A French senator walked into the Luxembourg Palace, opened his mouth, and basically set the whole room on fire. Politely. In a suit.

Claude Malhuret didn’t yell nor wave his arms. He just listed things… calmly, methodically, like a doctor reading a very long and very depressing diagnosis.

And by the time he was done, the entire Trump administration had been reduced to a punchline that wasn’t even trying to be funny.

• READ MORE: Senator Claude Malhuret’s ‘speech on the situation in the Near and Middle East’
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He started with an apology. Why? Because a year ago, he said, he had compared Trump’s presidency to Nero’s Court. He was wrong.

“It’s the miracle court,” he corrected himself on Friday.

And then he started naming names.

A former heroin addict running the Ministry of Health. A climate skeptic in charge of the economy. A TV host with a drinking problem commanding the armed forces. A lobbyist who used to work for Qatar now sitting as Attorney General. A woman who openly admires Putin in charge of national intelligence.

‘Clown in a palace’
Malhuret quoted a Turkish proverb for the occasion… “When a clown settles in a palace, he does not become king — it is the palace that becomes a circus.”

Nobody needed to ask who or what he meant. They just smiled.

And you know what? He wasn’t even being cruel. He was just being truthful and very accurate. Which, somehow, made it worse.

Then came the part that made people’s jaws drop a little.

Every time the Epstein files resurface, he said, bombs go off somewhere in the world. A new military strike. A fresh crisis.

Convenient timing. Every single time.

Malhuret didn’t call it a conspiracy. He just pointed at the pattern and let everyone draw their own conclusions.

Gulf investments
The US$400 million Boeing jet from Qatar got a mention. The Gulf investments. The stock market moves that only a small circle of insiders seemed to profit from.

Any one of these, Malhuret said, would have triggered impeachment proceedings in France.

“But we are not here,” he added. “We are in MAGA’s America.”

Here’s what makes this 5 minute speech different from the usual political noise. Malhuret didn’t just wave his hands and say “America bad.” He went person by person, scandal by scandal, conflict by conflict — and built a picture so complete that by the end of it, you couldn’t really argue with any individual piece without defending the whole rotten structure.

It’s the kind of speech American senators could give. If they wanted to. If they weren’t so busy trying not to offend anyone.

The world is watching. While Americans debate whether the speech was fair or too harsh or whatever, the rest of the planet has already formed its opinion.

One man. One very powerful seat. And a world that keeps catching fire while everyone argues about the Epstein files — which, funny enough, never quite get released fully, do they?

“Trump, the Mar-a-Lago golfer, is the only bull in the world who walks around with his own china shop. When a clown takes over the Palace, he doesn’t become King. It’s the Palace that becomes a circus”

French senator Claude Malhuret once again nails it. You won’t hear a better… pic.twitter.com/q2mpL7XFtK

— Alex Taylor (@AlexTaylorNews) March 27, 2026

A decisive hearing before the Israeli Supreme Court on whether the press will have independent access to Gaza is due to take place tomorrow.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) will be participating as amici curiae and call on the member states of the Media Freedom Coalition (MFC) to take concrete steps towards guaranteeing unrestricted, independent media access to the Gaza Strip.

For more than two years, free movement in and out of the besieged territory has been prohibited, and more than 220 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli army.

• READ MORE:  Massacre of Gaza journalists triggers RSF’s Black Monday protest
• Other Gaza journalists reports

“But in Gaza, the absence of foreign journalists is depriving the global public of independent information from diverse sources while dangerously isolating Palestinian journalists.

“The inaction of states around the world encourages censorship and sets a dangerous precedent for other conflicts, to the detriment of civilian populations, humanitarian aid and political decisions based on verified facts.

“We call on these governments to act without delay to defend the public’s right to unrestricted, independent and reliable news.”

Having been admitted as an amicus curiae by the Israeli Supreme Court on 23 October 2025 along with the CPJ, RSF will be represented in the courtroom on January 26 by its director-general Bruttin and its Supreme Court lawyer, Michael Sfard.

RSF has emphasised that “the Supreme Court has the opportunity to finally uphold essential democratic principles in the face of propaganda, disinformation and widespread censorship and put an end to two years of the meticulous, unrestrained destruction of journalism in and about Gaza.

‘No excuse, no restriction’
“No excuse, no restriction can justify keeping Gaza closed to international, Israeli and Palestinian media. That is the appeal we are making to the Israeli Supreme Court by joining the Foreign Press Association’s petition.”

More than 220 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the beginning of the war, including at least 68 slain while working, according to RSF data.

On January 20, while the ceasefire, already repeatedly violated by the Israeli army, remained in force, an Israeli strike killed Mohammad Salah Qashta, Anas Ghneim and Abdul Raouf Samir Shaat, three freelance journalists who worked with international news agencies, while they were filming a report in the al-Zahra area south of Gaza City.

The 29 MFC member states that signed the statement on media access to Gaza are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

RSF and CPJ are members of the MFC Consultative Network.

Republished from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) by Pacific Media Watch.

Pacific Media Watch supports the call by the Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) for justice for the victims of crimes against journalists in Gaza, and its demand for immediate access to the Palestinian enclave for exiled journalists and foreign press.

The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, confirmed on Friday, 10 October 2025, came after two years of unprecedented massacres against the press in Gaza.

Since October 2023, the Israeli army has killed nearly 220 journalists, including at least 56 slain due to their work.

• READ MORE: IFJ condemns Australian lobby censorship bids to ‘silence’ reporting on Gaza
• Other Pacific Media Watch reports

Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which has filed five complaints with the International Criminal Court, has called in a statement for justice for the victims, and the urgent evacuation of media professionals who wish to leave.

The ceasefire agreement in Gaza under US President Donald Trump’s peace plan has so far failed to produce an end to the media blockade imposed on the besieged Palestinian territory.

According to RSF information, several bombings struck the north of Gaza on the day the agreement was announced, 9 October. One of them wounded Abu Dhabi TV photojournalist Arafat al-Khour while he was documenting the damage in the Sabra neighbourhood in the centre of Gaza City.

While the agreement approved by the Israeli government and Hamas leaders allows humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, it does not explicitly mention authorising access for the foreign press or the possibility of evacuating local journalists.

‘Absolute urgency’
Jonathan Dagher, head of the RSF Middle East Desk, said in a statement: “The relief of a ceasefire in Gaza must not distract from the absolute urgency of the catastrophic situation facing journalists in the territory.

“Nearly 220 of them have been killed by the Israeli army in two years, and the reporters still alive in Gaza need immediate care, equipment and support. They also need justice — more than ever.

“If the impunity for the crimes committed against them continues, they will be repeated in Gaza, Palestine and elsewhere in the world. To bring justice to Gaza’s reporters and to protect the right to information around the world, we demand arrest warrants for the perpetrators of crimes against our fellow journalists in Gaza.

“RSF is counting on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to act on the complaints we filed for war crimes committed against these journalists. It’s high time that the international community’s response matched the courage shown by Palestinian reporters over the past two years.”

Since the start of the Israeli offensive in Gaza in October 2023, the Israeli army has killed nearly 220 journalists in the besieged territory. At least 56 of these victims were directly targeted or killed due to their work, according to RSF, which has filed five complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the past two years, seeking justice for these journalists and end impunity for the crimes against them.

In addition to killing news professionals on the ground and in their homes, the Israeli army has also targeted newsrooms, telecommunications infrastructure and journalistic equipment.

Famine hits journalists
Famine continues to afflict civilians in the Strip, including journalists, yet aid is barely trickling in and all communication services have been destroyed by two years of bombing.

On October 9, Israeli authorities and Hamas leaders reached a 20-point ceasefire agreement in Cairo, Egypt’s capital, as part of Donald Trump’s plan to establish “lasting peace” in the region.

This is the second ceasefire in Gaza since 7 October 2023, the first put in place at the beginning of the year and broken in March 2025, shortly after a strike killed the renowned Al Jazeera journalist Hossam Shabat.

Israel is ranked 112th among the 180 nations surveyed by the annual RSF World Press Freedom Index and Palestine is 163rd.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

Global media freedom groups have condemned the Israeli occupation forces for assassinating two more Palestinian journalists covering the Gaza genocide, taking the media death toll in the besieged enclave to at least 208 since the war started.

Journalist and contributor to the Qatari-based Al Jazeera Mubasher, Hossam Shabat, is the latest to have been killed.

Witnesses said Hossam’s vehicle was hit in the eastern part of Beit Lahiya. Several pedestrians were also wounded, reports Al Jazeera.

• READ MORE: CPJ denounces Israel’s killing of 2 more Gaza journalists in return to war
• Other Gaza media freedom reports

in a statement, Al Jazeera condemned the killings, saying Hossam had joined the network’s journalists and correspondents killed during the ongoing war on Gaza, including Samer Abudaqa, Hamza Al-Dahdouh, Ismail Al-Ghoul, and Ahmed Al-Louh.

Al Jazeera affirmed its commitment to pursue all legal measures to “prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes against journalists”.

The network also said it stood in “unwavering solidarity with all journalists in Gaza and reaffirms its commitment to achieving justice” by prosecuting the killers of more than 200 journalists in Gaza since October 2023.

The network extended its condolences to Hossam’s family, and called on all human rights and media organisations to condemn the Israeli occupation’s systematic killing of journalists.

Hossam was the second journalist killed in Gaza yesterday.

House targeted
Earlier, the Israeli military killed Mohammad Mansour, a correspondent for the Beirut-based Palestine Today television, in an attack targeting a house in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.

Al Jazeera condemns Israel’s killing of journalist Hossam Shabat in Gaza https://t.co/iJ6lscVahm

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) March 25, 2025

A fellow journalist circulated a video clip of Mansour’s father bidding farewell to his son with heartbreaking words, putting a microphone in his son’s hand and urging the voice that once conveyed the truth to a deaf world.

“Stand up and speak, tell the world, you are the one who tells the truth, for the image alone is not enough,” the father said through tears.

Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), condemned the killings, describing them as war crimes.

The CPJ called for an independent international investigation into whether they were deliberately targeted.

“CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” said CPJ’s programme director Carlos Martinez de la Serna in New York.

‘Nightmare has to end’
“This nightmare in Gaza has to end. The international community must act fast to ensure that journalists are kept safe and hold Israel to account for the deaths of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour, whose killings may have been targeted.”

Israel resumed airstrikes on Gaza on March 18, ending a ceasefire that began on January 19.

The occupation forces continued bombarding Gaza for an eighth consecutive day, killing at least 23 people in predawn attacks including seven children.

A UN official, Olga Cherevko, said Israel’s unhindered attacks on Gaza were a “bloody stain on our collective consciousness”, noting “our calls for this madness to stop have gone unheeded” by the world.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said 792 people had been killed and 1663 injured in the week since Israel resumed its war on the Strip.

The total death toll since the war started on October 7, 2023, has risen to 50,144, while 113,704 people have been injured, it said.

West Bank ‘news desert’
Meanwhile, the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said the repression of reporters in the West Bank and East Jerusalem had intensified in recent months despite the recent ceasefire in Gaza before it collapsed.

In the eastern Palestinian territories, Israeli armed forces have shot at journalists, arrested them and restricted their movement.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank and East Jerusalem, has detained Al Jazeera journalists.

RSF warned of a growing crackdown, which was transforming the region into a “news desert”.

One of the co-directors of the Palestinian Oscar-winning film No Other Land, Hamdan Ballal, has been detained by Israeli forces. It happened after he was attacked by a mob of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.

He was in an ambulance receiving treatment when the doors were opened and he was abducted by the Israeli military. Colleagues say he has “disappeared”.

A number of American activists were also attacked, and video on social media showed them fleeing the settler violence.

It was a heady week for the Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) — celebration of seven years of its Taipei office, presenting a raft of proposals to the Taiwan government, and hosting its Asia-Pacific network of correspondents.

Director general Thibaut Bruttin and the Taipei bureau chief Cedric Alviani primed the Taipei media scene before last week’s RSF initiatives with an op-ed in the Taiwan Times by acknowledging the country’s media freedom advances in the face of Chinese propaganda.

Taiwan rose eight places to 27th in the RSF World Press Freedom Index this year — second only to Timor-Leste in the Asia-Pacific region.

• READ MORE: RSF director general calls China’s repression of journalists ‘totally insane’
• Reporters Without Borders calls for media freedom reforms in Taiwan
• Other RSF images and videos in Taipei

But the co-authors also warned over the credibility damage caused by media “too often neglect[ing] journalistic ethics for political or commercial reasons”.

As a result, only three in 10 Taiwanese said they trusted the news media, according to a Reuters Institute survey conducted in 2022, one of the lowest percentages among democracies.

“This climate of distrust gives disproportionate influence to platforms, in particular Facebook and Line, despite them being a major vector of false or biased information,” Bruttin and Alviani wrote.

“This credibility deficit for traditional media, a real Achilles heel of Taiwanese democracy, puts it at risk of being exploited for malicious purposes, with potentially dramatic consequences.”

Press freedom programme
At a meeting with Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te and senior foreign affairs officials, Bruttin and his colleagues presented RSF’s innovative programme for improving press freedom, including the Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI), the first ISO-certified media quality standard; the Paris Charter on Artificial Intelligence and Journalism; and the Propaganda Monitor, a project aimed at combating propaganda and disinformation worldwide.

The week also highlighted concerns over the export of the China’s “New World Media Order”, which is making inroads in some parts of the Asia-Pacific region, including the Pacific.

At the opening session of the Asia-Pacific correspondents’ seminar, delegates referenced the Chinese disinformation and assaults on media freedom strategies that have been characterised as the “great leap backwards for journalism” in China.

“Disinformation — the deliberate spreading of false or biased news to manipulate minds — is gaining ground around the world,” Bruttin and Alviani warned in their article.

“As China and Russia sink into authoritarianism and export their methods of censorship and media control, democracies find themselves overwhelmed by an incessant flow of propaganda that threatens the integrity of their institutions.”

Both Bruttin and Alviani spoke of these issues too at the celebration of the seventh anniversary of the Asia-Pacific office in Taipei.

Why Taipei? Hongkong had been an “likely choice, but not safe legally”, admitted Bruttin when they were choosing their location, so the RSF team are happy with the choice of Taiwan.

Hub for human rights activists
“I think we were among the first NGOs to have established a presence here. We kind of made a bet that Taipei would be a hub for human rights activists, and we were right.”

About 200 journalists, media workers and press freedom and human rights advocates attended the birthday bash in the iconic Grand Hotel’s Yuanshan Club. So it wasn’t surprising that there was a lot of media coverage raising the issues.

In an interview with Voice of America’s Joyce Huang, Bruttin was more specific about the “insane” political propaganda threats from China faced by Taiwan.

However, Taiwan “has demonstrated resilience and has rich experience in resisting cyber information attacks, which can be used as a reference for the world”.

Referencing China as the world’s “biggest jailer of journalists”, Bruttin said: “We’re very worried, obviously.” He added about some specific cases: “We’ve had very troublesome reports about the situation of Zhang Zhan, for example, who was the laureate of the RSF’s [2021 press freedom] awards [in the courage category] and had been just released from jail, now is sent back to jail.

“We know the lack of treatment if you have a medical condition in the Chinese prisons.

“Another example is Jimmy Lai, the Hongkong press freedom mogul, he’s very likely to die in jail if nothing happens. He’s over 70.

“And there is very little reason to believe that, despite his dual citizenship, the British government will be able to get him a safe passage to Europe.”

Problem for Chinese public
Bruttin also expressed concern about the problem for the general public, especially in China where he said a lot of people had been deprived of the right to information “worthy of that name”.

“And we’re talking about hundreds of millions of people. And it’s totally scandalous to see how bad information is treated in the People’s Republic of China.”

Seventeen countries in the Asia-Pacific region were represented in the network seminar.

Representatives of Australia, Cambodia, Hongkog, Indonesia, Japan, Myanmar, Mongolia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, South Korea, Tibet, Thailand and Vietnam were present. However, three correspondents (Malaysia, Singapore and Timor-Leste) were unable to be personally present.

Discussion and workshop topics included the RSF Global Strategy; the Asia-Pacific network and the challenges being faced; best practice as correspondents; “innovative solutions” against disinformation; public advocacy (for authoritarian regimes; emerging democracies, and “leading” democracies); “psychological support” – one of the best sessions; and the RSF Crisis Response.

What about Oceania (including Australia and New Zealand) and its issues? Fortunately, the countries being represented have correspondents who can speak our publicly, unlike some in the region facing authoritarian responses.

Australia
Australian correspondent Dr Joseph M Fernandez, visiting associate professor at Curtin University and author of the book Journalists and Confidential Sources: Colliding Public Interests in the Age of the Leak, notes that Australia sits at 39th in the RSF World Press Freedom Index — a drop of 12 places from the previous year.

“While this puts Australia in the top one quarter globally, it does not reflect well on a country that supposedly espouses democratic values. It ranks behind New Zealand, Taiwan, Timor-Leste and Bhutan,” he says.

“Australia’s press freedom challenges are manifold and include deep-seated factors, including the influence of oligarchs whose own interests often collide with that of citizens.

“While in opposition the current Australian federal government promised reforms that would have improved the conditions for press freedom, but it has failed to deliver while in government.

“Much needs to be done in clawing back the over-reach of national security laws, and in freeing up information flow, for example, through improved whistleblower law, FOI law, source protection law, and defamation law.”

Dr Fernandez criticises the government’s continuing culture of secrecy and says there has been little progress towards improving transparency and accountability.

“The media’s attacks upon itself are not helping either given the constant moves by some media and their backers to undermine the efforts of some journalists and some media organisations, directly or indirectly.”

A proposal for a “journalist register” has also stirred controversy.

