About 2000 New Zealand protesters marched through the heart of Auckland city today chanting “no justice, no peace” and many other calls as they demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the Israeli atrocities in its brutal war on the besieged Palestinian enclave.

For more than 73 days, Israel has blocked all food, water, and medicine from entering Gaza, creating a man-made crisis with the Strip on the brink of a devastating famine.

Israel’s attacks killed more than 150 and wounded 450 in a day in a new barrage of attacks that aid workers described as “Gaza is bleeding before our eyes”.

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• More images and videos of the protest

in Auckland, several Palestinian and other speakers spoke of the anguish and distress of the global Gaza community in the face of Western indifference to the suffering in a rally before the march marking the 77th anniversary of the Nakba — the “Palestinian catastrophe”.

“There are cracks opening up all around the world that haven’t been there for 77 years,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair John Minto in an inspired speech to the protesters.

“Right through the news media, journalists are up in arms against their editors and bosses all around the world.

“We’ve got politicians in Britain speaking out for the first time. Some conservative politician got standing up the other day saying, ‘I supported Israel right or wrong for 20 years, and I was wrong.’

‘The world is coming right’
“Yet a lot of the world has been wrong for 77 years, but the world is coming right. We are on the right side of history, give us a big round of applause.”

Minto was highly critical of the public broadcasters, Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand, saying they relied too heavily on a narrow range of Western sources whose credibility had been challenged and eroded over the past 19 months.

He also condemned their “proximity” news value, blaming it for news editors’ lapse of judgment on news values because Israelis “spoke English”.

Minto told the crowd that that they should be monitoring Al Jazeera for a more balanced and nuanced coverage of the war on Palestine.

His comments echoed a similar theme of a speech at the Fickling Centre in Three Kings on Thursday night and protesters followed up by picketing the NZ Voyager Media Awards last night with a light show of killed Gazan journalists beamed on the hotel venue.

About 230 Gazan journalists have been killed in the war so far, many of them allegedly targeted by the Israeli forces.

Minto said he could not remember a previous time when a New Zealand government had remained silent in the face of industrial-scale killing of civilians anywhere in the world.

“We have livestreamed genocide happening and we have our government refusing to condemn any of Israel’s war crimes,” he said.

NZ ‘refusing to condemn war crimes’
“Yet we’ve got everybody in the leadership of this government having condemned every act of Palestinian resistance yet refused to condemn the war crimes, refused to condemn the bombing of civilians, and refused to condemn the mass starvation of 2.3 million people.

“What a bunch of depraved bastards run this country. Shame on all of them.”

Palestinian speaker Samer Al Malalha spoke of the 1948 Nakba and the injustices against his people.

“Everything we were told about international law and human rights is bullshit. The only rights you have are the ones you take,” he said.

“So today we won’t stand here to plead, we are here to remind you of what happened to us. We are here to take what is ours. Today, and every day, we fight for a free Palestine.”

Nakba survivor Ghazi Dassouki is now a 90-year-old and he told a harrowing story from his homeland. As a 14-year-old boy, he and his family were driven out of Palestine during the Nakba.

He described “waking up to to the smell of gunpowder” — his home was close to the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9, 1948, when Zionist militias attacked the village killing 107 people, including women and children.

‘Palestine will be free – and so will we’
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said: “What we stand for is truth, justice, peace and love.

“Palestine will be free and, in turn, so will we.”

She said only six more MPs were needed to have the numbers to have the Greens’ Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill passed in Parliament.

Israel has blocked all food, water, and medicine from entering Gaza, creating a man-made crisis, with the integrated food security agency IPC warning that famine could be declared any time between now and September, reports Al Jazeera.

The head of the UN Children’s Fund, Catherine Russell, said the world should be shocked by the killing of 45 children in Israeli air strikes in just two days.

Instead, the slaughter of children in Gaza is “largely met with indifference”.

“More than 1 million children in Gaza are at risk of starvation. They are deprived of food, water and medicine,” Russell wrote in a post on social media.

“Nowhere is safe for children in Gaza,” she said.

“This horror must stop.”

Famine worst level of hunger
Famine is the worst level of hunger, where people face severe food shortages, widespread malnutrition, and high levels of death due to starvation.

According to the UN’s criteria, famine is declared when:

• At least 20 percent (one-fifth) of households face extreme food shortages;
• More than 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition; and
• At least two out of every 10,000 people or four out of every 10,000 children die each day from starvation or hunger-related causes.

