Facilitated by ABC International Development, and conducted by veteran journalist Scott Waide, the first-of-its-kind training in Papua New Guinea aims to plug the skills gaps identified in the last 10 years, especially with news journalists.

“While we have students graduating from the University of Technology, Divine Word, the Pacific Adventist University and the University of Papua New Guinea, training gaps still remain,” Waide told Lae media after the second day of the weeklong training on Tuesday.

“And some of those gaps are very basic and shouldn’t be that way.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific journalism training reports

“With the help of ABC, this template was developed and we had to go through the training ourselves.

“A trainer, Chris Kimball, tested it on us and we suggested changes — for local context — and then we took the training and tested it on Chris and all our participants to see if it worked.”

The training includes the definition of public interest journalism, what constitutes public interest, interviewing tips and tools, writing structures, characteristics of a good journalist and the difference between proactive and reactive journalism.

“It seems very basic but if you look at it, the content is very relevant,” said Waide.

“If a person is graduating from another course, another programme in university, and then goes into news journalism; we’ll take him or her through that course and give that person a broad understanding of what news is and what journalism is.

“Particularly in Papua New Guinea, it’s about public interest journalism.

“We can talk about the big things, like politics and economics, but if there’s no understanding of why we’re doing it and why people are important in public interest journalism then that journalism actually becomes useless and worthless.”

Seven Highlands-based NBC presenters and broadcasters are also part of the training, including members of Lae media.

The training ended yesterday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Former broadcasting minister Willie Jackson has defended Aotearoa New Zealand’s public interest journalism fund that his government started during the covid-19 pandemic, after the new deputy prime minister characterised it as “bribery”.

Speaking to media on Monday after his swearing in, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters accused state-funded media organisations of a lack of independence from the previous Labour government.

Peters was asked how quickly he expected government departments to take action on removing te reo Māori from their names.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: Journalism fund for media outlets all around the country – Willie Jackson
• Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters attacks state-funded media independence

“Well, we’ll see the speed at which TVNZ and RNZ — which are taxpayer owned — understand this new message. We’ll see whether these people, both the media and journalists — are they independent?,” he said.

“Well, isn’t that fascinating, I’ve never seen evidence of that in the last three years.” he said.

He then laughed, and said “you can’t defend $55 million of bribery, cannot defend $55 million of bribery. Get it very clear”.

That last remark was a reference to the Public Interest Journalism Fund, a three-year $55m contestable fund for journalists initially set up to shore up public interest media during the covid-19 pandemic, which was wound up in July.

Media jobs, development funded
This included funding for 219 jobs and 22 industry development projects. Political coverage was exempted from eligibility to benefit from it. The fund was administered by NZ On Air.

Jackson, who became broadcasting minister in the Labour government two years after the fund was set up, said it was for media around the country, not just state-funded organisations.

“It was introduced during covid because it was a disastrous time in terms of media and we were pressured by good people out there to say, ‘hey, you support financial institutions so how about supporting local media that’s struggling’.”

It was aimed at supporting New Zealand media to keep producing public interest stories, he said and was “not just for RNZ and for TVNZ”.

“What you saw was a great investment in support of media outlets, Māori, Pasifika, regional [outlets] … Gisborne Herald, Otago Daily Times, Asburton Guardian, they got support and an opportunity to rebuild, reset.

“I’m very proud of what we did.”

Influence denied
He denied the then Labour government had any influence over the media as a result.

“The rules are very clear, we can’t interfere, we can’t intervene . . .  You guys have to have your own independence.”

RNZ’s charter requires the broadcaster to be independent, including providing “reliable, independent, and freely accessible news and information”.

While the organisation is funded by the government, by law no ministers of the Crown or person acting on their behalf may give direction to RNZ relating to programming, newsgathering or presentation, or standards, and cannot have staff removed.

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

Kia ora koutou. Ko Ngāpuhi tōku iwi. Ko Ngāti Manu toku hapu. Ko Karetu tōku marae. Ko Myles Thomas toku ingoa.

I grew up with David Beatson, on the telly. Back in the 1970s, he read the late news which I watched in bed with my parents. Later, David and I worked together to save TVNZ 7 and also regional TV stations.

The Better Public Media (BPM) trust honours David each year with our memorial address, because his fight for non-commercial TV was an honourable one. He wasn’t doing it for himself.

• READ MORE: Other Better Public Media reports
• Better Public Media website

He wasn’t doing it so he could get a job or because it would benefit him. He fought for public media because he knew it was good for Aotearoa NZ.

Like us at Better Public Media, he recognised the benefits to our country from locally produced public media.

David knew, from a long career in media, including as editor of The Listener and as Jim Bolger’s press secretary, that NZ’s media plays an important role in our nation’s culture, social cohesion, and democracy.

NZ culture is very important. NZ culture is so unique and special, yet it has always been at risk of being swamped by content from overseas. The US especially with its crackpot conspiracies, extreme racial tensions, and extreme tensions about everything to be honest.

Local content the antidote
Local content is the antidote to this. It reflects us, it portrays us, it defines New Zealand, and whether we like it or not, it defines us. But it’s important to remember that what we see reflected back to us comes through a filter.

This speech is coming to you through a filter, called Myles Thomas.

Commercial news reflects our world through a filter of sensation and danger to hold our attention. That makes NZ seem more shallow, greedy, fearful and dangerous.

The social media filter makes the world seem more angry, reactive and complaining.
RNZ’s filter is, I don’t know, thoughtful, a bit smug, middle class.

The New Zealand Herald filter makes us think every dairy is being ram-raided every night.

And The Spinoff filter suggests NZ is hip, urban and mildly infatuated with Winston Peters.

These cultural reflections are very important actually because they influence us, how we see NZ and its people.

It is not a commodity
That makes content, cultural content, special. It is not a commodity. It’s not milk powder.

We don’t drink milk and think about flooding in Queenstown, drinking milk doesn’t make us laugh about the Koiwoi accent, we don’t drink milk and identify with a young family living in poverty.

Local content is rich and powerful, and important to our society.

When the government supports the local media production industry it is actually supporting the audiences and our culture. Whether it is Te Mangai Paho, or NZ On Air or the NZ Film Commission, and the screen production rebate, these organisations fund New Zealand’s identity and culture, and success.

Don’t ask Treasury how to fund culture. Accountants don’t understand it, they can’t count it and put it in a spreadsheet, like they can milk solids. Of course they’ll say such subsidies or rebates distort the “market”, that’s the whole point. The market doesn’t work for culture.

Moreover, public funding of films and other content fosters a more stable long-term industry, rather than trashy short-termism that is completely vulnerable to outside pressures, like the US writer’s strike.

We have a celebrated content production industry. Our films, video, audio, games etc. More local content brings stability to this industry, which by the way also brings money into the country and fosters tourism.

We cannot use quota
New Zealand needs more local content.

And what’s more, it needs to be accessible to audiences, on the platforms that they use.

But in NZ we do have one problem. Unlike Australia, we can’t use a quota because our GATT agreement does not include a carve out for local music or media quotas.

In the 1990s when GATT was being negotiated, the Aussies added an exception to their GATT agreement allowing a quota for Aussie cultural content. So they can require radio stations to play a certain amount of local music. Now they’re able to introduce a Netflix quota for up to 20 percent of all revenue generated in Aussie.

We can’t do that. Why? Because back in the 1990s the Bolger government and MFAT decided against putting the same exception into NZ’s GATT agreement.

But there is another way of doing it, if we take a lead from Denmark and many European states. Which I’ll get to in a minute.

The second important benefit of locally produced public media is social cohesion, how society works, the peace and harmony and respect that we show each other in public, depends heavily on the “public sphere”, of which, media is a big part.

Power of media to polarise
Extensive research in Europe and North America shows the power of media to polarise society, which can lead to misunderstanding, mistrust and hatred.

But media can also strengthen social cohesion, particularly for minority communities, and that same research showed that public media, otherwise known as public service media, is widely regarded to be an important contributor to tolerance in society, promoting social cohesion and integrating all communities and generations.

The third benefit is democracy. Very topical at the moment. I’ve already touched on how newsmedia affect our culture. More directly, our newsmedia influences the public dialogue over issues of the day.

It defines that dialogue. It is that dialogue.

So if our newsmedia is shallow and vacuous ignoring policies and focussing on the polls and the horse-race, then politicians who want to be elected, tailor their messages accordingly.

There’s plenty of examples of this such as National’s bootcamp policy, or Labour’s removing GST on food. As policies, neither is effective. But in the simplified 30 seconds of commercial news and headlines, these policies resonate.

Is that a good thing, that policies that are known to fail are nonetheless followed because our newsmedia cater to our base instincts and short attention spans?

Disaster for democracy
In my view, commercial media is actually disaster for democracy. All over the world.

But of course, we can’t control commercial media. No-one’s suggesting that.

The only rational reaction is to provide stronger locally produced public media.

And unfortunately, NZ lacks public media.

Obviously Australia, the UK, Canada have more public media than us, they have more people, they can afford it. But what about countries our size, Ireland? Smaller population, much more public media.

Denmark, Norway, Finland, all with roughly 5 million people, and all have significantly better public media than us. Even after the recent increases from Willie Jackson, NZ still spends just $44 per person on public media. $44 each year.