Dr Fernandez also says the war on Gaza has “highlighted the near paralysis” of many governments of the so-called established democracies in “bringing the full weight of their influence to end the loss of lives and human suffering”.

“They have also failed to demonstrate strong support for journalists’ ability to tell important stories.”

An English-language version of this tribute to the late RSF director-general Christophe Deloire, who died from cancer on 8 June 2024, was screened at the RSF Taipei reception. Deloire was 53. Video: RSF

Aotearoa New Zealand
In New Zealand (19th in the RSF Index), although journalists work in an environment free from violence and intimidation, they have increasingly faced online harassment. Working conditions became tougher in early 2022 when, during protests against covid-19 vaccinations and restrictions and a month-long “siege” of Parliament, journalists were subjected to violence, insults and death threats, which are otherwise extremely rare in the country.

Research published in December 2023 revealed that high rates of abuse and threats directed at journalists put the country at risk of “mob censorship” – citizen vigilantism seeking to “discipline” journalism. Women journalists bore the brunt of the online abuse with one respondent describing her inbox as a “festering heap of toxicity”.

While New Zealand society is multicultural, with mutual recognition between the Māori and European populations enshrined in the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, this balance is under threat from a draft Treaty Principles Bill.

The nation’s bicultural dimension is not entirely reflected in the media, still dominated by the English-language press. A rebalancing is taking place, as seen in the success of the Māori Television network and many Māori-language programmes in mass media, such as Te Karere, The Hui and Te Ao Māori News.

Media plurality and democracy is under growing threat with massive media industry cuts this year.

New Zealand media also play an important role as a regional communications centre for other South Pacific nations, via Tagata Pasifika, Pacific Media Network and others.

Papua New Guinea
The Papua New Guinea correspondent, Belinda Kora, who is secretary of the revived Media Council of PNG and an ABC correspondent in Port Moresby, succeeded former South Pacific Post Ltd chief executive Bob Howarth, the indefatigable media freedom defender of both PNG and Timor-Leste.

Currently PNG (91st in the RSF Index) is locked in a debate over a controversial draft government media policy — now in its fifth version — that critics regard as a potential tool to crack down on media freedom. But Kora is optimistic about RSF’s role.

“I am excited about what RSF is able and willing to bring to a young Pacific region — full of challenges against the press,” she says.

“But more importantly, I guess, is that the biggest threat in PNG would be itself, if it continues to go down the path of not being able to adhere to simple media ethics and guidelines.

“It must hold itself accountable before it is able to hold others in the same way.

“We have a small number of media houses in PNG but if we are able to stand together as one and speak with one voice against the threats of ownership and influence, we can achieve better things in future for this industry.

“We need to protect our reporters if they are to speak for themselves and their experiences as well. We need to better provide for their everyday needs before we can write the stories that need to be told.

“And this lies with each media house.

The biggest threat for the Pacific as a whole? “I guess the most obvious one would be being able to remain self-regulated BUT not being accountable for breaching our individual code of ethics.

“Building public trust remains vital if we are to move forward. The lack of media awareness also contributes to the lack of ensuring media is given the attention it deserves in performing its role — no matter how big or small our islands are,” Kora says.

“The press should remain free from government influence, which is a huge challenge for many island industries, despite state ownership.

Kora believes that although Pacific countries are “scattered in the region”, they are able to help each other more, to better enhance capacity building and learning from their mistakes with collaboration.

“By collaborating in our efforts in seeking the truth behind many of our big stories that is affecting our people. This I believe will enable us to improve our performance and accountability.”

Example to the region
Meanwhile, back in Taiwan on the day that RSF’s Thibaut Bruttin flew out to Thailand to open a Myanmar Press Freedom Project in Chiang Mai for exiled journalists, he gave a final breakfast interview to China News Agency (CNA) reporter Teng Pei-ju who wrote about the country building up its free press model as an example to the region.

“Taiwan really is one of the test cases for the robustness of journalism in the world,” added Bruttin, reflecting on the country’s transformation from an authoritarian regime that censored information into a vibrant democracy that fights disinformation.

Dr David Robie, convenor of the Asia Pacific Media Network’s Pacific Media Watch project and author of several media and politics books, including Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific, has been an RSF correspondent since 1996.

This unpublished “heartfelt” letter sent to The Press this week criticising its April 6 editorial about a “turning point” in the deadly war on Gaza by Earthwise co-presenter Lois Griffiths is published here in the public interest.

• READ MORE: A turning point in Gaza – The Press
• Israeli suffering is not comparable to Palestinian suffering – Caitlin Johnstone
• Poet, professor and writer, Refaat Alareer killed in Israeli strike

Dear editor,

Historian Howard Zinn stressed the importance of historical background if one wants to understand today’s world. The past cannot be changed. But learning about the past makes it easier to understand the present and how to strive for a better future.

Every Gaza war article, including the [6 April 2024] Press editorial “A turning Point in Gaza”, begins with Hamas attacking Israel last October and then Israel retaliating. No historical background is needed.

Yet UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that “October 07 did not happen in a vacuum”.

Maybe, just maybe, he reads history. Maybe he is thinking of the Nakba of 1948, the regular Israel bombing campaigns with names like “Operation Cast Lead”.

If Israel has the right to retaliate, maybe Palestinians do too?

The same Press article refers to “Western media and its consumers” not being able to identify with “faceless, nameless Palestinians” .

Palestinians aren’t “faceless or nameless”. I’ve read about and seen pictures of some of the Palestinian journalists targeted. Refaat Alareer, a well-loved Gazan academic, writer, and story-teller, was targeted.

Our commitment to humanity challenges us to follow Howard Zinn’s advice and believe that another, kinder, world is possible.

Quoting Bethlehem Lutheran Pastor Munther Isaac, “Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world.”

Lois Griffiths
Christchurch

In the Press yesterday pic.twitter.com/zJn6rDhnjN

— John Minto (@JohnJohnminto) April 11, 2024

There are questions about what the future of media will look like for Pacific media platforms in the wake of the axing of TVNZ’s Sunday and Fair Go programmes along with the proposed closure of Newshub.

Economist and political commentator Filipo Katavake-McGrath says the recent changes are monumental and media will need to adapt to changing audiences.

“Commercial news is expensive … the cost of maintaining a series of transmitters around the country is huge.

• READ MORE: Pacific journalist Barbara Dreaver challenges TVNZ chief over job cuts
• Mediawatch: Apocalypse now for NZ news – take 2?
• Inaugural Pacific Australia Media Leaders Meeting hosted by the ABC

“So one of the big challenges facing the broadcast sector here and around the world is trying to get people to switch off radios and to switch on computers so that everything can be done down the broadband lines, which would be significantly cheaper.”

Katavake-McGrath says shifting to a streaming or digital service could even the playing field for services like Radio Apna, Whakaata Māori, Coconet and Tagata Pasifika Plus.

‘A massive buffet’
“Today, as people use YouTube and Facebook a lot more, where they’ve got just a plethora of things that they can click in and out of, our news world might become more like that as well, where there’s just a massive buffet, and on that buffet, PMN sits with exactly the same prominence as TV1 news.”

More than 3.3 million people listen to commercial radio each week, with Pacific audiences making up 8 percent of that audience.

Speaking at last year’s Pacific Media Fono, veteran Tagata Pasifika executive producer John Utanga said: “We make content for us, and we put the faces, voices and issues of Pacific people on screens made by Pacific people for Pacific people.”

Pacific Media Network (PMN) chief executive Don Mann says media entities must be “brave and courageous” in their decision making.

“The worst thing we can do is just trundle along, doing the same old, same old, and end up just being an irrelevant organisation where our community are elsewhere, while we’re still sitting in an old way of doing things.”

Regional matters
Last week, ABC hosted the inaugural Pacific Australia Media Leaders Meeting. Mann was there, and says that on top of changing audience consumption and loss of revenue, Pacific media are facing a whole different level of concerns.

“We heard from an executive, I won’t name them for privacy reasons, who was talking about just the right to exist as a media entity and the threats and the pressure that they were under from the country’s military and political leaders,” he says.

“For other Pacific leaders, they were discussing the impact of foreign countries competing in their space and trying to act as a media agency in the middle of two major entities that are vying for power in their space.”

Mann says there were many layers of discussions, from trying to get working laptops, possibilities around subscription-based platforms, and AI content.

Local and long term plan
Closer to home, Mann says the government needs to have a long term strategy for how media is created for all the various communities in Aotearoa.

“What is the future government policy, irrespective of who’s in power . . . whether it’s Māori media or ethnic media or right across the board, what’s the coherent government policy on funded content moving forward?”

Disclaimer: Pacific Media Network is operated by a charitable trust and uses a mixed funding model with revenue coming from both public entities as well as commercial sources.

Khalia Strong is a Pacific Media Network senior reporter. This article was first published by PMN and is republished here with permission.

The toll of four months of war in Gaza on journalism is “nothing short of horrifying” — Palestinian journalists killed, wounded, and prevented from working without any possibility of safe refuge, reports the Paris-based global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

RSF has strongly condemned the “eradication of journalism and the right to information” in Gaza by the Israeli army, and has called on states and international organisations to increase pressure on Israel to “immediately cease this carnage”.

In 124 days of conflict, at least 84 journalists have been killed in Gaza, including at least 20 in the course of their journalistic work or in connection with it, according to RSF statistics.

• READ MORE: Fiji human rights activists pay tribute to slain Gaza journalists, but shunned by local media
• RSF condemns Israel over ‘silencing of media’ – 31 Palestinian journalists in jail, 80 plus killed
• Silencing the messenger: Israel kills journalists, while the West merely censors them — David Robie
• Other Gaza media reports

Journalists are being decimated as the days of this interminable war go by, through incessant Israeli strikes from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip, the watchdog said.

Journalists who had survived these four months were “living a daily hell” — in inhumane conditions, they suffered shortages of all kinds, particularly of equipment, as well as regular media blackouts, RSF said.

“In four months of conflict, Palestinian journalism has been decimated by Israeli armed forces with complete impunity, with a staggering death toll of more than 84 journalists killed — at least 20 in the line of duty,” said RSF’s Middle East desk in their statement.

“After filing two complaints with the International Criminal Court and making repeated appeals to States and international organisations, RSF is once again urging the UN Security Council to immediately enforce Resolution 2222 (2015) on the protection of journalists.

Journalists trapped in Rafah
Journalists in Gaza have no way out or any place of safe refuge. Forced to flee to the south of the enclave since October 7, the vast majority have taken refuge in Rafah, where the crossing point with Egypt is still closed and where an invasion of the city could lead to a new bloodbath.

Rafah was described by Israel as a “security zone” at the start of the conflict. Despite RSF’s calls for the Rafah gate to be opened, the Israeli authorities continue to prevent Gazan journalists from leaving and to block access to the enclave for foreign journalists.

As Gaza killings rise, so does the toll on Palestinian journalists.   Video: Al Jazeera

A chilling toll
According to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS), about 50 local and international media outlets in Gaza have been totally or partially destroyed by the Israeli army since October 7, in addition to the appalling death toll.

RSF filed two complaints with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on 31 October and 22 December 2023 in connection with the killings of journalists and the destruction of media outlets.

In the aftermath of the killings of independent videographer Moustafa Thuraya and Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Dahdouh on January 7, RSF obtained a decision from the ICC prosecutor to include crimes against journalists in its investigation into the situation in Palestine.

Two days later, RSF called on the UN Security Council to urgently address Israel’s violations of Resolution 2222 on the protection of journalists.

The struggle of journalists in the field
Against this terrifying backdrop, Palestinian reporters in Gaza are showing untold courage in continuing to report on the war.

Most have lost loved ones. Forced to move, they live in tents, with no electricity and very little food or water.

Wounded journalists have very limited access to medical care. In partnership with Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), RSF has been providing grants to Gazan journalists since the start of the war to support their reporting work.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

Al Jazeera rejects Israeli forces’ attempt to justify crimes against journalists

Al Jazeera Media Network has rejected the Israeli occupation forces’ attempt to justify the killing and targeting of journalists.

In a statement this week, the network has condemned the accusations against its journalists and recalled Israel’s “long record of lies and fabrication of evidence through which it seeks to hide its heinous crimes”.

• READ MORE: Israeli forces killed Abu Akleh ‘without justification’, UN inquiry says

The statement continued:

“At a time when its correspondents and field crews are making great sacrifices to cover what is happening in Gaza, Al Jazeera’s employment policies stipulate that employees are not to engage in any political affiliations that may affect their professionalism, and to adhere to the controls and directives contained in the Network’s code of ethics and code of conduct.

“Al Jazeera ensures that all its journalists and correspondents adhere to the editorial standards.

“The network recalls the systematic targeting of Al Jazeera by the Israeli authorities, which includes:

• the bombing of its office in Gaza twice,
• the assassination of its correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh,
• the killing of colleagues Samer Abu Daqa and Hamza Al-Dahdouh,
• the deliberate targeting of a number of Al Jazeera journalists and their family members, and
• the arrest and intimidation of its correspondents in the field.

“Given Israel’s unprecedented campaign against journalists, Al Jazeera urges media outlets worldwide to exercise the utmost caution and responsibility when headlining Israel’s justifications for its crimes against journalists in Gaza.”

Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, has been killed along with another journalist in an Israeli air strike west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, the news channel reports.

The 27-year-old photojournalist was killed when a missile directly hit the vehicle he was travelling in to “document new atrocities” in the latest Israel attack.

Gaza’s media office condemned the killing of two more Palestinian journalists, describing it as a “heinous crime” committed by the “Israeli occupation army against journalists”.

• READ MORE: Why NZ should join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel
• Israel is eradicating journalism in Gaza, with ten reporters killed in three days

Hamza Dahdouh and colleague Mustafa Thuraya, who has worked as a journalist for Agence France-Presse news agency, were in the car at the time it was targeted, Al Jazeera reports.

Thuraya also died.

Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son in October in an Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in.

Dozens of journalists have been killed in the Israeli strikes since the war began on October 7 and Al Jazeera reports that a total of 109 Palestianian journalists have died.

Journalists ‘being targeted’
Interviewed live on Al Jazeera, another AJ correspondent, Hani Mahmoud, described the work of Dahdouh and other Palestinians journalists documenting the war.

He said “journalists are being targeted and killed for telling the true story” as an Israeli drone hovered overhead during the interview.

Hamza and his colleagues were doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction that was caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road that connects Khan Younis with Rafah.

Reporting from Rafah, Mahmoud said that Hamza and his colleagues had been doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road connecting Khan Younis with Rafah.

“Every airstrike has an aftermath — it does not only cause a great deal of damage to the targeted home but also to the surrounding area,” he said.

“So they were documenting these crimes — destruction, displacement, and people under the rubble — when they were targeted.”

An Al Jazeera news executive compared the war on Gaza and on Palestinians with the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, saying “it is genocide”.

Israel aims to “intimidate journalists in a failed attempt to obscure the truth and prevent media coverage”, the Gaza media office said.

It also demanded “the occupation to stop the genocidal war against our defenceless people in the Gaza Strip”.

More than 22,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry, 40 percent of them children.

Al Jazeera journalist, Wael Dahdouh, bidding farewell to his son Hamza, who has been killed along with journalist Mustafa Thurayya in an Israeli strike, which targeted a journalists’ car. pic.twitter.com/2h0zEizoKo

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) January 7, 2024

Major media organisations all over the world are copping criticism for the way they’re reporting what’s happening in Gaza and Israel. Mediawatch has asked BBC news boss Jonathan Munro how they’re handling it — even when it’s coming from the UK’s own government.

“Palestinian health officials in Gaza say hundreds of people have been killed in an explosion at a hospital in Gaza. They’re blaming an Israeli strike on the hospital.

“But the Israel DefenCe Forces said an initial investigation shows the explosion was caused by a failed Hamas rocket launch.”

That was how RNZ’s news at 8am last Tuesday reported the single deadliest incident of this conflict so far — and likely to be the deadliest one in all of the five times Israel and Hamas have fought over Gaza so far.

The Israeli Defence Force also singled out Islamic Jihad for the atrocity — but the absence of hard evidence put the media reporting it in a difficult position.

“It’s still absolutely unclear. There are varying bits of information that are coming out for now. I don’t think anybody can quite say . . . it’s most likely to have been Israel,” the BBC Middle East editor Sebastian Usher told RNZ on Wednseday night.

“They said it seems like it might be a misfired rocket,”

Huge anger on streets
“We can’t say for now, but I don’t think  — in terms of the mood in the Arab world and the Middle East — that that really matters. People out on the streets are showing huge anger and they will reject any investigation, any Israeli claim, to say that Israel is not responsible,” he said.

Reporting those claims and counterclaims creates confusion among the audience. It’s also stoked the anger of those objecting to reporters’ choice of words.

CNN’s Clarissa Ward, for example, was criticised heavily on social media for mentioning the Israeli Defense Force claims — and then expressing doubt about them at the same time.

A video showing a pro-Palestinian protester calling Clarissa Ward “a puppet” has gone viral on social media. So did another falsely accusing her of faking a rocket strike.

The longer version of the video of Egyptian podcaster Rahma Zein confronting CNN reporter Clarissa Ward at the Rafah crossing. It’s raw, sincere, and powerful. Much respect for Rahma, she expressed our collective pain at the Western media’s dehumanization of the Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/yfB7zFYPwe

— Amro Ali (@_amroali) October 20, 2023

Her CNN colleague Anderson Cooper was also criticised online for referring to a huge civilian loss of life during the live report from Tel Aviv in Israel and repeating himself, but then without the word “civilian”.

Among those who, alongside expert investigators, tried to sift the available evidence and cut through the information war was Alex Thompson, correspondent for UK broadcaster Channel Four

“Israel and Hamas can tweet what they like. The truth of what happened here requires independent expert investigation — not happening,” was Alex Thompson’s bleak conclusion.

