ANALYSIS: By John Hobbs

The New Zealand government remains unwilling to support Palestinian statehood recognition at the United Nations General Assembly.

This is a disgraceful position which gives support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and seriously undermines our standing. Of the 193 states of the UN, 157 have now provided statehood recognition. New Zealand is not one of them.

The purpose of this opinion piece is to highlight the troubling lack of transparency in how the government deliberates on its foreign policy choices.

• READ MORE: As delegates walk out in protest, Netanyahu tells UN Israel must ‘finish job’ in Gaza

Government decisions and calculations on foreign policy are being made behind closed doors with limited public scrutiny, unlike other areas of policy, where at least a modicum of transparency occurs.

The government has, over the past two years, exceeded itself in obscuring the process it goes through, without explaining its approach to the question of Palestine.

New Zealand still inconceivably lauds the impossible goal of a two-state solution, the hallmark of successive governments’ foreign policy positions on the question of Palestine, but does everything to not bring about its realisation.

To try to understand the basis for New Zealand’s approach to Gaza and the risks generated by the government’s lack of direct action against Israel, I placed an Official Information Request (OIA) with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Winston Peters. I requested copies of advice that had been received on New Zealand’s obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948.

Plausible case against Israel
My initial OIA request was placed in January 2024, after the International Court of Justice had determined there was a plausible case that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. At that point, about 27,000 people in Gaza had been killed, mainly women and children. My request was denied.

I put the same OIA request to the minister in June 2025. By this time, nearly 63,000 people had been killed by Israel. At the time of my second request there was abundant evidence reported by UN agencies of Israel’s tactics. Again, my request for information was denied.

I appealed the refusal by the minister of foreign affairs to the Office of the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman reviewed the case and accepted that the minister of foreign affairs was within his right to refuse to provide the material.

The basis for the decision was that the advice given to the minister was subject to legal professional privilege, and that the right to protect legally privileged advice was not outweighed by the public interest in gaining access to that advice.

The refusal by the minister and the Ombudsman to make the advice available is deeply worrying. Although I am not questioning the importance of protecting legal professional privilege, I cannot imagine an example that could be more pressing in terms of “public interest” than the complicity of nation states in genocide.

Indeed, the threshold of legal professional privilege was never meant to be absolute. Parliament, in designing the OIA regime, had this in mind when it deemed that legal professional privilege could, under exceptional circumstances, be outweighed by the public interest.

The Office of the Ombudsman has ruled in the past that legal professional privilege is not an absolute; it accepted that legal advice received by the Ministry of Health on embryo research had to be released, for example, as it was in the public interest to do so, even though it was legally privileged.

Puzzling statement
The Ombudsman concludes his response to my request with the puzzling statement that the “general public interest in accountability and transparency in government decision-making on this issue is best reflected in the decisions made after considering the legal advice, rather than what is contained in the legal advice.”

The point I was trying to clarify is whether the government is acting in a manner that reflects the advice it has received. If it has received advice that New Zealand must take particular steps to fulfil its obligations under the Genocide Convention, and the government has chosen to ignore that advice, then surely New Zealanders have a right to know.

The content of the advice is extremely relevant: it would identify any contradictions between the advice the government received and its actions. Through public access to such information, governments can be held to account for the decisions they make.

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, concluded on September 16 that Israeli authorities and security forces committed four out of the five underlying acts of genocide. Illegal settlers have been let loose in the West Bank under the protection of the Israeli army to harass and kill local Palestinians and occupy further areas of Palestinian land.

At the UN General Assembly, the New Zealand government took a stance that is squarely in support of the Israeli genocide, also supported by the United States. International law clearly forbids the act of genocide, in Gaza as much as anywhere else, including the attacks on Palestinian civilians living under occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

In 2015-16, New Zealand co-sponsored a UN Security Council resolution that condemned the illegality of Israel’s actions in the Occupied West Bank, with the intention of supporting a Palestinian state. New Zealand’s recent posture at the General Assembly undermines this principled precedent.

That New Zealand could not bring itself to offer the olive branch of statehood recognition is morally repugnant and severely damages our standing in the international community. The New Zealand public has the right to demand transparency in its government’s decision-making.

The advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to the minister cannot be hidden behind the veil of legal professional privilege.

John Hobbs is a doctoral student at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago. This article was first published by the Otago Daily Times and is republished with the author’s permission.

Social cohesion is a national responsibility, and everyone, including the media, should support government’s efforts, according to Dr Shailendra Singh, associate professor in Pacific Journalism at the University of the South Pacific.