When we had a licence fee it was $110. Jim Bolger’s government got rid of that and replaced it with funding from general taxation — which means every year the Minister of Finance, working closely with Treasury, decides how much to spend on public media for that year.

This is what I call the curse of annual funding, because it makes funding public media a very political decision.

National, let us be honest, the National Party hates public media, maybe because they get nicer treatment on commercial news. We see this around the world — the Daily Mail, Sky News Australia, Newstalk ZB . . . most commercial media quite openly favours the right.

Systemic bias
This is a systemic bias. Because right-wing newsmedia gets more clicks.

Right-wing politicians are quite happy about that. Why fund public to get in the way? Even if it it benefits our culture, social cohesion, and democracy.

New Zealand is the same, the last National government froze RNZ funding for nine years.

National Party spokesperson on broadcasting Melissa Lee fought against the ANZPM merger, and now she’s fighting the News Bargaining Bill. As minister she could cut RNZ and NZ On Air’s budget.

But it wouldn’t just be cost-cutting. It would actually be political interference in our newsmedia, an attempt to skew the national conversation in favour of the National Party, by favouring commercial media.

So Aotearoa NZ needs two things. More money to be spent on public media, and less control by the politicians. Sustainable funding basically.

The best way to achieve it is a media levy.

Highly targeted tax
For those who don’t know, a levy is a tax that is highly targeted, and we have a lot of them, like the Telecommunications Development Levy (or TDL) which currently gathers $10 million a year from internet service providers like Spark and 2 Degrees to pay for rural broadband.

We’re all paying for better internet for farmers basically. When first introduced by the previous National government it collected $50 million but it’s dropped down a bit lately.

This is one of many levies that we live with and barely notice. Like the levy we pay on our insurance to cover the Earthquake Commission and the Fire and Emergency Levy. There are maritime levies, energy levies to fund EECA and Waka Kotahi, levies on building consents for MBIE, a levy on advertising pays for the ASA, the BSA is funded by a levy.

Lots of levies and they’re very effective.

So who could the media levy, levy?

ISPs like the TDL? Sure, raise the TDL back up to $50 million or perhaps higher, and it only adds a dollar onto everyone’s internet bill. There’s $50 million.

But the real target should be Big Tech, social media and large streaming services. I’m talking about Facebook, Google, Netflix, YouTube and so on. These are the companies that have really profited from the advent of online media, and at the expense of locally produced public media.

Funding content creation
We need a way to get these companies to make, or at least fund, content creation here in Aotearoa. Denmark recently proposed a solution to this problem with an innovative levy of 2 percent on the revenue of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney.

But that 2 percent rises to 5 percent if the streaming company doesn’t spend at least 5 percent of their revenue on making local Danish content. Denmark joins many other European countries already doing this — Germany, Poland, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France and even Romania are all about to levy the streamers to fund local production.

Australia is planning to do so as well.

But that’s just online streaming companies. There’s also social media and search engines which contribute nothing and take almost all the commercial revenue. The Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill will address that to a degree but it’s not open and we won’t know if the amounts are fair.

Another problem is that it’s only for news publishers — not drama or comedy producers, not on-demand video, not documentary makers or podcasters. Social media and search engines frequently feature and put advertising around these forms of content, and hoover up the digital advertising that would otherwise help fund them, so they should also contribute to them.

A Media Levy can best be seen as a levy on those companies that benefit from media on the internet, but don’t contribute to the public benefits of media — culture, social cohesion and democracy. And that’s why the Media Levy can include internet service providers, and large companies that sell digital advertising and subscriptions.

Note, this would target large companies over a certain size and revenue, and exclude smaller platforms, like most levies do.

Separate from annual budget
The huge benefit of a levy is that it is separate from the annual budget, so it’s fiscally neutral, and politicians can’t get their mits on it. It removes the curse of annual funding.

It creates a funding stream derived from the actual commercial media activities which produce the distribution gaps in the first place, for which public media compensates. That’s why the proceeds would go to the non-commercial platform and the funding agencies — Te Mangai Paho, NZ On Air and the Film Commission.

One final point. This wouldn’t conflict with the new Digital Services Tax proposed by the government because that’s a replacement for Income Tax. A Media Levy, like all levies, sits over and above income tax.

So there we go. I’ve mentioned Jim Bolger three times! I’ve also outlined some quite straight-forward methods to fund public media sustainably, and to fund a significant increase in local content production, video, film, audio and journalism.

None of it needs to be within the grasp of Melissa Lee or Willie Jackson, or David Seymour.

All of it can be used to create local content that improves democracy, social cohesion and Kiwi culture.

Myles Thomas is a trustee of the Better Public Media Trust (BPM). He is a former television producer and director who in 2012 established the Save TVNZ 7 campaign. Thomas is now studying law. This speech was this year’s David Beatson Memorial Address delivered at a public meeting in Grey Lynn last night on broadcast policy for the NZ election 2023.

The International Press Institute (IPI) has condemned the arrest and interrogation of French journalist Ariane Lavrilleux and demanded her immediate release. She was released after 39 hours in custody.

IPI has also called on French law enforcement authorities to ensure full respect for international media freedom standards on source protection.

Lavrilleux, a journalist with French non-profit investigative platform Disclose was taken into custody last Tuesday, September 19, after a dawn raid on her home by officers from France’s domestic intelligence agency, the DGSI, said an IPI statement.

• READ MORE: The Moruroa Files – how cutting edge science, secret documents and journalism exposed a Pacific lie
• State secrets: Disclose journalist taken into custody
• The Disclose website

Her apartment was searched and her computer was confiscated, in the presence of a judge, according to news media reports.

Journalists at Disclose played a key role in a major investigation of French nuclear tests secrecy in the South Pacific in March 2021.

Lavrilleux was taken to the DGSI headquarters in Marseille and questioned for several hours in the presence of her lawyer as part of an investigation into the publication of highly confidential documents in the investigative series, the “Egypt Papers”. She remained in custody overnight and into Wednesday, September 20.

In November 2021, Lavrilleux had co-authored and published the Egypt Papers, about the Sirli operation, an investigative series based on hundreds of leaked documents which revealed how information gathered by French counter-intelligence bodies was abused by the Egyptian military to carry out a campaign of bombings and arbitrary killings of alleged smugglers and innocent civilians.

French state’s potential complicity
At the time, Disclose had issued a statement justifying its decision to publish the confidential information, citing the evidence of the French state’s potential complicity in serious human rights abuses committed by a foreign regime, and the public’s right to know about such matters of public interest.

In July 2022, prosecutors in Paris opened an investigation that was later handed over to the DGSI. They alleged the publication had compromised national defence secrets and revealed information that could lead to the identification of a protected agent.

It is unclear whether any intelligence official was compromised.

“IPI is highly alarmed by the continued detention and interrogation of Ariane Lavrilleux and urges the General Directorate for Internal Security to proceed with extreme caution and full respect for French law and international legal standards regarding journalistic source protection”, IPI executive director Frane Maroevic said.

“Any charges against Lavrilleux must be dropped immediately and all pressure on Disclose and its journalists related to their investigative work must cease.

“The arrest of an investigative journalist is extremely serious, as it has major ramifications for press freedom”, he added.

“Journalists’ right to protect their sources is enshrined in national and international law as it essential for journalists to expose wrongdoing and hold power to account. The public interest defence of revealing the information published in Disclose’s investigative reporting on the Egyptian military is clear.

“IPI and our global network stand behind Lavrilleux and her colleagues at Disclose and will continue to monitor the situation closely.”

First home search since 2007
The arrest of Lavrilleux is believed to be the first time since 2007 that the home of a French journalist had been searched by police.

In a statement released immediately after the arrest, Disclose said: “The aim of this latest episode of unacceptable intimidation of Disclose journalists is clear: to identify our sources that revealed the Sirli military operation in Egypt.

“In November 2021, Disclose revealed an alleged campaign of arbitrary executions orchestrated by the Egyptian dictatorship of President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, with the complicity of the French state, based on several hundred documents marked ‘defence – confidential”.

IPI’s Maroevic added that the institute had been in contact with staff at Disclose after the arrest and has offered to help provide legal support through the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), a European consortium which offers legal aid.

He noted that the arrest was the latest in a number of worrying incidents involving the interrogation of journalists from Disclose in relation to their reporting on the Egyptian government, and its sources for those stories.

This statement by IPI is part of the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), a Europe-wide mechanism which tracks, monitors and responds to violations of press and media freedom in EU Member States, Candidate Countries, and Ukraine. The project is co-funded by the European Commission.

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.

Radio Australia was conceived at the beginning of the Second World War out of Canberra’s desire to counter Japanese propaganda in the Pacific. More than 70 years later its rebirth is being driven by a similarly urgent need to counter propaganda, this time from China.

Set up within the towering framework of the ABC, Radio Australia was, and remains, an institution with a lively multilingual culture of its own. Sometimes it has thrived and sometimes, especially in recent decades, it has struggled as political priorities and media fashions waxed and waned within the ABC and the wider world.

Phil Kafcaloudes, an accomplished journalist, author and media educator who hosted Radio Australia’s popular breakfast show for nine years, was commissioned by the ABC to write the service’s story for the corporation’s 90th-anniversary celebrations. The result is a nicely illustrated and comprehensively footnoted new book, Australia Calling: The ABC Radio Australia Story, which uses the original name of the service for its title. (With appropriate good manners, Kafcaloudes acknowledges previous accounts of the Radio Australia story, by Peter Lucas in 1964 and Errol Hodge in 1995.)

