A woman whose great-grandparents — all eight of them — were Girmitiya labourers has put their stories into her debut novel.

The result is Banjara, a novel partly based on what she found, which is told through the eyes of two women more than 100 years apart.

Author, Shana Chandra told RNZ Nine to Noon she knew her grandparents were Girmitiya, but nothing of their origin stories.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji literature reports

“I knew that they were part of this larger geopolitical movement under colonialism, but I didn’t have their personal stories,” she said.

“I didn’t know where they came from in India. I didn’t know what made them vulnerable to coercion. I didn’t even know their names. So really, writing the story was a way for me to write their origin story not only for me, but for them.”

Chandra said the former head of New Zealand’s Girmitiya Foundation told her that Indo-Fijians were prohibited from writing about indenture.

“It felt very important for me to write this origin story, because there was so much silence – I think, because there was so much shame over what happened.

‘Angry about the silence’
“And it was my way of saying to my ancestors, they no longer need to be silenced, and… thank you, in a way, because I used to be quite angry about the silence, but then I realized it was their gift to me, and their gift to all of us — they didn’t want us to be burdened with what they endured.”

Chandra said a lot of research went into the book, but historical records only tell so much.

“When I saw my great-grandmother’s immigration pass, she boarded the Hereford, which is actually the same boat that Avani, my character, boards in the book.

“She was only eight when she boarded, and she boarded the boat with her younger brother, her older sister and her father, and there was actually no record of her mother being on board. So because of the way indentureships were partitioned with men on one side and women and children on the other, I know that those women on board would have helped my great-grandmother and her siblings survive in a myriad of ways.

“One day, I just had this compulsion to wake up and say all of those women’s names because I knew that they would have helped them survive.”

There were shocking discoveries, too. One immigration pass was that of a 15-day-old baby who had died.

“And on the left-hand side, written in cursive writing by a colonial official, was that her mother had suffocated her. And though I know that could be true, there was something about that intuitively that just didn’t sit right in my body.”

Real oral histories
Chandra later came across a post from a site called Cutlass Magazine, featuring real oral histories.

“One about a woman who said that when her grandmother was indentured, the women on board had to hide the children because crew members would find them a nuisance and want to throw them overboard.

“And there was an actual story from an indentured man who kept on repeating the same story, how on his ship that had a particularly rough passage, the captain came, took a newborn baby and fed it to the sea as a sacrifice.

“Even just me writing the names of those women afterwards, just burst into tears… It was important to weave those other stories, those oral histories, into the book to show that other side of history.”

Chandra believes a lot of labourers were duped into signing the labour agreements, and many were promised a “paradisical island full of abundant opportunity”.

“But what they actually faced …was hard labour up to 14 hours a day or over six days a week. And a lot of them were subjected to brutal physical and sexual abuse.

“At one point, Fiji had the highest suicide rate in the world due to indenture.”

The ‘women’s gang’
Chandra said there was “amazing forms of resistance” from the women.

“There’s something known as the women’s gang.

“These women would form these gangs, and they would go to known abusers and use the only thing, only weapons they had, which was their bodies, and retaliate and beat their abusers. So my book really showcases that female solidarity.”

She said it was tough to navigate all the cultural practices and language of the time to be accurate. But what also became important was the “emotional truth”.

“That emotional honesty was almost just as important, because that’s what it’s really trying to capture, but I was lucky. When I was writing this novel, it did feel like something larger was guiding my hand. So I do partly dedicate this novel to my ancestors, who felt like they were conspiring with me from the heavens.

“I think what’s so amazing to me is that, and this is what I hoped the book would do — it would provide an emotional landscape for other Indo-Fijians to rebound off and to start talking about these stories.”

• Shana Chandra will be appearing as part of the Auckland Writers’ Festival next month.

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

TVNZ’s 1News Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver has released a new memoir looking back at over 30 years of reporting in the region.