‘A fierce information war’
“Any doubt is due to a fierce information war that in truth matters little to the victims of the Gaza hospital tragedy,” another British correspondent — ITV Jonathan Irvine — said on Newshub at 6 last Tuesday.

At times, broadcasters have used the wrong words and given audiences the wrong idea.

Last week the BBC’s main evening news bulletin made a rapid apology for describing pro-Palestine protests in the UK as “pro-Hamas”.

“We accept that this was poorly-phrased and was a misleading description,” the presenter told viewers just before the end of the bulletin.

And earlier this month, people protested outside the BBC News headquarters in London about the BBC’s long-standing policy of not labeling any group as “terrorists”.

“You don’t seem to be particularly interested. If the BBC seems to refuse to call terrorists even though the British Parliament has legislated them terrorists — that is a question I haven’t heard the BBC answer yet,” UK government Defence Secretary Grant Shapps told the BBC radio flagship news show Today.

“Have you not seen any of the coverage on the BBC of the atrocities, the dead, the injured, the survivors?” the startled presenter asked him.

“How can you say that we’re not interested?” she replied, when Shapps said he had.

An obligation to audiences
The BBC’s deputy chief executive of news Jonathan Munro was at Sydney’s South by Southwest festival this week to talk about how the BBC delivers news from and about conflict zones.

“We’ve already seen journalists lose their lives in this country, working for organisations who are also facing the same dilemmas as we are,” said Munro, who is also the BBC’s director of journalism.

“We’ve got an obligation to audiences to explain what’s going on and that involves lots of people on the ground as witnesses to events, but also the analysis that comes with expert knowledge,” he told Mediawatch.

“Expertise is just invaluable. People like Jeremy Bowen (former Middle East editor and current international editor of BBC News) and our chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet and correspondents who are based in that region,” he said.

“But the main story here is the catastrophic loss of life and the appalling conditions that people are living in and that the hostages are being held in — the humanity of that,” he said.

A lot of reporting people will see, hear and read will come from Israel. Reporting from Gaza itself is difficult and dangerous — and access to Gaza at the border is restricted by Israel.

“We have a correspondent in Gaza, but he’s moved from Gaza City to Khan Yunis in the south of the strip, a safer option. But he can’t report 24 hours a day, and he is looking after his family which is paramount.

Need for transparency
“So we do have to add to that [with] reporting from Israel and from London by people who know Gaza very well,” he said.

“We have to be transparent about that and tell the audience and then the audience knows that wherever it’s coming from, and you still hold editorial integrity.”

A lot of what people will be seeing from Gaza is amateur footage and social media content that’s very difficult to verify.

The BBC recently launched BBC Verify, dedicated to checking out this kind of material and vetting its use.

“There’s a huge amount of video out there on social media we can all find at the touch of a button. The brand of BBC Verify is a signpost that the material . . . has been checked by us using methods like geolocation and looking at the metadata,” he said.

Even when verified, there are still ethical dilemmas.

For example, BBC Verify used facial recognition software to analyse images of an individual in the Hamas surprise attacks on October 8. It identified one gunman as a policeman from Gaza.

Independently verifying claims
“It’s case-by-case — but something shouldn’t go out on the BBC without us knowing it’s true. There are occasions we would broadcast something and we would tell the audience that we’ve not been able to independently verify a claim . . . and we need to caveat our coverage of the reaction to it with the fact that we do not have our own verification of source material,” he said.

Major media outfits all over the world are copping criticism for the way they’re reporting what’s happening in Gaza and Israel. Mediawatch asks BBC news boss Jonathan Munro how they’re handling it – even when it’s coming from the UK’s own government https://t.co/gm8Fyv4ar1

— Mediawatch (@MediawatchNZ) October 21, 2023

Even before the Al Ahli hospital catastrophe amplified emotions, intense scrutiny of reporters’ work was adding to the stress of those reporting from the region.

“Every word you say is being scrutinised so closely and is likely to be contested by one side or the other more or both — and that definitely adds to the pressure,” Channel Four correspondent Secunder Kermani told the BBC’s Media Show last week from Gaza.

“In the Israel Gaza situation it is critical. Every word can be checked and rechecked and double checked for any implication which is either inferred or implied by accident.

“Because our job is to be impartial, tell the reality of the story, and most importantly, share the witnessing of that story by our correspondents,” Jonathan Munro told Mediawatch.

“That’s why we’ve got a significant number of correspondents in Israel and back in the newsroom in London are adding explanations and leaning into that scrutiny on language,” he said.

Adjectives ‘can be dangerous’
“We’re using expertise, our knowledge as an organisation and we’re making sure that at every stage of that every sentence, every paragraph is reflective of what we know to be true.

“But adjectives can be dangerous, because they may imply something which is more emotive than we mean. We have to be quite clean in our language in these circumstances,” he said.

“Of course, people can come on the BBC and express their views in language of their choice. All of those things help to keep our coverage straight and honest and ensure that correspondents on the ground aren’t in danger by slips or mistakes that are made in good faith elsewhere in the BBC output.”

Last week at its annual conference, senior members of the Conservative Party — which is in power in the UK — heavily criticised the BBC for alleged bias and elitism. Some — including home secretary Suella Braverman and former prime minister Liz Truss made a point of praising GB News — the new right-wing TV channel backed by billionaire Brexiteers — for disrupting the news.

“The criticism of the BBC from politicians is as old as the BBC itself. Just because they’re habitual critics doesn’t mean they’re wrong, but we’ve got a well developed set of editorial guidelines which have stood the test of time over many, many difficult stories,” Munro told Mediawatch. 

“The editorial guidelines are robust and public. You can go online and look at them. All of our journalism abides by those guidelines and if you have guidelines that you believe in as an organisation, that’s a significant defence to some of the less well-founded attacks that we sometimes find ourselves on the end of,” he said.

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

As we prepared for this podcast, representatives of Arab states have presented a united front at the United Nations, criticising the UN Security Council of doing nothing to protect civilians from Israeli bombing and missile attacks on Gazan civilians and locations.

Since then, the UN Security Council has considered two resolutions, the latter calling for a pause in hostilities to allow a humanitarian effort to enter Gaza to assist civilians.

The United States vetoed that Security Council resolution.

• READ MORE: Regional tensions threaten to spill over, Israel continues attack on Gaza
• Other War on Gaza reports

Al Jazeera has detailed that Israel forces have targeted and bombed civilian facilities include hospitals, schools, residential areas resulting in the deaths of thousands of people, civilians – around one-third of the deaths are children.

It remains contested by all sides in this conflict as to who, or what, is responsible for the deadly attack on Gaza Hospital, resulting in the deaths of at least 471 people.

Additional to this, Israel has sealed the borders of Gaza while it prevents food, water and medical supplies from reaching civilians — in breach of international law requirements and laws of conflict.

Israel ordered Gazan civilians, who wish to get to safety, to get out of North Gaza and move toward the south, to the border with Egypt.

Heavy bombing, sealed border
But as people fled south toward what appeared to be safety, Israel bombed the southern Gaza region killing more civilians and sealing off that corridor for others who sought refuge.

As a consequence of the bombing, Egypt responded by sealing the Gaza-Egypt border.

Humanitarian aid now sits on trucks, waiting, on the Egypt side of the border, while United Nations officials implore Israel and Egypt to allow medical supplies, food and water to get through to those who are injured and dying.

The Israel Defence Force strikes followed a surprise-attack on Israeli citizens by soldiers operating under the Hamas banner.

Civilians were slaughtered and others taken hostage, only to be used as bargaining chips and leverage against their enemies.

Even Palestinian advocacy groups like the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa suggested that breaches of international humanitarian Law, crimes against civilians, have been committed by those Hamas-aligned fighters.

But they are clear, as others are too, that crimes against humanity, war crimes, have been committed by Israel, without consequence, as we all give witness to its response which is disproportionate, brutal, and disregarding of the thousands of Palestinian lives that have already been taken.

The View From Afar podcast on Gaza.

Getting worse
That is the grave current situation and it is likely to get much worse.

In this episode, Selwyn Manning and global security and geopolitics analyst Dr Paul Buchanan discuss the crisis yesterday:

• What are the world’s leaders doing to stop the carnage?
• Are the world’s nations being drawn into what will be an ever-expanding war?
• Are we witnessing the beginning of a war where on one side authoritarian-led states like Russia, Iran, the wider Arab states, and possibly China stand unified against the United States, Britain, Germany, and other so-called liberal democratic allies representing the old world order?
• Is what we are witnessing, what happens when a global rules-based order, multilateralism and institutions like the United Nations no longer have influence to prevent war, or restore peace and stability, or assert principles of international justice and enforce the rights of victims to see recourse to the law?
• Why has this slaughter become an opportunity for the US and Russia to square-off against each other at the UN Security Council — a body that was once designed to advocate and achieve peace, but has now become a geopolitically divided entity of stalemate and mediocrity?
• Eventually, will humanitarianism prevail? Will the world recognise that all people, the elderly, women, children, people of all ethnicities and religions, that they all bleed and die irrespective of their state of origin, when leaders of all sides, while sitting back in their bunkers, unleash weapons designed to kill as many people as is possible?

Watch this episode of A View from Afar

Pacific Media Watch

An award-winning website with an archive of thousands of Pacific news reports, videos, images and research abstracts regarded as a pioneering initiative for a university based media programme has “disappeared” from its cyberspace platform.

Pacific Media Centre Online, founded in 2007, was the website of the research and publication centre established at Auckland University of Technology as a component of the Creative Industries Research Institute (CIRI).

It was a platform for student journalists and independent media contributors from other media schools and institutions across the Oceania region such as the University of the South Pacific as well as at AUT.

• READ MORE: The PMC Online website on the WebArchive
• Latest: AUT restores mirror PMC Online website here

One of PMC Online’s components, Pacific Media Watch, was awarded the faculty dean’s “Critic and Conscience of Society” award in 2014 and contributing student journalists won 11 prizes in the annual Ossie journalism awards of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA).

When the PMC effectively closed in early 2021, the website continued as an archive at AUT for more than two and a half years under the URL pmc.aut.ac.nz — a total life of 16 years plus.

However, suddenly the website vanished earlier this month with pmc.aut.ac.nz defaulting to the university’s Journalism Department with no explanation from campus authorities.

Founding director of the Pacific Media Centre and retired professor of Pacific journalism Dr David Robie called it a disappointing reflection on the decline of independent journalism and lack of respect for history at media schools, asking: “Yet another example of cancel culture?”

‘Appalling waste’
Media commentators on social media have raised questions and been highly critical.

Jemima Garrett, co-convenor of the Australia Asia Pacific Media Initiative (AAPMI), described it as an “appalling waste and disrespectful”.

Investigative journalist and Gold Walkley winner Peter Cronau, who is co-publisher of Declassified Australia, wrote: “That’s disgraceful censorship of Pacific stories — disturbing it’s been done by AUT, who should be devoted to openness and free speech. What avenues exist for appeal?”

Another investigative journalist and former journalism professor Wendy Bacon said: “This is very bad and very glad that you archived all this valuable work. Unfortunately the same thing happened to an enormous amount of valuable files of Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at UTS [University of Technology Sydney].”

The Pacific affairs adviser of the Pacific Islands Forum, Lisa Leilani Williams-Lahari, said: “Sad!”

Pacific Media Centre student contributors filed more than 50 reports for the Australian journalism school collaborative platform The Junction and they can be read here.

The PMC Online archive can also be accessed at WebArchive and the National Library of New Zealand.

More than 220 media videos by students and staff are available on the PMC YouTube channel.

Stop press:
On Monday, 2 October 2023, AUT restored the PMC Online archive here at this url: https://pmcstatic.aut.ac.nz/

The Pacific Archives – 13 years of storytelling, news, current affairs and research from the Pacific Media Centre available online – thanks to @JunctionJournos and @Tuwhera at @AUTuni @USPWansolwara @JERAAus #journalism #research https://t.co/EfOBFwcipp

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) October 9, 2023

A Radio New Zealand Pacific journalist has alleged that an Indonesian official attempted to both bribe and intimidate him following an interview at the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) leaders’ summit in the Vanuatu capital of Port Vila last month.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its affiliates, the Media Association Vanuatu (MAV) and the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) Indonesia, have condemned the attempted bribery and harassment of the journalist and urged the relevant authorities to thoroughly investigate the incident.

On August 23, RNZ Pacific journalist Kelvin Anthony reported that a representative of the Indonesian government, Ardi Nuswantoro, attempted to bribe him outside Port Vila’s Holiday Inn Resort after Anthony conducted an exclusive interview with Indonesia’s Australian ambassador, Dr Siswo Pramono.

• READ MORE: Indonesia responds after claim official attempted to bribe RNZ Pacific journalist
• AJI slams treatment of White House reporter by Indonesian officials at ASEAN Summit
• Other West Papua reports

According to Anthony, Nuswantoro had previously expressed the Indonesian government’s displeasure at RNZ’s coverage of ongoing independence efforts in West Papua, reported the IFJ in a statement.

The journalist had advised him of the outlet’s mandate to produce “balanced and fair” coverage and was invited to the hotel for the interview, where he questioned Dr Pramono on a broad range of pertinent topics, including West Papua.

Following the interview, Anthony was escorted from the hotel by at least three Indonesian officials. After repeatedly inquiring as to how the journalist was going to return to his accommodation, Nuswantoro then offered him a “gift” of an unknown amount of money, which Anthony refused.

Anthony reported that he felt harassed and intimidated in the days following, with Nuswantoro continuing to message, call, and follow him at the conference’s closing reception.

Interview not aired
RNZ chose not to air the interview with Dr Pramno due to the incident.

In response to the claims of bribery and intimidation sent to the Indonesian government by RNZ, Jakarta’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Asia Pacific and African Affairs director-general Abdul Kadir Jailani said, “bribery has never been our policy nor approach to journalists . . . we will surely look into it.”

In a September 6 interview, New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins reiterated his government’s commitment to press freedom, stating the importance of free and independent media.

Journalists and civil society in West Papua have faced increasing threats, restrictions and violence in recent years. Indonesian media has disproportionately reflected state narratives, with state intervention resulting in the censorship of independent outlets and effective barring of local or international journalists from Indonesian-administered Papua.

In February, renowned Jubi journalist Victor Mambor was subject to a bombing attack outside his Jayapura home.

Pacific Journalism Review: How Indonesian media amplifies the state’s narrative on the Free West Papua movement. #westpapua #indonesia #humanrights https://t.co/J3Rj0Ulhzs pic.twitter.com/9ygIo6KjWN

— Human Rights Monitor (@hurimonitor) September 12, 2023

MAV said: “The Media Association of Vanuatu (MAV) is concerned about an alleged bribery attempt by foreign officials at a Melanesian Spearhead Group regional meeting.

MAV president Lillyrose Welwel denounces such actions and urges MAV members to adhere to the Code of Ethics, as journalism is a public service. She encourages international journalists to contact the association when in the country, as any actions that do not reflect MAV’s values are not acceptable.”

AJI calls for ‘safety guarantee’
AJI said:“AJI Indonesia urges the Indonesian government to investigate the incident with transparency. This action must be followed by providing guarantees to any journalist to work safely in Papua and outside.

“The Indonesian government must also guarantee the protection of human rights in Papua, including for civilians, human rights defenders, and journalists.”

The IFJ said: “Government intervention in independent and critical reporting is highly concerning, and this incident is one in an alarming trend of intimidation against reporting on West Papua.

“The IFJ urges the Indonesian government to thoroughly investigate this incident of alleged bribery and harassment and act to ensure its commitment to press freedom is upheld.”

Pacific Media Watch condemnation
Pacific Media Watch also condemned the incident, saying that it was part of a growing pattern of disturbing pressure on Pacific journalists covering West Papuan affairs.

“West Papua self-determination and human rights violations are highly sensitive issues in both Indonesia and the Pacific. Journalists are bearing the brunt of a concerted diplomatic push by Jakarta in the region to undermine Pacific-wide support for West Papuan rights. It is essential that the Vanuatu authorities investigate this incident robustly and transparently.”

According to a CNN Indonesia report on September 6, Indonesian authorities denied the attempted bribery and harassment allegation.

News media in Indonesia act as “government loudspeakers” by advancing a one-sided narrative regarding the conflict in West Papua, a new study reveals.

The human rights abuses against indigenous Papuans, who have been under military occupation of the Indonesian armed forces since 1962-63 and their struggle for independence from Jakarta, remains a sticking point for the Indonesian government in the region.

However, the Indonesian national media provides an unfair coverage on the plight of the West Papuans by only amplifying the state’s narrative, according to research published in Pacific Journalism Review.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Journalism Review research reports
• Other West Papua reports

The paper, which looks at how six dominant news media organisations in Indonesia report on the Free West Papua movement, found that they “tend to be only a ‘loudspeaker’ for the government” by using mainly statements issued by state officials when reporting about West Papua.

The findings come from in-depth interviews that were conducted between 2021 and 2022 with six informants and journalists who have a history of writing on West Papua in the last five years.

Additionally, the research analysed over 270 news items relating to West Papua issues that appeared in the six Indonesian online media — Okezone, Detik, Kompas.com, Tribunnews, CNN Indonesia and Tirto — in the week after the Indonesian government formally labelled the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement (TPNPB-OPM) as a terrorist group in April 2021.

“The Indonesian media does not use a balanced frame, for example, in terms of explaining why and how acts of violence are chosen on the path to fight for West Papuan independence,” the author of the research from Universitas Padjadjaran, Justito Adipresto, writes.

‘Prolonging human rights violations’
Non-state actors have acknowledged that “labelling West Papuan separatist groups as terrorist will not only not solve the problem, but that it also has the potential to prolong the human rights violations that have been taking place in West Papua,” Adipresto says.