The overseas service’s nadir came in 2014 after the election of the Abbott government. At the time, Inside Story’s Pacific correspondent Nic Maclellan described in devastating detail the impact in the region of the eighty redundancies brought on by the government’s decision to remove the Australia Network, a kind of TV counterpart to Radio Australia, from the ABC. The network had controversially been merged with key elements of Radio Australia to create ABC International.

Among the casualties was the legendary ABC broadcaster Sean Dorney, known and loved throughout the Pacific. Programmes for Asia were axed, as was much specialist Pacific reporting, with English-language coverage to be sourced from the ABC’s general news department.

The ABC’s full-time team in the Pacific was reduced to a journalist in Port Moresby and another (if it counts) in New Zealand. Australia’s newspapers had already withdrawn their correspondents from the region, and online-only media hadn’t filled the gap. Where once, in 1948, Radio Australia had helped beam a signal to the moon, the countries of our own region now seemed even more remote.

Despite the steady erosion of the service over decades, though, Kafcaloudes’s book has a happy ending of sorts. Its final chapter, titled “Rebirth: Pivoting to the Pacific,” tells how Radio Australia benefited from the Morrison government’s “Pacific Step-Up,” launched in response to China’s campaign to build regional connections. Steps to rebuild Radio Australia’s capacities have since been enhanced by substantial new funding from the Albanese government.

Placing listeners at scene
When current affairs radio is at its most effective, it places listeners at the scene. Kafcaloudes tells of being on air when a listener in Timor-Leste called to tell of an assassination attempt on José Ramos-Horta and Xanana Gusmão.

“Radio Australia instantly changed its scheduling to broadcast live for three hours so locals would know whether their leaders were still alive.”

But, as Kafcaloudes explains, “for all the good work, global connections and breaking news stories, the truth is, for many Australian politicians there was little electoral capacity in a service that a domestic audience did not hear.” Thus the abrupt funding reverses and the constant tinkering.

Former ABC journalist and manager Geoff Heriot describes how, during a challenging phase for the ABC about 25 years ago, managing director Brian Johns’s desire to defend the ABC meant that, “if necessary, you could cut off limbs.” And Radio Australia was the limb that often seemed most remote from the core.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, Kafcaloudes says, the service “was often at or near the top of the polls as the world’s best.” Many listeners, especially in China and elsewhere in East Asia, testified to having learned English from listening to Radio Australia.

Its popularity in Asia and the Pacific was boosted by the fact that it broadcast from a similar time zone, which meant its morning shows, for instance, were heard during listeners’ mornings. In 1968 alone, the station received 250,000 letters from people tuning in around the region.

For decades, broadcasts were via shortwave, the only way of covering vast distances at the time. But the ABC turned off that medium for good in 2017, so Radio Australia now communicates via 24-hour FM stations across the Pacific and via satellite, live stream, on-demand audio, podcasts, the ABC Listen app, and Facebook and Twitter.

New audiences emerging
With new audiences emerging in different places, the geography of Radio Australia’s languages have changed too. As the use of French in the former colonies in Indochina declined, for instance, new French-speaking audiences developed in the Pacific colonies of New Caledonia and French Polynesia.

One of the continuities of Radio Australia is the quality and connectedness of its broadcasters. Most of them come from the countries to which they broadcast, and together they have evolved into a remarkable cadre who could and should be invited by policymakers and diplomats to help Australia steer and deepen its relations with our neighbours.

Kafcaloudes rightly stresses the importance of that first prewar step, when Robert Menzies, “a man who believed he was British to the bootstraps, despite being born and bred in country Victoria,” decided “Australians needed to speak to the world with their own voice.”

How best to do this has frequently been disputed. In a 1962 ministerial briefing, the Department of External Affairs argued that Radio Australia’s broadcasts “should not be noticeably at variance with the broad objectives of Australian foreign policy” — an instruction that John Gorton, the relevant minister, declined to issue publicly.

Tensions have inevitably resulted from the desire of the service’s funder, the federal government, to see its own policies and perceptions prioritised. Resisting such pressure has required greater stamina and skill at Radio Australia than at the ABC’s domestic services, which can count more readily on influential defenders.

Kafcaloudes says it was Mark Scott, who headed the ABC a dozen years ago, who linked Radio Australia with American academic/diplomat Joseph Nye’s idea of “soft power.” Then and now, this was a seductive phrase for politicians. It also became a familiar part of the case for restoring, consolidating or increasing funding, while underlining the familiar, nagging challenge for the station’s “content providers” of choosing between projecting that kind of power on Canberra’s behalf and dealing with stories that might well be perceived as “negative” for the Australian government.

Of course, the conventional public-interest answer to that dilemma is that fearless journalism is itself the ultimate expression of soft power by an open, democratic polity. But not everyone sees it that way.

Public broadcasting ethos
The public broadcasting ethos of the station’s internationally sourced staff has meanwhile stayed impressively intact. Kafcaloudes introduces one of them at the end of each chapter, letting them speak directly of how they came to arrive at Radio Australia and their experiences working there.

Running Radio Australia has been complicated for decades by its being bundled, unbundled and bundled again with television services that have sometimes been run by the ABC and sometimes by commercial stations. Technologies have of course become fluid in recent years, freeing content from former constraints. So too has the badging — the service is now “ABC Radio Australia,” which morphs online into “ABC Pacific.”

Radio Australia continues to broadcast in Mandarin, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Khmer, French, Burmese and Tok Pisin (the Melanesian pidgin language spoken widely in PNG and readily understood in Vanuatu and, slightly less so, in Solomon Islands), as well as in English.

Dedicated, high-quality journalism remains the core constant of an institution whose story, chronicled so well by Kafcaloudes, parallels in many ways Australia’s on-again, off-again, on-again engagement with our region.

• Australia Calling: The ABC Radio Australia Story, By Phil Kafcaloudes, ABC Books, 224 pages. ISBN: 9780646852430. This review was first published by Inside Story and is republished on Asia Pacific Report with permission and in collaboration with Pacific Journalism Review.

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.

We will continue bringing you the news, holding the powerful to account for their actions and decisions, calling attention to government lapses that further disempower the disadvantaged. We will hold the line.

Dear readers and viewers, We thought this day would never come, even as we were warned in the first of week of December last year that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would be handing down a ruling against us.

Because we have acted in good faith and adhered to the best standards in a fast-evolving business environment, we were confident that the country’s key business regulator would put public interest above other interests that were at play in this case.

We were, in fact, initially relieved that it was the SEC that initiated what appeared to us as a customary due diligence act, considering our prior information that it was the Office of the Solicitor-General that had formed, as early as November 2016, a special team to build a case against us.

• READ MORE: Rappler ordered to shut down by Philippines government, says Ressa
• Lies about foreign ownership a form of harassment 
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• Of PDRs and ‘foreign ownership’ of PH media
• Why Would Anyone Invest in Rappler if it’s Losing Money?
• Amid harassment, Rappler vows to #InspireCourage
• Other Rappler media freedom reports

We were wrong. The SEC’s kill order revoking Rappler’s licence to operate is the first of its kind in history — both for the Commission and for Philippine media. What this means for you, and for us, is that the Commission is ordering us to close shop, to cease telling you stories, to stop speaking truth to power, and to let go of everything that we have built — and created — with you since 2012.

All because they focused on one clause in one of our contracts which we submitted to — and was accepted by — the SEC in 2015.

Now the Commission is accusing us of violating the Constitution, a serious charge considering how, as a company imbued with public interest, we have consistently been transparent and above-board in our practices.

Transparency best proof
Every year since we incorporated in 2012, we have dutifully complied with all SEC regulations and submitted all requirements even at the risk of exposing our corporate data to irresponsible hands with an agenda.

Transparency, we believe, is the best proof of good faith and good conduct. All these seem not to matter as far as the SEC is concerned.

In a record investigation time of 5 months and after President Rodrigo Duterte himself blasted Rappler in his second SONA in July 2017, the SEC released this ruling against us.

This is pure and simple harassment, the seeming coup de grace to the relentless and malicious attacks against us since 2016:

We intend to not only contest this through all legal processes available to us, but also to fight for our freedom to do journalism and for your right to be heard through an independent platform like Rappler.

We’ve been through a lot together, through good and bad — sharing stories, building communities, inspiring hope, uncovering wrongdoing, battling trolls, exposing the fake. We will continue bringing you the news, holding the powerful to account for their actions and decisions, calling attention to government lapses that further disempower the disadvantaged.

We will hold the line. The support you’ve shown us all this time, and our commitment to tell you stories without fear, give us hope.

You inspire courage. You have taught us that when you stand and fight for what is right, there is no dead-end, only obstacles that can only make us stronger. We ask you to stand with us again at this difficult time.

Republished with permission. First published 15 January 2018, when the SEC originally ordered the closure of Rappler.

Tairāwhiti tā moko artists Maia Gibbs and Henare Brooking designed the jersey the Warriors wore in their Indigenous Round National Rugby League match against Newcastle Knights last Saturday.

The jersey, called Te Amokura, is a powerful expression of connection, unity and identity developed in partnership with Puma and Gisborne’s Toi Ake Maori art gallery.