Famine is not just about hunger; it is the worst humanitarian emergency, indicating a complete collapse of access to food, water and the systems necessary for survival.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), since Israel’s complete blockade began on March 2, at least 57 children have died from the effects of malnutrition.

A board member at RNZ appointed less than a month ago quit this week after making public comments on former Justice Minister Kiri Allan’s downfall and criticising media coverage of it.

RNZ had asked Jason Ake to stop and the government said he breached official obligations of neutrality, but he was unrepentant.

Jason Ake (Ngāti Ranginui) was one of the appointments last month to the boards of RNZ and TVNZ that represented “an exciting new era for our public broadcasters as they continue to tackle the challenges of … serving all people of Aotearoa now and into the future,” according to Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson.

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“Looking forward to the mahi ahead,” Ake told his LinkedIn followers at the time.

“Hoping to bring an indigenous perspective to the strategic direction at the public broadcasting institution,” he added, honouring the advocacy of pioneers Whai Ngata, Derek Fox and Henare Te Ua “for a much more visible Māori perspective in RNZ’s strategic direction”.

But even before he could be inducted into RNZ or attend a single board meeting, Ake resigned this week in the wake of controversy over social media comments he made about the downfall of cabinet minister Kiri Allan.

“When there’s blood in the water the sharks circle, and they’re more than happy to digest every last morsel and watch the bones sink to the depth. It’s a bloodsport,” he said in a Facebook post.

Referenced mental breakdown
He also referenced former National Party leader Todd Muller, who recovered from a mental breakdown to resume his work as an MP.

Jackson told reporters in Parliament on Tuesday Ake had “often been quite vocal about issues and he’s gonna have to stop”.

RNZ chair Dr Jim Mather had already been in touch to remind Jason Ake of his responsibilities under the Public Service Commission’s code of conduct for crown entity board members.

“When acting in our private capacity, we avoid any political activity that could jeopardise our ability to perform our role, or which could erode the public’s trust in the entity,” the code says.

Ake’s initial Facebook comment was not explicitly or aggressively politically partisan. Most of the comments could be construed as a reflection on the media as much as on politics or politicians.

But there is heightened sensitivity these days because of Te Whatu Ora chair Rob Campbell, who was sacked after publicly criticising opposition parties’ health policies recently. (That was amplified when media commentaries of other government-appointed board members were scrutinised in the wake of that).

In a statement earlier this week, RNZ’s chair acknowledged that  Ake was “new to the board of RNZ”.

An RNZ board member appointed less than a month ago quit this week after commenting on Kiri Allan’s downfall and criticising media coverage. The government said Jason Ake breached official obligations of neutrality, but he was unrepentanthttps://t.co/ttGog3rDLG

— Mediawatch (@MediawatchNZ) July 29, 2023

Communications professional
But he is also a former journalist and a communications professional who is currently Waikato Tainui’s communications manager. Along with his partner — Māori communications consultant Deborah Jensen — he is a director of a consultancy called Native Voice.

RNZ said no further comment would be made until Dr Mather and Ake had discussed the matter further.

But Ake did not wait for that.

He went on Facebook again insisting mental health was a topic that needed to be talked about, particularly because it affected Māori so much.

He also referred to “an ideological premise that we as Māori must conform”.

And while he thanked some journalists for “getting the key message”, he repeated his criticisms of the media.

“21 Māori journos got it — more than the entire compliment [sic] of our two major media entities in Aotearoa, who between them have more than 700 reporters on the staff.”

Unable to ‘stay quiet’
After that, Ake told The New Zealand Herald he had resigned from the RNZ board “on principle”, because he would have been unable to stay quiet about broadcasting decisions which impacted on Māori.

“Crown entity governance has its own tikanga and protocols that need to be observed,” Dr Mather said in a statement describing it as “a missed opportunity.”

That was reinforced by Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni.

“It’s really important that they seem to be impartial and they’re not getting involved in the politics in any way. They’ve got really important roles to play and so the public needs to have faith in them being impartial,” she told TVNZ’s Te Karere.

Whanua Ora Minister Peeni Henare told Te Karere that crown entity board members “must represent all of Aotearoa”.

Rob Campbell wrote a piece for The New Zealand Herald the same day, applauding Ake for in his words, “having the guts to speak his truth”.

“They should not remove people, or put pressure on people to resign while in a position because the public views are not mutually shared or inconvenient. Nor should they be censored or silenced. They can appoint new directors when their term has served,” he said.