While some point to the economic disparities as a starting point to the West Papua conflict, the research shows that the media fall significantly short of providing a nuanced coverage by ignoring the “haunting track record of violence and militarism, ethnicity and racism” in their reports.

“The imbalance of representation that occurs in relation to reporting on West Papua cannot be separated from Indonesia’s treatment of ethnic groups and the region of West Papua,” Adipresto says.

He says the government’s labelling of the Free West Papua movement has “severe implications for the current and future situation and conflict in West Papua”.

“Media in Indonesia is under the shadow of the state,” he said adding that reporting on West Papua lacks “explanation and sufficient context”.

He said Indonesian media were “very concerned about the readers clicks”, and therefore on the quantity of reports rather than the quality.

“The concentration of reporters in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, also leads to reporting from reporters not located in or never having visited West Papua, potentially reducing empathy and understanding of human rights or economic aspects in their reporting.

‘Quality, ethics of journalists are an issue’
“The quality and ethics of journalists are an issue in reporting on West Papua, considering that journalists do not tend to cover the issue of labelling a ‘terrorist’ comprehensively.”

The research shows Indonesian media place greater importance on comments from government officials, often ignoring or not providing space for other voices, in particular the West Papuan community.

“It is necessary to develop a more systematic and consolidated strategy for the national media to cover West Papua better,” the author concludes.

The full paper, titled “Government loudspeakers: How Indonesian media amplifies the state’s narrative towards the Free West Papua movement”, can be found at Pacific Journalism Review, published by the Asia Pacific Media Network. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand-adopted Fiji journalist, sports writer, national news agency reporter, anti-coup activist, media freedom advocate, storyteller and mentor Sri Krishnamurthi has died. He was just two weeks shy of his 60th birthday.

Born on 15 August 1963, just after his twin brother Murali, Sri grew up in the port city of Lautoka, Fiji’s second largest in the west of Viti Levu island. His family were originally Girmitya, indentured Indian plantation workers shipped out to Fiji under under harsh conditions by the British colonial rulers.

“My grandmother, Bonamma, came from India with my grandfather and came to work in the sugar cane fields under the indentured system,” Sri recalled in a recent RNZ interview with Blessen Tom.

• READ MORE: Sri Krishnamurthi reports for RNZ

“They lived in ‘lines’ — a row of one-room houses. They worked the cane fields from 6am to 6pm largely without a break. It was basically slavery in all but name.”

However, the Krishnamurthi family became one of the driving forces in building up Fiji’s largest NGO, TISI Sangam.

He made his initial mark as a journalist with The Fiji Times, Fiji’s most influential daily newspaper. However, along with many of his peers, he became disillusioned and affected with the trauma and displacement as a result of Sitiveni Rabuka’s two military coups in 1987 at the start of what became known as the country’s devastating “coup culture”.

Sri migrated to New Zealand to make a new life, as did most of his family members, and he was active for the Coalition for Democracy (CDF) in the post-coup years. He worked as a journalist for many organisations, including the NZ Press Association, the civil service, Parliament and more recently with RNZ Pacific.

Tana’s ‘sleepless nights’
His last story for RNZ Pacific was about Tana Umaga ”expecting sleepless nights” as the new coach of Moana Pasifika.

“A friend to many, he is best known in the journalism industry for his long-time stint at NZPA covering sport, and more recently for his work with the Pacific Media Centre,” said New Zealand Herald editor-at-large Shayne Currie in his Media Insider column.

“During his NZPA career, he covered various international rugby tours of New Zealand, America’s Cups, cricket tours, the Warriors in the NRL and was also among a handful of reporters who travelled to Mexico in 1999 for the All Whites’ first-ever appearance at Fifa’s Confederations Cup.”

His mates remember him as a generous friend and dedicated journalist.

“He enjoyed being a New Zealander, a true Kiwi if we can call someone that,” recalled Nik Naidu, an activist businessman, former journalist and trustee of the Whanau Community Centre and Hub, when speaking about his lifelong family friend at the funeral on Friday.

“Sri was one of the few Fijians and migrants over 30 years ago who embraced Māoridom and the first nation people of our land. It is only now in New Zealand that the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi is becoming better understood by the mainstream.

“Sri lived Te Tiriti all those years ago, and advocated for Māori and indigenous rights for so long.”

Postgraduate studies
I first got to know Sri in 2017 when he rolled up at AUT University and said he wanted to study journalism. I was floored by this idea. Although I hadn’t really known him personally before this, I knew him by reputation as being a talented sports journalist from Fiji who had made his mark at NZPA.

I remember asking Sri why did he want to do journalism — albeit at postgraduate level — when he could easily teach the course standing on his head. And then as we chatted I realised that he was rebuilding his life after a stroke that he had suffered travelling from Chennai to Bangalore, India, back in 2016.

Well, I persuaded him to branch out in his planned Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies and tackle a range of challenging new skills and knowledge, such as digital media. And I was honoured too that he wanted to take my Asia Pacific Journalism studies postgraduate course.

He wanted to build on his Fiji origins and expand his Pacific reporting skills, and he mentored many of his fellow postgraduates, people with life experience and qualifications but often new to journalism, especially Pacific journalism.

I realised he was somebody rather special who had a remarkable range of skills and an extraordinary range of contacts, even for a journalist. He seemed to know everybody under the sun. And he had a friendly manner and an insatiable curiosity.

From then he gravitated around Asia Pacific Journalism and the Pacific Media Centre. Next thing he was recruited as editor/writer of Pacific Media Watch, a media freedom project that we had been running in the centre since 2007 in collaboration with the Paris-based global watchdog Reporters Without Borders.

In spite of his post-stroke blues, he was one of the best project editors that we ever had. He had a tremendous zeal and enthusiasm no matter what handicap was in his way. He was willing to try anything — so keen to give it a go.

95bFM radio presenter
Sri became the presenter of our weekly Pacific radio programme Southern Cross on 95bFM, not an easy task with his voice issues, but he gained a popular following. He interviewed people from all around the Pacific.

Next challenge was when we sent him to the University of the South Pacific to join the journalism school team over there covering the 2018 Fiji General Election. We had hoped 2006 coup leader Voreqe Bainimarama would be ousted then, but he wasn’t – that came four years later last December.

However, Sri scored an exclusive interview with the original coup leader, Sitiveni Rabuka, the man responsible for Sri fleeing Fiji and who is now Prime Minister of Fiji. Sri got the repentent former Fiji strongman to admit that he was “coerced” by the defeated Alliance party into carrying out the first coup.

He graduated from AUT with a Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies (Digital Media) in 2019 to add to his earlier MBA at Massey University. Several times he expressed to me that his ambition was to gain a PhD and join the USP journalism programme to mentor future Fiji journalists.

At AUT, he won the 2018 RNZ Pacific Prize for his Fiji coup coverage and in 2019 he was awarded the Storyboard Award for his outstanding contribution to diversity journalism. RNZ Pacific manager Moera Tuilaepa-Taylor tells a story about how he had declared to her at the time:  “I’m going to work for RNZ Pacific.” And he did.

However, the following year, our world changed forever with the COVID-19 pandemic and many plans crashed. Sri and I teamed up again, this time on a Pacific Covid and Climate crisis project, writing for Asia Pacific Report.  He recalled about this venture: “The fact that we kept the Pacific Media Watch project going when other news media around us — such as Bauer — were failing showed a tenacity that was unique and a true commitment to the Pacific.”

‘Virtual kava bar’
It was a privilege to work with Sri and to share his enthusiasm and friendship. He was an extraordinarily generous person, especially to fellow journalists. I was really touched when he and Blessen Tom, now also with RNZ, made a video dedicated to the Pacific Media Watch and my work.

Nik Naidu shares a tale of Sri’s generosity with a group of West Papuan students last year when their Indonesian government suddenly pulled their scholarships and left them in dire straits. AUT postgraduate communications Laurens Ikinia was their advocate, trying to get their visas extended and fundraising for them to complete their studies.

“Many people don’t know this, but Lauren’s rent was late by a year — more than $3000 — and Sri organised money and paid for this. That was Sri, deep down the kindest of souls.”

During his Pacific Media Watch stint, Sri wrote several generous profiles of regional colleagues, including The Pacific Newsroom, the “virtual kava bar” news success founded by Pacific media veterans Sue Ahearn and Michael Field, and also of the expanding RNZ Pacific newsroom team with Koroi Hawkins appointed as the first Melanesian news editor.

But he struggled at times with depression and diabetes and his journalism piece that really stands out for me is an article that he wrote about living with a stroke for three years. It was scary but inspirational and it took huge courage to write. As he wrote at the time:

“You learn new tricks when you have a stroke – words associated with images, or words through the process of elimination worked for me. And then there was the trusted old Google when you couldn’t be bothered.

“You learn to use bungee shoelaces or Velcro shoes because tying shoelaces just won’t happen. The right arm is bung and you are back to typing with two fingers – as I’m doing now. At the same time, technology is your biggest ally.”

Sri Krishnamurthi died last week on August 2 — way too early. He was a great survivor against the odds. Moce, Sri, your friends and colleagues will fondly remember your generous spirit and legacy.

Dr David Robie is a retired journalism professor and founding director of the AUT Pacific Media Centre. He worked with Sri Krishnamurthi for six years as an academic mentor, friend and journalism colleague. This article is published under a community partnership with RNZ.

It has been a decade since The Daily Blog (TDB) came into being informing all and sundry of the political machinations in New Zealand.

Run by the Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury it serves the left of politics.

It had almost five million page views in 2022.

• READ MORE:  How NZ’s Public Interest Journalism Fund can help ‘normalise’ diversity
• Other Daily Blog reports

“We had just under five million page views last year,” Bradbury told Asia Pacific Report.

“We have professor Wayne Hope from the AUT School of Communications; we have associate professor Susan St John from Auckland University, who is a poverty campaigner; John Minto who is a well-known political activist; and we have Mike Treen, a union boss.”

And they also have one of the country’s leading left analysts, Chris Trotter.

“We have anywhere between 10 to 20 bloggers,” Bradbury said.

TBD has been one of the go to blogsites for the political left.

“I think the idea when we set it up in 2013 was to provide an alternative commentary on the leftwing of opinion shapers,” he said.

Bradbury, who studied English at Auckland University and became a journalist on the job, believes debate is essential when discussing politics.

“I think we enjoy robust debate,” he said.

Nor does he blindly carry a candle for the leftwing government of the day even though he professes to belongs to the left.

“I think you have to be critical of everyone in power regardless of whether they are on your side or not,” said Bradbury, who was given his moniker “Bomber” by the Auckland University student newspaper Craccum.

“If you are writing commentary about the politics of the day you have to equally scathing for when the left are in, or the right are in, or you don’t have any credibility.

“We (TBD) are able to talk about things that are going on in politics and that is happening 24-48 hours ahead of the mainstream media; so I think people that are hungry to find out what is going on and have better oversight into the New Zealand political system can? So they come to us before you see it turn up in the mainstream media.”

He believes that journalism must be held to account.

“We have an obligation if you are the Fourth Estate to hold the powerful to account and the most powerful is the government of the day,” said Bradbury.

Public Interest Journalism
He said the government must provide for more investment in Public Interest Journalism (PIJ).

PIJ, a programme which started three years ago and is set to be concluded this year, needed to be continued, Bradbury said.

“I think it is a good start for the problem we have always had in New Zealand which is the market driven model, which is audience based advertising. We have always had too small a population to be able to support good journalism.

“But, there needs to be a lot more investment in public journalism for it to work.”

Nor does he see it, as many perceive it, as the government attempting to purchase favours from the media.

“I don’t see it as the government buying the media, I know that is a common critique that is used and brought up, but I don’t see it as black and white as that,” Bradbury said.

“We need to have public money go into journalism and there needs to be better checks and balances as to how that money is getting out there.

“There is a problem there, but overall I think that you can’t get a well-funded Fourth Estate that critiques the government of the day without having the state invested in that.”

He is advocating for a campaign to promote the benefits of better public interest journalism.

“We need a public service campaign similar to the one we have on our beaches where we have the ‘swim between the flags’ mantra.

“There has to be more public journalism funding to a vastly different group of media players and, by getting that funding they are able to show a little flag and we have a public campaign where we talk about ‘reading between the flags,’ so they know what they are reading is accurate and true.”

TVNZ-RNZ merger
Although the government has now shelved the TVNZ-RNZ merger after five years of work and many millions of dollars, Bradbury said it was only needed to see what was happening out in the public to realise people did not trust mainstream media.

“I think that the reason why we should have the merger is because we need to have a baseline public broadcasting that people can trust,” Bradbury said.

“We have all seen with real horror what happens when a large chunk of your population no longer believes certain agreed truths and we saw that on Parliament lawns last year.

“It is important to have public broadcasting that is trusted and believed because if we don’t have that it is very difficult to find common ground.

The emergence of rightwing radio — The Platform
“What we are seeing is the fracturing of the media world in New Zealand, and there are people who don’t believe in mainstream media anymore; people who have moved away from it and are searching out their own news,” Bradbury said.

“That’s fine as long as those media that are operating adhere to the basic values of journalism and stick to them.”

Jacinda Ardern
In the TBD Bradbury shared an excerpt from a podcast from TDB’s The Working Group which was rated as the best podcast in New Zealand in August last year by the Sunday Star-Times.

Bradbury related a story from January 24 the week that former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had to endure:

“Matt McCarten tells us a story of how at the end of last year, Jacinda and [her preschool daughter] Neve went out for a coffee with a friend of theirs at a cafe just in their private capacity. The way any mum with their daughter does every weekend.

“However, when Jacinda and their friend and Neve had settled down at a table, two people walked into the cafe after learning of Jacinda being in there, and started screaming at Jacinda and Neve telling them how they intended to hurt and kill Neve and Jacinda.”

“No mother should have feral lunatics screaming death threats at them and their child in a cafe.”

— TDB’s The Working Group

The TDB Working Group of 24 January 2023, Matt McCarten at 41m 46s.

“No doubt there was a tsunami of vileness that I don’t think I have seen in my political life that hit Jacinda,” said Bradbury.

“There was danger with forcing her out the way the angry right activists did, but the danger for them was that it was going create a backlash from the political swing voters who are 50+ female, tertiary educated.

“They would have seen the way Jacinda was forced out and they would have been quite angry with that; and we saw that in the first polls which saw Labour jump back up into the lead was a result of a political backlash.”

Radical social media
With the fracturing of media there has now developed radicalism on social media.
“Now we have a level of radicalism at play within social media,” Bradbury said.

“There are some strident leftwing voices and we’ve certainly seen some middle class identity politics and their de-platforming campaign; and we also have very extreme rightwing bloggers who are taking the debate in a very conspiratorial place which is very dangerous and polarising to the political debate in this country.

“We need healthy debate, but is it healthy when people in that debate have nothing but malice and spite to trade and are actually creating problems and not providing any solutions.”

Journalism
Bradbury believes journalism is at a crossroads but its principles must be upheld.

“Journalism is one of the most important careers in a democracy right now, and I bring it back to the misinformation and disinformation we have seen on so many online formats,” Bradbury said of the covid-19 pandemic years.

“If you can’t trust the material you’re reading, and if you have a citizenship that doesn’t know what is true anymore, then the basic standard of your democracy, the entire foundation that we are built on crumbles.

“So journalism is as important now than ever before.

“This is why we need a strong public service, this is no longer a nice-to-have, because I believe journalism is under so much threat because the alternative is voters who don’t know what is real and what is not.”

Roll on the election on October 14 and once again TBD will be at the forefront.

As a postscript, Bradbury was asked how was TBD faring financially.

He laughed before offering: “We get by, we are here for this election, we’ve been around for 10 years and I am always surprised that there is still a need for it.

“I’ll keep blogging as long as there is a readership for it.”

Sri Krishnamuthi is an independent journalist, former editor of the Pacific Media Watch project at the Pacific Media Centre and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

A veteran journalist known for covering rights abuses in Indonesia’s militarised Papua region says a bomb exploded outside his home yesterday and a journalists group has called it an act of “intimidation” threatening press freedom.

No one was injured in the blast near his home in the provincial capital Jayapura, said Victor Mambor, editor of Papua’s leading news website Jubi, who visited New Zealand in 2014.

Police said they were investigating the explosion and that no one had yet claimed responsibility.

• READ MORE: Tabloid Jubi journalist Victor Mambor ‘terrorised’ over Papua reports
• Papuan journalist Victor Mambor wins Udin Award for ‘dedicated journalism’
• Other Victor Mambor reports

“Yes, someone threw a bomb,” Papua Police spokesperson Ignatius Benny told Benar News. “The motive and perpetrators are unknown.”

The Jayapura branch of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) condemned the explosion as a “terrorist bombing”.

In Sydney, the Australia West Papua Association (AWPA) and Pacific Media Watch in New Zealand protested over the incident and called for a full investigation.

Mambor said he heard the sound of a motorcycle at about 4 am and then an explosion about a minute later.

‘Shook like earthquake’
“It was so loud that my house shook like there was an earthquake,” he told Benar News as reported by Radio Free Asia.

“I also checked the source of the explosion and smelt sulfur coming from the side of the house.”

The explosion left a hole in the road, he said.

The incident was not the first to occur outside Mambor’s home. In April 2021, windows were smashed and paint sprayed on his car in the middle of the night.

Mambor is also an advocate for press freedom in Papua. In that role, he has criticised Jakarta’s restrictions on the media in Papua, as well as its other policies in his troubled home province.

The AJI awarded Mambor its press freedom award in August 2022, saying that through Jubi, “Victor brings more voices from Papua, amid domination of information that is biased, one-sided and discriminatory.”