Maia Gibbs (Ngāi Tāmanuhiri, Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Kahungungu) and Henare Brooking (Ngāti Porou, Rongowhakaata, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Tūwharetoa) run the gallery located in Ballance Street Village.

• READ MORE: Other sport reports

It was set up about two years ago following the first covid-19 lockdown.

Gibbs said the jersey needed to “encompass what the club and team represent”.

“We are the paintbrushes and pencils that put it together but the players are the ones that live their lives under a microscope. This is about them and what they want to represent.

“It’s pretty cool to see our tohu holding its own,” he said.

Powerful expression
“I’m humbled to have had the opportunity to work on this project and see it come to life — even more so to do it along side taku tuakana Henare Brooking.

“To have the support of our iwi, hapū and whānau throughout is really special and we thank you all,” he said.

Te Amokura is a powerful expression of the Warriors’ connection, unity and identity. It takes its inspiration from the manu (bird) of the same name, known across the Pacific, Australia and Aotearoa.

The amokura helped the great navigators of the Pacific chart the largest body of water in the world.

It is known for its two distinct red elongated tail feathers which were highly prized by foremost warriors and chiefs throughout Te moana nui a Kiwa.

These are represented by two red strips on the back of the jersey.

The colours represent significant elements of the club’s identity but also the journey over the last three seasons, and the sacrifices made by players and staff to base themselves away from home, their families and their fans.

The collective whakapapa
Blue represents mana moana — the ocean — that connects Aotearoa, Australia and the Pacific, carrying the collective whakapapa.

Green represents mana whenua — the land — Aotearoa acknowledging the Warriors’ true home and importantly Australia’s mana whenua, the Aboriginal whanaunga and the original people of Australia who hosted the team over the last three seasons.

Red represents mana tāngata — the people — connecting players past, present and future, and interweaving the whakapapa of each individual as they move into the field of battle.

The black represents Te Pō — a place of development and learning — while the white is Te Ao — a place of expression and action.

The jersey is like a korowai (cloak) that adorns the wearer, not just as a jersey but as a representation of their own journey.

It is a celebration of the Warriors’ cultural identity and a representation of the connection they share as indigenous people across the world.

This year’s NRL Indigenous Round focused on creating a space for learning and educating Australians about Indigenous culture as well as encouraging the rugby league community to take three key actions to be part of the change — learn the land; learn the history; support an Indigenous business.

Note: Te Amokura is also the Te Reo Māori name of the Pacific Media Centre, which launched this website Asia Pacific Report in 2016. Asia Pacific Report is now published independently in association with Evening Report and Pacific Journalism Review.

Republished with permission by The Gisborne Herald and NZ On Air.

The next Australian government must recommit to press freedom by putting in place overdue reforms to support public interest journalism, says the union for Australia’s media workers.

On World Press Freedom Day, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance is calling on all political parties to act on a range of reforms that are needed to ensure journalists can continue to perform their essential work finding facts, seeking the truth and holding power to account.

MEAA media federal president Karen Percy said the role of public interest journalism in a democratic society had been highlighted by the covid-19 pandemic, when there has been confusion and debate about what is true and what is false, often exploited by deliberate disinformation campaigns.

• READ MORE:  Nobel laureates Ramos-Horta, Ressa demand freedoms, fight for democracy
• Other media freedom reports

“We know from the covid-19 pandemic that the work of journalists saves lives, informs the public, improves public policy and holds the powerful to account,” Percy said in a statement.

“But we’ve also witnessed how people have been confused about what is true and what is false with their vulnerabilities exploited by those pushing disinformation campaigns.

“Australians have relied on journalists to accurately and impartially convey important information, but our jobs have been made all the more difficult when governments suppress information, refuse to answer questions, hide information under the pretext of national security, and when defamation laws are used to quash accountability.

“So, on World Press Freedom Day 2022, it is timely to call for our political leaders — and those aspiring to lead us — to respect and honour public interest journalism, to put accountability and transparency at the heart of our democracy.

“Because without a free press, democracy dies.”

With the federal election underway, MEAA has submitted to the major parties our key priorities for reform to protect media freedom and support public interest journalism.

Among the reforms that are needed are:

• Boosting the Public Interest News Gathering (PING) programme for a minimum of three years with $150 million per annum available to the small and medium news sectors, with substantial funds quarantined for providers of regional news services.
• Restoration of adequate funding to public broadcasters the ABC and SBS, with greater certainty over a five-year funding cycle.
• Implementing reforms to protect whistle blowers who disclose confidential information to media in the public interest.
• Conducting an urgent review of Australia’s security laws to remove impediments and sanctions against public interest journalism.
• Harmonising journalism shield laws across all national, state and territory jurisdictions to protect journalists from identifying sources.
• Introduce new provisions to ensure that any future media mergers meet a “diversity of voices” test before they are approved by government regulators.
• Financial reforms to enable the costs of journalism to be offset via taxation incentives.
• Increasing international advocacy in support of journalists and allied workers when they are exposed to arbitrary detention, imprisonment and threats to their life, and adopting the International Federation of Journalists’ International Convention on the Safety and Independence of Journalists and Other Media Professionals.

Today, MEAA is also releasing its annual report into the state of press freedom in Australia, titled Truth vs Disinformation: the Challenge for Public Interest Journalism.

The report examines the impact of covid-related disinformation campaigns on journalism and press freedom, including increases in violent attacks, harassment and threats against journalists.

The report is available at pressfreedom.org.au.

Australia’s union for journalists says Australian journalism is in crisis after years of disruption, undermining and neglect, and swift action is needed to halt the decline.

A new study pointing to the crisis in public interest journalism demands urgent government action to safeguard democracy.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) commissioned the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute to prepare the report, The Future of Work in Journalism, to examine the state of Australian journalism and to develop recommendations that could be used to address the serious decline in public interest journalism that has taken place over the past decade.

• READ MORE: Active policy needed to stop decline of Australian journalism
• How NZ’s Public Interest Journalism Fund can help ‘normalise’ diversity (Part 1)
• Perceptions over NZ’s public interest journalism project – saint or sinner? (Part 2)
• NZ’s Public Interest Journalism Fund

The report says journalism is a “public good” that can only be sustained by a dramatic renovation of government supports, including:

• a new $250 million fund to sustain journalism;
• expanded funding for public media organisations;
• rebates (refundable tax credits) for the employment of journalists;
• tax concessions for consumers of news media; and
• a stronger Mandatory News Bargaining Code with dedicated funding for small and new media.

MEAA media federal president Marcus Strom said: “It’s abundantly clear that the slow erosion of Australia’s media industry over many years has taken its toll on public interest journalism.

“As this study shows, failure to take dramatic steps now places our democracy at risk.”

Disappearance of dozens of outlets
He said the crisis was most stark in the disappearance of dozens of outlets and hundreds of jobs from regional, rural and community media in the past few years.

The Australia Institute’s study reveals that the number of journalists has fallen dramatically over the past decade; that decline will continue without effective policy and regulatory changes.

Efforts to support journalism have, to date, been inadequate and poorly targeted.

Media workers have delivered massive productivity gains in an environment of ongoing cost-cutting, but have been “rewarded” by stagnant wages, and ongoing restructuring and shifts into freelance and casual work, which now make up about one-third of the media workforce.

A significant and unacceptable gender pay gap persists above the national industry average.

The report highlights the upheaval caused to the Australian media ecosystem by the arrival and rise of digital platforms.

The government’s response, the News Media and Digital Platforms Bargaining Code, has not achieved the rebalance needed to promote public interest journalism.

Call to disclose Bargaining Code ‘deals’
The report recommends that the deals struck under the code be disclosed and that dedicated funding be provided to the small-to-medium media sector, which has been “treated with contempt” by the major digital players.

Among the other remedies recommended in the report, MEAA supports calls for certainty around and restoration of the funding of public media including the national broadcasters ABC and SBS; and expansion of the government’s existing Public Interest News Gathering programme to include all classes of journalism, including freelancers, and media content production.

The amount of support needed has been estimated at $250 million a year.

“This storm has been coming for many years,” Strom said.

“The media industry has been savaged. Thousands of journalism jobs have been lost. Print and broadcast media have all been hurt: mastheads have closed, networks have been cut back.

“Local community and regional reporting has, in many places, disappeared altogether. The number of media players have been reduced to a handful of very powerful players, and that power concentrated in the hands of a few reduces the variety of voices and choices for Australians.

‘Cynically avoided regulation’
“The News Media Bargaining Code offers a partial remedy to the revenue losses by Australian media, but the big digital platforms have cynically avoided regulation under the code by promising to do ‘just enough’.

“Outside the code they are showing their ‘just enough’ is wholly inadequate with not only small publishers missing out, but SBS and The Conversation being excluded.

“Public interest journalism is a public good. It informs and entertains Australians, ensures the public’s right to know and holds the powerful to account.

“If we want that to continue, then there is no time to waste to address the many challenges facing those working in journalism and the entire media industry.”

• The full report

In other media developments today, the video Your ABC vs Their IPA, funded by ABC Alumni and the ABC Friends, was released on YouTube in response to an attack by the rightwing Institute of Public Affairs (IPI) on the ABC. The ABC itself is not involved in any way, but the presenter is former ABC Media Watch presenter Jonathan Holmes who says that “the mainstream thinks that the ABC is the most trustworthy source of news in Australia”.