The book, titled Be Brave, details moments in Dreaver’s career in the Pacific from covering natural disasters to coups and personal tragedies.

Speaking to Pacific Waves, Dreaver said she wanted readers to see the Pacific through her eyes.

• READ MORE: Other Barbara Dreaver reports

“Be Brave” – Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver reflects   Video: RNZ Pacific Waves

“The Pacific is so important to the world, it is important to New Zealand and Australia and I thought, if I show it like the real stories . . .  what happens behind the scenes that it just might provide, you know, share that joy really of the Pacific with people.

“I’m really concerned about the way the region is going at the moment, and I think there’s volatile times ahead and so I really decided some time ago that I wanted to record it and record, for my family as well.”

The Kiribati-born journalist also encourages up and coming Pacific journalists to report “without fear or favour”.

“When people say to you, as a Pacific journalist ‘you’re not being culturally aware’ . . .  we know what’s culturally aware.

“We do and quite often people in power use it as a means of stopping you reporting.

“So you have to be really aware of the boundaries on that.”

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

The seventh narco sub in Pacific waters was discovered last week as the wave of methamphetamine becomes the latest crisis challenging the region.

1News Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver has spent decades reporting on the region from this country, including the drug battle and subsequent HIV epidemic in some countries.

Dreaver has released her memoir — Be Brave: The Life of a Pacific Correspondent — on covering the Pacific through natural disasters, military coups and criminal activity.

• READ MORE: Barbara Dreaver: I’ve never defended who I am, why should I?
• Other Barbara Dreaver reports

She was detained and deported from Fiji before being blacklisted and not allowed to return for many years during former Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama’s reign.

Bainimarama was recently charged with inciting mutiny over allegations they encouraged senior Fiji Military Forces officers to act against the military commander in 2023.

She is a well known face within in Aotearoa, and in much of the Pacific where 1News is screened.

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

• Listen to her interview with RNZ Nine to Noon

Author David Robie left his cabin on the Rainbow Warrior three days before it was blown up by the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE), France’s foreign intelligence agency

The ship was destroyed at Marsden Wharf on 10 July 1985 by two limpet mines attached
below the waterline.

As New Zealand soon learned to its shock, the second explosion killed crew member and photographer Fernando Pereira as he tried to retrieve his cameras.

• READ MORE: Other Eyes of Fire reports

“I had planned to spend the night of the bombing onboard with my two young sons, to give them a brief taste of shipboard life,” Dr Robie writes. “At the last moment I decided to leave it to another night.”

He left the ship after 11 weeks documenting what turned out to be the last of her humanitarian missions — a voyage which highlighted the exploitation of Pacific nations
by countries who used them to test nuclear weapons.

Dr Robie was the only journalist on board to cover both the evacuation of the people
of Rongelap Atoll after their land, fishing grounds and bodies were ravaged by US nuclear fallout, and the continued voyage to nuclear-free Vanuatu and New Zealand.

Eyes of Fire is not only the authoritative biography of the Rainbow Warrior and her
missions, but a gripping account of the infiltration of Greenpeace by a French spy, the bombing, its planning, the capture of the French agents, the political fallout, and ongoing
challenges for Pacific nations.

Dr Robie corrects the widely held belief that the first explosion on the Rainbow Warrior
was intended as a warning, to avoid loss of life. No, it turns out, the French state really
did mean to kill people.

“It was remarkable,” he writes, “that Fernando Pereira was the only person who
died.”

The explosives were set to detonate shortly before midnight, when members of the
crew would be asleep. (One of them was the ship’s relief cook, Waihekean Margaret Mills. She awoke in the nick of time. The next explosion blew in the wall of her cabin).

“Two cabins on the main deck had their floors ruptured by pieces of steel flying from
the [first] engine room blast,” writes Dr Robie.

“By chance, the four crew who slept in those rooms were not on board. If they had been,
they almost certainly would have been killed.”