While the news media are often accused of exacerbating conflict by amplifying ethnic tensions through biased narratives, media could also assist social cohesion and unite people by promoting dialogue and mutual understanding, said Dr Singh.

He was the lead trainer at a two-day conflict-sensitive reporting workshop for journalists, student journalists, and civil society on reporting in ethically tense environments.

• READ MORE: The Pacific Media 2024 conference
• Other Fiji journalism education and training reports

The training, organised by Dialogue Fiji at the Suva Holiday Inn on November 12–13, included reporting techniques, understanding Fiji’s political and media landscape, and building trust with audiences.

Watchdog journalism
Dr Singh said media played an important public interest role as ‘society’s watchdog’. The two main strengths of Watchdog Journalism are that it seeks to promote greater accountability and transparency from those in power.

However, he cautioned reporters not to get too caught up in covering negative issues all the time. He said ideally, media should strive for a healthy mix of positive and what might be termed “negative” news.

Dr Singh’s doctoral thesis, from the University of Queensland, was on “Rethinking journalism for supporting social cohesion and democracy: case study of media performance in Fiji”.

He discussed the concepts of “media hyper-adversarialism” and “attack dog journalism”, which denote an increasingly aggressive form of political journalism, usually underpinned by commercial motives.

This trend was a concern even in developed Western countries, including Australia, where former Labour Minister Lindsay Tanner wrote a book about it: Sideshow, Dumbing Down Democracy.

Dr Singh said it had been pointed out that media hyper-adversarialism was even more dangerous in fragile, conflict-affected and vulnerable settings, as it harms fledgling democracies by nurturing intolerance and diminishing faith in democratically-elected leaders.

“Excessive criticism and emphasis on failure and wrongdoings will foster an attitude of distrust towards institutions and leaders,” he said.

Conflict-sensitive reporting
According to Dr Singh, examples around the world show that unrestrained reporting in conflict-prone zones could further escalate tensions and eventually result in violence.

The number one aim of conflict-sensitive reporting is to ensure that journalists, are aware of their national context, and shape their reporting accordingly, rather than apply the “watchdog” framework indiscriminately in all situations, because a “one-size-fits-all” approach could be risky and counterproductive.

Journalists who adopt the conflict-sensitive reporting approach in their coverage of national issues could become facilitators for peaceful solutions rather than a catalyst for conflict.

“The goal of a journalist within a conflict-prone environment should be to build an informed and engaged community by promoting understanding and reconciliation through contextualised coverage of complex issues,” he said.

A rethink was all the more necessary because of social media proliferation, and the spread of misinformation and hate speech on these platforms.

Challenges in maintaining transparency and accountability in journalism
According to Dr Singh, in many Pacific newsrooms today journalists who are at the forefront of reporting breaking news and complex issues are mostly young and relatively inexperienced.

He said the Pacific media sector suffered from a high turnover rate, with many journalists moving to the private sector, regional and international organisations, and government ministries after a brief stint in the mainstream.

“There is a lot of focus on alleged media bias,” said Dr Singh.

“However, young, inexperienced, and under-trained journalists can unknowingly inflame grievances and promote stereotypes by how they report contentious issues, even though their intentions are not malicious,” he said.

Dr Singh emphasised that in such cases, journalists often become a danger unto themselves because they provide governments with the justification or excuse for the need for stronger legislation to maintain communal harmony.

“As was the case in 2010 when the Media Industry Development Act was imposed in the name of professionalising standards,” said Dr Singh.

“However, it only led to a decline in standards because of the practice of self-censorship, as well as the victimisation of journalists.”

Legislation alone not the answer
Dr Singh added that legislation alone was not the answer since it did not address training and development, or the high rate of newsroom staff turnover.

He said the media were often attacked, but what was also needed was assistance, rather than criticism alone. This included training in specific areas, rather than assume that journalists are experts in every field.

Because Fiji is still a transitional democracy and given our ethnic diversity, Dr Singh believes that it makes for a strong case for conflict-sensitive reporting practices to mitigate against the risks of societal divisions.

“Because the media act as a bridge between people and institutions, it is essential that they work on building a relationship of trust by promoting peace and stability, while reporting critically when required.”

This article was first published by The Fiji Times on 24 November, 2024 and is being republished from USP Journalism’s Wansolwara and The Fiji Times under a collaborative agreement.

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.

Journalists may face decades in prison for “foreign interference” offences unless urgent changes are made to Australia’s national security laws, according to a University of Queensland researcher.