The dilemma facing whistleblowers, journalists and publishers who risk it all to help the world’s people to become more informed. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange finds himself crushed between these two counterbalances — the asserted right of powerful nations to operate in secret, and the right of the press to reveal what goes on in the public’s name.

Article sponsored by NewzEngine.com

This week, on October 27-28, Julian Assange appeared before a United Kingdom court defending himself against an appeal that, if successful, would see him extradited to the United States to face a raft of indictments that ultimately could see him spend the rest of his life in prison.

The US lawyers argued largely that human rights reasons that caused the UK courts to reject extradition to the US could be mitigated. That Julian Assange’s case could be heard in Australia and if found guilty serve out jail time in his home country rather than the US.

Assange’s defence lawyer Edward Fitzgerald QC argued: “In short there is a large and cogent body of extraordinary and unprecedented evidence… that the CIA has declared Mr Assange as a ‘hostile’ ‘enemy’ of the USA, one which poses ‘very real threats to our country’, and seeks to ‘revenge’ him with significant harm.” The lawyers said the United States assurances were “meaningless”.

• READ MORE: Julian Assange must be freed, now
• Other Julian Assange case reports

“It is perfectly reasonable to find it oppressive to extradite a mentally disordered person because his extradition is likely to result in his death.” Fitzgerald QC added that a court must have the power to “protect people from extradition to a foreign state where we have no control over what will be done to them”.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde, said: “You’ve given us much to think about and we will take our time to make our decision.”

The judges then reserved their decision. It is expected Assange’s fate will be revealed within weeks.

In this Special Report, we examine why the US wants this man. And we detail the space between whistleblowers, journalists and publishers who risk it all to help the world’s people to become more informed. Julian Assange finds himself crushed between these two counterbalances: the asserted right of powerful nations to operate in secret, and the right of the press to reveal what goes on in the public’s name.

Should Julian Assange be extradited from the UK to face indictments in the United States? Or should he be set free and offered a safe haven in a country such as Russia or even New Zealand?

It was always going to come down to this: Is Julian Assange captured by the assumptions people have of him, or a blurred line between a public’s right and a state’s wrong.

‘Manhunt Timeline’
The United States effort to capture or kill Assange goes back to 2010. But his inclusion in what’s called the “Manhunt Timeline” soon lost its sting when, under US President Barack Obama, it was believed if charges against Assange were brought before the US courts for his publishing activity, then he would be found not guilty due to the US First Amendment “freedom of the press” constitutional protections.

But everything changed with a new president, and a massive leak to Wikileaks of CIA secret information on 7 March 2017.

That leak of what was called Vault 7 information “detailed hacking tools the US government employs to break into users’ computers, mobile phones and even smart TVs.”

CBS News reported at the time: “The documents describe clandestine methods for bypassing or defeating encryption, antivirus tools and other protective security features intended to keep the private information of citizens and corporations safe from prying eyes.” (CBS News)

The Vault 7 leak (and earlier leaks going back to 2010) also revealed information that the US security apparatus argued compromised the safety of its personnel around the world. This aspect is vital to the US Justice Department’s case against Julian Assange.

Among a complex web of indictments and superseding indictments, the US alleges Wikileaks and Assange conspired with whistleblowers (significant among them Chelsea Manning) in what it argues was a conspiracy against the US interest. It also argues that Wikileaks and Julian Assange failed to satisfactorily redact leaked documents before dissemination or publication of the same — including details that put US personnel and agents at risk.

Prominent New Zealand investigative journalist Nicky Hager had knowledge of Wikileaks’ processes, and, going back to 2010, spent time working with Wikileaks on redacting documents.

Hager testified at The Old Bailey in London in September 2020 before a hearing of the Assange case and, according to The Australian, said: “My main memory was people working hour after hour in total silence, very concentrated on their work and I was very impressed with efforts that they were taking (to redact names).” Hager added that he himself had redacted “a few hundred” Australian and New Zealand names.

On cross examination, The Australian reported: “Hager referred in his testimony to the global impact of the publication of the collateral murder video, which shows civilians being gunned down in Iraq from an Apache helicopter, which led to changes in US military policies. He claimed it had a ‘similar galvanising impact as the video of the death of George Floyd’.” (The Australian)

But it was the Vault 7 leak that triggered the then Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Mike Pompeo to act. After that leak, Pompeo set out to destroy Wikileaks and its publisher Julian Assange.

Pompeo vs Assange

Mike Pompeo was appointed as CIA director in January 2017. The Vault 7 leak occurred on his watch. It was personal, and in April 2017 he defined Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service”.

That definition triggered a shift of approach. The US intelligence apparatus and its Justice Department counterpart then re-asserted that Wikileaks and its publisher and editor-in-chief Julian Assange were enemies of the United States.

Pompeo’s definition paved the way for a more targeted operation against Assange. But, for the time being, the US public modus operandi was to ensure extradition proceedings, through numerous hearings and appeals, were dragged out while stacking an increasing number of complex indictments on the charge-sheet.

The definitions ensured the UK’s corrections system regarded Assange as a high risk and dangerous prisoner hostile to the UK’s special-relationship partner, the USA.

The tactic is well used by governments and states around the world. But in this case it appears beyond cold and calculated. As the US applied a figurative legal-ligature around the neck of Julian Assange it knew his circumstances — that he was imprisoned, isolated, in solitary confinement, on a suicide watch, handled by prison guards under a repetitive high security risk protocol. It knew the psychological impact was compounding, causing legal observers, his lawyers, his supporters — even the judge overseeing the extradition proceedings — to fear that the wall before Assange of ongoing litigation, compounded with the potential for extradition and possible life imprisonment, would overwhelm him.

Let’s detail reality here. In real terms, being on suicide-watch as a high security risk prisoner, meant every time Assange left his cell for any reason (including when meeting his lawyers), on return he would be stripped, cavity searched (which includes being forced to squat while his rectum is digitally searched, and a mouth and throat search).

This was a similar security search protocol that was used against Ahmed Zaoui while he was held at New Zealand’s Paremoremo maximum security prison. At that time Zaoui was regarded as a security risk to New Zealand. He was of course later found to be a man of peace and given his liberty. Sometimes things are not what they initially seem.

In the UK, for Assange the monotonous grind of total solitude and indignity ticked on. In the US in March 2018, Mike Pompeo was set to be promoted. He received the then US President Donald Trump’s nomination to replace Rex Tillerson as US Secretary of State. The US Senate confirmed Pompeo’s nomination and he was sworn in on 26 April 2018.

Pompeo quickly became one of Trump’s most trusted and powerful White House insiders. As Secretary of State, Pompeo toured the globe’s foreign affairs circuit asserting the Trump Administration’s position on governments throughout the world. As such, Pompeo was regarded as one of the world’s most powerful men.

Looking back, Pompeo wasn’t the first high ranking US official to regard Assange as an enemy of the state. The Edward Snowden leaks of 2014 revealed that the US government had in 2010 added Assange to its “Manhunting Timeline” — which is an annual list of individuals with a “capture or kill” designation.

This designation came during the early stages of the Obama Administration years. However, US investigations into Wikileaks then suggested Assange had not acted in a way that excluded him from being defined as a journalist and therefore it was likely Assange, if tried under US law, would be provided protections under the First Amendment constitutional clauses.

But when Pompeo advanced toward prominence, Obama was gone. And under Donald Trump, the US appeared to ignore such constitutional rocks in the road. Trump had his own beef with the US Fourth Estate, and the conditions for respecting First Amendment privilege had deteriorated.

Did Trump stop the CIA kidnap or kill plan?

Perhaps we understand the Trump Administration’s mindset more now in the wake of the 6 January 2021 insurrection where supporters of Trump stormed the US House of Representatives seeking to overturn the election result and reinstate Trump as President. Throughout much of that destructive day, Trump reportedly remained at the White House while the mob erected a gallows and sought out Vice-President Mike Pence. The mob’s reason? Because Pence had begun the process of certifying electoral college writs, an essential step toward swearing in as President the newly elected Joe Biden.

It may reasonably be argued that Trump and some members of his Administration displayed a disregard for elements of the US Constitution. But, it must also be said, that Trump had at times displayed an empathy for Julian Assange’s situation.

This week The Hill reported on Trump’s view of Assange through an interview with the former president’s national security advisor, Keith Kellogg (who is also a retired US Army Lieutenant General.

Kellogg told The Hill: “He (Trump) looked at him (Assange) as someone who had been treated unfairly. And he kind of related him to himself … He said there’s an unfairness there and I want to address that.”

Kellogg added that Trump saw similarities between Assange and himself in that Trump would not back down in the face of media attacks: “I think he kind of saw that with Julian in the same way, like ‘ok, this guy’s not backing down’.” (The Hill)

Kellogg’s account seems incongruous to what we now know. On 26 September 2021, a Yahoo News media investigation delivered a bombshell. It revealed how the CIA had planned to kidnap or kill Assange.

But more on the detail of that below. First, let’s look at a confusing picture of how former President Trump’s words do not meet his Administration’s actions.

We know that “someone” in the Trump Administration put a halt to the CIA’s kill or capture plan. We just do not know whether Trump commanded its cessation, or whether Pompeo or Trump’s attorney-general/s operated outside the former president’s orbit. But we do know the US Justice Department pursued Assange through an intensifying relentless application of indictments of increasing severity and complexity. If it is an MO, then it is reasonable to suggest the legal wall of indictments and the CIA’s plan to kill or capture were potentially one of the same.