“AJI in Jayapura strongly condemns the terrorist bombing and considers this an act of intimidation that threatens press freedom in Papua,” it said in a statement.

‘Voice the truth’ call
“AJI Jayapura calls on all journalists in the land of Papua to continue to voice the truth despite obstacles. Justice should be upheld even though the sky is falling,” said AJI chair Lucky Ireeuw.

Amnesty International Indonesia urged the police to find those responsible.

“The police must thoroughly investigate this incident, because this is not the first time … meaning there was an omission that made the perpetrators feel free to do it again, to intimidate and threaten journalists,” Amnesty’s campaign manager in Indonesia, Nurina Savitri, told BenarNews.

The Papua region, located at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, has been the site of a decades-old pro-independence insurgency where both government security forces and rebels have been accused of committing atrocities against civilians.

Foreign journalists have been largely barred from the area, with the government insisting it could not guarantee their safety. Indonesian journalists allege that officials make their work difficult by refusing to provide information.

The armed elements of the independence movement have stepped up lethal attacks on Indonesian security forces, civilians and targets such as construction of a trans-Papua highway that would make the Papuan highlands more accessible.

Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, has accused Indonesian security forces of intimidation, arbitrary arrests, torture, extrajudicial killings and mass forced displacement in Papua.

Security forces kill 36
Last month, Indonesian activist group KontraS said 36 people were killed by security forces and pro-independence rebels in the Papua and West Papua provinces in 2022, an increase from 28 in 2021.

In Sydney, Joe Collins of the AWPA said in a statement: “These acts of intimidation against local journalists in West Papua  threaten freedom of the press.

“It is the local media in West Papua that first report on human rights abuses and local journalists are crucial in reporting information on what is happening in West Papua”.

Collins said Canberra remained silent on the issue — ‘the Australian government is very selective in who it criticises over their human rights record.”

There was no problem raising concerns about China or Russia over their record, “but Canberra seems to have great difficulty in raising the human rights abuses in West Papua with Jakarta.”

Republished from Radio Free Asia with additional reporting by Pacific Media Watch.

This year was another huge one for Local Democracy Reporting, with our reporters at the forefront of uncovering some of the biggest stories in their regions.

Felix Desmarais in Rotorua exposed hitherto secret plans by the council to revoke the reserve status of seven council reserves, paving the way for new housing to be built on them, including social housing.

It became a major election issue with residents using the ballot to choose candidates opposed to the plan, which was subsequently canned by the new council.

• READ MORE: Other Local Democracy Reporting stories on APR

Steve Forbes covered the chaos created by understaffed and overstretched Emergency Departments, with a deep dive in to the death of a patient who visited Middlemore Hospital.

He was first with a damning independent report that found the ED was “an unsafe environment for both patients and staff”.

It was a year of climate change-induced severe weather, and LDR reporters produced numerous stories on how councils were coping, or not, when it came to putting back together what Mother Nature had torn apart.

Flooding this year continued to represent an existential threat to Westport after the devastating inundation seen last year as well. Brendon McMahon’s stories have reflected the reality on the ground, such as the predicament faced by residents on Snodgrass Road who had been left out of a proposed flood protection scheme.

Nelson clean-up
Nelson reporter Max Frethey has kept readers up to date as that city deals with its own clean-up after devastating downpours in August, which left the city with a repair bill of between $40 million and $60 million, the biggest in its 160-year history.

The weather kept Marlborough’s Maia Hart busy this year as well in a region with communities still cut off or with limited access due to damage caused a year ago.

But it was her story on the resilience of elderly Lochmara Bay resident Monyeen Wedge that really captured readers’ attention. Living alone, she went three days without power and was forced to live off canned food.

The pandemic and the response of health authorities and councils continued to be an area of inquiry for LDR in 2022, and none more so than Moana Ellis in Whanganui.

While high vaccination rates amongst pākehā protected thousands from the worst affects of the Omicron wave, it was a battle for DHBs to reach many Māori, who already had a distrust of health authorities. Moana’s reporting ensured these communities were not forgotten.

In one of LDR’s most read stories of 2022, Alisha Evans uncovered the extent of bureaucratic overreach in Tauranga when through traffic was discouraged on Links Ave with the help of a fine. A glitch led to infringements being issued to drivers living as far away as the South Island who had never even visited the city.

Reporters have documented the good and the bad of people’s interactions with vulnerable ecosystems. North Canterbury’s David Hill shone a light on the wonton destruction of endangered nesting birds in the region’s braided river beds by 4WD enthusiasts.

Community efforts
While Mother Nature was the winner following a series of stories from Taranaki’s Craig Ashworth on community efforts to protect dwindling stocks of kaimoana, which finally resulted in a two-year long rāhui.

The national roll out of flexible median barriers, aka “cheesecutters”, caused consternation in Whakatāne where Diane McCarthy talked to police who said they would struggle to pass drivers on their way to emergencies and farmers driving slow-moving tractors worried about extra levels of road rage from slowed-up motorists.

The dire state of the country’s water infrastructure is magnified in places like Wairarapa, with its small ratepayer base and decades old pipes and sewage treatment. There was no better illustration of this than Emily Ireland’s reporting on Masterton’s use of its Better Off funding where it was pointed out a mum was using a council provided portaloo to potty train her toddler because sewage was backing up in the town system whenever there was heavy rain.

The human impact of decisions around water infrastructure was also brought in to sharp relief in Ashburton reporter Jonathan Leask’s excellent reporting. He took up the cause of a couple and their three children who were shut out of moving in to their dream home due to high nitrate levels limiting the building of any more septic tanks.

One of the biggest changes around council tables this year was the election of Māori ward candidates, with half of all councils now having these. Northland’s Susan Botting has been first out of the blocks reporting on the new dynamics at play, starting with Kaipara mayor Craig Jepson’s ban on karakia to open meetings. The ban was hastily reversed, but led to the largest hikoi in Dargaville for some time.

As with all of LDR’s reporters, choosing just one stand out story from the many fine pieces published throughout the year is almost impossible. None more so than Tairāwhiti reporter Matthew Rosenberg.

But no wrap of 2022 would be complete without mention of his story on bulldozer driver Hamish Pryde. The 65-year-old helped save Wairoa from a dangerously high river by negotiating already badly flooded paddocks and opening up a sand bar so the river could drain out to sea.

As Matthew says, “not all heroes wear capes, some drive bulldozers”.

Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air. Asia Pacific Report is a partner in the project.

Susana Lei’ataua has been appointed news editor of RNZ Pacific.

She will join RNZ Pacific officially in August and brings a wealth of experience, having worked both in New Zealand and overseas.

Of Samoan and Palagi descent, Lei’ataua is no stranger to the RNZ Pacific family. She was first employed by RNZ as a journalist and newsreader from 1986 to 1991.

• READ MORE: RNZ Pacific’s news feed

During this time she also worked for RNZ Pacific, in its first incarnation as Radio New Zealand International, which was launched in 1990.

Among her many achievements, Lei’ataua was awarded a Fulbright New Zealand Senior Scholar Award in 2007. This allowed her to take up a position as artist-in-residence at New York University’s Asian/Pacific/American Institute, becoming the first artist of Pacific Island descent to do so.

Susana’s role at NYU involved many collaborations with New York based organisations, including the Pacific Island missions to the United Nations. These missions helped initiate the global response to climate change, by successfully proposing climate change become a UN Security Council agenda item in 2008.

A talented and experienced newsreader and presenter, most recently Lei’ataua has been working for RNZ National’s Checkpoint team, and also with Karen Hay on the Lately programme.

Lei’ataua is very enthusiastic about taking on this new role.

“I’m delighted to be joining RNZ Pacific and this great team — the timing couldn’t be better,” she said.

Her appointment as news editor will benefit RNZ Pacific and further increase its capabilities:

RNZ Pacific manager Moera Tuilaepa-Taylor said: “This is a great appointment. I’m very excited about the skills Susana brings to our team as well as her deep commitment to telling the important stories of our Pacific communities.”

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

Auckland University of Technology has denied it is sidelining the Pacific Media Centre in the School of Communication Studies, but it is yet to announce the new leadership following disputes over office space and a succession plan.

The multi-disciplinary research and professional development unit was founded in 2007 by Professor David Robie with a focus on Pacific media research and producing stories of marginalised communities in New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region.

The centre also housed several outlets that provided journalists covering regional issues and Pasifika researchers a space to publish their work, such as the academic journal Pacific Journalism Review and the award-winning Pacific Media Watch.

• READ MORE: Other reports on the Pacific Media Centre future
• Ena Manuireva: AUT can – and should – do better
• How the ‘voice of the voiceless’ kaupapa became derailed at the Pacific Media Centre

Dr Robie retired last December as the centre’s director but the position was not filled immediately. There have been no updates from the PMC’s website, YouTube and Soundcloud channels since, while Southern Cross, the weekly radio segment produced by the PMC on 95bFM’s The Wire at Auckland University has not had a new episode since last August.

Only one month after his retirement, Dr Robie was told that the PMC’s office on the 10th floor of the WG Building had been emptied of its awards, theses, books and other memorabilia, with people involved with the centre not being notified or consulted about the move.

The Pacific Newsroom reported that the contents, including a traditional carved Papua New Guinean storyboard presented by then Pacific Island Affairs Minister Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban to celebrate the centre’s opening in October 2007, had been removed “with the lack of a coherent explanation from AUT”.

Dr Robie told Debate in April that there was a gap between what was said by AUT and “reality”, saying that the office being cleared out affirmed a lack of commitment by the university for the PMC’s future.

He also said a succession plan drawn up several years ago that had involved “headhunting” possible successors before his sabbatical in 2019 so the candidate could familiarise themselves with the role before formally taking over, but AUT did not follow through on this.

‘Opportunity wasted by the school’
“This opportunity was wasted by the school and by the time I left, nobody had been prepared for continuity and the very able and talented people still working hard for the centre were not given support,” he said.

“This is unconscionable in my view.

“The school needs to listen to the vision of the stakeholders and treat them with respect.”

The move was also criticised by journalists and academics, with the influential Sydney-based Australia Asia Pacific Media Initiative (AAPMI) advocacy group calling on AUT’s vice-chancellor Derek McCormack in an open letter in February to ensure that the PMC would continue to be developed “at a time when Pacific journalism is under existential threat”.

Meanwhile, Dr Camille Nakhid, the chair of the PMC’s advisory board and an associate professor in AUT’s School of Social Sciences and Public Policy, told The Spinoff that she believed the PMC directorship should be advertised externally to “attract a range of qualified candidates”.

Dr Rosser Johnson, the head of AUT’s School of Communications Studies, told Debate at the end of April that the office “relocation” was due to security reasons and the PMC’s “new space” on the 12th floor of the WG Building has “twice as much office space” for students and affiliate researchers.

The new PMC leadership had been expected to be announced in April, but has been again delayed.

‘Expensive specialist gear’
“There’s one department who uses specialist gear that is very expensive and we have a very high level of risk around that gear,” Dr Johnson said.

“We had to consider the space that the Pacific Media Centre was in because it can be made secure through two sets of security doors.”

The school also scheduled two faculty and school-wide planning days to talk with people who would be affected.

Dr Johnson said the School had opted for an expression of interest approach within the department to fill Dr Robie’s position because the original plan did not follow protocol. An external hiring freeze imposed by AUT last year and the part-time nature of the PMC’s directorship meant the school preferred to look internally.

“David [Robie] was asking if it was possible for us to shoulder-tap two or three people to be co-directors but the School is supposed to have a transparent process where everyone who wants to be considered can be considered.

“If you want to grow and develop a research culture, it makes sense to look internally first.”

Dr Johnson also said he respected the care and commitment Dr Robie had towards the PMC, but insisted the school had no intention to shape the centre’s future direction, as the responsibility would fall on the next director.

Justin Wong is a postgraduate student journalist at AUT.  He is also the student news reporter at AUT’s Debate magazine and the presenter of The Wire on student radio station 95bFM at the University of Auckland. This article is republished with permission from Debate and the author.

A creative “grab bag” of projects has been unveiled by the Pacific Media Centre in a showcase of collaboration across academic and communication communities.

Held at Auckland University of Technology on Friday and hosted by PMC advisory board chair Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, the PMC “Midwinter Showcase” celebrated the launch of a double edition of Pacific Journalism Review, the 2018 Bearing Witness documentary Banabans of Rabi, the Pacific Media Watch Project – The Genesis video and the new PMC Online website.

Doctoral candidate and journalist Atakohu Middleton opened the night with a karakia before pro-vice chancellor and faculty dean Professor Guy Littlefair officially launched PJR – which focuses heavily on the New Zealand mosque massacre and media dilemmas of democracy – with a powerful and poignant speech.

READ MORE: NZ mosque massacre, New Caledonia referendum and Fiji elections top PJR

Describing universities as the “critic and conscience of society”, Professor Littlefair lauded the value of the new PJR research in light of the media response to the March 15 atrocity.

He said how the privileged Pākehā narrative of New Zealand history made the violence of the attack all the more affronting for a media community consisting of mostly young, white journalists.

“This double issue of PJR that I have the privilege to launch tonight picks up on the narrative at precisely this point,” he said.

“’Dilemmas for journalists and democracy [PJR title]’ – these five words encapsulate for me the critic and conscience role of universities.

“This journal provides once again a magnificent example of the best, most relevant, most meaningful research that I as a dean could hope to see come from this wonderful faculty of ours.

“David and the team, I could not be more proud.”

The trailer for Banabans of Rabi.

Banabans of Rabi
Banabans of Rabi was then screened after an introduction by AUT screen production senior lecturer Jim Marbrook.

Marbrook, who helped produce the film, described it as a successful product of collaboration between journalism and screen production students.

He explained that film creators Blessen Tom and Hele Ikimotu had to overcome particular challenges to get to the remote Fijian island of Rabi and make the documentary.

“The philosophy of the Bearing Witness project is to go to areas that are under reported, that are quite difficult to get to; with that comes risks and complications.

“It’s kind of a pressure cooker situation to drop two students into.

“There is not a lot of power on the island, it’s isolated. Complicating that is the mix of languages; Fijian, Gilbertese and Banaban as well.

Blessen Tom then described filming on Rabi where scarcity of electricity meant that he had to be very selective with his choice of shots to conserve battery power.

Sri Krishnamuthi and Blessen Tom’s documentary about Pacific Media Watch.

PMW Project – The Genesis
Postgraduate communications student and former NZ Press Association journalist Sri Krishnamurthi introduced the Pacific Media Watch Project – The Genesis documentary which pays homage to the origins of the PMW media freedom project.

Through making the film with Blessen Tom, Krishnamurthi described learning about the project, from its creation in response to the wrongful arrest of three Tongans in the famous “contempt of Parliament” case in 1996, to its two decades since as a “watchdog of Pacific journalism.”

He stressed the value of the project and its role in the development of student journalists.

“The beauty of it is the use of student contributing editors – all of them will echo my sentiments; that this little gem which is invaluable as a guardian of Pacific journalism must be kept going for years to come.”

PMC Online
Finally, Tony Murrow of Little Island Press unveiled the new mobile friendly and robust PMC Online website, the product of almost two years of his team’s work in collaboration with the PMC.

He said the bold and colourful design reflected the vibrancy and diversity of the Pacific Media Centre.

The website is due to go live on www.pmc.aut.ac.nz in the coming days.

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie acknowledged all those who had contributed and collaborated on the assortment of projects – including Pacific Journalism Review co-editors and collaborators Khairiah Rahman, Dr Philip Cass, Del Abcede, Nicole Gooch and Professor Wendy Bacon, whom he described as one of the best investigative journalists in Australia.

The Pacific Media Centre has a new website and it will be going live over the next week.

A project almost two years in the making, the PMC Online website features a new vibrant design along with an innovative user interface.

Social enterprise website developer Tony Murrow from Little Island Press says that although the layout and design has been updated, the main aim of the project was to modernise the platform for security and user experience.

READ MORE: AUT’s Pacific Media Watch ‘lighthouse’ role featured in freedom doco

“Unlike most websites, it fulfils a number of purposes,” he says.

A unique website for a university environment, it features a blend of news and current affairs content, including the Pacific Media Watch freedom project along with research publication.

“It’s more of a Swiss army knife approach where you’re accommodating a wide range of tools under a single unifying element,” says Murrow.

The most significant change is the new website’s mobile friendly platform, which will allow users to browse easily from their cellphones.

Better showcase
Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie says this will “enormously enhance” the user experience.

“Personally, it has irked me to see a ‘not mobile friendly’ rider on Google for a few years.”

“When PMC Online was first launched in 2010 it was a very innovative and appealing design at the time.”

“And now this new updated design on Drupal takes us into a new digital era and it is a much better showcase for the work of the Pacific Media Centre, its student media outputs and its challenging ‘critical conscience’ social justice content.”

He says the PMC Online website is used by a variety of media as a resource in the Asia-Pacific region.

Several people have contributed to the new PMC website development, including Amy Tansell, Emi Teng, Patrick Murrow and James Bristow.

Little Island Press has collaborated with the PMC on number of projects for almost a decade.

One of the most significant projects was in 2015, when 40 AUT journalism and television students worked with LIP to generate “Eyes of Fire – Thirty Years on”, an archive of contemporary environmental and climate stories to mark the 30th anniversary of the Rainbow Warrior bombing on 10 July 1985.

It is believed to be the largest single journalism project carried out a media school in New Zealand.

Little Island also collaborates with the PMC in the printing of the Pacific Journalism Review research journal that is now in its 25th year of publication.

The launch of the new website along with the publication of this year’s Pacific Journalism Review will be celebrated at the Pacific Media Centre’s Midwinter Showcase tomorrow night.

