)

Transparency International New Zealand’s Fuimaono Tuiasau, the Pacific director, says the forum enables TINZ to support Pacific journalists in their work to tell stories about corruption and bribery.

“We hope to highlight to an international audience the role of he media in the Pacific and the challenges that face media organisations and to expose those at the forefront to an international audience.”

Fuimaono says corruption and bribery should be a topic introduced into journalism education and training so the media can develop the skills necessary to tell these stories.

• Register for the preconference here.
• Strong Asia contingent lined up for WJEC
• Pacific preconference webpage
• WJEC website

Strained relations between the President-elect of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, and much of the news media before he even takes office this week pose challenging times for the nation.

A journalist, broadcaster and media educator visiting New Zealand for the World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC) next month warns that the news media will need to be “more enterprising” to get a good story.

Jose Maria Carlos, a former secretary-general of the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC), which has now moved to Manila from its previous location of Singapore, says journalists in the Philippines must be extra vigilant in protecting press freedom and challenging the culture of impunity that exists in the country.

President-elect Duterte will be sworn in on Thursday as the 16th chief executive of the Philippines in a simpler ceremony than usual having declared that he would strip away “lavish inauguration rites that will inconvenience Filipinos with cost and heavy traffic”.

But the controversial incoming president has come under international fire from media freedom groups for his threats against journalists, saying that those killed in the Philippines were often corrupt and that he would shun press briefings.

“The Philippines news media will need to be more enterprising to get a good story,” says Carlos.

“As the new president declared, he would not hold any press briefings for the duration of his term, practitioners need to find credible sources to examine and report on new policies, directions, progress and gaps of project implementation.”

‘Biased reporting’
President-elect Duterte had complained of “erroneous and biased” reporting by some journalists and media, says Carlos.

“The media needs to be extra mindful of their ethical responsibility to be accurate and fair, providing background and context so that the public can better understand stories, participate in public discourse and help them make decisions on matters that affect them,” he says.

Carlos is being brought to New Zealand for the WJEC conference being hosted by the Pacific Media Centre along with two colleagues, Professor Crispin Maslog, current chairman and a founder of AMIC, and Dr Hermin Indah Wahyuni, of Yogyakarta’s Gadja Mada University in Indonesia, who are being supported for the conference by the Asia NZ Foundation.

Let there be no mistake about this. Since his proclamation by Congress as President-elect,  Rodrigo Duterte has engaged the media in a relentless campaign of coercion and harassment to browbeat journalists into submission before he takes office on June 30.

The interregnum marked an unprecedented test of wills between the presidency and the media, a ferocity not experienced by any incoming administration in the history of the adversarial relationship between the two social institutions.

The conflict has entered an impasse from which none of the protagonists appears to be backing off.

No incoming President has mounted such a  dangerous challenge to the media since the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos.

In that conflict, journalists critical of the abuses of power by Marcos survived 14 years of the martial law regime, which jailed a number of its critics.

None of the critics was threatened with  summary executions by squads sponsored by nonstate law enforcement actors.

Under siege
In this running conflict, freedom of the press has come under siege and has in fact suffered erosion without the formal declaration of emergency powers of a burgeoning, aspiring dictatorship, as Duterte awaits his inauguration.

Are we indeed entering a twilight zone in the transition of our electoral democracy?

This impasse leaves little room for complacency in  the light of Duterte’s campaign to eradicate crime and bureaucratic corruption in six months  from his inauguration on June 30.

Media reports abound about  this struggle of the press to defend its freedom from the creeping erosion posed by a supposed campaign against criminals, drug lords and corrupt officials demonised by partisan propaganda as enemies of the state.

One of the recent media reports comes from the Associated Press (AP). In this story, Duterte is reported to have blasted media groups for condemning his earlier comments that appeared to justify the killings of  journalists because they were corrupt or overly critical.

The journalists were depicted as allies of the criminal suspects tagged by Duterte. He refused to  apologise and dared reporters to carry out a threat to boycott his news conferences.

‘Don’t threaten me’
The AP reported that Duterte, in an outburst at a late night news conference in Davao City, lambasted  journalists, saying, “Don’t threaten me. Boycott, boycott … go ahead, damn you!”

The outburst came after international and local news groups  expressed outrage over Duterte’s remarks about the media killings.

Reporters Without Borders urged local media to boycott his news conferences until he issues a public apology.

Duterte replied that he would survive even if journalists boycotted him because he could ask state-run TV network to cover his activities.

“I’m telling the networks I do not need you,” he said. He threatened to order his Cabinet members not to speak to journalists who are not from the state-run network.

According to the International Federation of Journalists, the Philippines has been the second deadliest country for journalists since 1990, behind only war-torn Iraq.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Duterte’s remarks  “apparently excusing extrajudicial killings threaten to make the Philippines into a killing field for journalists.”

It said the country ranks fourth on its impunity index, which spotlights the countries where the killers of  journalists go unpunished.

Duterte’s crass pronouncements not only sully the memories of journalists who have been murdered since 1986, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said.

Open season
Asked to comment on the unsolved killings of journalists, Duterte, in effect, declared open season to silence the media.

He made the sweeping accusation that many of those slain were paid to take sides on issues or had overly criticised people who could not tolerate personal attacks.

“Just because you’re a journalist (doesn’t mean) you’re exempted from assassination if you’re a son of a bitch,” Duterte said.

“Your  freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something with the guy.”

• Only state-run media for inauguration
• Duterte threatens assassination of journalists

Speaking during the banquet to welcome New Zealand Prime Minister John Key at Suva’s Grand Pacific Hotel last night, Bainimarama said according to the New Zealand media, what had happened in Fiji somehow lacked legitimacy.

“That somehow, I lack legitimacy and my government lacks legitimacy,” Bainimarama said.

He said this was simply not borne out by the facts.

“We have moved on, but it would appear that the New Zealand media has not. Prime Minister [John Key], let me also confront head on the issue of media freedom and more particularly, the right of access to Fiji by certain of your journalists.

“No one who reports on events in Fiji fairly and in a balanced manner is excluded. Any journalist is free to criticise my government or me in an opinion piece or report criticism made by others in their news stories.”

He said Fiji could not allow the wilful propagation of false information that damaged the national interest and “undermined our vulnerable economy”.