PhD candidate Sarah Kendall from UQ’s School of Law warned that reporting on issues relating to Australian politics, national security or international relations while working with overseas media organisations could place journalists at risk of criminal prosecution under the Espionage and Foreign Interference Act 2018.

“The law could apply to any journalist, staff member or source who works for or collaborates with foreign-controlled media organisations,” Kendall said.

• READ MORE: Other Australian media freedom reports

“There could also be repercussions for journalists working overseas, as any news published in Australia is subject to these laws.”

The Espionage and Foreign Interference Act 2018 covers nine foreign interference offences, with penalties ranging from 10 to 20 years imprisonment.

“While these offences require some part of the person’s conduct to be covert or involve deception, this does not exclude legitimate journalistic activities,” Kendall said.

“Journalists could be acting covertly whenever they liaise with a confidential source using encrypted technologies or engage in undercover work using hidden cameras.”

Public interest protection
In a Foreign Interference Law and Press Freedom briefing paper, Kendall recommended that the government introduce an occupation-specific exemption to protect journalists working in the public interest.

The paper argues that the scope of offences be narrowed to remove “recklessness” and “prejudice to Australia’s national security” as punishable elements.

“For example, a journalist could be accused of recklessly harming national security when they publish a story that reveals war crimes by members of the Australian Defence Force,” Kendall said.

“Journalists and their sources could face up to 20 years in prison if any part of their conduct was covert, even if they are engaged in legitimate, good faith reporting.”

Kendall said the law’s Preparatory Offence, which carries a potential jail term of 10 years, risked creating a dangerous precedent when combined with the offence of conspiracy.

“This offence can capture the earliest stages of investigative reporting so a discussion between a journalist and source about a potential story on Australian politics could see them charged with conspiring to prepare for foreign interference,” Kendall said.

Foreign Interference Law and Press Freedom is the latest report in UQ Law School’s Press Freedom Policy Papers series, a project aimed at laying the groundwork for widespread reform in laws spanning espionage, whistleblowing and free speech as they affect the media.

In the mid-1990s I started working with New Zealand investigative writer Nicky Hager. I have had the most singular of all my authorial relationships with Nicky, the result of the potent, usually red-hot subject matter that is his stock-in-trade.

I knew Nicky from our early days in forest conservation — he had been a fellow campaigner — but he also had a long interest in security issues. In 1996 he came to us with a nearly completed book that, for the first time, revealed the existence of the highly secret ECHELON surveillance programme run between the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, now commonly known as the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.

This alliance effectively means that New Zealand does the bidding of its more powerful allies. It raises myriad moral and sovereignty issues about who we are spying on, and why.

• READ MORE: Other Nicky Hager reports

We published what became Secret Power, with a great deal of trepidation — a prominent QC and expert on media law had expressly warned us off the project, making chillingly clear the potential for jail time if we published state secrets, which we obviously intended to do.

But in an early demonstration of Nicky’s strategic nous, no one came knocking. In this, and in all future publishing decisions with him, it became a careful weighing up of whether the subject of the book — in this case the government and its intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau — would want the scrutiny and public exposure of a court case, even if they were likely to win it.

The other issue that applied to Secret Power and, again, with all Nicky’s subsequent books, was both ethical and practical — is the exposure of secret or private information justified? It is, only if it is clearly in the public interest, which is also the primary legal defence should that be necessary.

In the process of publishing Secret Power we developed our own organic publishing model, used a number of times over the next 20 years to get Nicky’s risky books successfully into readers’ hands and to minimise the danger of being stifled by a High Court injunction, the most likely tool the subject of a book would use to prevent publication. This involved producing the books at breakneck speed to reduce the chance of being discovered.

Printed in absolute secrecy
After the book had been written, Nicky would work intensively alongside an editor over a week or two; I would lay out and proofread the book in two or three days, and then print in absolute secrecy.

When printed, we would drop them via overnight courier into bookshops nationwide without any prior warning, explaining to booksellers why we were doing this and offering to take back at our expense any they didn’t want. It meant that the book was already available to readers just as Nicky started to create a media firestorm thereby significantly reducing the window for legal action to be successfully launched: by the time an injunction could be drawn up and submitted to the court, widespread availability meant it would be pointless and therefore unlikely to be granted.

Secret Power proved to be an internationally significant book — it led to an enquiry in the European Parliament at which Nicky testified, and could be regarded as the forerunner to Edward Snowden’s revelations about the workings of the US National Security Agency in 2013 and the subsequent global debates about mass surveillance and information privacy.