By Sri Krishnamurthi

“It’s a bit of a lighthouse” for vital regional news and information, says former contributing editor Alex Perrottet summing up the value of the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project for New Zealand and Pacific journalism.

The Radio New Zealand journalist is among seven international media people involved in the 23-year-old project featured in a new video released today.

Pacific Media Watch – The Genesis is a 15-minute mini documentary telling the story of the project launched by two journalists at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) in 1996 and adopted by Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre in 2007.

READ MORE: The Pacific Media Watch freedom project

The video was released today to coincide with the global media freedom conference in London this week.

Pacific Media Watch has become a challenging professional development opportunity for AUT postgraduate students seeking to develop specialist skills in Asia-Pacific journalism.

It is was launched by Professor David Robie, then head of the UPNG journalism programme in Port Moresby and Peter Cronau, editor of Reportage investigative magazine at UTS.

Now Dr Robie is director of the Auckland-based PMC and Cronau is an award-winning senior producer of the ABC’s flagship Four Corners investigative journalism programme.

The ‘Tongan three’
The catalyst for Pacific Media Watch was the jailing of the “Tongan Three” – founding editor of Taimi ‘o Tonga Kalafi Moala, his deputy Filokalafi Akau’ola, and pro-democracy MP ‘Akilisi Pohiva, now Prime Minister of Tonga – for contempt of Parliament in 1996.

Dr Robie and Cronau could not sit back and allow this happen – the second major attack on media freedom in the Pacific after Fiji was thrown into turmoil with the first coup in 1987.

“The Tongan Three was really how we got started,” recalls Dr Robie about their response to the unprecedented and “outrageous” 30-day jailing sentence imposed on the trio at the time.

Peter Cronau says: “The case of the three was just a shock and it was a rallying point.”

Since then Pacific Media Watch has grown to become a reliable media outlet based on professional development for student journalists but it also has a network of contributing media and academic correspondents around the region.

Many events
The PMW has covered many events in the Pacific including tsunamis, Fiji peacekeepers being taken hostage in the Golan Heights, beatings and torture of a prisoner by the security forces in Fiji, two Fiji general elections, the New Caledonian independence referendum and – most recently – the massacre of 51 Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch and the impact on journalism.

So far nine postgraduate student contributing editors and two reporters have been trained on the PMW project, and between them at least 11 awards have been won at the annual Ossie Awards for the cream of student journalism in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.

For Blessen Tom, who produced last year’s Bearing Witness climate change project short film Banabans of Rabi along with Hele Ikamotu, and I, producing this Pacific Media Watch programme was a deeply satisfying project.

We hope that through our six interviews and countless hours spent in the editing suite that we have made a fitting tribute to the work of David, Peter, Kalafi and all those who have made the Pacific Media Watch project what it is today.

Media freedom challenge
In London yesterday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and 31 other press freedom and media development agencies met in advance of the Global Media Freedom Conference.

They called on all nations taking part to ensure the protection and safety of all journalists and media workers in compliance with their existing obligations and international standards.

The group, representing and working with hundreds of thousands of journalists and media workers throughout the world, said new pledges would only be credible if countries immediately:

• Release all imprisoned journalists;
• Stop killing, attacking and denigrating journalists; and
• Investigate and prosecute all murders of journalists.

The group demanded that all states hold themselves and their counterparts accountable and show demonstrable progress.

Several countries attending the conference have imprisoned journalists and unsolved murders.

• The 11 recommendations by media freedom groups
• More Pacific Media Watch stories

By Sri Krishnamurthi

After 30 years as chief editor and publisher of Tonga’s flagship Taimi ‘o Tonga newspaper, the iconic Pacific media personality Kalafi Moala has sold his business and is looking to move on.

He plans to explore greenfield operations in Tonga in the digital era by presenting news through a mobile phone platform.

“I want to be engaged in something where we continue to produce news and maybe deliver news in a different platform maybe online, digital or maybe something to do with the phone,” he said in a recent interview with the Pacific Media Centre in Auckland.

WATCH: The interview with Kalafi Moala

“Who needs a newspaper, who needs a television set, who needs a computer when you have a telephone, in Tonga everybody has a telephone.

“The mobile phone is a major thing that has changed the life of Tongans and we want to use that platform.”

Moala expressed his concerns too about the “sovereignty” of Pacific peoples who he said were being subjected to “colonisation through other means”.

He has sold his publishing and broadcast business Taimi Media Network to enterprising businessman Tausinga Taumoefolau and his company Keitahi Limited.

Moala spoke to the PMC’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project as part of a series of interviews for a forthcoming mini-documentary, Pacific Media Watch – The Genesis.

• More information
• More media freedom stories
• PMC’s YouTube channel

The head of an Auckland-based Pacific media watchdog says New Zealand “takes media freedom for granted” and could learn a lot from its Pacific neighbours.

“For the last few years we have been sitting fairly pretty in the world press freedom index where we are seventh at the moment – we have gone up one place from last year and we just take it for granted,” said Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie.

“Everything’s fine. Hunky-dory here.

“But around most of the world, particularly in the Pacific, World Press Freedom Day is a really important thing because there is a constant struggle going on.”

WATCH VIDEO: UN Secretary-General António Guterres speaks out for World Press Freedom Day

Radio 95bFM’s The Wire host Jemima Huston was asking Dr Robie on a pre-Media Freedom Day special of the Pacific Media Centre’s Southern Cross programme about why the event was barely observed in New Zealand.

Also being interviewed was Pacific Media Watch contributing editor Michael Andrew. He said last month’s call by traditional chiefs on the Federated States of Micronesia island of Yap for the expulsion of a local US journalist had “opened up a whole bunch of scrutiny from abroad to see what is actually going on there”.

Asked by Huston why he thought media freedom stories did not get covered as well in New Zealand as in the Pacific, he replied coverage of Micronesia was “in the shadows” because of US colonisation history which had kept the region out of Australian and New Zealand attention.

Listen to PMC’s Southern Cross programme.

Across the Asia-Pacific region, many events are happening to mark World Press Freedom Day.

In Fiji, University of the South Pacific student journalists are staging a debate on the theme of “links between quality information, elections and democracy.”

The panel will be led by the Wansolwara journalism training newspaper editor Rosalie Nongebatu, of the Solomon Islands, and she will be joined by Kirisitiana Viuwai, Apenisa Vatuniveivuka and Eparama Warua (all of Fiji).

In the Philippines, where journalists and the media have been under severe pressure for many months, with award-winning editor Maria Ressa of the popular Rappler digital media website being arrested on trumped up charges, a lively programme is being planned.

Staging a “freedom festival”, the organisers, including from the Philippine Centre for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), described the government attacks on the media as “grave and more direct”.

“We, a community of journalists, photojournalists, and artists, have come together to #fightback and mark the day in hope, courage, and unity, so we may all protect and defend our fundamental freedoms and the people’s right to know,” the organisers declared.

The activities include the release of a “State of the Philippine Media” report on the “Killings, attacks, and threats on the Philippine media, June 30, 2016 to April 30, 2019″, a protest at the Department of Defence in Aguinaldo military camp in Manila, and an online screening of the documentary Portraits of Mosquito Press.

The PMC Southern cross radio programme on media freedom.

In Timor-Leste, an all-day World Press Freedom Day event is planned and one of the keynote speakers is former PNG Post-Courier publisher and Asia-Pacific media training consultant Bob Howarth.

Addressing hate speech, he praises New Zealand in his keynote.

“New Zealand’s media are setting an example for the rest of the world as a result of the Christchurch mosque killings in March. They have agreed to focus reporting on the massacre victims and not the white supremacist currently facing justice,” he says.

He also speaks with pride about the Timor-Leste Press Council launching a campaign to lobby Google and Facebook to add Tetum to the list of languages they can translate automatically to other languages.

• David Robie: Pacific media freedom and news ‘black holes’ worsen for World Press Freedom Day
• Bob Howarth: Role of journalism in developing and protecting journalism
• Alexandra Wake: Students on frontline for media truth in a fact-less world
• Yap legislature rejects ‘kick out’ demand over US journalist
• World Press Freedom in the Pacific 2019 – VIDEO
• Alistar Kata on media diversity in New Zealand – VIDEO

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

The theme for the 26th celebration of the World Press Freedom Day this year is “Media for Democracy: Journalism and Elections in Times of Disinformation”.

World Press Freedom Day was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in December 1993, following the recommendation of UNESCO’s General Conference.

Since then, May 3, the anniversary of the Declaration of Windhoek, is celebrated worldwide as World Press Freedom Day.

It is a day to:

• celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom;
• assess the state of press freedom throughout the world;
• defend the media from attacks on their independence; and
• pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the line of duty.

This year the global conference is in Africa, being held from May 1-3 in the Ethipian capital of Addis Ababa, but that is not to say there are no problems in the Pacific.

In this video by journalist Sr Krishnamurthi, Professor David Robie, director of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre and 2019 contributing editor Michael Andrew talk about the concerns for the Pacific on World Press Freedom Day 2019.

“Because we lack diversity in most of the newsrooms in New Zealand it means you often get a bit of a distorted coverage of the region, for example there is a tendency to think in most New Zealand media that the Pacific is only one part of the Pacific – the eastern side, the so -called Polynesian triangle…and Melanesia and Micronesia are consequently squeezed out,” says Dr Robie.

Sri Krishnamurthi is an experienced journalist and a current Postgraduate Diploma of Communication Studies student in digital media.

• Other Pacific Media Watch stories

An Auckland freelance journalist, Michael Andrew, who is completing his postgraduate journalism diploma at Auckland University of Technology, has been appointed Pacific Media Watch contributing editor for the year.

Andrew, 30, is studying journalism through AUT’s Postgraduate Diploma in Communications and was among the top students on last year’s Asia Pacific Journalism Studies paper.

He demonstrated a keen awareness and interest in the Pacific region on the course and produced a range of Pacific stories last year.

Andrew will be in charge of reporting and editing news and current affairs stories for the Pacific Media Watch freedom project, PMC Online and Asia Pacific Report for the Pacific Media Centre. He will also host the centre’s weekly radio programme Southern Cross at 95bFM.

After completing his undergraduate degree in economics at the University of Otago, he shifted to a freelance journalism career.

Along with local stories for community news, he has covered Asia-Pacific issues, including Fiji’s 2018 election, Kanaky independence and the impact of climate change on the Pacific.

“There is a lack of in-depth coverage of the Pacific in the mainstream media and this needs to change to reflect the crucial role of the region in global affairs,” says Andrew.

Pacific Media Centre professor David Robie welcomed Andrew to the team and said he had had been selected from a strong field of 9 applicants.

The PMC’s Pacific Media Watch project collaborates with Reporters Without Borders and other global media freedom groups.

Michael Andrew can be contacted at pmedia@aut.ac.nz

BRIEFING: By David Robie

Monday – just three days before today’s World Press Freedom Day – was the deadliest day for news media in Afghanistan in 17 years. The killing of nine journalists and media workers among 26 people who died in dual suicide bomb attacks in Kabul was the worst day for the press since the fall of the Taliban.

Five other journalists were wounded and a 10th journalist was shot and killed in a separate attack outside the capital.

Among the dead was Agence France-Presse chief photographer Shah Marai who left behind an extraordinary legacy of images.

READ MORE: PMC director condemns ‘targeting’ of journalists and silence on West Papua

It was the also the most horrendous day for global media too since the Ampatuan massacre on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao on 23 November 2009. A shocking 32 journalists were murdered that day, most of the total death toll of 58 in an ambush on a pre-election cavalcade.

To date nobody has been successfully brought to justice. The scores of private militia “owned” by the Ampatuan family alleged to have carried out the killings have got away with their vile crime almost scot-free.

However, some suspects have been detained and others are out on bail.
Also, a military task force has launched a massive disarmament programme in Maguindanao province in a bid to curb vendetta-driven crimes.

High-powered weapons
Twenty two high-powered weapons were handed in by the local mayor of an Ampatuan clan bringing the number of 439 firearms either “recovered or surrendered in Maguindanao and Sultan Kuarat in the past four months.

The Ampatuans handed over nine M79 grenade launchers, six Barret rifles, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a mortar, an M16-A1 rifle, a Garand rifle, one Uzi and one carbine.

Eight years after the Ampatuan killings, of the 197 men originally accused, only 13 have been brought before the court for judgement since the start of proceedings in January 2010 and more than 250 witnesses have been heard.

“It’s supposed to be the trial of the century. Yet eight years later, no convictions have been made in the Maguindanao massacre cases … the worst case of election-related violence in the Philippines,” writes Rappler journalist Sofia Tomacruz.

Asia-Pacific has clearly become the most dangerous region for journalists. More specifically, South Asia, according to a new International Federation of Journalists report that is being launched today.

The report, entitled Clampdowns and Courage: Press Freedom in South Asia 2017-18, says that a total of 33 journalists lost their lives across South Asia in the year ending April 2018, making it “the most dangerous region in the world for journalists”.

The latest attacks underscore the global targeting of journalists and the impunity that most of their killers enjoy.

‘Justice is elusive’
“In most of the cases of killing of journalists in South Asia, justice is elusive, says the IFJ.

“The 33 journalist colleagues whom we lost this year add to a long list of hundreds of slain journalists awaiting justice after being killed for carrying out their professional duties. The struggle for justice is a challenging process, and in many cases the process doesn’t even begin.”

The IFJ’s report highlights the case of leading editor Gauri Lankesh who was among the slain journalists.

“She was shot dead in Bengaluru in India in September 2017,” recalled the IFJ.

“Despite repeated commitments from authorities, it took six months to nab an accused, the suspected supplier of firearms where the actual shooters are still at large.”

The IFJ says in its report that more than 30 journalists have been killed over the past decades in India while doing their professional work.

Last week, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders warned over what it described as a “growing animosity towards journalists” around the globe.

“Hostility towards the media, openly encouraged by political leaders, and the efforts of authoritarian regimes to export their vision of journalism pose a threat to democracies,” says the media freedom agency.

The line separating verbal violence from physical violence is dissolving, says RSF.

Assassination threat
In the Philippines (falling six places to 133rd in the RSF World Press Freedom Index), President Rodrigo Duterte “not only constantly insults reporters but has also [has] warned them that they ‘are not exempted from assassination’.

In India (down two places to 138th), “hate speech targeting journalists is shared and amplified on social networks, often by troll armies in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pay”.

In both countries, says RSF, at least four journalists were gunned down in cold blood in the space of a year – and a Filipino radio journalist, Edmund Sestoso, of DyGB 91.7FM in Dumaguete City, died on Tuesday after being shot by motorcycle gunman on April 30.

Also in the Philippines, encouraged by the aggressively anti-media stance of their president, the Congress initiated a “good news only” clampdown on the media reporting about the lawmakers barely a week before Media Freedom Day.

Reporters in the House of Representatives have protested against the new media accreditation rules that demand only positive coverage of the Congress, the lawmakers and its officials.

A 19-page draft policy statement distributed by the accrediting agency Press and Public Affairs Bureau (PPAB) says it seeks to ban journalists who “besmirch the reputation” of Congress, its officials and members.

Breaching a proposed six-point list of violations will mean cancellation of a journalist’s press identity card and being barred from covering Congress.

Ironically, the Philippines is also taking advantage of a Chinese agreement to help develop the infrastructure for government broadcasting system and has indicated it is “with China” in its approach to the freedom, of the press just when RSF has warned the Asia-Pacific region of Beijing’s impact on the media.

RSF says the Chinese model of state-controlled news and information “is being copied” in Asian countries. A warning too for the Pacific.

Pacific issues
In the Pacific, both Tonga (51st) and Papua New Guinea (53rd) have dropped two places, and Samoa one place (22nd).

The biggest climbs were by Fiji (up 10 places to 57th), New Zealand (five places to 8th) -back into the top 10 globally – and Timor-Leste three places to 95th.  Solomon Islands was unranked while Australia remained on 19th (mainly due to the concentrated media ownership in that country). Other Oceania nations were not cited.

This is especially surprising about Vanuatu, where the local newspaper Vanuatu Daily Post has been a leading example of press freedom and courageous journalism for a few years.

Although interest remains high about West Papua in the Pacific, the region is “lost” in the RSF ranking for Indonesia (which remains unchanged at 124th). President Joko Widodo is accused of “breaking his campaign promises” with his presidency marked by “serious media freedom violations, including drastically restricting media access to the Papua and West Papua provinces (the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea), where violence against local journalists continues to grow”.

In Fiji, where the “chill” factor is still strong, the big test will come with the second post-coup election likely to be in September.

While acknowledging a modest freeing up of the media with the 2014 election, RSF says: “The media are nonetheless still restricted by the draconian 2010 Media Industry Development Decree and the Media Industry Development Authority (MIDA) that it created. Violating the decree is punishable by up to two years in prison and the MIDA’s independence is questionable.”

However, New Zealand should not be too smug about its return to favour in the top 10 of world press freedom nations (due to the Commerce Commission’s rejection of the proposed merger of Fairfax and NZME with the threat to plurality).

RSF says there are still political pressures: “The media continue to demand changes to the Official Information Act, which obstructs the work of journalists by allowing government agencies a long time to respond to information requests and even makes journalists pay several hundred dollars for the information.”

While the threats to media freedom in Oceania remain fairly benign compared with much of the rest of the world, vigilance is needed.

And there is a challenge to journalism schools in New Zealand and the Pacific. They ought to put far more resources and teaching strategies into addressing how to keep young journalists safe in an increasingly hostile world for the media.

Dr David Robie is convenor of the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project.

• What happened to the Manguindanao massacre trial 8 years later?
• Indonesian double standards over press freedom endanger Papuan journalists
• Why we must pay attention to the death of nine journalists in Kabul
• The Pacific Media Centre’s World Press Freedom Day event at AUT University today

China’s media control threatens Asia-Pacific democracies, says RSF

Pacific Media Centre project students and interns announced for the year this week include two budding documentary makers and a seasoned journalist from Fiji with more than two decades of experience.