‘No other journalist banned’
“And that is what has happened in the case of certain New Zealand journalists and others from Australia. Incidentally, no journalist from any other country has been banned from Fiji,” Bainimarama said.

“New Zealand television ran footage of tanks in the streets of Suva when our military does not own any tanks. They had been interposed from other sources. A claim was made that Fijian children were starving and were eating grass.

“These are egregious examples of wilful bias and misreporting. Yet, certain journalists in New Zealand and Australia — along with certain journalists in Fiji — think nothing of dispensing with the facts if they get in the way of the politically-weighted narrative they want to tell.”

Bainimarama and Key have assured each other of their willingness to redefine the relationship between the two countries after a decade.

On his arrival in the country yesterday, Key assured Bainimarama that his trip was to foster a greater working relationship and ensure that Fijians were treated with respect by New Zealand.

“Ten years is a long time between kava bowls. The purpose of coming is to say that this relationship with New Zealand is a very important one and you [Mr Bainimarama] made that point that you want our relationship to be one of equals,” said Key at the banquet.

Barbara Dreaver on the Fiji blacklist ‘disgrace’

Fiji and New Zealand ‘friends again’

By TJ Aumua

New Zealand-based Pacific Cooperation Foundation has launched its annual appeal for student applications for the 2016 media programme.

Now in its second year, the two-week media exchange programme provides an opportunity for aspiring graduate journalists to intern in New Zealand and regional Pacific media organisations.

PCF project manager Michelle Curran said the programme was unique because it offered practical media experience in a foreign setting.

“During the internship, recipients will learn how the newsroom operates and they will be asked to go out on jobs and contribute news pieces,” she told Pacific Media Watch.

“The students will gain a real sense of what it is like to work in the industry. Perhaps most importantly, they will learn the skill and importance of networking – they will have a chance to meet journalists and senior management of organisations and learn from their personal experiences.”

Last year’s recipients included three university students from Samoa, Papua New Guinea and Fiji who travelled to New Zealand and worked in Auckland-based newsrooms. Two Auckland University of Technology students were also chosen to intern to Samoa and Fiji.

The media programme is a part of PCF’s Pacific engagement strategy, which Curran said was “in line with our aim to capture the hearts and minds of Pacific youth”.

“It is focused on improving the level and quality of media exposure in the Pacific and on creating a greater awareness and better understanding of regional issues across a wide audience.”

Curran said successful applications would showcase potential of what was needed to make a great journalist and work in the media industry.

“This includes having a passion for news and a good sense of what makes a great story, strong and clear communication skills, an interest in the Pacific, and knowledge about issues affecting the region and a desire to learn from all the contacts they will be exposed to through this programme.”

• Deadline for the 2016 PCF media programme is April 8.
• Applications
• PCF exchange students visit AUT, PMC

Moderate Muslims were losing the media war with ISIS, according to leading Turkish journalist, Kerim Balci.

”Authentic” Muslims were losing to “radical so called Muslims” because of the obvious symbiosis between journalists and terrorists.

“Ten thousand Muslims may be doing good things but it’s not reported,” he said. “One Muslim makes something bad and its headlines!

“The voice of extremism is always multiplied through world media!” Even Muslim media were guilty of this.

Kerim Balci is editor of the Turkish Review, a bimonthly journal published by Zaman Media Group.

Balci studied physics and political science and international relations in the Bosporus University of Turkey. He has an MA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the city where he served as the representative of Zaman Turkish Daily for eight years. Balci is currently a linguistic philosophy PhD candidate at Durham University. He was in Sydney at the invitation of the Affinity Intercultural Foundation.

Balci said social media could have been an alternative where “authentic” Muslims could promote peaceful Islam.

“Unfortunately, ISIS uses social media much better than us. The videos that are produced by ISIS for Youtube are much better than even the movies produced for the market in many Muslim countries”.

Mainstream conflict
Mainstream Muslim media could also find themselves in conflict with their own governments.

In Turkey, journalists had revealed the government had been engaged in secret negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), regarded by the state and in the West as a terrorist organisation.

“There is the paradoxical situation where you are stuck between the national interest and journalistic ethics”.

Turkish newspapers published the story. The government was “quite angry” and two journalists were jailed, accused of treason.

“It’s not the duty of journalists to keep those things secret,” Balci said.

Meanwhile, some [radical] religious Muslim media branded any journalists who identified terrorist groups, as “infidels” .

“In fact one of them is sitting in front of you, ” he said with a grin. “I wrote an article calling Hamas terrorists,” Baldi said. ”And a [radical] religious paper called me an infidel!

‘More harm’
“As a religious person, I believe the terrorists are hijacking my religion and doing more harm to religious Muslims than they are doing harm to the West”.

ISIS had killed many more Muslims than Westerners.

“As a journalist, I have a duty to inform the public. But there is also an inescapable duty to educate the public about our religion.”

In this “post modern era” many people got their information on religion from newspapers.

“Those of us who cover religious conflicts are actually setting the tone for the people. We have to realise that what we say may be perceived by our readers as if we are the preachers in the mosque.”

An Armenian journalist was killed in Turkey by a “religiously motivated” nationalist young man, as a result of what he had read in a religious newspaper, Balci said.

Terrorism was too often defined as what your enemy was doing. In a mirror image of the more belligerent Western newspapers, many Muslim publications called Western actions “terrorism” while being reluctant to apply the term to Muslim atrocities.

“Suicide bombings are never OK, no matter who does it,” Balci said.

“We journalists need to be sincere, frank and consistent about the language we are using,” he said. “Language is never innocent. We have to understand it won’t stay in the newspaper. It will influence people!”

The article was first published on Professor Alan Knight’s blog Online Journalism and is republished here with the author’s permission.

Opinion by Professor Wadan Narsey in Suva

There should have been institutional protests a few weeks ago when the Bainimarama government announced that it had awarded the sole government (and public enterprise) advertising rights to the Fiji Sun.

The protests should have been even louder given that the government had called for expressions of interest according to an extensive list of criteria, which if followed, ought to have resulted in a decision in favour of The Fiji Times.

While I declare my interest as a regular columnist for this newspaper, I explain below that it would not be in the public interest to award sole advertising rights to The Fiji Times either and that the Fiji Sun should also be included.