Eyes of Fire was first published in 1986 — and also in the UK and USA, and has been reissued in 2005, 2015 and again this year to coincide with the 40th anniversary
of the bombing.

If you are lucky enough to own the first edition, you will find plenty that is new here; updated text, an index, new photographs, a prologue by former NZ prime minister Helen Clark and a searing preface by Waihekean Bunny McDiarmid, former executive director
of Greenpeace International.

As you would expect from the former head of journalism schools at the University
of Papua New Guinea and University of the South Pacific, and founder of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre, Eyes of Fire is not only a brilliant piece of research, it is an absolutely
fascinating read, filled with human detail.

The bombing and its aftermath make up a couple of chapters in a book which covers an enormous amount of ground.

Professor David Robie is a photographer, journalist and teacher who was awarded an MNZM in 2024 for his services to journalism and Asia-Pacific media education. He is founding editor of the Pacific Journalism Review, also well worth seeking out.

Eyes of Fire is an updated classic and required reading for anyone interested in activism
or the contemporary history of the Pacific.

• Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, by David Robie; prologue by former NZ prime minister Helen Clark (Little Island Press). There is a linked microsite Eyes of Fire: 40 Years On. Reviewer Jenny Nicholls is subeditor of the Waiheke Weekender, where this review was first published.
• Available at Baka Books in Fiji
• The Legends of the Pacific: Stories of a Nuclear-Free Moana exhibition curated by the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) is currently on at the Waiheke Library until September 11.

The New Zealand government needs to do more for its Pacific Island neighbours and stand up to nuclear powers, a distinguished journalist, media educator and author says.

Professor David Robie, a recipient of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM), released the latest edition of his book Eyes of Fire: The last voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior (Little Island Press), which highlights the nuclear legacies of the United States and France.

Dr Robie, who has worked in Pacific journalism and academia for more than 50 years, recounts the crew’s experiences aboard the Greenpeace flagship the Rainbow Warrior in 1985, before it was bombed in Auckland Harbour.

• LISTEN: Dr David Robie talks to RNZ Pacific last week
• Crimes NZ: David Robie on the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior — RNZ Afternoons
• Other Eyes of Fire reports

At the time, New Zealand stood up to nuclear powers, he said.

“It was pretty callous [of] the US and French authorities to think they could just carry on nuclear tests in the Pacific, far away from the metropolitan countries, out of the range of most media, and just do what they like,” Dr Robie told RNZ Pacific. “It is shocking, really.”

Speaking to Pacific Waves, Dr Robie said that Aotearoa had “forgotten” how to stand up for the region.

“The real issue in the Pacific is about climate crisis and climate justice. And we’re being pushed this way and that by the US [and] by the French. The French want to make a stake in their Indo-Pacific policies as well,” he said.

‘We need to stand up’
“We need to stand up for smaller Pacific countries.”

Dr Robie believes that New Zealand is failing with its diplomacy in the region.

He accused the coalition government of being “too timid” and “afraid of offending President Donald Trump” to make a stand on the nuclear issue.

However, a spokesperson for New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Pacific that New Zealand’s “overarching priority . . . is to work with Pacific partners to achieve a secure, stable, and prosperous region that preserves Pacific sovereignty and agency”.

The spokesperson said that through its foreign policy “reset”, New Zealand was committed to “comprehensive relationships” with Pacific Island countries.

“New Zealand’s identity, prosperity and security are intertwined with the Pacific through deep cultural, people, historical, security, and economic linkages.”

The New Zealand government commits almost 60 percent of its development funding to the region.

Pacific ‘increasingly contested’
The spokesperson said that the Pacific was becoming increasingly contested and complex.

“New Zealand has been clear with all of our partners that it is important that engagement in the Pacific takes place in a manner which advances Pacific priorities, is consistent with established regional practices, and supportive of Pacific regional institutions.”

They added that New Zealand’s main focus remained on the Pacific, “where we will be working with partners including the United States, Australia, Japan and in Europe to more intensively leverage greater support for the region.