Three years later Nicky came to me again with Secrets and Lies: The Anatomy of an Anti-environmental PR Campaign, which he co-authored with the Australian environmentalist Bob Burton. Based on a leak from a concerned whistleblower, the book exposed how the government-owned Timberlands was secretly using taxpayer money to run an undercover public relations campaign to justify its logging of native forest on the West Coast.

This greenwashing broke a fundamental public service rule — government departments and state-owned enterprises cannot secretly run campaigns to help further their own agendas — and the story blew up exactly as the authors and I hoped.

By complete coincidence, we happened to publish on the same day as the launch of the National Party’s 1999 election campaign. It completely destroyed their media splash, and they were furious — I know this because [co-publisher] Craig Potton happened to meet a National Cabinet minister, with close ties to our area, in Wellington airport the next morning. He lost it, and had to be physically restrained by his aides after he shoved Craig in the chest.

Then, when Helen Clark and her Labour government came to power later in the year, the logging of native forest on the West Coast was stopped. Timberlands had badly overreached.

Things didn’t go well
Nicky’s next book, Seeds of Distrust, published in 2002, which detailed how the then Labour government had covered up the illegal planting of GE corn in New Zealand after intense lobbying from big business; the controversy known as Corngate. Seeds of Distrust was essentially about accountability and transparent government, but while the book was accurate, things did not go well for us.

TV3’s John Campbell ambushed Prime Minister Helen Clark about the issue in a television interview, and she responded by calling Campbell a “sanctimonious little creep”. It was a lesson in the perils of crossing a furious Clark, and her government managed very effectively to cloud the issue with technical arguments.

The book was a distressing and sobering experience as we lost the PR battle, with the media uncertain about the veracity of Nicky’s work.

I went on to publish a number of other important books with Nicky, all of them focused on speaking truth to power. The Hollow Men, in 2006, was an inside look at then leader of the opposition, Don Brash, and the questionable tactics he and others in the National Party employed as they sought to gain power. Brash had heard rumours that someone was leaking his personal emails, so he successfully sought an over-arching injunction preventing publication of this material.

He had no idea, however, that only a few kilometres away in Kaiwharawhara, we were just finishing printing 5000 copies of The Hollow Men, based in large part on these leaked emails.

The injunction was a disaster for us, as it meant that we could not sell the books and would potentially have to pulp them, so with nothing to lose we decided to try to pressure Brash to lift the injunction. Nicky called a press conference, and he and I fronted the Wellington media.

With a small pile of printed copies of The Hollow Men on display, we explained that people were not able to read this book even if it was in the public interest that they should. The tactic worked spectacularly — the frenzied response by the media, and the pressure bought to bear on Brash, forced him not only to resign as leader of the National Party but also to lift the injunction.

We were then able to release the book, an instant bestseller, which revealed, among many other things, that Brash had misled the public about his relationship with the Exclusive Brethren, who had secretly given the National Party a substantial donation.

Exposing john Key’s ‘dark tactics’
Nicky’s next book, the equally explosive Dirty Politics, was published in the middle of the election campaign in 2014, and exposed the dark tactics of John Key’s National government. An anonymous hacker, Rawshark, had been so enraged by the behaviour of Cameron Slater, the right-wing blogger behind the Whale Oil blog, that he managed to hack into his Facebook account and extract a large tranche of Slater’s communications.

After a long process of winning Rawshark’s trust, Nicky was given this information, and it became the foundation of the book. Dirty Politics laid out in startling detail how unscrupulous Key and his operators were in feeding Slater with inside information and using him to attack their political enemies. It remains a shameful stain on the Key government.

It also led to another grubby incident when, in the wake of the book’s publication, the police, perhaps in an attempt to please their political masters, raided Nicky’s house and illegally obtained his personal financial records, all in a fruitless attempt to discover Rawshark’s identity. Nicky took action in the High Court, winning an apology and substantial damages from the police.

We have published two others of Nicky’s books on security issues: Other People’s Wars in 2011, a large, supremely well researched book on New Zealand’s unseen role in the so-called war on terror; and, with Jon Stephenson, Hit & Run in 2017, detailing a Defence Force cover-up of a New Zealand SAS operation that killed civilians in Afghanistan.

For me, this strand of publishing has frequently been terrifying, given the potential for legal action lurking behind every book that could destroy the company. It has always been ameliorated, however, by the privilege of being able to publish Nicky’s remarkable books. Having the freedom to take them on feels like the ultimate gift of being an independent publisher.