Obliged to be ‘politically noisy’
In a piece for the Herald explaining his own decision, Ake said that membership of Te Whakaruruhau o Nga Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa, the umbrella group representing more than 20 iwi radio stations around the country, obliged him to be “politically noisy”.

“This would have placed me on a collision course with the political neutrality expectations as set out in the Crown Entities guidelines,” he wrote.

“I made it clear that I came with a deep commitment to the Treaty and ensuring that it is embedded into the fabric and culture of the organisation. The Treaty is by definition a political pact and this required uncomfortable and sometimes public conversations,” Ake wrote in The Herald.

“My presence cannot be a distraction to the transformative mahi ahead of it. It would not be fair on the chair or the other board members and it will undoubtedly stymie progress for the entire organisation,” he added.

But commenting on mental health or broadcasting would not be a problem if he refrained from criticising political decisions or individual politicians, or discussing RNZ in public.

Jackson also appointed Ake to lead the Māori Media Sector Shift review back in 2020.

While in that role, Ake aired opinions on broadcasting broadly mirroring Jackson’s own aspirations for state-owned media.

Boost for Māori creators
“Where is the allowance for decent Māori stories? We’ve got an opinion and a view under a whole range of things that’s not reflected in the television in high rating programmes. It shouldn’t ghetto-ised into digital online platforms only,” Ake told Radio Waatea in 2021.

In another Radio Waatea interview, Ake said RNZ and TVNZ’s merger must be a boost for Māori content creators.

“The human capability and capacity out there is really, really limited. And it doesn’t make sense for the Māori sector to fight with itself in order to bring to the market good content. I think that’s where the merger ought to look for what a decent template would look like,” he said.

Ake also aired concerns about the commercial media organisations getting money from the Public Interest Journalism Fund for Māori journalism, content and topics.

“Why would you put yourself in front of an environment that’s diabolically opposed or structured in a way that doesn’t recognise the value that Māori bring to the discussion?

“The internal culture at some of these organisations is so ingrained that it has become part of the carpets, the curtains and everything else. So there needs to be systemic change inside these commercial organisations,” he argued.

Content funding increased
Māori broadcasting content funding was boosted by $82 million in the past two years, as part of the review which Jackson appointed Ake to oversee.

In the wake of the merger’s collapse, RNZ’s own funding has been boosted — in part to fuel the Rautaki Māori (Māori strategy) Jackson called for in the past and now supports.

Ake has rejected a governance role at RNZ at a time when his input and influence may have had its greatest effect.

He has not responded so far to Mediawatch’s calls and messages.

But his most recent post on LinkedIn announcing his resignation has this footnote for reporters: “Stop ringing me. I have mahi to do.”

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

Former Fijian Broadcasting Corporation chief executive Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum was paid $224,792 in bonuses during his term at FBC which began in 2008, the new board chair has claimed.

He was due for a $30,000 bonus this year.

FBC chair Ajai Bhai Amrit also revealed Sayed-Khaiyum, brother of former attorney-general Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, received a salary of F$304,453 (NZ$218,000) and was paid a bonus of $25,671 during the covid-19 pandemic.

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Amrit revealed this while speaking to the media.

Amrit said FBC would have incurred a loss of more than $63 million if the company had not received annual grants from government.

He clarified questions regarding the purchase of a vehicle by the sacked CEO.

“The final price of the vehicle was $207,470 and the vehicle is at Customs,” Amrit said.

“The vehicle will be tendered, I haven’t seen it yet.”

He said no staff would lose their jobs and the board was now dealing with the company’s annual reports and continuing investigations into its operations.

Wata Shaw is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum denies chair’s claims
FijiVillage News reports that Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said in a statement today that Amrit’s comments that he was being paid $32,000 a month in salary was “absolutely false”.

Sayed-Khaiyum said that under his most recent 3 year contract, which was approved by the previous board in late December, he was paid “nowhere near” what has been falsely reported.

He said that for all his contracts over the last 15 years of his tenure as CEO, FBC had been strictly sanctioned and approved by several boards with a clearly defined job description.

The former FBC chief executive said the board had always approved his salary, bonus and other entitlements based on performance and job evaluation reports.

He said the board also sanctioned every major development at the FBC over the past 15 years.

Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said Amrit’s allegation that Sayed-Khaiyum had received more than $304,000 in salary during the covid19 pandemic was also incorrect.