“We will maintain the high tempo of political engagement across the Pacific to ensure alignment between our programme and New Zealand and partner priorities. And we will work more strategically with Pacific governments to strengthen their systems, so they can better deliver the services their people need,” the spokesperson said.

However, former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark, writing in the prologue of Dr Robie’s book, said: “New Zealand needs to re-emphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament.”

Dr Robie added that looking back 40 years to the 1980s, there was a strong sense of pride in being from Aotearoa, the small country which set an example around the world.

“We took on . . . the nuclear powers,” Dr Robie said.

“And the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior was symbolic of that struggle, in a way, but it was a struggle that most New Zealanders felt a part of, and we were very proud of that [anti-nuclear] role that we took.

“Over the years, it has sort of been forgotten”.

‘Look at history’
France conducted 193 nuclear tests over three decades until 1996 in French Polynesia.

Until 2009, France claimed that its tests were “clean” and caused no harm, but in 2010, under the stewardship of Defence Minister Herve Morin, a compensation law was passed.

From 1946 to 1962, 67 nuclear bombs were detonated in the Marshall Islands by the US.

In 2024, then-US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell, while responding to a question from RNZ Pacific about America’s nuclear legacy, said: “Washington has attempted to address it constructively with massive resources and a sustained commitment.”

However, Dr Robie said that was not good enough and labelled the destruction left behind by the US, and France, as “outrageous”.

“It is political speak; politicians trying to cover their backs and so on. If you look at history, [the response] is nowhere near good enough, both by the US and the French.”

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

A journalist who was on the Rainbow Warrior voyage to Rongelap last night condemned France for its “callous” attack of an environmental ship, saying “we haven’t forgotten, or forgiven this outrage”.

David Robie, the author of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, said at the launch that the consequences of almost 300 US and French nuclear tests – many of them “dirty bombs” — were still impacting on indigenous Pacific peoples 40 years after the bombing of the ship.

French saboteurs had killed “our shipmate Fernando Pereira” on 10 July 1985 in what the New Zealand prime minister at the time, David Lange, called a “sordid act of international state-backed terrorism”.

• READ MORE: NFIP activists, advocates to open nuclear-free Pacific exhibition
• ‘Storm clouds are gathering’: 40 years on from the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior
• Rainbow Warrior bombing remembered 40 years on
• Rainbow Warrior bombing ‘should have led to French Watergate’, says saboteur
• Other nuclear-free Pacific reports

Although relations with France had perhaps mellowed over time, four decades ago there was a lot of hostility towards the country, Dr Robie said.

“And that act of mindless sabotage still rankles very deeply in our psyche,” he said at the launch in Auckland Central’s Ellen Melville Centre on the anniversary of July 10.

About 100 people gathered in the centre’s Pioneer Women’s Hall for the book launch as Dr Robie reflected on the case of state terrorism after Greenpeace earlier in the day held a memorial ceremony on board Rainbow Warrior III.

“One of the celebrated French newspapers, Le Monde, played a critical role in the investigation into the Rainbow Warrior affair — what I brand as ‘Blundergate’, in view of all the follies of the bumbling DGSE spy team,” he said.

Plantu cartoon
“And one of the cartoons in that newspaper, by Plantu, who is a sort of French equivalent to Michael Leunig, caught my eye.

“You will notice it in the background slide show behind me. It shows François Mitterrand, the president of the French republic at the time, dressed in a frogman’s wetsuit lecturing to school children during a history lesson.

“President Mitterrand says, in French, ‘At that time, only presidents had the right to carry out terrorism!’

He noticed that in the Mitterrand cartoon there was a “classmate” sitting in the back of the room with a moustache. This was none other than Edwy Plenel, the police reporter for Le Monde at the time, who scooped the world with hard evidence of Mitterrand and the French government’s role at the highest level in the Rainbow Warrior sabotage.