It says everything about Nicky’s extraordinary dedication and research skills, quite apart from his courage, that despite the endless vitriol from his detractors, we have never ended up in court over one of his books — the passage of time has always revealed the accuracy of his work. Consequently, my trust in him is absolute.

His most powerful weapon, and one that lies behind everything he does, is his integrity. His sole motivation is to make the world a better place, and money and power simply do not matter to him. In my view he is a national treasure.

• An extract reprinted with permission from the newly published Bushline: A Memoir, by Robbie Burton (Potton & Burton, $39.99).

Nobel Peace Prize laureate and press freedom champion Maria Ressa wasn’t intending to make breaking news when she planned her keynote address at the East-West Center’s 2022 International Media Conference in Honolulu this week.

But late the night before she got disturbing word from her lawyers that the Philippines government’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had issued an order for her online news organisation Rappler to shut down.

“You are the first to hear this,” Ressa said, as she told the combined in-person and online audiences of around 450 international journalists and media professionals gathered for the conference about the commission’s order.

Under now-former President Rodrigo Duterte, Ressa and Rappler have faced multiple charges, widely believed to be retaliation for her critical reporting on Duterte’s deadly drug war and abuses of power.

Ressa vowed to continue fighting the commission’s order, even as new President Ferdinand Marcos Jr — son of the late Philippines dictator who was forced to flee the country in 1986 — prepared to be sworn into office yesterday.

In the meantime, she said, “It is business as usual for Rappler. We will adapt, adjust, survive, and thrive. As usual, we will hold power to account. We will tell the truth.”

Safeguarding freedom of expression
Ressa’s struggle to thwart the government’s efforts to shut down her groundbreaking news outlet and imprison her for cyber-libel led to Ressa becoming the first Filipino recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace,” as the Nobel Committee put it.

In her address to the media conference, Ressa bemoaned the fact that the global environment for quality journalism has deteriorated so quickly, in part because at least initially there was a reluctance to accept just how much damage the online world can do to the real one.

“Online violence is real-world violence,” she said. “They’re not separate. Digital impunity is real-world impunity.

“There is only one world that we live in, and for the platforms and legislators to think that these are two systems has weakened the rule of law in the real world.”

After being brutally attacked online by Duterte backers, Ressa has campaigned tirelessly against what she called a “tyranny of trends.” Through their algorithms, social media platforms have created a new information ecosystem that prioritises “lies laced with anger and hate” over “boring” facts, she said.

“These platforms are determining the future of news, and yet their driver is profit, right? The platform’s profit — not the public’s, not journalism’s.”

That system has made it more difficult for humans to listen to their better angels, Ressa said, because “social media gave the devil a megaphone. And this is why we are seeing the worst of human nature.”

The problem, she said, is that the forces of manipulation do not need to convince the public of anything. They only need to sow doubt and uncertainty in order to create distrust of the facts.

Pillars of trust
Ressa said Rappler was built on a foundation of three pillars to rebuild trust in the news media: technology, journalism and community.

“Tech has to be first because this was the spark that ignited the world, and not for good,” she explained.

“Journalism, because we must continue independent journalism despite what it costs us, and we must let our societies know that. And finally community, because journalists can’t do this alone.”

The importance of maintaining independent journalism outlets is intensified by the fact that this year there are more than 30 elections globally, according to Ressa: “I said this in the Nobel lecture: If you don’t have integrity of facts, how can you have integrity of elections? You can’t, and that’s the problem.”

The consequences can be catastrophic, she said. “When real people who are insidiously manipulated online then democratically elect an illiberal leader and the balance of power of the world shifts, how much more time do we have before we move into a fascist world?”

Banding together against disinformation
Ressa counsels independent journalists around the world to build their courage, commitment and, most importantly, community, saying the only way to stand up to the forces of disinformation is to join hands.

Before the recent elections in the Philippines, for example, 16 news organisations agreed to collaborate on fact-checking campaign statements.

“We shared each with other,” Ressa said. “We made the content agnostic. We’re not competing against each other; we’re competing against evil and lies.”

That experience helped inform Ressa’s vision of a world in which trust in facts and institutions can be rebuilt on four levels. The first and most basic is independent journalism as exemplified by news organisations like hers.

The second she calls “the mesh”, elements of civil society that can take the facts news outlets and share them with emotion and inspiration.