Which segues back to the details of the US case against Assange.

The US Justice Department vs Assange
In March 2019, The Washington Post reported that US Whistleblower Chelsea Manning had been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in the investigation of Julian Assange. The Post correctly suggested that the US Justice Department appeared interested in pursuing Wikileaks before a statute of limitations ran out.

Washington Post reported: “Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, said the Justice Department likely indicted Assange last year to stay within the 10-year statute of limitations on unlawful possession or publication of national defense information, and is now working to add charges.” (Washington Post)

Then, On April 11 2019, after high-level bilateral meetings between the US and Ecuador, the Ecuadorian Government revoked Assange’s asylum. The UK’s Metropolitan Police were invited into Ecuador’s London embassy and Assange was arrested. 

Once Assange was in custody (pending the outcome of a court ruling of what eventually became a 50 week sentence for breaching bail) the United States made its move. On 11 April 2019 (the same day Ecuador evicted him) US prosecutors unsealed an indictment against Assange referring back to information that Wikileaks had released in stages from 18 February 2010 onwards. (US Justice Department)

This video, known as the collateral murder video, was among the Wikileaks release. The video is of US military personnel killing what they initially thought were Iraqi insurgents. It also displays an apparent indifference by US personnel when, shortly after, it was revealed by ground troops that there were civilians killed, including women and children (and also what were later found to be journalists). The leaked video exposed the United States to potential allegations of war crimes.

The video, and the accompanying dossier of US classified documents, shocked the world and revealed what had been covered up by US secrecy. The information that was leaked by then US Military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, and published by Wikileaks and provided to a select group of the world’s most prominent media, was arguably a tipping point for public sentiment regarding the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. It was, in the <2010 decade, on a par with revelations of abuses of detainees by US personnel at Abu Ghraib prison.

In a release to the US press, the Justice Department’s office of international affairs stated: “According to court documents unsealed today, the charge relates to Assange’s alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.”

It connected to how Wikileaks had acquired documents from US whistleblower Chelsea Manning. The leak contained 750,000 documents defined as “classified, or unclassified but sensitive” military and diplomatic documents. The documents included video. The sum of the leaks detailed what were regarded generally as atrocities committed by American armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The leaked material was also published by The New York Times, Der Spiegel and The Guardian. In May 2010, Manning was identified then charged with espionage and sentenced to 35 years in a US military prison. Later, in January 2017, just three days before leaving office, US President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence.

On 23 May 2019, the US Justice Department issued a statement confirming Assange had been further charged in an 18-count superseding indictment that alleged violation of the Espionage Act 1917. It specifically alleged (among other charges) that Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning in late 2009 and that: “… Assange and WikiLeaks actively solicited United States classified information, including by publishing a list of ‘Most Wanted Leaks’ that sought, among other things, classified documents. Manning responded to Assange’s solicitations by using access granted to her as an intelligence analyst to search for United States classified documents, and provided to Assange and WikiLeaks databases containing approximately 90,000 Afghanistan war-related significant activity reports, 400,000 Iraq war-related significant activities reports, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs, and 250,000 US Department of State cables.” (US Justice Department)

The superseding indictment added: “Many of these documents were classified at the Secret level.”

It’s also important to note, a superseding indictment, in this context carries heavy weight. It isn’t merely a charge lodged by an investigative wing of government, but issued by a US grand jury.

The May 2019 superseding indictments ignited a stern rebuttal from powerful media institutions.

The Washington Post and The New York Times, as well as press freedom organisations, criticised the government’s decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act, characterising it as an attack on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees freedom of the press. On 4 January 2021, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled against the US request to extradite him and stated that doing so would be “oppressive” given his mental health. On 6 January 2021, Assange was denied bail, pending an appeal by the United States. (Wikipedia.org)

In normal times an assault on the US First Amendment through a clever legal move would destroy a presidency. But these were not normal times.

Ultimately, the powerful US Fourth Estate fraternity failed to ward off the Trump Administration’s men. Trump himself was by this time already hurling attacks on the credibility and purpose of the United States media. And, he tapped in to a constituency that distrusted what it heard from journalists.

Then on 24 June 2020, the US Justice Department delivered more charges against Assange, this time with an additional superseding indictment that included allegations he conspired with “Anonymous” affiliated hackers: “In 2010, Assange gained unauthorised access to a government computer system of a NATO country. In 2012, Assange communicated directly with a leader of the hacking group LulzSec (who by then was cooperating with the FBI), and provided a list of targets for LulzSec to hack.” (US Justice Department)

As the Trump presidency ran out of steam, and arguably created its own attacks on the US national interest, Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden won the election and became the 46th President of the United States.

Why Assange was imprisoned in the UK

Julian Assange was tried before the UK courts and convicted for breaching the Bail Act. He was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison. He was expected to have been released after five to six months, but due to the US extradition proceedings and appeal he was held indefinitely.

The initial bail conditions (of which Assange was found to have breached) were set resulting from an alleged sexual violence allegation made in Sweden in 2010. Assange had denied the allegations, and feared the case was designed to relocate him to Sweden and then onto the US via a legal extradition manoeuvre — hence this is why he sought asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy. Assange was never actually charged by Swedish authorities nor their UK counterparts, but rather the initial bail breach related to a move to extradite him to Sweden.

Also, as a side-note: in November 2019, Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation into allegations of sexual violence crime. The BBC reported that Swedish authorities dropped the case as it had: “Weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed since the events in question.”

Meanwhile, Assange was imprisoned at London’s Belmarsh maximum-security prison where he was incarcerated indefinitely pending the outcome of US extradition proceedings.

There is an irony that in January 2021, the week Assange was denied bail pending the outcome of the US-lodged appeal, back in the US a mob loyal to Trump attempted a coup d’etat against the US constitution.

Out with Trump, in with Biden
On 20 January 2021, Joe Biden was sworn in as US President. Around the world a palpable mood of change was anticipated. It’s fair to say those involved or observing the Assange case were hopeful the United States under Joe Biden’s presidency would withdraw the initial charges and superseding indictments.

But, that was not to be.

Then on 26 September 2021, a Yahoo News media investigation delivered a bombshell. It revealed how the CIA had planned to kidnap or kill Assange.

The investigation’s timeline revealed a plan was developed in 2017 during Pompeo’s tenure at the CIA and considered numerous scenarios where Assange could be liquidated while he resided at the Ecuadorian Embassy. The investigation was backed by “more than 30 US official sources”. (Yahoo News)

The media investigation stated: “… the CIA was enraged by WikiLeaks’ publication in 2017 of thousands of documents detailing the agency’s hacking and covert surveillance techniques, known as the Vault 7 leak.” 

It added that Pompeo: “was determined to take revenge on Assange after the (Vault 7) leak.”

Apparently, the CIA believed Russian agents were planning to remove Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy and “smuggle” him to Russia: “Among the possible scenarios to prevent a getaway were engaging in a gun battle with Russian agents on the streets of London and ramming the car that Assange would be smuggled in.”

It appears a wise-head in the Trump Administration ordered a halt to the CIA plan due to legal concerns. Officials cited in the investigation suggested there were: “Concerns that a kidnapping would derail US attempts to prosecute Assange.”

It would also be reasonable to suggest that a prosecution would be difficult should Assange be dead.

As the US extradition appeal loomed, Julian Assange’s US-based lawyer Barry Pollack reportedly said: “My hope and expectation is that the UK courts will consider this information (the CIA plot) and it will further bolster its decision not to extradite to the US.”

Assange’s partner Stella Morris, on the eve of the US extradition appeal proceedings also said reports of the CIA’s plan “was a game-changer” in his fight against extradition from Britain to the United States. (Reuters)

Greg Barnes, special council and Australian human rights lawyer and advocate spoke this week to a New Zealand panel (A4A via the internet): “Now we know that the CIA intended effectively to murder Assange. For an Australian citizen to be put in that position by Australia’s number one ally is intolerable. And I think in the minds of most Australians the view is that the Australian Government ought to intervene in this particular case and ensure the safety of one of its citizens.”

Barnes added that the Assange case is now a human rights case: “I can tell you that the rigours of the Anglo-American prison complex which we have here in Australia and in which Julian is facing at Belmarsh (prison in London) are such that very few people survive that system without having severe mental and physical pain and suffering for the rest of their lives.

“This should not be happening to an Australian citizen, whose only crime, and I put quotes around the word crime, has been to reveal the war crimes of the United States and its allies.” (A4A YouTube)

The respected journalist advocacy organisation Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières, or RSF), this week called for the US case against Assange to be closed and for Assange to be “immediately released”. (Reporters Without Borders)

RSF added: “During the two-day hearing, the US government will argue against the 4 January decision issued by District Judge Vanessa Baraitser, ruling against Assange’s extradition to the US on mental health grounds. The US will be permitted to argue on five specific grounds, following the High Court’s decision to widen the scope of the appeal during the 11 August preliminary hearing. An immediate decision is not expected at the conclusion of the 27-28 October hearing, but will likely follow in writing several weeks later.”

RSF concluded: “If Assange is extradited to the US, he could face up to 175 years in prison on the 18 counts outlined in the superseding indictment… (If convicted) Assange would be the first publisher pursued under the US Espionage Act, which lacks a public interest defence.”