Dr Robie said that Plenel now published the investigative website Mediapart, which had played a key role in 2015 revealing the identity of the bomber that night, “the man who had planted the limpet mines on the Rainbow Warrior — sinking a peace and environmental ship, and killing Fernando Pereira.”

Jean-Luc Kister, a retired French colonel and DGSE secret agent, had confessed to his role and “apologised”, claiming the sabotage operation was “disproportionate and a mistake”.

“Was he sincere? Was it a genuine attempt to come to terms with his conscience. Who knows?” Dr Robie said, adding that he was unconvinced.

French perspective
Dr Robie said he had asked Plenel for his reflections from a French perspective 40 years on. Plenel cited three main take ways.

“First, the vital necessity of independent journalism. Independent of all powers, whether state, economic or ideological. Journalism that serves the public interest, the right to know, and factual truths.

“Impactful journalism whose revelations restore confidence in democracy, in the possibility of improving it, and in the usefulness of counterbalancing powers, particularly journalism.”

Secondly, this attack had been carried out by France in an “allied country”, New Zealand, against a civil society organisation. This demonstrated that “the thirst for power is a downfall that leads nations astray when they succumb to it.

“Nuclear weapons epitomise this madness, this catastrophe of power.”

Finally, Plenel expressed the “infinite sadness” for a French citizen that after his revelations in Le Monde — which led to the resignations of the defence minister and the head of the secret services — nothing else happened.

“Nothing at all. No parliamentary inquiry, no questioning of François Mitterrand about his responsibility, no institutional reform of the absolute power of the president in a French republic that is, in reality, an elective monarchy.”

‘Elective monarchy’ trend
Dr Robie compared the French outcome with the rapid trend in US today, “a president who thinks he is a monarch, a king – another elective monarchy.”

He also bemoaned that “catastrophe of power” that “reigns everywhere today – from the horrendous Israeli genocide in Gaza to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, from Trump to Putin to Netanyahu, and so many others.”

The continuous Gaza massacres were a shameful indictment of the West that had allowed it to happen for more than 21 months.

Dr Robie thanked many collaborators for their help and support, including drama teacher Hilari Anderson, an original crew member of the Rainbow Warrior, and photographer John Miller, “who have been with me all the way on this waka journey”.

He thanked his wife, Del, and family members for their unstinting “patience and support”, and also publisher Tony Murrow of Little Island Press.

Launching the book, Greenpeace Aotearoa programme director Niamh O’Flynn said one thing that had stood out for her was how the legacy of the Rainbow Warrior had continued despite the attempt by the French government to shut it down 40 years ago.

“We said then that ‘you can’t sink a rainbow’, and we went on to prove it.

“When the Rainbow Warrior was bombed in Auckland harbour, it was getting ready to set sail to Moruroa Atoll, to enter the test exclusion zone and confront French nuclear testing head-on.”

So threatened
The French government had felt so threatened by that action that it had engaged in a state-sanctioned terror attack to prevent the mission from going ahead.

“But we rebuilt, and the Rainbow Warrior II carried on with that mission, travelling to Moruroa three times before the French finally stopped nuclear testing in the Pacific.

“That spirit and tenacity is what makes Greenpeace and what makes the Rainbow Warrior so special to everyone who has sailed on her,” she said.

“It was the final voyage of the Rainbow Warrior to Rongelap before the bombing that is the focus of David Robie’s book, and in many ways, it was an incredibly unique experience for Greenpeace — not just here in Aotearoa, but internationally.

“And of course David was a key part in that.”

O’Flynn said that as someone who had not even been born yet when the Rainbow Warrior was bombed, “I am so grateful that the generation of nuclear-free activists took the time to pass on their knowledge and to build our organisation into what it is today.

“Just as David has by writing down his story and leaving us with such a rich legacy.”

Other speakers
Among other speakers at the book launch were teacher Hilari Anderson, publisher Tony Murrow of Little Island Press, Ena Manuireva, a Mangarevian scholar and cultural adviser, and MC Antony Phillips of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.