Given the clear evidence (total dollar values of commercial advertising) that the private sector advertisers, on the basis of reach and cost effectiveness alone, favour The Fiji Times, then the Bainimarama government decision to select the Fiji Sun as sole print advertiser, amounts to gross misuse of taxpayers’ advertising money, which is not in the public interest.

The first protests at the government decision should therefore have come from the institutions which have been set up under the Fiji Constitution precisely to prevent the misuse of taxpayers’ money, ie the Office of the Auditor-General and the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament.

At the next level of constitutional responsibility, there should have been protests from institutions like the Commerce Commission, the Media Industry Development Authority, and the Consumer Council of Fiji.

Sadly, there has been total silence from all these institutions.

Dismaying silence
This silence utterly dismaying for good governance, given that the Bainimarama government decision is striking at the heart of a “level playing field” and fair competition for media organisations, and the constitutional basic human right of citizens of Fiji to have free access to all public interest information that a government disseminates using taxpayer funds.

It is totally abhorrent that there are a large number of public enterprises whose advertising decisions ought to be totally independent of the government of the day and based purely on commercial grounds alone, are also following the Government, indicating the utter spinelessness of their boards.

Advertised criteria

The Bainimarama government claimed it would be assessing tenders on the basis of stated criteria which included the following:

* evidence of circulation;

* evidence of national reach;

* commitment to educate and inform all Fijians with respect to development and government issues in an unbiased and responsible manner; and

* ability to accept urgent and last minute requests.

These four criteria would seem reasonable and commercially oriented.

But the advertisement also asked for evidence of commitment to:

* quality;

* national unity, national identity development and nation building;

* the development of the Fiji economy; and

* the welfare of all Fijians.

By no stretch of the imagination can criteria 5 to 8 be important considerations for any government to get its messages out to the people on matters that concern them, given that the actual vehicle for the advertisement is surely irrelevant.

Any media which had a solid commercial track record of reaching the largest set of citizens in Fiji, ought to have been selected as an avenue for government advertising, purely from the point of view of outreach of advertisements.

Common sense
While a good high school mathematics student could show the following arguments with a “Venn diagram”, common sense indicates the same.

* Only a small number of readers read both the Fiji Sun and The Fiji Times.

* The largest number read only The Fiji Times or only the Fiji Sun.

* Hence to reach the maximum number, government ought to advertise in both newspapers.

* As the largest customer, government could even demand the lowest fees compatible with reasonable profits for the newspapers.

Note that even if it is implied by the government’s call for tenders, The Fiji Times should also not be given sole rights to advertise, as there are many members of the public who, for whatever reason, read only the Fiji Sun, and they also should not be deprived of easy access to government advertisements.

But of course, the arguments could be couched in more technical language relevant to the formal responsibilities of the institutions.

Institutional duties
The Auditor-General (backed by the Public Accounts Committee) is duty bound to examine whether the Bainimarama gbovernment’s decision is on commercial grounds and, if not, whether it amounts to a gross misuse of taxpayer’s money. They are entitled to demand an immediate explanation from the Minister of Finance.

A principled Consumer Council of Fiji, whose executive is never reticent about appearing in the media on behalf of small groups of consumers, could have passionately informed the media that by giving ads only to one newspaper, government was depriving readers of the other more popular newspaper legitimate access to public information, as a basic human right as citizens and consumers of government services.

A principled MIDA chairman could have proactively pronounced (and he has done quite frequently on other matters of less national importance) that government was undermining fair competition in the media, which was against the public interest.

A principled Commerce Commission, which has often acted against private sector companies who are perceived to have exercised monopoly power, ought to have proactively explained to the Bainimarama government that it was against the public interest, to bestow by contract, monopoly power on the Fiji Sun as the “sole retailer” of government advertisements.

A principled Commerce Commission ought to also point out that the Fiji Sun was thereby also unfairly obtaining newspaper sales revenues because members of the public interested in government advertisements were being forced to buy the Fiji Sun, and thereby also giving Fiji Sun unfair advertising revenue from commercial advertisers attracted by the artificially added circulation.

A principled CEO of Transparency International could have reminded the Bainimarama government that it was not good governance to be unfairly granting subsidies to a media owner whose newspaper was not a good watchdog on Government.

But unfortunately, when it comes to contentious Bainimarama government policies or misdemeanours by companies close to them (such as a mobile company), it seems that these organisations have become institutional lambs, afraid to do their duty, for fear of slaughter.

Solution is easy
The Commerce Commission has been ever ready to set controlled prices for thousands of products and services in the Fiji economy, ranging from drugs, hardware items and even the rents charged for accommodation, wherever there is a hint of lack of competition.

The current government decision to award sole advertising rights to the Fiji Sun is a blatant example of creation of monopoly which is against the public interest, and which the Commerce Commission is duty bound to combat.

The Commerce Commission could quite legitimately and easily, with the support of the Consumer Council and MIDA, following the proper investigation, establish a regime of advertising charges system for government advertisements, fair to both taxpayers and the media companies, with both companies being asked to run all important advertisements.

What is so difficult about this solution?

The people of this country are ever ready to write Letters to the Editor (the people’s parliament) on rugby sevens, same sex marriages, Bollywood and Hollywood, the bad state of the roads, or the blunders in the education system.

I call on the “people’s parliament” to express their opinions on the Bainimarama government’s decision to advertise solely in the Fiji Sun.

Dr Wadan Narsey is a an independent economist and writer and also a former professor of economics at the University of the South Pacific.

Eight hours a day of free-to-air New Zealand content is on offer to Pacific countries in a new broadcasting initiative backed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT).

Prime Minister John Key announced the plan at the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Summit in September.

But just how this plan will roll out was the focus of a seminar at AUT University last week.

“New Zealand has a proud image to protect in the Pacific, but the Pacific now is crowded space. For example, over the last 10 to 15 years the Chinese presence is a lot more pervasive in the Pacific,” says New Zealand Economic Ambassador in the Pacific, Matua Shane Jones.

“Broadcasting is a great way for the interests and values that New Zealanders hold dear to be projected into the Pacific, after all there is an enormous Pasifika community now living in Aotearoa.”

Consultant working on the project Tony O’ Brien says the project is more than just providing content.

“Of course we want to help them and encourage them to produce more local content, and how we’re doing that is we’re giving them camera equipment, camera kits to encourage them to do more local content in their territories,” he says.