The third level is academic research designed to help better understand the societal challenges, which continue to evolve. The final level is a proactive legal approach in which lawyers engage in both tactical and strategic litigation, rather than simply waiting to defend against the latest attacks.

Still, Ressa admitted that she is extremely worried about the future of objective journalism and the societies that rely on it.

The world does have the resources to fight back, she but not as individuals: “We really must work together,” she concluded. “And a global coalition is the best way to do this.”

• 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.”

Fiji’s Assistant Minister for iTaukei Affairs Selai Adimaitoga said quite a lot on Friday in her end of week statement on the Media Industry Development Act 2010 in Parliament.

She blamed reckless reporting by journalists as “one of the causes of violence and economic destruction over the past years”.

She said dishonest media had played a role in every troubling event in Fiji’s history. For that, she said, media organisations had a duty to tell the truth to the public and not to publish things that would stir political instability or violence.

• READ MORE: Selai takes a swipe at the Fiji media

“We must ensure that history does not repeat itself as Fijians deserve honest and fair media,” Ms Adimaitoga said.

She said every media organisation should only speak the truth and fairly report on facts, adding “Fiji cannot afford the reckless reporting of the past. The media have a responsibility to publish the truth. They also have a responsibility to maintain professional standards, a responsibility to maintain integrity”.

We totally agree with her that media organisations have a duty to tell the truth and fairly report on issues. We do not just talk about it. We do it, every day.

We try, every day, to fairly report on issues of importance to the nation, and to provide coverage that cuts through any imaginary demarcation line.

There are many such lines — political leanings, ethnicity, gender and religion for instance. Any good news organisation lives on its reputation for reliability. If its information is reliable it has the trust of its readers or viewers. But a key part of the media’s role is to hold power to account.

Ms Adimaitoga, whose [FijiFirst] government has held power (in one form or another) for more than a decade, said nothing about that. Our editorial decisions on what information we present must factor in what is of public interest, and the public interest requires close scrutiny of those who exercise power over us.

So when a government politician talks about “anti-government” news, she must think carefully about the fact that the public expects accountability from her government. Keeping the trust of our readers requires us to maintain a balance and not to be partisan advocates for one political side or the other.

Ms Adimaitoga needs to better appreciate and understand the role of the media. And we will say to her what we have said to the government in the past when we have faced the same “anti-government” label.

We are not anti-government, nor are we pro-government, and neither she nor anyone should try to put us into one corner or another.

The Fiji Times does not exist to create positive headlines for the government. It exists to publish all views and to ensure there is balanced coverage of the news and balanced political debate.

The public in any democracy expects to read diverse news and opinions which are representative of our whole society and the different viewpoints and perspectives that exist in our nation.

And we believe in serving the public in line with those democratic expectations.

The Fiji Times was founded at Levuka in 1869. This editorial was published in The Sunday Times edition of the newspaper yesterday (September 26) under the title “The role of the media” and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

International public service media from G-7 countries have reported “strong audience increases” since the covid-19 pandemic, which they interpret as a show of confidence for the “reliable and independent information” they deliver on multiple communication platforms, in a variety of languages, on all continents.

The global health crisis has illustrated that public service media are “at the service of the general interest, democratic values and freedom of expression, which brings us together,” said a statement cited by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC).

The statement was issued by France Médias Monde, France 24, Deutsche Welle, BBC World Service, USAGM, NHK World, CBC/Radio-Canada and ABC Australia.

READ MORE: The conspiracy virus: Covid-19 misinformation in the US – Al Jazeera

The managers and chief executives of these media – which reach a weekly global audience of one billion — pledged to “build on this public confidence in our media, which is more precious and greater than ever”.

“Public service media have suffered greatly from the unregulated nature of digital platforms as well as from unscrupulous bloggers and peddlers of fake news,” said WACC general secretary Philip Lee.

“The rehabilitation of public service media is long overdue,” he added.

The statement noted that journalists, technicians, correspondents, and other employees “have mobilised to pursue their mission tirelessly, informing people about the new coronavirus and helping to combat its spread by delivering prevention messages, in conjunction with the health authorities”.

The fact that their content is reported in many international languages by local correspondents “makes it possible to reach the citizens of the world in their mother tongues,” the G-7 public service media added.

International public service media have also been on the frontlines of the fight against the spread of fake news about the novel coronavirus and treatments, it said.

“The international public service media in our seven countries have opened their platforms to the best scientific experts and specialists, to major political and economic leaders, on all aspects of the worst pandemic the world has seen in decades,” said the statement.