RSF recently joined a coalition of 25 press freedom, civil liberties and international human rights organisations in calling again on the US Department of Justice to drop the charges against Assange.

Beyond Belmarsh Prison – human rights and asylum options

There remains a logical and considered question as to what will become of Julian Assange should his legal team successfully defend moves of extradition to the United States.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden has found relative safety living inside the Russian Federation. But beyond Russia there are few safe-haven options available to Julian Assange.

This week a group called A4A (Aotearoa for Assange) coordinated an online panel of human rights advocates and whistleblowers to consider whether New Zealand should become involved.

It was a serious move. The panel included the United States’ highly respected Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. (Pentagon Papers, Wikipedia)

Daniel Ellsberg told the panel: “A trial under (the Espionage Act) cannot be a fair trial as there is ‘no appeal to motives, impact or purposes’.”

“A trial under the Espionage Act could not permit that person to tell the jury why they did what they did,” Daniel Ellsberg said. “It is shameful that President Biden has gone in the footsteps of President Trump. It is shameful for President Biden to have continued that appeal.

“To allow this to go ahead is to put a target on the back of every journalist in the world who might consider doing real investigative journalism of what we call the National Defence or National Security…”

It’s a valid point for those that work within the sphere of Fourth Estate public interest journalism. While in New Zealand, there are rudimentary whistleblower protections, they fail to protect or ensure anonymity. For journalists, if a judge orders a journalist to reveal her or his source(s), then the journalist must consider breaching the code of ethics required from the profession, or acting in contempt of court.

In the latter case, a judge can, in New Zealand, order the journalist to be held in custody for contempt, and it should be pointed out there is no time limit of incarceration. Defamation law is equally as draconian. In New Zealand (unlike the United States) a journalist accused of defamation shoulders the burden of proof — to prove a defamation was not committed.

The chill factor (a reference to pressures that cause journalists to abandon deep and meaningful reportage) is real.

Daniel Ellsberg knows what this means. And he fears, that if the US wins its appeal against Assange, it will erode the Fourth Estate from reporting on what goes on behind the scenes with governments: “… there will be more Vietnams, more Iraqs, more acts of aggression… A great deal rides (on this case) on the possibility of freedom.”

His comments connect remarkably with those of former New Zealand prime minister, and former administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Helen Clark.

In a previous online discussion, Clark was asked what she thought of Julian Assange’s case. In a considered reply she said: “You do wonder when the hatchet can be buried with Assange, and not buried in his head by the way.

“I do think that information that’s been disclosed by whistleblowers down the ages has been very important in broader publics getting to know what is really going on behind the scenes.

“And, should people pay this kind of price for that? I don’t think so. I felt that Chelsea Manning for example was really unduly repressed.

“The real issue is: the activities they were exposing and not the actions of their exposure,” Helen Clark said.

The US appeals case this week is not litigating the merits of its indictments. But rather it has attempted to mitigate the reasons Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied extradition in January 2021. The US legal team has suggested to the UK court that Assange’s human rights issues could be minimised should he face trial in his native Australia, that if found guilty that he could serve out his sentence there. It gave, however, no assurances that this would occur.

On the eve of the appeal, and appearing before the A4A online panel was Dr Deepa Govindarajan Driver.

Dr Driver is an academic with the University of Reading (UK) and a legal observer very familiar with the Assange case. The degree of human rights abuses against Assange disturb her.

Dr Driver detailed what she had observed: “Julian Assange was served the second superseding indictment on the first day of trial. When he took his papers with him, back to the prison, his privileged papers were taken from him. He was handcuffed, cavity searched, stripped naked on a daily basis. [This is] a highly intelligent human being who we already know is on the Autism Spectrum. To be put through the indignities and arbitrariness of the process which is consistently working in a way that doesn’t stand with normal process…

“For somebody who has gone through all of this for a number of years, it has its psychological impact. But it is not just psychological, the physical effects of torture are pretty severe including the internal damage that he has.”

She added: “We expect the high court will recognise the kind of serious gross breaches of Julian’s basic rights and the inability for him to have a fair trial in the UK or in the US and that this case will be dismissed immediately.”

On the merits of whistleblowers, Dr Driver said: “You can see through the Vault 7 leaks how much the state knows about what is going on in your daily lives… As an observer in court I see how he (Julian Assange) is being tortured on a day to day basis. His privileged conversations with his lawyers were spied on.”

Dr Driver said the Swedish allegations were never backed up with charges. In fact the allegations were dropped due to time and insufficient evidence.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, concluded after his investigation of the Swedish allegations that Assange was never given the opportunity to put his side of the case.

Dr Driver said: “In any situation where there is violence against women, and I say this as a survivor myself, people are meant to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. And, this new trend which is accusation-equal-to-guilt is a bad trend because it undermines the cause of women, and it prevents women from getting justice — just as it happened in Sweden because indeed nobody will ever know what happened between Julian and those women other than the two parties there.”

A crime left undefended or a case of weaponising violence against women?
Dr Deepa Driver said: “If cases like this are not brought to court, then neither the women nor those accused like Julian get justice. And it is Lisa Longstaff at Women Against Rape who has said time and again, ‘this is the state weaponising women in order to achieve its own ends and hide its own war crimes’. And this is what Britain and America have done in weaponising the case in Sweden, because Sweden was always about extraditing Julian (Assange) to America.”

She suggested Assange’s situation was a human rights case where he was the victim. The view has validity.

The United Nations’ special rapporteur Nils Melzer issued a statement on 5 January 2021 welcoming the UK judge’s ruling that blocked his extradition to the United States (a ruling that this week was under appeal).

Melzer went on: “This ruling confirms my own assessment that, in the United States, Mr. Assange would be exposed to conditions of detention, which are widely recognised to amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Melzer said the judgement set an “alarming precedent effectively denying investigative journalists the protection of press freedom and paving the way for their prosecution under charges of espionage”.

“I am gravely concerned that the judgement confirms the entire, very dangerous rationale underlying the US indictment, which effectively amounts to criminalizing national security journalism,” Melzer said.

In summary Melzer said: “The judgement fails to recognise that Mr Assange’s deplorable state of health is the direct consequence of a decade of deliberate and systematic violation of his most fundamental human rights by the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Ecuador.”

He added: “The failure of the judgment to denounce and redress the persecution and torture of Mr Assange, leaves fully intact the intended intimidating effect on journalists and whistleblowers worldwide who may be tempted to publish secret evidence for war crimes, corruption and other government misconduct”. (UNCHR)

A call for New Zealand to provide asylum
This week, US whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg applauded New Zealand’s independent global identity. And, he called for New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to provide an asylum solution should Julian Assange be released.

Dr Ellsberg’s call was supported by Matt Robson, a former cabinet minister in Helen Clark’s Labour-Alliance government and whom currently practices immigration law in Auckland.

Matt Robson said: “We can support this brave publisher and journalist who has committed the same crime, in inverted commas, as Daniel Ellsberg — to tell the truth as a good honest journalist should do. Our letter to our (New Zealand) government is a plea to do the right thing. To say directly on the line that is available, to (US) President Biden, to free Julian Assange.”

Australian-based lawyer Greg Barnes said: “New Zealand plays a prominent and important role in the Asia-Pacific region and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the New Zealand government could offer Julian Assange what Australia appears incapable of doing, and that is safety for himself and his family.”

So why New Zealand?

Daniel Ellsberg said: “There are many countries that would have been supportive of Assange, none of whom wanted to get into trouble with the United States of America. Of all the countries in the world I think you can pick out New Zealand that has dared to do that in the past. I remember the issue over whether they would allow American warships into New Zealand harbours.

“Julian Assange should not be on trial,” Daniel Ellsberg said. “And given he is indicted, he should not be extradited. It is extremely important, especially to journalists.

“To allow this to go ahead is to put a target, a bull’s eye, on the back of every journalist in the world who might consider doing real investigative journalism of what we call national security. It’s to assure every journalist that he or she as well as your sources can be put in prison, kidnapped if necessary to the US.

“That is going to chill (journalists) to a degree that there will be more Vietnams, more Iraqs, more acts of aggression such as we have just seen. The world cannot afford that. A great deal rides on the policy matters on the possibility of freedom,” so said Daniel Ellsberg — the US whistleblower who blew the lid off atrocities that were committed in Vietnam.

Conclusion
Of course there are always complications, such as executive government leaders involving themselves in judicial matters. But sometimes a leader does the right thing, simply because it is the right thing to do — as Helen Clark did early on in her prime ministership when she extended an olive branch to people fleeing tyranny onboard a ship called the Tampa, which was under-threat of sinking off the coast of Australia. Helen Clark brought the Tampa refugees home to a new place called Aotearoa New Zealand, and we have been better off as a nation because of it.

Investigative journalist Selwyn Manning is editor of Evening Report. a partner of Asia Pacific Report.

• READ MORE: How NZ’s Public Interest Journalism Fund can help ‘normalise’ diversity (Part 1)
• Perceptions over NZ’s public interest journalism project – saint or sinner? (Part 2)
• Public Interest Journalism Fund

Goal 3: The PIJF says: “Actively promote the principles of Partnership, Participation and Active Protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi acknowledging Māori as a Te Tiriti partner.”