The Pacific Cooperation Foundation will run the initiative, with content being available as early as next year.

Reporter/Editor: Alistar Kata, contributing editor of the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch project.

Interviewees:
Matua Shane Jones
Tony O’Brien
Marion Crawshaw

Video clip sources:
Pacific Cooperation Foundation
Television New Zealand

News story: http://www.pmc.aut.ac.nz/pacific-media-watch/region-nz-media-content-aid-project-gears-pacific-broadcasters-9489

(CC) Pacific Media Centre, School of Communication Studies, AUT University, Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand. www.pmc.aut.ac.nz

While the spectre of Daesh (ISIS) is nothing new for much of the Arab region, last month’s attacks on Paris and Beirut brought heightened urgency to ongoing global debates on violent extremism. As in the past, governments have targeted social media, seeking to extinguish online activities of extremist organisations, but also of non-violent political activists.

Saudi Arabian officials have threatened to sue anyone who likens the oil-rich kingdom’s penal system to that of ISIS on social media. This comes on the heels of a death sentence handed to poet and artist Ashraf Fayadh last month.

The sentence was criticised far and wide, with many taking to social media and comparing Saudi Arabia’s penal code and punishments to those of ISIS. Using the hashtag #sosuemesaudi, critics pointed to various parallels between the two entities, including their issuance of death sentences for individuals convicted of adultery, treason, blasphemy, and acts of homosexuality.

Meanwhile, Russian social media user Oleg Novozhenin was sentenced one year in a penal colony after a local municipal court found him guilty of distributing “extremist materials” on social networks.

Local media reported that Novozhenin had posted files “promoting the activity” of Ukrainian nationalist party organisation “Right Sector,” which is currently banned in Russia.

And in Bangladesh, authorities have continued the ban on Facebook, Viber, WhatsApp and various other social messaging applications that began on November 18. The ban was instituted on “security grounds,” in anticipation of a Supreme Court ruling that upheld death sentences for two political figures convicted of genocide and rape during Bangladesh’s 1971 war for independence from Pakistan.

The defendants’ political supporters, some of whom belong to violent extremist groups, had threatened public unrest in response to the sentences.

Proxy networks
When citizens turned to VPNs, proxy networks and tools like the Tor browser in order to access social platforms, State Minister for Post and Telecommunications Tarana Halim publicly condemned these activities as “illegal.”

Users have reported that their telecommunications providers are warning them of heightened monitoring of the use of such tools.

Technology experts and cryptographers around the world are also being asked to change their systems in an effort to stop or monitor the online activities of violent extremist groups. In a recent blog post, Lebanese developer Nadim Kobessi, who is best known as the lead developer for the CryptoCat encrypted chat program, reflected on such questions coming from both state actors and media alike:

A simple mention of my encryption software in an Arabic-speaking forum is enough to put me on the receiving end of press inquiries such as “are you aware of any terrorists using your software? Do you feel it’s your responsibility to monitor terrorist activity?”
…
In this rush to blame a field that is largely unknowable to the public and therefore at once alluring and terrifying, little attention has been paid to facts: The Paris terrorists did not use encryption, but coordinated over SMS, one of the easiest to monitor methods of digital communication. They were still not caught, indicating a failure in human intelligence and not in a capacity for digital surveillance.

China cuts ethnic services
Users of circumvention technologies in China’s Xinjiang province may have their mobile phone accounts shut down, with several affected users reporting receiving text messages saying “Due to police notice, we will shut down your cellphone number within the next two hours in accordance with the law.”

People who use VPNs, foreign messaging software like WhatsApp or Telegram, or who have not linked their identities to their accounts have been implicated, according to the New York Times.

Xinjiang, a province in the west of China, has frequently served as a testing ground for state censorship and surveillance practices. In the past, the government has shut down Xinjiang’s Internet services following periods of violence between its Uighur ethnic minority and majority Han Chinese.

Indonesia struggles
Indonesian police issued new recommendations on the management of hate speech, linking it to the criminal code in a manner some are concerned could present a threat to free expression.

According to Inspector General Anton Charliyan, head of the National Police’s Public Relations Division, “We cannot afford to let these new technologies and digital tools to be misused and abused.”

Legal aid group LBH Pers responded: “The application of the law here could result in wrongful arrest…it is better to separate defamation from hate speech, so that police officers don’t end up abusing their authority.”

Russia tightens up
Russia may soon make buying a mobile SIM card even more difficult than it already is. It’s currently illegal to purchase SIM cards anonymously. Citing a “growing terrorist threat”, authorities may limit the term of mobile service contracts for foreigners in Russia, tying the capacity to extend service contracts to paperwork that confirms they are allowed to extend their stay in the country.

Law enforcement agencies are seeking tighter restrictions on sales of pre-paid mobile services that do not require signing a contract with a mobile provider.

Google bats for fair use
Google announced plans to provide legal support to several YouTube videos that were taken down due to DMCA copyright claims, in what the company is calling an attempt to “protect some of the best examples of fair use on YouTube”.

Their hope is to develop a “demo reel” for the site to help users and copyright owners better understand what fair use looks like online.

Currently, YouTube uses a digital fingerprinting system called ContentID to identify infringing content on the site by scanning and automatically taking down files submitted to the website by content owners, but it’s unclear whether this system would be impacted by the move.

New Research

• October 2015 Iranian Internet Infrastructure and Policy Report – Small Media
• Reporting, Reviewing and Responding to Harassment on Twitter – J. Nathan Matias, Amy Johnson, Whitney Erin Boesel, Brian Keegan, Jaclyn Friedman, Charlie DeTar

Ellery Roberts Biddle, Sam Kellogg, Weiping Li, Hae-in Lim, and Sarah Myers West contributed to this Netizen Report. Republished from Global Voices.

Source: Pacific Media Watch 9513

Report by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!

Before the United Nations climate change summit in Paris, France, more than 180 nations pledged to voluntarily reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but many climate justice groups say far more needs to be done to keep global warming in check.

We speak with one of the world’s leading climate scientists who has come to the Paris talks with a shocking message: The climate crisis is more severe than even many scientists have acknowledged.

Kevin Anderson is deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester in Britain.

He has said many scientists are self-censoring their work to downplay the severity of the climate crisis.

TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! – The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re broadcasting from the UN climate summit, the COP21 here in Paris, France. Ahead of the talks, more than 180 nations pledged to voluntarily reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but many climate justice groups say far more needs to be done to keep global warming in check.

We’re joined now by one of the world’s leading climate scientists who has come to the Paris talks with a shocking message: The climate crisis is more severe than even many scientists have acknowledged. Kevin Anderson is deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester in Britain. He said many scientists are self-censoring their own work to downplay the severity of the climate crisis.

Dr. Anderson recently wrote, quote, “Yet so far we simply have not been prepared to accept the revolutionary implications of our own findings, and even when we do we are reluctant to voice such thoughts openly, many are ultimately choosing to censor their own research.”

Kevin Anderson, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us.

KEVIN ANDERSON: It’s nice to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: You came in from Britain?

KEVIN ANDERSON: Yes, I did. Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you get here?

KEVIN ANDERSON: By train. I always travel by train or ship.

AMY GOODMAN: I remember when we were in Copenhagen, you refused to fly.

KEVIN ANDERSON: Yeah, I haven’t flown for 11 years. Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Why?

KEVIN ANDERSON: Because I think it’s really important that those of us who think climate change is an essential, pivotal issue for modern society demonstrate that we can lead good lives, we can carry out our jobs, without having very high carbon footprints. So while the emissions from my particular activities aren’t quite so important—I’m just one person—the sort of symbolic message that it sends is actually very important. And it’s already sort of engendered a different attitude among some of the academic colleagues, who now also take a similar approach. They try to avoid flying wherever they reasonably can. And sometimes that can make things quite difficult, but we have to—we have to make that sort of effort.

AMY GOODMAN: So why are you here?

KEVIN ANDERSON: I’m here because there’s a, I think, very important scientific message still to be made and to be related to not just the policymakers and the people here, but also to wider society, to the civil society groups, to the NGOs, but, I mean, even, of course, for us to discuss amongst the scientists that are here, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: And what is that message?

KEVIN ANDERSON: The message is that the voluntary submissions that have been put forward by all of the countries, when you add all of these up, they are far, far above the level of what we call dangerous climate change, that all of our leaders have committed to, to avoid going above this 2 degrees C rise, I think about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. But actually, when you add up all of the commitments that the countries are making in terms of their reductions in emissions, then actually it’s far, far above that, nearer 3 or 4 degrees C temperature rise, which is a huge increase. That’s a global average. Remember, that is a global average. And most of the globe is covered in water, so on land that’s an average of, if we carry on like we’re going now, 4, 5, possibly even as high as 6 degrees C temperature rise.

AMY GOODMAN: So what does that look like on the ground?

KEVIN ANDERSON: If we saw those sorts of changes, we’d see dramatic reductions in the staple food crops. So that’s a really big issue, if we have big 40 percent or so reductions in rice, maize, wheat, sorghum, those sorts of crops. Huge changes in sea level rise by the end of the century, but also locking in very large sea level rise changes going forward beyond that. And we’d see increase in droughts and in flooding, increase in severity of typhoons in the Southern Hemisphere. So, really, a lot of the—you know, we have all learned to live with the weather that we’ve had. And actually, what we’d be seeing are significant increases in the extremes around the planet, so we’d all suffer very significantly from a 4 degrees C temperature rise.

AMY GOODMAN: You have said that scientists, climate scientists, are self-censoring. What are they saying?

KEVIN ANDERSON: Well, those of us who look at the—running between the science and then translating that into what that means for policymakers, what we are afraid of doing is putting forward analysis that questions the sort of economic paradigm, the economic way that we run society today. So, we think—actually, we don’t question that. So what we do is we fine-tune our analysis so it fits within a sort of a—the political and economic framing of society, the current political and economic framing.

So we don’t really say that—actually, our science now asks fundamental questions about this idea of economic growth in the short term, and we’re very reluctant to say that. In fact, the funding bodies often are reluctant to fund research that raises those questions. So the whole setup, not just the scientists, the research community around it that funds the research, the journalists, events like this, we’re all being—we’re all deliberately being slightly sort of self-delusional.

We all know the situation is much more severe than we’re prepared to voice openly. And we all know this. So it is a—this is a collective sort of façade, a mask that we have.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s just talk about the headlines today.

KEVIN ANDERSON: OK.

AMY GOODMAN: On Democracy Now!, we talked about Beijing issuing its first-ever red alert for air pollution, as China’s capital city is engulfed in thick smog rife with poisonous chemicals that can make residents sick from simply stepping outside. This isn’t because there’s some catastrophic meltdown at a coal plant or some factory.

KEVIN ANDERSON: No.

AMY GOODMAN: This is just daily life in Beijing.

KEVIN ANDERSON: Yes, and that’s because the sorts of power that they’re using in Beijing, and lots of it is being generated in Beijing, and the cars, as well, are there running in Beijing, they’re not running cleanly. So they’re putting lots of very nasty pollutants in the atmosphere. They’re also obviously putting a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, as well. So it’s both then a local air pollution issue and a real issue for climate change. And to the Chinese credit, they are significantly trying to reduce the amount of local air pollution in their cities, because they know it has a big health impact, they know it has a big economic impact. So the Chinese are moving in the right direction, but nowhere near fast enough for us to avoid this 2 degrees C temperature rise.

AMY GOODMAN: And then you have what’s happening in England right now, in Cumbria. You have in Norway, for example—

KEVIN ANDERSON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —an absolute crisis—

KEVIN ANDERSON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —that they’re saying they’re seeing problems like they haven’t seen in a hundred years.

KEVIN ANDERSON: Yeah, and, again, in India. There’s some big floods in India, as well. So we are seeing—we are seeing lots of extreme weather events. Now, it is always—we have to be very careful as scientists. Scientists are always slightly annoyingly conservative here. We cannot say that any one of these events is a climate change event.

But we can say that our climate change science and analysis makes it very clear that the sorts of things that we’re doing in terms of emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere means we will see more of these sorts of events and increased severity of these events, as well. So these are indicative of exactly what we would expect to see.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what we consume in the United States, what you consume in Britain, compared with what is consumed in other parts of the world?