Emphasising that “the humanist values of solidarity” underpin actions of public service media, the statement noted how they have joined in worldwide tributes to healthcare workers, researchers and essential workers and paid special tribute to women, “whose role has often been crucial at all levels of society.”

It noted, among others, that their stories have helped raise awareness of increases in gender-based violence and domestic violence during lockdown and ways to address them.

“This period should  encourage us to draw lessons  about the way the world works and changes, about social relations, about the importance of public services and access to information,” said the statement.

“Our media contribute to the international reflection and debate needed to build the post-pandemic future and make the most of it.”

The ABC’s decision today to end the appeal process against the warrant used to raid its offices demonstrates that the system is broken, says the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA).

The union says the only way to fix this is to change the law to protect public interest journalism and whistleblowers.

MEAA media federal president Marcus Strom said: “That warrant targeted journalists who had published the truth.

READ MORE: The Afghan Files – Defence leak exposes deadly secrets

“The warrant was issued with the intent to bypass the journalists’ ethical obligation to never reveal the identity of a confidential source – a principle of journalism recognised around the world.

“Journalists and whistleblowers cannot feel safe until there are legislative reforms to protect public interest journalism.

“Remember, there are three journalists still in legal limbo following the raids on the ABC and the home of a News Corporation journalist.

“This is not about making journalists above the law, but to bring the law into line with community expectations. There must be a positive legal protection for journalism that is in the public interest in order to uphold the public’s right to know.”

‘Scope of warrant disturbing’
Strom added: “The scope of the warrant is extremely disturbing. It allowed the AFP to ‘add, copy, delete or alter’ material in the ABC’s computers. That represents a genuine threat to the ability of media outlets to carry out their duties if government agencies can cause immense disruption to entire computer networks as well as undermine the privacy of other Australians unrelated to the warrant’s intent.

“The warrant was approved by a local court registrar in Queanbeyan. But it is clear that there needs to be greater oversight of these warrants.”

“As ABC managing director David Anderson has said today, the journalism in the Afghan Files was published almost two years before the raid. Its veracity has never been questioned.

“And yet for publishing the truth and upholding the public’s right to know, three journalists now face lengthy jail terms. Warrants should be contestable before they unleash their damage on the truth and the public’s right to know.”

The Department of Home Affairs and the AFP have made a supplementary submission to a Parliamentary inquiry into the freedom of the press that rejects the notion of contestable warrants, claiming contestability had the “potential [to] undermine the efficacy of such a warrant”.

Strom said: “That argument is a nonsense. The potential for overreach has already been acknowledged by the Department.

“On August 9 last year, Minister Dutton directed the AFP ‘to take into account the importance of a free and open press in Australia’s democratic society and to consider broader public interest implications before undertaking investigative action involving a professional journalist or news media organisation’.

‘Reforming bad law’
“Contestability is clearly necessary to stem overreach by government departments and the AFP.

MEAA chief executive Paul Murphy added: “The ability to contest warrants is not about placing journalists above the law. It is about reforming bad law.

“Since the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Australian Parliament has passed at least 75 national security laws. Under the guise of protecting the nation, many of those laws have introduced new penalties that criminalise journalists and their journalism, and persecute and punish whistleblowers for exposing wrongdoing.

“The public’s right to know what our government’s do in our name must not be allowed to be usurped by bad laws that punish the truth,” Murphy said.

A Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) media release.

• Other ABC raid stories

An Australian federal court decision upholding the legality of the police raid on the Sydney headquarters of the national public broadcaster ABC last June has dealt a major blow to the protection of journalists’ sources and poses a grave danger for the future of public interest journalism, says Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

In its ruling issued on February 17, the court rejected the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s challenge to the legality of the search warrant that allowed federal police to search computers, emails and USB sticks at its headquarters on 5 June 2019.

The police were trying to identify the source for The Afghan Files reporting by ABC journalists Sam Clark and Dan Oakes in 2017 about the role of Australian special forces in the illegal killing of civilians in Afghanistan.

READ MORE: The Afghan Files: Defence leak exposes deadly secrets of Australia’s special forces

The reporters used material provided by a whistleblower within the Defence Ministry.

“If confirmed on appeal, this federal court ruling will set a disturbing legal precedent by turning investigative reporters and whistleblowers into criminals,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk.

“The ABC story never compromised national security and clearly served the interests of the Australian public, who have a right to reliable and independent information freely reported by journalists.

“We call on the federal judges to guarantee this right on appeal by recognising the search warrant’s illegality.”