• READ MORE: How NZ’s Public Interest Journalism Fund can help ‘normalise’ diversity (Part 1)
• Perceptions over NZ’s public interest journalism project – saint or sinner? (Part 2)
• Public Interest Journalism Fund

To that end, a three-pillar model was developed for:

• Project funding – for tightly defined projects delivered to a deadline, similar to those funded via the NZ Media Fund Factual stream;
• Role-based funding – supporting newsrooms for the employment of reporters, clearly tied to content outcomes; and
• Industry development funding – including cross-industry cadetships, and targeted upskilling initiatives

Public Interest Journalism does not pander to the murky side of clickbait, advertorial, fake news, censorship, propaganda and voyeurism.

The fund ‘was a necessity’

As experienced journalist and producer Raewyn Rasch, who was appointed by New Zealand on Air (NZOA) as Head of Journalism alludes, the fund was a necessity.

“The impact of covid-19 had exacerbated the decline of traditional commercial media models,” she said.

“Prior to covid-19, rapid technological change and changing consumer behaviour was already causing financial constraints for media organisations as advertising revenues moved away from traditional media outlets towards online platforms and social media.”

It was time to sweep with a new broom as the media grappled with the changing landscape.

“As a result of covid-19, further declines in advertising revenue have resulted in significant journalist redundancies, pay cuts and disposal of infrastructure, with further cost-cutting measures expected,” explained Rasch.

That was confirmed by Crawford Media Consulting, which was engaged to interview industry players and find dominant trends prevalent in the media market.

“The decline in the provision of public interest journalism (PIJ) to New Zealand audiences is real and widespread. At the same time, PIJ output has reduced, the attractiveness of journalism as a career has collapsed.

Closure of journalism schools
This collapse is seen in the closure of journalism schools and the declining applications to one high-profile journalism course,” the report said.

Rasch saw the dire need for a calculated injection of funding to secure the decline in industry numbers.

“Covid-19 has accelerated the need to confront the pre-existing and fundamental challenges facing the news media sector,” Rasch said.

“Media companies have to adapt and transition to more sustainable business models that would fit the future media outlook, and continue to provide vital public interest journalism”.

It was then easy to assume then that Māori, Pasifika and other ethnic minority media had been marginalised.

It came as no surprise that Taualeo’o Stephen Stehlin, managing director of Sunpix, which produces Tagata Pasifika (TP), felt aggrieved at the way the Pacific programme was sidelined by state-owned Television New Zealand.

“I think [PIJF] is a great start and we have [funding] for two roles [for its new website TP+] for two years, although it is more than TP which gets funded from year to year [by the Ministry of Heritage and Culture].

‘Lack of leadership’
“But the big media companies, which we were part of for 27 years, then turned around and dumped us for no other reason than a lack of leadership.

“Personally, it has been good for us but for the development and capacity-building for Pacific people it is appalling because then the training is left to much smaller organisations like us, Coconet and PMN (Pacific Media Network) and we are all tiny in the grand scheme of things,” Stehlin said.

Rasch, however, said the PIJF had worked hard with applications received to fund diversity.

“We are particularly conscious of the need for diversity, in Māori, Pacific, and Asian journalism,” she told BusinessDesk in June.

Selwyn Manning, whose independent company Multimedia Investments Ltd, publisher of Evening Report, applied but was unsuccessful, said the PIJF sought to address issues of diversity.

“There is a clear and considered effort to address diversity through prioritising a biculturalism-first approach,” Manning said.

“And, it is encouraging that Māori media and Māori initiatives were highly represented among those entities that were successful in their funding applications — at least in the first round of PIJF considerations.”

Among five goals
Among the five goals the PIJF applicants had to achieve were to:

• Actively promote the principles of Partnership, Participation and Active Protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi;
• Acknowledge Māori as a Te Tiriti partner; and
• Reflect the cultural diversity of New Zealand

That spoke volumes for the hoops applicants had to jump through, said Manning.

“What was particularly obvious was all applicants were required to address and detail their respective commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Te Reo Māori,” he said.

“This effort was clearly considered and well beyond past tokenisms that mainstream media entities were, in past years, encouraged to address.”

He paid tribute to RNZ’s Guyon Espiner and others for inculcating Te Reo gaining acceptance in the New Zealand media vernacular.

Concerted effort
“Generally in 2021, we have seen a concerted effort on behalf of mainstream multimedia producers to present a bicultural face to their reporting,” said Manning.

“I believe Radio New Zealand producers and reporters first set an excellent benchmark in this regard. Guyon Espiner and others pioneered this bicultural expression, and I have full admiration for their effort.

“The Public Interest Journalism Fund certainly seized on this cultural shift as an opportunity to embed this expression of biculturalism within its funding selection processes,” Manning said.

“New Zealand on Air should be applauded for making such a clear requirement to all PIJF applicants.”

Media consultant and former editor of The New Zealand Herald Dr Gavin Ellis, who was one of a group of independent assessors who made the initial assessments, was in agreement with that view.

“The criteria for the PIJF are certainly wide enough to accommodate broad diversity and the first two funding rounds show Māori and Pasifika media are well represented. Other ethnicities have also received funding.

“Much depends on the applicants: to receive the funding they must present as compelling a case as possible. So the ball is in their court,” Dr Ellis said.

‘No systemic problems’
“I’m satisfied the PIJF has no systemic problems relating to diversity. Indeed, I would say the opposite. Diversity is a key driver.”

Manning took this further with his assertion that diversity went beyond the realms of mainstream media.

“If Public Interest Journalism funding is accepted as necessary to maintain democratic balance, then such initiatives must go further than mere corporate welfare.”

However, diversity brings its own problems and one that the interviewees identified in the Crawford Media Consulting Report. This said:

“There was a consensus that the pipeline of talent into NZ journalism is broken.

“Newsrooms cannot find experienced journalists to fill vacancies and many in the industry believe the tertiary sector is not supplying sufficiently skilled graduates.

“For this reason, interviewees were enthusiastic about the possibility of a funded cadetship programme and other training initiatives,” the report said.

That highlights the constriction created by the dearth of good quality ethnic journalists.

‘Where are these people?’
“With 110 positions in the second round, that is great, the question is where are we going to find these people?” Stehlin asks in exasperation.

“The other problem is the whole media landscape for the last 30 years has been one of a production village where big broadcasters pick and choose so the small voices never get a look in.

“But that has changed now because the younger generation is simply not watching mainstream and they don’t care about current affairs, they would rather watch themselves doing TikTok.

“The pitch (PIJF) is admirable, it will create opportunities but it remains to be seen because there is a very small pool of Pacific journalists to begin with,” he said.

Where then do the likes of freelance journalists like Portia Mao, a Qantas Award winner who has written for North and South, Newsroom, Herald on Sunday, as well as worked for TVNZ Sunday, 60 minutes on TV3, go? Or are they meant to slip through the cracks?

“I have been working as a journalist in doing in-depth reports on big political and economic or cultural events that have happened in mainstream society since 2004,” Mao said.

“It is important to help the community integrate into New Zealand society by helping them to become informed citizens or residents. Apart from writing, I make video programmes.

Chinese candidate interview
“The video interview with Naisi Chen, the Chinese candidate during the last election got more than 8000 hits,” she says.

“I sometimes write in English to let the mainstream know what is happening in the Chinese community and what the community is concerned about. I do think my work is very important and I get no official support at all.

“It is really hard to make a living as an independent journalist.”

Mao has had to write in collaboration with Kiwi journalists whose bylines tend to dominate articles for fear of reprisals from Chinese authorities.

Of immediate concern is rectifying the broken pipeline of Māori and Pacific journalists.

That is where a training programme called Te Rito aims to train and hire 25 journalists and cadets to inject more Māori and diverse voices into the media.

Te Rito is a collaboration between Māori Television, Newshub, NZME, and Pacific Media Network and other media organisations such as Sunpix.

Funding for training
As Mihingarangi Forbes, presenter of the Māori programme The Hui, said:

“Yes, have been funded to do some training with iwi radio stations, also some consultation work to diversify mainstream newsrooms and we have a podcast on RNZ with Tau [Henare] and Shane [Jones] but it has been held up with covid.”

And, as one who observes from the sidelines but provides vital content, training and equipment to the Pacific Island, Natasha Meleisea, CEO for Pasifika TV (funded by the Ministry of Foreign and Trade, MFAT) and has extensive experience in media, marketing and Aadvertising assesses.

“There is a need to build a pathway for more diverse voices in journalism,” she said.

“It is timely to start thinking about broadening or redefining the concept of mainstream [media] to be more inclusive than divisive. Journalism can play an active role in normalising diversity and promoting acceptance.

“We are beginning to see this now, however, there is always more that can be done. There is hope that the PIJF will help encourage more diverse voices on-air, onscreen and online.” Meleisea said.

With the need for diversity in the media, identified by the catalyst of the 15 March 2019 mosques massacre in Christchurch, the PIJF is a bold move into uncharted waters.

Chance for a global standard
As the Crawford report concludes:

“The PIJF will invest more per year than either the UK or the Canadian PIJ schemes, in a country a fraction the size. The potential impact is big, and the scheme has an opportunity to set the global standard in terms of PIJ reinvention.

“It is not an exaggeration to say that for anyone convinced of the value of news, the initiative represents a crucial test. We hope that the information and recommendations in the full report will assist New Zealand in building a world-leading public interest journalism fund”.

At the heart of it will be diversity.