KEVIN ANDERSON: Well, when we think about carbon dioxide emissions, which is basically how much fossil fuel we’re burning, 50 percent of the global carbon dioxide emissions from our burning of fossil fuels comes from just 10 percent of the population. So it’s quite a small percent of the population are responsible for the lion’s share of the emissions. And if you sort of dig down a little bit deeper than that, you find some even more disturbing figures—that the top 1 percent in the US, they emit two-and-a-half thousand times more—two-and-a-half thousand times more—than the bottom 1 percent globally.

So there’s a huge difference between who is responsible for the CO2 emissions, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and therefore the climate change that we are beginning to witness now. And I think when we think about this in terms of what we need to do in terms of policy, this is not about everyone in the world making big reductions in their energy consumption. It’s about those of us who are responsible for the lion’s share of the emissions making those big changes.

AMY GOODMAN: Compare what Americans consume and what Europeans consume.

KEVIN ANDERSON: Well, the Americans are roughly twice as much as a typical European. So, you know—and really, your quality of life is—when we look at all the indices for a pure quality of life, the quality of life of a typical American is no better than the quality of life for a typical European. But your cars are much heavier and bigger. Your refrigerators are bigger. I mean, I think sort of bigness probably captures the difference between the US and the EU.

So, you know, I think—so, the Americans could live just as good a quality of life as they do today, and they could probably do almost all the things that they do today and significantly reduce their emissions down to sort of the EU level. Now, that would not be enough for us to avoid dangerous climate change, but it would be a huge step in the right direction.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you say to, oh, presidential candidates, like Donald Trump says he doesn’t believe in human-made global warming, says sometimes there’s global warming and sometimes there’s global cooling?

KEVIN ANDERSON: There’s certainly a small but very vociferous contingent in the US who basically do not believe in science, if we’re really blunt about it. They don’t believe in climate change, which is—there’s nothing new about climate change. We’ve been doing scientific analysis on this for at least 200 years. It’s not a new science. They don’t often believe in Darwin and evolution.

And I think, really, the particular group that don’t really like the idea of what science has to say about many subjects, that group, we’re not going to change their minds. I think we have to talk to the other people who actually are open to the fact that what we are looking at is a scientifically well-understood area.

We are very clear—the science is categorical—that the emissions we put in the atmosphere from burning of our fossil fuels are changing the climate. Even the skeptics are saying that. Maybe not the denialists, but the climate skeptics do not deny the fact that the human emissions of carbon dioxide emissions are changing the temperature.

AMY GOODMAN: You are very critical of models that rely on negative emissions through technologies that remove carbon dioxide. Explain.

KEVIN ANDERSON: Yes. This comes back to this idea we all want to sit within our current political and economic framework. We don’t want to question it. But when we are looking at a temperature—a 2 degrees C temperature rise, which I say, you know, is a huge shift in the average temperature for the planet, then we have a certain carbon budget, a certain amount of carbon dioxide that we can emit into the atmosphere over the century. And we know that very well from the science.

The problem is, we have emitted so much of that, we’ve used up so much of that budget—like money in your bank account, we’ve spent that money already—that what’s left is so small, so that if we are going to stay within that budget, we now have to either make dramatic changes to how we live our lives—people like me and you, we have to, you know, fly much less, if fly at all, live in smaller houses, drive much less, consume less goods.

So, those of us that—the wealthy parts of the society will have to make those sorts of changes. But because we’re—the scientists are reluctant to make that point politically, what they’re saying is, we can increase the size of the carbon budget by this dial here, which means that we will—can suck the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in 2050 to 2070 with a technology that just does not exist at the moment.

So we are putting already almost all of our eggs in a basket that—a technology that does not exist. At some point a long way in the future, we’ll suck the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester in Britain. If you could address what is happening here? I think especially for Americans, there’s hardly any coverage of what’s going on here. The world leaders came the first two days, and that got maybe a little bit of coverage, because it was the largest gathering of world leaders in the history of the world. But now, what’s being worked out?

KEVIN ANDERSON: OK. All the leaders arrived very early here in this event in Paris. They also all arrived with their voluntary contributions, what each country would do. So Obama came with what the US would do. The EU has its versions. Tanzania has—says, “This is what we can do.” So every country—almost every country in the world has said, “We can make this level of change.”

AMY GOODMAN: Voluntary. Voluntary.

KEVIN ANDERSON: Voluntary, yes, voluntary. There’s no legal basis to this. This is a real concern.

AMY GOODMAN: And that’s because?

KEVIN ANDERSON: Well, I mean, politically, it’s hard to get a legal basis, but very significantly, because we know that it will not be passed in the States, that what comes out of this agreement—

AMY GOODMAN: In the United States.

KEVIN ANDERSON: In the United States. So the United States really is—it’s almost, I say, blackmailing the rest of the world, because they’re saying, “You cannot have a legal framework because we will not sign it.” So—and everyone has recognised that. And because they say it’s very important for us to have an inclusive political agenda coming out of Paris, we are prepared to accept this voluntary arrangement system, which, I mean, personally, I think, is a real problem, in terms of what it means about people having to make those adjustments in their own countries.

I mean, I think a legally binding commitment would be something that would drive us a little bit further than a voluntary agreement, which we, of course, like most voluntary goals and targets, will no doubt breach.

But anyway, every leader arrived here, was saying, “This is what our country can do.” And then the leaders go away, but they leave their negotiators here. And then there are the scientists here and others who are saying, “What you’ve put together is not enough for 2 degrees C temperature rise, and we need to do lots more.”

So then the discussions that go on for the following two weeks are on the detail of how can we tighten up those agreements, can we have a review procedure so every few years we go back and review those agreements on the basis of what’s happened in terms of emissions and the latest science.

So, you know, by the end of this two weeks, what we hope to have is a strong agreement, even though it won’t be legally binding, a strong agreement that says that countries will do particular levels of—deliver particular levels of emission reductions and that we will review those every few years.

But it’s very unlikely what we will get by the end of this event is a document that is in line with the 2 degrees C temperature rise—in other words, with avoiding dangerous climate change. So Paris is not the endgame. What happens after Paris is very important, indeed.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the climate fund. What is it? What has—I remember in Copenhagen when it was Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, who announced how much money would go into the climate fund.

KEVIN ANDERSON: Yeah. Well, this is this discussion about what we call “loss and damage.” And basically, it’s money from the wealthy parts of the world that they see as giving to the poorer parts of the world to help the poorer parts of the world deal with adaptation and the impacts of climate change and adaptation. And when we think about that, the amount of money that is on the—well, it’s not on the table.