Anderson spoke of the Warrior’s early campaigns and acknowledged the crews of 1978 and 1985.

“I have been reflecting what these first and last crews of the original Rainbow Warrior had in common, realising that both gave their collective, mostly youthful energy — to transformation.

“This has involved the bonding of crews by working hands-on together. Touching surfaces, by hammer and paint, created a physical connection to this beloved boat.”

She paid special tribute to two powerful women, Denise Bell, who tracked down the marine research vessel in Aberdeen that became the Rainbow Warrior, and the indomitable Susi Newborn, who “contributed to naming the ship and mustering a crew”.

Manuireva spoke about his nuclear colonial experience and that of his family as natives of Mangareva atoll, about 400 km from Muroroa atoll, where France conducted most of its 30 years of tests ending in 1995.

He also spoke of Tahitian leader Oscar Temaru’s pioneering role in the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement, and played haunting Tahitian songs on his guitar.

• Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, by David Robie, prologue by Helen Clark (Little Island Press).

Author David Robie and Little Island Press are about to publish next week a 40th anniversary edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, a first-hand account of the relocation of the Rongelap people by Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior in 1985.

Dr Robie joined what turned out to be the ill-fated voyage of the Rainbow Warrior from Hawai’i across the Pacific, with its first stop in the Marshall Islands and the momentous evacuation of Rongelap Atoll.

After completing the evacuation of the 320 people of Rongelap from their unsafe nuclear test-affected home islands to Mejatto Island in Kwajalein Atoll, the Rainbow Warrior headed south via Kiribati and Vanuatu.

• READ MORE: Other Eyes of Fire reports

After a stop in New Zealand, it was scheduled to head to the French nuclear testing zone at Moruroa in French Polynesia to protest the then-ongoing atmospheric nuclear tests conducted by France for decades.

But French secret agents attached bombs to the hull of the Rainbow Warrior while it was tied up at a pier in Auckland. The bombs mortally damaged the Warrior and killed Greenpeace photographer Fernando Peirera, preventing the vessel from continuing its Pacific voyage.

The new edition of Eyes of Fire will be launched on July 10 in New Zealand.

“This edition has a small change of title, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, and has an extra 30 pages, with a new prologue by former Prime Minister Helen Clark,” Dr Robie said in an email to the Journal.

“The core of the book is similar to earlier editions, but bookended by a lot of new material: Helen’s Prologue, Bunny McDiarmid’s updated Preface and a long Postscript 2025 by me with a lot more photographs, some in colour.”

Dr Robie added: “I hope this edition is doing justice to our humanitarian mission and the Rongelap people that we helped.”

He said the new edition is published by a small publisher that specialises in Pacific Island books, often in Pacific languages, Little Island Press.

• For more information about the new book: https://littleisland.nz/books/eyes-fire

Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark has warned the country needs to maintain its nuclear-free policy as a “fundamental tenet” of its independent foreign policy in the face of gathering global storm clouds.

Writing in a new book being published next week, she says “nuclear war is an existential threat to humanity. Far from receding, the threat of use of nuclear weapons is ever present.

“The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists now sits at 89 seconds to midnight,” she says in the prologue to journalist and media academic David Robie’s book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior.

• READ MORE: 40 years on: Reflecting on Rainbow Warrior’s legacy, fight against nuclear colonialism
• Other Eyes of Fire reports

Writing before the US surprise attack with B-2 stealth bombers and “bunker-buster” bombs on three Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22, Clark says “the Middle East is a tinder box with the failure of the Iran nuclear deal and with Israel widely believed to possess nuclear weapons”.

The Doomsday Clock references the Ukraine war theatre where “use of nuclear weapons has been floated by Russia”.

Also, the arms control architecture for Europe is unravelling, leaving the continent much less secure. India and Pakistan both have nuclear arsenals, she says.

“North Korea continues to develop its nuclear weapons capacity.”