He said that during this time the FBC staff went through a 10 percent salary reduction for about half a year in order to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on their revenue, and he took a 12 percent salary reduction on his own volition.

Wata Shaw is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

One of Fiji’s leading media analysts says wholesale changes to the Fiji Broadcasting Corporation’s board were inevitable, given the change of government in the country, reports ABC Pacific Beat.

The board’s previous members and chairman resigned last week as Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s government continues to clear the decks in the public service.

The government has begun an investigation into excessive spending patterns in the Department of Information, involving US-based PR company Qorvis, along with local communications company VATIS and FBC itself.

• LISTEN TO ABC PACIFIC BEAT: Future of the FBC board

Featured: Dr Shailendra Singh, associate professor in journalism at the University of the South Pacific

The Civicus Monitor has documented an uptick in restrictions on civic space by the Solomon Islands government, which led to the downgrading of the coiuntry’s rating to “narrowed” in December 2021.

As previously documented, there have been threats to ban Facebook in the country and attempts to vilify civil society.

The authorities have also restricted access to information, including requests from the media. During violent anti-government protests in November 2021, journalists on location were attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets from the police.

• READ MORE: Other Solomon islands reports

Elections are held on the Solomon Islands every four years and Parliament was due to be dissolved in May 2023.

However, the Solomon Islands is set to host the Pacific Games in November 2023, and Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has sought to delay the dissolution of Parliament until December 2023, with an election to be held within four months of that date. The opposition leader has criticised this delay as a “power grab”.

There have also been growing concerns over press freedom and the influence of China, which signed a security deal with the Pacific island nation in April 2022.

Journalists face restrictions during Chinese visit
In May 2022, journalists in the Solomons faced numerous restrictions while trying to report on the visit of China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi to the region.

Draft legislation which would see state broadcasters RNZ and TVNZ subsumed into a new entity has been published ahead of its introduction to Parliament.

It would take effect from March 1 next year, setting up Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media as a not-for-profit autonomous Crown entity.

The two broadcasters would then become subsidiaries, with all staff transferring to the new organisation, under the leadership of a new board.

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Under a commercial and government mixed-funding model, services which are advertising-free will remain so and any profit will be reinvested.

Services and programming that carry a fee must later also become freely available within a reasonable time, and the organisation will be required to ensure content overall remains “predominantly free of charge”.

Some $370 million over four years in operating expenditure and $306 million in capital funding was set aside in this year’s Budget for the new entity.

It will operate under a charter that sets out goals and responsibilities, with editorial independence enshrined in law.

Tikanga Māori knowledge
Board members must collectively have the financial and sector-specific skills and experience to meet the charter. At least two of them must also have good knowledge of te ao Māori and tikanga Māori, appointed in consultation with the Minister for Māori Development, and engage with Māori where relevant.

Many of the decisions about how ANZPM will run in practice have been left to the six-to-nine member board appointed by the government. This includes when RNZ and TVNZ will be dissolved, though this must be before 1 March 2028 with at least three months notice.

The entity is also required to collaborate with other media entities, including Māori media. Freeview; Ngā Taonga Sound Archives; and TVNZ’s international, investments, and free-to-air service arms are also listed as subsidiaries.

Kris Faafoi, who had spearheaded the project as broadcasting minister since 2018, officially announced the plan in March.

At the time, he signalled the organisation would be up and running by the middle of the year.

Faafoi is set to leave Parliament and gave his valedictory speech this evening.

His successor, Willie Jackson, will introduce the Bill on Tuesday.

Broadcaster charter
A summary of ANZPM’s objectives laid out in the Bill:

• Reflecting and representing a strong New Zealand identity and culture
• Ensuring te reo Māori and tikanga Māori are valued, visible and flourishing
• An inclusive, enriched and connected society, supporting children’s wellbeing and growth and New Zealand’s diverse languages, regions and cultures
• Fostering a healthy, informed and participative democracy

The legislation says ANZPM would achieve this through freely available, accessible, and high-quality content across all genres that informs, enlightens, and entertains.

News and information is required to be reliable and accurate, comprehensive, impartial and balanced, while the organisation must also reflect New Zealand’s history, and ensure Māori can access content by and about themselves.

Strong relationships with Pacific Island countries must also be recognised and supported.

The minister responsible is banned from giving direction over content, complaints, newsgathering, and compliance with broadcasting standards, and cannot remove people for making decisions over such matters.

ANZPM’s directors are also banned from receiving compensations for loss of office.

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