The amount of money that was proposed was $100 billion per year, $100 billion every year. Now, we haven’t got that. The countries haven’t come together to agree on that. But when we really think about $100 billion, that’s 1/15th of the size of the UK economy, a relatively small country on the globe. And that’s all we are prepared to give as a collective—the collective, all the wealthy countries—to the poorer countries to deal with the impacts of climate change. So—and we are all arguing about this. Should it be 110? Should it be 90? Who’s it going to come from? This is a small crumb that has fallen off the table, and we are all fighting over what size that crumb should be.

But actually, the real argument is, we should be—on the table, we should be talking about trillions of dollars that are necessary to help the poorer parts of the world not build high-carbon infrastructure, to deal with the impacts of climate change, to make their societies resilient to the climate change that is locked into the system because we have carried on emitting when we knew what the science has been telling us for at least 25 to 30 years.

So this fund is there to help the poor parts of the world, but it’s such a small amount of money. And then, very cleverly, they make us argue about this small amount of money. So, it’s all part of, I think, this sort of sad indictment of modern society, that we were not prepared to make the sorts of changes that are necessary, either in terms of reducing our carbon dioxide emissions or even helping the more impoverished poor people who have not made any contribution to the problem that we’re trying to solve now.

AMY GOODMAN: As we wrap up, Kevin Anderson, what do you think is the most important takeaway from this conference right now, from your work, from what you see is happening in the world?

KEVIN ANDERSON: The most important thing is that we can all trigger change. This is not just about world leaders. It’s not just about the big charities, the NGOs. It’s not just about the scientific community. This is a problem for all 7 billion people on the planet. And we all need to be driving—in our own lives, with our colleagues and friends at work, with our local politicians, we ought to be pushing really hard for an agreement or for a change in the way we run our society to become very, very low-carbon, and very quickly indeed. So, it is up to all of us. There are 7 [billion] stakeholders involved with climate change, and we all have a role to play.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you hopeful?

KEVIN ANDERSON: No, I’m not hopeful. But if we don’t try, we are guaranteed to fail.

AMY GOODMAN: Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester in Britain. This is Democracy Now!

Republished from Democracy Now! on a Creative Commons licence.

Source: Pacific Media Watch 9510

Item: 9509

Communications Minister Jimmy Miringtoro has announced plans to set up a Media Appeals Tribunal in the New Year targeting abuse of social media and other related mediums.

The tribunal is expected to deal with abusive matters including defamation of character, deliberate misinformation, spreading of “falsities” and malice on the social media including Facebook and through the mass media.

Although no details have yet been released, the concept is aimed at instilling effective instruments or legislation to control what is currently seen as a totally uncontrollable and uncensored social media sector.

It is also aimed at protecting the characters of those abused and seeks avenues for redress for the many helpless victims that are targeted with unfounded and falsified accusations. He said plans for the concept were now being prepared for final approval which he will spearhead as the minister responsible.

The reason for the appeals tribunal is being driven by the gross abuse of the social media where users “get away with” outright defamation and misinformation.

Miringtoro said that preparations were afoot for this basic premise, given the idea that freedom of the press was not an absolute right, but must be balanced against individuals’ rights to privacy and human dignity.

In an interview this week, he said there was overuse of social media in PNG right now, and also in the media industry where there had been a lot of misinformation and false reports plus issues taken out of context on a daily basis.

Tribunal remedy
He said the establishment of a media appeals tribunal accountable to Parliament was thought to be a remedy to this situation. Further, if this is successfully established it will be headed and run by very neutral and professional people who would deal with complaints.

“You see the government was initially thinking about stopping social media because of so much wrong information and defamation of character that has been going on.

“But we said to look at options and the Media (Appeals) Tribunal was one for us to look into.

“There are a lot of issues that will involve this.

“We have to prepare many things on this so that we are not accused of trying to control the media in PNG,” he said.

Miringtoro said that at the first mention of this, many people would have had negative thoughts about it – even “bashing” the government – and especially him as the head of the communications portfolio.

He said the concept might be taken out of context as many would see it as a “political interference” which is not the case.

But he said that if they finalised a complete and proper [legal] instrument this would actually help PNG and the media control information.

Miringtoro said there were also a lot of issues to take into account in the planning process so once all was put in place an announcement would be made.

Source: Pacific Media Watch 9509

ANALYSIS: Wednesday, December 2, was the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery. It marks the date of the adoption, by the General Assembly, of the United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (resolution 317(IV) of 2 December 1949).

The focus of this day is on eradicating contemporary forms of slavery, such as trafficking in persons, sexual exploitation, the worst forms of child labour, forced marriage, and the forced recruitment of children for use in armed conflict.

The day also marks the beginning of the second week (eighth day) of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. One form of gender-based violence is structural violence. Structural violence refers to systematic ways in which social structures or social institutions may harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs.

Hunger and poverty are two prime examples of the physical and psychological harm that results from exploitive and unjust social, political and economic systems.

One form of structural violence is lack of progress toward equality of men and women in the news media.

This is according to the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), a five-yearly study which has conducted research in 114 countries over 20 years. The study was undertaken on sampling the news of one particular day around the world — Wednesday March 25, 2015.

The study reveals continuing severe disparity between representation of women and men in news media, indicating the portrayal of women in day-to-day journalism does not reflect their contribution to society.

Portrayal of women
This year’s study was GMMP’s fifth and largest on the portrayal and representation of women in the news media. Findings indicate that, worldwide, women make up about 50 percent of the general population but only 24 percent of the persons heard, read about or seen in newspaper, television and radio news — exactly the same level found in the 2010 report.

Women’s relative invisibility in traditional news media has also crossed over into digital news delivery platforms. Only 26 per cent of the people in internet news stories and media news “tweets” combined are women.

“The GMMP 2015 report examined the visibility, voice and mention of women and men in the news media and finds a sexism that has endured across decades and geographical boundaries, adapting to emerging media forms and thriving in all spaces in which news content is produced and shared,” said Dr Sarah Macharia, GMMP global co-ordinator.

The report also found that, overall, women remain more than twice as likely as men to be portrayed as victims as they were a decade ago, at 16 and 8 per cent respectively.