‘Serious ramifications’
Clark, who was also United Nations Development Programme administrator from 2009 to 2017, a member of The Elders group of global leaders founded by Nelson Mandela in 2007, and is an advocate for multilateralism and nuclear disarmament, says an outright military conflict between China and the United States “would be one between two nuclear powers with serious ramifications for East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and far beyond.”

She advises New Zealand to be wary of Australia’s decision to enter a nuclear submarine purchase programme with the United States.

“There has been much speculation about a potential Pillar Two of the AUKUS agreement which would see others in the region become partners in the development of advanced weaponry,” Clark says.

“This is occurring in the context of rising tensions between the United States and China.

“Many of us share the view that New Zealand should be a voice for de-escalation, not for enthusiastic expansion of nuclear submarine fleets in the Pacific and the development
of more lethal weaponry.”

In the face of the “current global turbulence, New Zealand needs to reemphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament.

Clark says that the years 1985 – the Rainbow Warrior was bombed by French secret agents on 10 July 1985 — and 1986 were critical years in the lead up to New Zealand’s nuclear-free legislation in 1987.

“New Zealanders were clear – we did not want to be defended by nuclear weapons. We wanted our country to be a force for diplomacy and for dialogue, not for warmongering.”

Chronicles humanitarian voyage
The book Eyes of Fire chronicles the humanitarian voyage by the Greenpeace flagship to the Marshall Islands to relocate 320 Rongelap Islanders who were suffering serious community health consequences from the US nuclear tests in the 1950s.

The author, Dr David Robie, founder of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology, was the only journalist on board the Rainbow Warrior in the weeks leading up to the bombing.

His book recounts the voyage and nuclear colonialism, and the transition to climate justice as the major challenge facing the Pacific, although the “Indo-Pacific” rivalries between the US, France and China mean that geopolitical tensions are recalling the Cold War era in the Pacific.

Dr Robie is also critical of Indonesian colonialism in the Melanesian region of the Pacific, arguing that a just-outcome for Jakarta-ruled West Papua and also the French territories of Kanaky New Caledonia and “French” Polynesia are vital for peace and stability in the region.

Eyes of Fire is being published by Little Island Press, which also produced one of his earlier books, Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific.

• Greenpeace executive director Dr Russel Norman is launching Eyes of Fire at the Ellen Melville Centre Pioneer Women’s Hall at 6pm on the bombing anniversary, July 10, following a memorial vigil in the morning on board the current flagship Rainbow Warrior III.
• Eyes of Fire microsite (Little Island Press)

Mediawatch on RNZ today strongly criticised Stuff and YouTube among other media for using Israeli propaganda’s “Outbrain” service.

Outbrain is a company founded by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) military and its technology can be tracked back to a wealthy entrepreneur, which in this case could be a euphemism for a megalomaniac.

He uses the metaphor of a “dome”, likening it to the dome used in warfare.

• LISTEN: The RNZ Mediawatch broadcast on Outbrain (at 30min40)
• READ MORE: Outbrain Discovery Outperforms Search and Social for Israel’s Ministry of Tourism
• Israel’s image crisis and the limits of propaganda – AJ Listening Post
• Israel boosts propaganda funding by $150m to sway global opinion against genocide
• Outbrain’s $1 billion Teads deal: The latest in Israel’s high-stakes acquisition spree
• Other propaganda reports

Outbrain, which publishes content on New Zealand media, picks up what’s out there and converts and distorts it to support Israel. It twists, it turns, it deceives the reader.

Presenter Colin Peacock of RNZ’s Mediawatch programme today advised NZ media to ditch the propaganda service.

Outbrain uses the media in the following way. The content user such as Stuff pays Outbrain and Outbrain pays the user, like Stuff.

“Both parties make money when users click on the content,” said Peacock.