Ruling fraught with consequences
Under the warrant, the police were authorised to search for evidence that the two journalists had “unlawfully obtained military information” and “dishonestly received stolen property”.

The supposedly stolen property was the leaked documents that exposed the illegal killings reported in The Afghan Files.

The federal police raid on ABC was all the more shocking for coming just one day after a raid on News Corp political editor Annika Smethurst’s home in Canberra. The timing of the two raids was widely seen as a deliberate attempt to intimidate investigative journalists.

The judicial precedents set by these two cases are particularly fraught with consequences inasmuch as Australia’s constitutional law contains no guarantees for press freedom.

• Australia is ranked 21st out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2019 World Press Freedom Index.

I joined the Australian Journalists Association (now the MEAA – Media Alliance) in, I think, 1971, when I still lived and worked in Papua New Guinea.

When I formally retired from paid work a few years back, I was given honorary membership but, to bolster the journalism profession and its union, I recently asked to return as a paying member – which was accepted.

Given that I still scribble the PNG Attitude blog, book reviews for The Australian, a column in Noosa Style and other bits and pieces, that seemed appropriate.

READ MORE: Journalists call for legislation to protect press freedom and the public’s right to know

It may seem implausible, but freedom of the press is under attack in our country. The actions of federal authorities have been nibbling at that freedom for some time, and most recently the federal police took a large bite at it.

I’m concerned. That’s why I’m sharing this letter:

A GRAVE THREAT TO MEDIA FREEDOM

Dear Llew O’Brien, MP,
cc Prime Minister Scott Morrison,
Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese

I support in full the following letter from the MEAA calling upon the Australian Parliament to act to guarantee the freedom of the press in Australia.

Recent events have shown that this implied right of Australians is under threat. Legislative and constitutional changes are required:

The Australian Federal Police raids on the home of News Corp Australia journalist Annika Smethurst and on the offices of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) represent a grave threat to press freedom in Australia.

We welcome the Prime Minister’s stated commitment to freedom of the press and openness to discuss the concerns that have been raised.

A healthy democracy cannot function without its media being free to bring to light uncomfortable truths, to scrutinise the powerful and inform our communities. Investigative journalism cannot survive without the courage of whistleblowers, motivated by concern for their fellow citizens, who seek to bring to light instances of wrongdoing, illegal activities, fraud, corruption and threats to public health and safety.

These are issues of public interest, of the public’s right to know. Whistleblowers and the journalists who work with them are entitled to protection, not prosecution. Truth-telling is being punished.

The raids, a raft of recent national security laws, and the prosecutions of whistleblowers Richard Boyle, David McBride and Witness K all demonstrate the public’s right to know is being harmed. Truth-telling is being punished.

It is also clear from the global response to the recent raids that Australia’s proud reputation around the world as a free and open society is under threat.

We urge Parliament to legislate changes to the law to recognise and enshrine a positive public interest protection for whistleblowers and for journalists. Without these protections Australians will be denied important information it is their right as citizens to have.

We urge you to take prompt action to protect our democracy for all Australians.

Yours sincerely,
Keith Jackson AM

• Australia’s press freedom needs more protection: Here’s where to start
• More Australian media raids stories
• Press freedom demonstrators say: ‘Australian democracy is in grave danger’

The union for Australian media workers therefore feels it is time for the government to step in and support independent journalism in order to preserve democracy.

“The digital disruption that has transformed the media has shaken everything we knew about out industry.

“There is no certainty. The audience is fragmented,” the MEAA noted in a statement.

The MEAA’s submission details the blow the internet and social media has dealt journalism in Australia, robbing media of its revenue — part of a growing global trend.

A series of recommendations have also been made to the Senate inquiry, namely around increases in funding and the establishment of further protections.

However, the MEAA acknowledges there is no “magic bullet” which will restore the media to its former glory of six years ago.

‘No going back’
“Digital disruption has and will continue to reshape the industry. There is no going back.”

This may mean the industry undergoes more hardships as improvements are potentially made, the MEAA says.

“It is true that, unless something urgent and comprehensive is done the media will continue to collapse.

“It is time for government to foster, encourage, promise and support the media so that it can continue to function for all Australians.”

The MEAA’s submission to the public interest journalism inquiry comes amid increasing surveillance attempts on the media by the Turnbull government as previously reported by Pacific Media Watch.

• Read the MEAA’s submission
• Increasing surveillance ‘deeply concerning’, says MEAA
• RSF condemns ‘alarming bid’ to crack message encryption