Jean Bell has been appointed the Pacific Media Watch contributing editor for 2018 and posted her first story this week about concerns over food safety and a politically “contained” debate seven years after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan in March 2011.

She is a current student at Auckland University of Technology, studying towards a Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies, majoring in journalism.

Bell also graduated from the University of Auckland in 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts double major in politics and international relations.

In 2017, Bell worked as a legal secretary in a commercial law firm and spent her free time working on freelance journalism projects and writing news for Auckland radio station 95bFM.

She will also be hosting the Pacific Media Centre’s weekly radio programme Southern Cross.

Bell admits she is no expert in Pacific journalism or politics, “but that’s one reason why I wanted to apply.

“I see this as a chance to learn more and widen my skill base while also bringing the valuable skills I already have to help drive this project.”

Highly experienced
Sri Krishnamurthi brings more than 20 years of experience as the PMC’s 2018 NZ Institute for Pacific Research journalist.

Originally from Fiji, Krishnamurthi has always had a strong connection with – and a deep interest in – what is happening in the Pacific region.

He is currently a part-time student in the Postgraduate Diploma in Communications (Digital Media) course at AUT. He also has an MBA (Massey University).

Krishnamurthi worked for many years as a journalist with the now-defunct New Zealand Press Association newsagency and has held a variety of senior communications posts, including Northland Inc., an iwi (Ngatiwai) organisation, the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs and as a minister’s press secretary.

“The media landscape has changed with the advent of the digital age, but the fundamentals of working as a journalist, a public relations practitioner, or in communications, require the same inherent skills they always have – albeit with some enhancements,” he says.

The two students going to Fiji this semester on the Bearing Witness climate change project are Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom, both on the Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies degree and keen to develop their screen production and writing skills.

‘Pacific passion’
Of Niuean and Banaban descent, Hele Ikimotu completed his Bachelor of Communication Studies degree majoring in journalism last year and worked as an intern on the NZ Institute for Pacific Research project.

Ikimotu is currently employed by the Office of Pacific Advancement at AUT, working for the the Oceanian Leadership Network, a new initiative at the university.

“I have a passion for Pacific stories, issues and people,” he says. “ I believe there needs to be more coverage on the Pacific community and positive representation of Pacific people.”

Blessen Tom, originally from India, completed his Bachelor and Masters in Literature and is now pursuing his studies in digital media.

He is passionate about visual storytelling and documentaries.

Tom directed two short films and a drama, and is currently working on a mini documentary series for YouTube.

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie described the project-winners as a “talented team” and looked forward to working with them this year.

He also praised project partners the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), University of the South Pacific Journalism Programme, NZ Institute for Pacific Research (NZIPR), AUT’s Te Ara Motuhenga and Evening Report.

The PMC recently engaged Dr Sylvia C. Frain, a Micronesian, Northern Marianas and peace studies specialist as a postdoctoral research fellow.

• More about PMC projects

BACKGROUNDER: By David Robie

Three United Nations special rapporteurs have added their voice to the global protests this week over the President Rodrigo Durterte government bureaucracy’s attack on the independent online news website Rappler and a free press in the Philippines.

Rappler has been the latest media target for the administration’s wrath over a tenacious public interest watchdog that has been relentless in its coverage of the republic’s so-called “war on drugs” and state disinformation.

Some media freedom advocates claim that the Philippines is facing its worst free expression and security crisis since the Marcos dictatorship, with The New York Times denouncing the “ruthlessness” and “viciousness” of Duterte’s disdain for democracy.

The death toll in the extrajudicial spate of killings range between 3993 (official) and more than 12,000 since Duterte took office on June 30, 2016, according to Human Rights Watch.

READ MORE: Licence to kill – Philippine police killings in Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’

Headlined “After killing spree, is a free press Mr Duterte’s next victim?”, the NY Times editorial said: “Even among that cast of illiberal leaders who rouse mobs with their ruthless policies and disdain for democratic protections, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines stands out for his viciousness.

“He has effectively declared open season on those he and his minions accuse of being drug users and dealers … Exposing such brazen abuse of power is a hallowed mission of a free press, so it should come as no surprise that authoritarians like Mr Duterte usually go after independent media.”

The NY Times described Rappler as a “tenacious critic of the President’s vicious crackdown” and this had led to the government announcing on January 15 it was revoking the online news site’s licence.

No hard evidence
Media freedom watchdogs say the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has produced no hard evidence to support its “foreign ownership” in breach of the constitution accusations against Rappler and the company that owns it, Rappler Holding Corp. Rappler is challenging this SEC ruling through the courts.

Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Manuel “Babe” Romualdez denied any “political motivation” behind the SEC ruling on Rappler.

In a letter to the editor published by The NY Times on January 24 in response to the editorial, Romualdez described SEC chairperson Teresita Herbosa as “a person of unimpeachable character”.

Rappler and many supporting news groups staged “Black Friday” demonstrations across the Philippines on January 19 when chief executive Maria Ressa declared her organisation would “ hold the line” on press freedom, insisting journalism was “not a crime”.

“We’re doing journalism. We’re speaking truth to power. We’re not afraid and we won’t be intimidated,” she said.

Ressa has joined a group of courageous, outspoken and defiant women opposed to Duterte who are “being marginalised, silenced, or worse”, according to The Diplomat.

They include Vice-President Leni Robredo (effectively gagged and whose office will be eliminated under Duterte’s controversial “federalism” plans) and Senator Leila De Lima, a human rights advocate (jailed for the past year on trumped up charges that have yet to be tried in court).

Highly successful and innovative website
Ressa founded Rappler in 2011, originally on Facebook (now 3.6 million followers), after being CNN’s leading Asia investigative journalist for several years. It has been a highly successful and innovative online and “citizen journalism” website, with an Indonesian edition and the slogan “independent journalism with impact”.

Rappler currently faces a “cyber libel” complaint that is seen as highly dangerous for the media.

Duterte has also threatened to block renewal of ABS-CBN’s franchise – the largest and most influential television network in the Philippines and publicly criticised the Philippines Daily Inquirer for its alleged “slanted reporting”. (A Duterte crony, San Miguel beer baron Ramon Ang, then seized a majority ownership stake in the company).

University of the Philippines journalism professor Daniel Arao said the President’s criticism echoed the martial law era, when then dictator Ferdinand Marcos ordered the shutdown of media outlets that were critical of his regime.

“The Duterte administration is being creative in terms of harassing and intimidating the media, but there is also the brutality, the bullying and the crassness,” Dr Arao said.

“Right now, he might even end up worse than Marcos.”

Other media freedom advocates have also warned that the Philippines is sliding into its “darkest chapter” of Philippine history between 1972 and 1986.

‘Flagrant’ violation
Describing the government’s stance as a “flagrant” violation of press freedom, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders watchdog announced it had asked the United Nations, UNESCO and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to take a stand.

“The decision to close Rappler is fraught with danger, hence the urgency of referring it to these international bodies,” RSF deputy director-general Antoine Bernard said. “We are very concerned about the safety of its journalists and the protection of their sources, especially as Rappler is well known for the quality of its investigative reporting.”

The watchdog’s Asia-Pacific director Daniel Bastard added: “For more than a year, Duterte’s notorious troll army has been spreading the rumour that Rappler is 100 percent foreign-owned.”

In a joint statement on Thursday, the three UN special rapporteurs said they were “gravely concerned” about the government moves to revoke Rappler’s licence.

“Rappler’s work rests on its own freedom to impart information, and more importantly its vast readership to have access to public interest reporting,” said the rapporteurs.

“As a matter of human rights law, there is no basis to block it from operating. Rappler and other independent outlets need particular protection because of the essential role they play in ensuring robust public debate.”

The rapporteurs are: David Kaye (Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression), Agnes Callamard (Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions), and Michael Forst (Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders).

‘Dangerous, risk of murder’
Writing in The Diplomat, University of Portsmouth academic Dr Tom Smith warned that journalism in the Philippines “has long been a dangerous trade, one that carries a very real risk of murder with little likelihood of accountability”.

He reminded readers of the 2009 Maguindanao massacre when 58 people, including 32 journalists, were “hacked to death, allegedly by members of the Ampatuan clan”. There had been no justice so far for the victims so far in a flawed prosecution case that has crawled over the past decade.

“Yet it is vitally important that Filipinos have a robust critical press to question a government up to its neck in human rights abuses.”

This is why so many people are concerned for the future in the Philippines with the news that Duterte’s administration is trying to ban Rappler.

Dr David Robie is editor of Asia Pacific Report, published by the Pacific Media Centre.

• Duterte’s ‘drug war’ claims 12,000+ lives
• ‘This isn’t the time to be silent,’ say writers defending Rappler
• Cybercrime, criminal libel and the media: From ‘e-martial law’ to the Magna Carta in the Philippines
• Other Philippines articles

One accused walked away a free man yesterday while another offered to serve a life sentence if the High Court in Lautoka set free the other 13 co-accused in the Fiji sedition case.

As the month-long Ra sedition trial came to an end, Tui Nalawa Ratu Epeli Niudamu was handed a suspended sentence of two years while the remaining 14 accused were each handed partial sentences that ranged from 18 months to three years.

Ulaiyasi Rabua Tuivomo, however, caught everyone off guard when he addressed Justice Aruna Aluthge, saying he would serve all sentences meted out to the other 13 accused.

“I want to request this honourable court if it is possible if all the accused could be released and I could go to jail for life,” he said.

“If it’s not possible then I will respect the decision of the court.”

The group was accused of conducting secret military training in a remote area of the northern Ra province, as part of a wider effort to form a breakaway Christian state.

RNZI reports defence lawyer Ravindra Singh said the 15 accused continued to maintain their innocence.

“As far as they are concerned they have not committed a crime. They continue to believe that they have the right to champion and advocate for the rights of indigenous people, the rights of indigenous land and indigenous issues,” he said. “And that is exactly what they did and there is no shame in that.

Filing appeals
Ravindra-Singh said he would file appeals to the Court of Appeal from next week.

According to the Office of Director of Prosecutions, the following sentences were handed down:

– Ratu Epeli Niudamu: two year suspended sentence.

– Sailasa Wairoaroa Malani: 2 years in prison, six months of which is suspended.

– Sereima Adidave Rokodi: 2 years in prison, six months of which is suspended.

– Nanise Kasami Nagusuca: 3 years in prison, 12 months of which is suspended.

– Waisea Duailima: 3 years in prison, 12 months of which is suspended.

– Isikeli Waisega Kabakoro: 2 years in prison, six months of which is suspended.

– Laisiasa Mocevakaca: 2 years in prison, six months of which is suspended.

– Emosi Toga: 2 years in prison, six months of which is suspended.

– Waisake Racaca: 2 years in prison, six months of which is suspended.

– Samuela Ligabalavu: 2 years in prison, six months of which is suspended.

– Mikaele Gonerara: 2 years in prison, six months of which is suspended.

– Josefa Natau: 2 years in prison, six months of which is suspended.

– Sulueti Lotu Waqalala: 2 years in prison, six months of which is suspended.

– Ulaiyasi Rabua Tuivomo: 2 years in prison, four months of which is suspended.

– Apolosi Qalilawa: 18 months of prison, 6 months of which is suspended.

• More stories on Fiji

One of Cambodia’s last remaining independent newspapers has announced it is closing today after 24 years, the latest in a series of blows to critics of Prime Minster Hun Sen.

The Cambodia Daily said today’s edition would be its last after it was slapped with a US$6.3 million tax bill, which its publishers said was politically motivated, Al Jazeera reports.

“The power to tax is the power to destroy. And after 24 years, one month and 15 days, the Cambodian government has destroyed The Cambodia Daily, a special and singular part of Cambodia’s free press,” the newspaper said in a statement.

The paper blamed “extra-legal threats by the government to close the daily, freeze its accounts and prosecute the new owner” for the closure.

The announcement came hours after Opposition Leader Kem Sokha was arrested and accused of treason.

READ MORE: Kem Sokha detained during Cambodia police raid

The Cambodia Daily was set up in 1993 by veteran American journalist Bernard Krisher in the aftermath of Cambodia’s genocide from 1975-78 and subsequent civil war.

It publishes in English, but also carries some articles in Khmer.

Krisher sold the paper to his daughter Deborah Krisher-Steele in April.

‘Arbitrary’ back taxes
Last month, the Cambodian tax department said the paper owed $6.3m in back taxes, with Hun Sen branding the owners “thieves” in one of his recent speeches.

The paper said the figure was “arbitrary” and not based on an audit of its books.

“It’s a dark day for press freedom in Cambodia,” editor Jodie DeJonge told AFP news agency on Sunday.

“We just can’t believe that on Monday morning we are going to wake up and not come and put out another newspaper. It’s a tremendous loss.”

The paper is not the only independent media organisation to come under pressure. Tax probes have also been announced by the government against the US-funded Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, who say they have complied with local laws.

A group of local radio stations which carried Khmer-language VOA and RFA content have also been shuttered or banned from broadcasting their content.

Last week, the US expressed “deep concern” over the state of Cambodia’s democracy after the government there ordered out an American NGO.

By Kendall Hutt in Auckland 

Student journalists from across the Pacific region have wrapped-up their 2017 internships.

Brandon Ulfsby, Joshua Lafoai, Linda Filiai, Safia Archer and Shivika Mala say their internships have “opened their eyes” to one another’s journalism cultures and opened future doors.

“The contacts you gain are the most beneficial for the future,” says Archer, a final-year journalism student from Massey University in Wellington.

Organised by the Pacific Cooperation Foundation as part of its media programme — now in its third year — three journalists from the Pacific and two journalists from New Zealand were given the opportunity to experience one another’s media cultures.

WATCH MORE: PCF interns at the America’s Cup Parade

Travelling to Apia and Suva respectively, Ulfsby and Archer say they enjoyed the “slower pace” of the newsrooms they visited.

“They process stories a lot more slowly, but that ups the quality of the storytelling,” says Ulfbsy, a Bachelor of Communication Studies journalism major at Auckland University of Technology.

“In New Zealand there are commercial pressures that can alter the telling of the story.”

Highlight ‘was the people’
While in Samoa, Ulfsby interned with TV3 Samoa, Samoa Observer, Talamua (Radio Samoa) and Savali and says the highlight “was the people”.

“I’d say Samoa is the people, that’s how I see it. Going there for a media exchange, it’s really about getting to know the people and understanding the cultural context that they’re in — their stories, their perspectives — and presenting it in a really authentic way.”

Despite an apparent lack of resources, Ulfbsy says, “journalists in the Pacific have a sense of freedom we don’t have in New Zealand. Freedom in the sense that they can select the stories that they want to write about, cover, and they can present it in a way they feel best represents it”.

Ulfbsy’s thoughts were similarly echoed by Archer:

“The resources that the journalists are using, we’re so spoiled here. We can do things so easily. They do things when they’re relatively under-resourced compared to us, but they still manage to produce good content in a relatively timely manner.”

For Archer, however, the highlight of her time in Fiji was spending a day in the village of Nayavutoka in the northern province of Ra.

She says the village of 57 families was “ground zero” for Cyclone Winston in 2016.

‘They’re still rebuilding’
“It’s three hours on a dirt road, barely accessible, and had been completely ravaged by Cyclone Winston and 17 months later they’re still rebuilding.”

Interviewing villagers with the crew of MaiLife magazine “was amazing”, Archer says.

“The whole major part of me wanting to do this internship was actually to give, or see, that human side of climate change and development that we don’t see.

“We just see the high-level talks, so having access to the villagers through a magazine that they trusted, people that they trusted, they warmed up to me and were able to speak to me about their experiences.”

Archer also interned with CFL Radio, FBCTV, and Fiji Television.

But while Ulfsby and Archer enjoyed the slower place of newsrooms in the Pacific, Filiai, Lafoai and Mala say they enjoyed the switch to New Zealand’s faster-paced industry.

“We were all over the place. We did print, radio, television,” says Lafoai of the National University of Samoa.

‘That was intense’
“We did a week’s work in our first two days at NZME. I did three stories alone, that was intense.”

Filiai reflects New Zealand’s fast-paced media industry also plays into access of information and sources.

“In the Pacific, if we were to work on a story it would take days, weeks, even up to a month because we find it really hard to chase our sources. It’s so hard to get information out of the government ministry.

“Here, I find it really interesting because you send an email and they will respond to you and you can work on your story in a day or a few hours.”

Filiai, Lafoai and Mala all agree they will be taking what they have learnt over the past two weeks back to the Pacific.

“We have a really big challenge ahead of us. We need to match up, we need to step-up our game in journalism. Not just in writing or reporting, but in also how we do our job,” says Lafoai.

Cultural, media experience
For young journalists thinking of covering the Pacific region, Ulfbsy advises them to snap-up the PCF’s unique opportunity, both for its cultural and media experience.

“For me the exchange is more of a cultural experience as opposed to a media experience, but that’s essential to being a journalist who wants to cover the Pacific.

“Go to the Pacific itself and gain that perspective and that understanding so that we can authenticate our stories.”

• See Brandon Ulfsby‘s work while at the Samoa Observer here and here. Read his Talamua (Radio Samoa) stories here and here. Ulfsby’s Asia Pacific Report internship stories are here and here.
  
• See Linda Filiai’s NZ Herald story
• See Shivika Mala’s NZ Herald stories here and here.
• Watch the Filiai, Lafoai, and Mala’s Tagata Pasifika broadcast
• Pacific exchange journalists begin NZ media ‘awareness’ internship
• Pacific media internship offers chance to follow regional issues

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

Current national contributions by countries to the Paris Agreement on climate change are not enough to save the Pacific, says Fiji’s Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama.