Findings indicated that there is a global glass ceiling for female news reporters in newspaper bylines and newscast reports, with 37 per cent of stories reported by women, the same as a decade ago.

The GMMP is a project of the World Association for Christian Communication, with support from the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.

The Pacific has participated in the GMMP since 1995 when Fiji was the sole Pacific Island country to contribute towards the global study. In 2010 Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Australia and New Zealand joined enabling data to be collated across the wider Pacific region.

Highlights decade
The Pacific report from the GMMP highlights that from the last 10 years of data that women are still in the minority of news topics reflecting the gender inequality in the formal structures of decision-making and power of Pacific media outlets:

* Overall the presence of women in news items averaged at 25 percent (26 percent in traditional media and 24 per cent in online media. Women were more present in news topics on Science and Health (54 per cent women) in traditional media.

* However, in the remaining six topics, women were present far fewer times than men in both traditional and online media sources.

* The top three story topics which featured the most female news subjects were employment with 75 percent. Female subjects made up 67 percent of stories on celebrity, arts and media while sources on medicine, health, hygiene and safety topics featured 65 percent female news subjects. Women also made up 50 percent of stories featuring beauty contests, models, fashion and cosmetic surgery.

* Overall males were portrayed as victims more commonly than females (59 percent males and 41 percent females) across a wider range of situations. However females were more likely to be victimised in situations of non-domestic sexual violence, assault, rape (11 percent females and 4 per cent males).

* Out of the total number of news stories featured in newspapers in the region, stories that featured women were more likely to be photographed compared with news stories featuring male news subjects (34 percent of news stories featuring women were photographed and 19 percent of news stories featuring men were photographed).

* Overall 45 percent of reporters in the Pacific region were female. While there were 47 percent of reporters and presenters in print who were female and 46 percent of television reporters were female in radio 61 percent of announcers were female.

* Across the seven major news topic categories women were the central focus in only 16 percent of stories including 2 per cent in politics and governance, 11 percent in economy, 29 percent in science and health, 15 percent in Social and Legal, 20 percent in crime and violence, 23 percent in celebrity, arts and media and sports and 20 percent in other categories.

* Only five out of a total 359 news stories (1 per cent) raised issues of gender equality/inequality: Women politicians (20 per cent), other domestic policies (20 percent), employment (20 percent), human rights (20 percent) and legal system (20 percent).

* Overall, the majority of major news topics did not challenge gender stereotypes — an average of 1 percent of stories clearly challenged stereotypes.

* Female news sources were more likely to be found in stories reported by females (35 percent of all female sources were interviewed by female reporters while 26 percent of all female sources were interviewed by male reporters).

* Overall the gender of reporters made no difference in the proportion of stories that challenged stereotypes (97 percent of stories by female reporters did not challenge stereotypes while 98 percent of stories by male reporters did not challenge stereotypes).

More female presenters
The Pacific GMMP report does point out, however, that there has been a marked increase in the number of female reporters and presenters making the news from less than 30 percent in 2005 to nearly 50 percent across a wider scope of traditional media outlets.

“Although more women have made it into mainstream media as the makers of news there still has not been a wider structural change in media institutions therefore not only is the content of media reflective of society it is at the same time as affected by the gaps in gender mainstreaming as any other organisation, company or community in the Pacific.”

Because of the recent rise in online media platforms Twitter and internet sources were also monitored in 2015. However there exists a digital divide between more developed countries such as Australia and New Zealand and small Pacific Island countries which accounts for the dominance in online data from the two former countries.

“Nevertheless online media is still largely dominated by male reporters and male news subjects. This highlights the growing need for newer forms of media sources to also be utilised as platforms for advancing gender equality.”

Given these findings, the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) and its GMMP coordinators are calling for an end to media sexism by 2020.

Dr Isabel Apawo Phiri, associate general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) added the WCC’s voice to that call. “Our prayer and hope is that, by the time we reach 2021, at the 11th WCC Assembly, we shall read a report that shows the news media has adopted a wider vision of equality and inclusion,” said Phiri. “With the guidance of the Holy Spirit, together we can transform the media to make women more visible.”

Report highlights
Highlights of the 2015 GMMP can be found at: http://cdn.agilitycms.com/who-makes-the-news/Imported/reports_2015/highlights/highlights_en.pdf while the full report can be found at: http://cdn.agilitycms.com/who-makes-the-news/Imported/reports_2015/global/gmmp_global_report_en.pdf

The Pacific report can be found at: http://cdn.agilitycms.com/who-makes-the-news/Imported/reports_2015/regional/Pacific_Islands.pdf

It is not only the news media that is challenged to widen its coverage of women and women’s issues in the news. All of us must recognise the similar challenge to pay attention to who and what makes the news and open our own eyes to see and understand the issues affecting those who don’t.

“Simplicity, serenity, spontaneity.”

Reverend James Bhagwan is an ordained minister of the Methodist Church in Fiji and a citizen journalist. He is also the vice-president of the World Association of Christian Communication-Pacific Region. This article was first published in The Fiji Times. The opinions expressed in this article represent the personal views of the author. He can be contacted on padrejames@gmail.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.

Welcome to the 4th World Journalism Education Congress that will be held in Auckland, from July 14 to July 16, 2016.

The conference, hosted by Auckland University of Technology’s School of Communication Studies, will provide a discussion forum on the development of journalism and journalism education worldwide. Contemporary developments signal significant shifts in the place of journalism programmes within the university and broader educational environment and in relationships with industry and wider society.

The implications of this transition will be the focus of the 4th World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC).

Journalism Education in the Asia-Pacific will also be a strong feature of the conference in partnership with the Pacific Media Centre.

Topics to be discussed at the congress will include:

• Mobile/Social/User-generated Media and Journalism
• Research Trends in Journalism
• Utilising the Professional Connection Work in Journalism Education
• 21st Century Ethical Issues in Journalism
• Journalism Education and an Informed Citizenry
• Journalism Programmes Offered by the Industry
• Journalism Education in the South Pacific
• Journalism Education in Asia

Call for abstracts

Contact: Steering Committee chair Associate Professor Verica Rupar
Asia-Pacific inquiries: Professor David Robie, New Zealand country representative of AMIC

WJEC conference website at AUT

AUT School of Communication Studies

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