“We have to try to persuade the rest of the world to embrace even more ambitious action in the years to come, because we all know that even the current national contributions to the Paris Agreement are not enough to save us,” he said, addressing Pacific leaders as the UN Oceans Conference came to a close in New York last week.

As the incoming president of COP23, Bainimarama called on the Pacific and its leaders to stand by him and demand decisive action, as climate change was an issue of critical importance to the region’s collective future.

“I want your input. I need your input. And I want every Pacific leader beside me as we demand decisive action to protect the security of our people and those in other vulnerable parts of the world.”

Bainimarama also outlined his worry that America’s decision to abandon the Paris Agreement may also encourage other nations to either back away from the commitments they have made or not implement them with the same resolve.

“We are all, quite naturally, bitterly disappointed by the decision of the Trump Administration to abandon the Paris Agreement,” he said.

“Not only because of the loss of American leadership on this issue of critical importance to the whole world, but because it may also encourage other nations to either back away from the commitments they have made or not implement them with the same resolve.

“But something wonderful is also happening. The American decision is galvanising opinion around the world in support of decisive climate action.

‘Widespread rebellion’
“Other nations and blocs like China, the European Union and India are stepping forward to assume the leadership that Donald Trump has abandoned. And within America itself, there is a widespread rebellion against the decision the President has taken.”

Bainimarama said dozens of American state governors and city mayors were banding together with leaders of the private sector, civil society and ordinary citizens to redouble their efforts to meet this challenge.

“So while the Trump Administration may have abandoned its leadership on climate change, the American people haven’t.

“Next week, I will go to California to meet the Democrat Governor Jerry Brown and sign up to the climate action initiative that he is spearheading. I am also in contact with his Republican predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who shares Governor Brown’s commitment.

“The point is that on both sides of American politics, we have friends who are standing with us in this struggle. And I am inviting both Governor Brown and the famous ‘Terminator’ to come to our pre-COP gathering in Fiji in October, where we hope they will join us in a gesture of solidarity with the vulnerable just before COP23 itself in Bonn the following month.”

The Paris Agreement, which Fiji has ratified, sets out a global action plan to put the world on track to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

Nasik Swami is a reporter with The Fiji Times

• Pacific leaders drive call for healthier oceans at UN conference

Pacific Media Watch’s Kendall Hutt spoke with 95bFM’s The Wire host Tess Barnett today about martial law in the southern island of Mindanao in the Philippines.

She says this is worrying for the Asia-Pacific region.

Papua New Guinea and the Micronesian states have significant diasporic Filipino communities.

Hutt talked about what the declaration of martial law in response to urban attacks in Marawi City, means; comparisons with the Marcos dictatorship; and the threat it poses if it continues past the “normal” 60-day period.

Kendall Hutt and colleagues present the weekly radio programme Southern Cross about Pacific issues on 95bFM on Mondays.

In Manila, Opposition lawmakers condemned President Rodrigo Duterte over his apparent rejection of constitutional provisions allowing Congress and the Supreme Court (SC) to assess the martial law declaration in Mindanao, reports Rappler.

“Is the President saying that he’s willing to violate the Constitution? He is on his way to becoming a dictator,” said Ifugao Representative Teddy Baguilat Jr.

Duterte declared martial law in Mindanao following clashes between government forces and Maute Group terrorists in Marawi City.

Listen to Kendall here:

As Television New Zealand’s news boss calls for the ban on Barbara Dreaver entering Fiji to be lifted, the Pacific correspondent has responded to claims from the Fiji prime minister on both her channel’s website and on Radio New Zealand’s Mediawatch programme today.

As the media team entered the Boroko Police Station juvenile office in the capital of Port Moresby around 4pm on Wednesday, there were about 16 students inside, most of them females, reports the digital news service Loop PNG.

They were a bit intimidated by the media groups’ presence but after much reassurance, they were able to talk to the reporters about how they ended up there.

The TV Wan reporter said that after the interview, one of the students asked her if the officers could give them back their cellphones so they could call their parents.

She first asked Superintendent for Operations Brian Kombe, reported Loop PNG.

He reportedly sent an officer to tell another officer holding onto the phones to return them to the students. However, after 30 minutes, the students still did not get their phones back.

“I later walked in and kindly asked the civilian officer why he had confiscated their phones when they had not been formally arrested, and if he could give their phones back so they could call their parents to come down to the station,” the unnamed journalist said.

Manhandled and kicked
“He told me that he would not give back their phones and that I would have to step outside and do my job so he could do his job.

“I told him that I heard clearly from the Superintendent for Operations, there were no arrests made yet and that they were still waiting for the commander to come and an arrest can be made, therefore the students must be given back their phones to contact their parents.”

The civilian officer then came towards the female reporter and tried to manhandle her out of the office, ripping her shirt in the process, Loop PNG reported.

The officer then kicked her in her ribs and she fell down. He later went outside and started assaulting two other female reporters from NBC, but Superintendent Kombe arrived and stopped him.

TV Wan chief editor Glenda Popot condemned the action of the civilian officer as her police reporter was only doing her job and she should not have been treated in such a manner.

Popot said this was police brutality against journalists and the media industry would not tolerate such actions from the police officers.

“We will not be intimidated,” she said.

Popot called on the police to take action about this, adding that journalists had the freedom to report and ask questions and the police should let journalists do their jobs without fear or favour.

Annette Kora is a reporter with Loop PNG News. This report has been relayed by the Pacific Media Watch freedom project.

TV Wan News

New Zealanders need to catch up with reality about the country’s trade partners in the South-East Asia region, says an ambassador.

Speaking to the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) NZ Business Council today, New Zealand Ambassador to Viet Nam Haike Manning said it was important for ASEAN members to work together to change outdated perspectives of potential business in the region.

“What I find in general is that a lot of perceptions about Viet Nam in New Zealand lags behind the reality of the country,” he told council members.

New Zealand’s Heads of Mission from ASEAN country members met at an Auckland University of Technology breakfast to update each other on recent developments.

Listen to TJ Aumua’s podcast for Pacific Media Watch.

“Yesterday I took a screenshot of an article that said, ‘Could Viet Nam become the next Silicon Valley’, and I think it’s a really interesting and provocative proposition,” Manning said.

“What we are certainly seeing is the rapid emergence in Viet Nam of a knowledge economy, we are seeing a rapid emergence of Viet Nam has a high-tech place.”

‘Academic freedom’
In an interview with Pacific Media Watch, Manning said that as part of Viet Nam’s step towards a growing knowledge economy, the country is working on establishing its very first university to have academic freedom.

“I think in Viet Nam it’s pretty well understood that the public education system cannot properly deliver all the needs for its people and that’s why we see a lot of Vietnamese students coming to New Zealand,” Manning said.

“But something’s got to happen inside the country as well in terms of supplying the public education system.”

“It’s a brave step by the Vietnamese government to give this freedom.”

The New Zealand Ambassador to the Philippines, David Strachan, also spoke at the event, saying New Zealanders needed to understand the Philippines was a great business and trading hub.

His speech also highlighted the controversy around Philippines President-elect, Rodrigo Duterte, who has become known for his hate speech and approval of increased death squads to reduce crime.

But he noted that the Philippines had been the top performing south-east Asian economy in recent years and he expected Duterte’s decisive leadership would be good for New Zealanders doing business with the country.

• Could Viet Nam become the next Silicon Valley?

Journalists, lawyers and corruption-fighters are sounding the alarm as one of the Pacific’s most comprehensive online databases faces an uncertain funding future.

Paclii, based at the University of the South Pacific, gives anyone with an internet connection access to a treasure trove of Pacific Island legal documents and court decisions.

LISTEN TO THE RADIO AUSTRALIA PODCAST

GARRETT: Paclii gives free online access to the constitutions and laws of every Pacific country as well as to court decisions, leadership commission rulings and other documents.

It is an essential resource for Pacific governments, international organisations, businesses, NGOs and citizens.

Lawrence Stephens is chairperson of the PNG chapter of Transparency International.

STEPHENS: Paclii has been a great gift to people of the Pacific and it really is important that more people have access to the laws of their country so more people can understand what their rights are.

GARRETT: Before Paclii existed people seeking information on the laws of their country had to travel to a major city to visit a library.

Now corruption-fighters like Lawrence Stephens can get access to court decisions and documents from any Pacific nation.

STEPHENS: We are interested to see what happens in [the] Solomon [Islands] and it is an opportunity provided to us to be able to check their laws. Another particularly interesting one was when Vanuatu placed so many members of parliament in the prison and the way in which that happened and so that became of particular interest to people in other countries and it is good to be able to check the laws and to understand exactly how things are handled.

GARRETT: Timely information is vital, especially for journalists who have to explain complex court decisions to their audiences.

Professor David Robie Director of the Pacific Media Centre at the Auckland University of Technology says Paclii is a Pacific success story.

After more big cuts to aid in the Australian budget earlier this month, Pacific lawyers and human rights advocates became concerned that Australian-funding for Paclii might be axed as soon as the end of June.

David Robie says if Paclii is cut there are stories Pacific audiences might not hear.

ROBIE: All the stories at the moment running in Papua New Guinea; the legal subterfuge which is going on with the political upheavals at the moment, all these sorts of stories need the legal documentation and backgrounding that journalists have to rely on something like Paclii to provide those sorts of basic information

GARRETT: Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has issued a statement saying Paclii’s funding has NOT been cut.

The University of the South Pacific’s Acting Deputy Vice Chancellor Professor Derrick Armstrong says Paclii is crucially important to the region.

ARMSTRONG: The simple situation is that the University of the South Pacific is going to continue to support Paclii. It is very crucially important to the region and we have always been a keen supporter of it so we want to seek ways of ensuring that it continues to thrive and provide the services that it does.

GARRETT: Julie Bishop says the funding has NOT been cut but perhaps ominously, when dfat is the main funder, added that ‘no decision has been made’. What do you take from that?

ARMSTRONG: Well, the funding hasn’t been cut. The funding has come to its natural end. It is a project funded by Dfat and it has come to an end, or will do later this year, and that is the course of all projects funded by development agencies.

GARRETT: Pacilii’s project funding runs to the 31st of December.

Australia could renew its funding.

If not, USP will seek donations from users to keep the service operating and pay its 12 members of staff.

David Robie thinks a donation model of funding is unlikely to allow Paclii to maintain its quality.

ROBIE: I think that would be extremely, extremely. difficult. It has set such a high benchmark now and it has been improving every year to match that. I think it would be a rather uncertain future. It would be a pity for such a valuable resource for the region to be given an uncertain future.

Jemima Garrett is a Radio Australia journalist specialising in Pacific Island affairs. This report is republished with permission.

He represented Vanuatu in weightlifting at the Commonwealth Games, and he is an advocate of a radical new accountancy that brings a whole raft of social indicators to your typical balance sheet.

Dr Pala Molisa is currently a lecturer at Victoria University Business School in Wellington, New Zealand, and talks to RNZ Sunday presenter Wallace Chapman about his critical ideas on neoliberalism.

• ‘We’re going to lose islands … whole countries,’ says Pacific climate change advocate

The Fiji Times is challenging the selection of the Fiji Sun as the government’s exclusive carrier of newspaper advertisements for the 2016 year.

“VBTC is important to the government, as part of the 100 Days Plan, the government wants radio coverage to reach the whole country,” Prime Minister Salwai told the Vanuatu Broadcasting and Television Corporation (VBTC) board of directors and staff during his visit to the national broadcaster late last week.

Stressing the importance of media and the role that VBTC is expected to play as the government’s mouthpiece, Salwai questioned why the state-owned institution was not functioning up to expectations.

“Media is important because information is important so people can be aware of what is happening nationally, regionally and also internationally.

“Unfortunately not everybody is reached. It is our homework to increase the coverage because it’s not only information but also educational for the people.”

The Prime Minister recalled having access to radio coverage when growing up as a child on his home Island of Pentecost during the colonial era.

“Now there is no coverage, even in rural Efate,” said Prime Minister Salwai.

Lack of coverage
“With more facilities in place like the e-govt network, submarine cable and the establishment of the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO), lack of coverage is a challenging issue.”

Salwai said he was concerned about the status of the institution and made it clear that he intends to get to the bottom of the issues that are affecting VBTC.

He called for more transparency and accountability, saying the institution’s annual report did not reflect the reality of the situation it was facing.

The prime minister said VBTC had an annual budget every year from the government on top of fees from other operators.

He said he would get a second opinion in terms of an audit report if needed.

“I want to find out what needs to be addressed,” he said.

Overall he said as minister responsible he would continue to support the media to work freely in the country.

In response, VBTC general manager Fred Vurobaravo thanked the prime minister for the “challenging words”, saying it would take time and a collective effort to address the issues.

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

Foreign Minister Murray McCully has welcomed the launch of a New Zealand-based Pacific think-tank aimed at supporting sustainable development in the region.

“We have identified the need for more targeted research on the Pacific, to underpin development initiatives and support Pacific decision makers,” said McCully, who launched the new institute at Auckland University’s Fale Pasifika last night.

“The New Zealand Institute for Pacific Research will work in support of Pacific governments and regional agencies, and will focus on producing the kind of hard-headed analysis that can support sustainable economic development.

“Our aim is for the NZPIR to become a centre of excellence for research on Pacific development, governance, public policy, and security issues.

“The government has provided a cornerstone investment of $7.5 million over five years to establish the Institute and develop an initial programme of research,” McCully said.

The NZPIR will be based at the University of Auckland.

The research programme will be delivered by a consortium led by the University of Auckland, and including Auckland University of Technology and Otago University.

• Pacific Media Watch’s TJ Aumua reports on the new institute
• New NZ think-tank launched to advance Pacific research

The launch of the New Zealand Institute of Pacific Research (NZIPR) at the University of Auckland last night has been hailed as a milestone for advancing student learning on Pacific issues.

The new institute has been established by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in partnership with the University of Auckland, Auckland University of Technology and Otago University as a consortium for Pacific research and engagement.

Newly appointed director of the NZIPR, Associate Professor Damon Salesa, said it was the first time the NZ government had funded a national centre of excellence in Pacific research.

“It is a remarkable opportunity not only to research but to deliver opportunities to learn and to grow our students and research, especially our Pacific students, which our consortium has counted are in the thousands.”

Salesa said the institute also created opportunities for solo researchers to engage in conversations for purposeful and transformative Pacific relationships and resolutions.

Foreign Minister Murray McCully launched the institute at the Fale Pasifika, saying the think-tank’s objective was to support sustainable development in the Pacific region.

A pro vice-chancellor of Otago University, Tony Ballantyne, said the intellectual programme of the NZIPR would connect students with “cutting edge” research on the Pacific region.

The NZIPR will also offer students supervision in specific Pacific postgraduate research, postgraduate scholarships and student internships and placements.

The Head of Pacific Advancement at AUT, Walter Fraser, said the move for a nationally recognised Pacific institute had been desired for a long time.

Informed position
He said the NZIPR was a result of two years of discussions but its launch finally gave an opportunity for institutions to advise governance with an informed position on Pacific issues.

Professor Jenny Dixon, deputy vice-chancellor of strategic engagement at the University of Auckland and chair of the new institute, said the challenges of the consortium had concerned how the three institutions would achieve a strategy and operations consensus for the new institute.

“I think we have to remember the institute will be present at a number of places, events are going to take pace at the other universities and also overseas, so it is very much a collective effort.”

“AUT, like Otago, has a large representation of Pacific students, Pacific staff. AUT has the Pacific Media Centre — these were assets the collective bid offered.”

A launch statement noted:

• The three universities in collaboration educate 75 percent of all Pacific Island university students in New Zealand, and produce 60 percent of Pacific PhDs. They also employ 90 percent of the 175 Pacific academics working in universities across New Zealand.

• The ministry is contributing $7.5 million over five-years to the NZIPR.

• Research of the NZIPR is agenda-driven by the ministry. The first five research cases of interest for the institute are: Mapping donor contributions in the Pacific, labour markets for sustainable and economic development in the Pacific, commercial potential of land in the Pacific, private-sector investment in the Pacific and the role of sovereign trust funds.

The Quills are awarded for excellence in Victorian journalism and “acknowledge outstanding work produced by journalists, photographers, camera people, cartoonists, illustrators and editors”.

Ferguson took out the top award as Fairfax staff continued to strike in protest at plans to cut 120 editorial jobs as part of cost-cutting measures at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Australian Financial Review.

Ferguson’s work for The Age, in partnership with ABC Four Corners, last year revealed retail giant 7-Eleven was systematically paying its workers about half the minimum wage at stores around the country.

The story prompted the resignation of the company’s chairman Russell Withers, along with chief executive Warren Wilmot and general manager of operations Natalie Dalbo.

The company has since established a panel led by former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) boss Allan Fels to help staff recover wages, and the Fair Work Ombudsman expects to take more court action over worker exploitation.

Ferguson told the audience gathered in Melbourne that the cuts would make her job and others’ much more difficult.

‘Heavy heart’
“Given the past 24 hours at Fairfax, it’s with a heavy heart I’m here tonight,” she said.

“If there are job cuts it’s going to be harder.

“I hope we’re not going to go on cutting, cutting, cutting until there’s nothing left.”

The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) believes the cuts amount to one-quarter of the editorial workforce.

The mood at the awards has been a sombre one, with journalists wearing “Fairgo Fairfax” T-shirts in support of the diminishing editorial workforce at the company.

A number of media professionals have tweeted in support of Ferguson and other Fairfax staff for their commitment to quality journalism.

Fairfax cuts hurt democracy: protesters

Fairfax job cuts plan produces mass walkout as staff ‘take a stand’

#FairGoFairfax