‘Digital Iron Dome’
The content on the Stuff website came via “Digital Iron Dome” named after the State of Genociders’ actual defence system. It is run by a tech entrepreneur quoted on Mediawatch:

“Just like a physical iron dome that scans the open air and watches for any missiles . . . the digital iron dome knows how to scan the internet. We know how to buy media. Pro-Israeli videos and articles and images inside the very same articles going against Israel,” says the developer of the propaganda “dome” machine.

Peacock said the developer had stated that the digital dome delivered “pro-Jewish”* messages to more than 100 million people worldwide on platforms like Al Jazeera, CNN — and last weekend on Stuff NZ — and said this information went undetected as pro-Israel material, ensuring it reached, according to the entrepreneur: “The right audience without interference.”

According to Wikipedia, Outbrain was founded by Yaron Galai and Ori Lahav, officers in the Israeli Navy. Galai sold his company Quigo to AOL in 2007 for $363 million. Lahav worked at an online shopping company acquired by eBay in 2005.

The company is headquartered in New York with global offices in London, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington DC, Cologne, Gurugram, Paris, Ljubljana, Munich, Milan, Madrid, Tokyo, São Paulo, Netanya, Singapore, and Sydney.

Peacock pointed out that other advocacy organisations had already been buying and posting content, there was nothing new about this with New Zealand news media.

But — and this is important — the Media Council ruled in 2017 that Outbrain content was the publisher’s responsibility: that the news media in NZ were responsible for promoted links that were offered to their readers.

“Back then publishers at Stuff and the Herald said they would do more to oversee the content, with Stuff stating it is paid promoted content,” said Peacock, in his role as the media watchdog.

Still ‘big money business’
“But this is also still a big money business and the outfits using these tools are getting much bigger exposure from their arrangements with news publishers such as Stuff,” he said.

He pointed out that the recently appointed Outbrain boss for Australia New Zealand and Singapore, Chris Oxley, had described Outbrain as “a leader in digital media connecting advertisers with premium audiences in contextually relevant environments”.

The watchdog Mediawatch said that news organisations should drop Outbrain.

“Media environments where news and neutrality are important aren’t really relevant environments for political propaganda that’s propagated by online opportunists who know how to make money out of it and also to raise funds while they are at it, ” said Peacock.

“These services like Outbrain are sometimes called ‘recommendation engines’ but our recommendation to news media is don’t use them for the sake of the trust of the people you say you want to earn and keep: the readers,” said Peacock.

Saige England is a journalist and author, and member of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

* Being “pro-Jewish” should not be equated with being pro-genocide nor should antisemitism be levelled at Jews who are against this genocide. The propaganda from Outbrain does a disservice to Palestinians and also to those Jewish people who support all human rights — the right of Palestinians to life and the right to live on their land.

Veteran journalist and editor Stanley Simpson has spoken about the enduring power of storytelling and its role in shaping Fiji’s identity.

Reflecting on his journey at the launch of FijiNikua, a magazine launched by Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka on Christmas Eve, Simpson shared personal anecdotes of growing up in Savusavu, a place he described as a hub of vibrant storytelling.

“I grew up listening to stories that were humorous, serious, tragic, and enlightening,” he said.

• READ MORE: A very difficult 2 years, says PM
• New magazine Fiji Nikua to bring back in-depth journalism and story telling

“These stories instilled values, kept the community together, and reminded us of our principles and identity.”

The launch of FijiNikua is the culmination of years of dedication to the craft of journalism and magazine production.

“This is the fifth magazine I’ve had the privilege of editing. I love the way magazines provide the space to tell stories, no matter how long they may be.”

His career in publishing began in 2006 when he left a secure position at UNDP to pursue a dream.

Storytelling dream ‘persisted’
Teaming up with journalist Imraz Iqbal, they launched Fiji Living magazine, driven by a passion for telling stories that mattered. However, their vision faced challenges during the political unrest later that year, resulting in attacks on their office and colleagues.

“Despite the pain and chaos, the dream of storytelling persisted.”

That resilience led him to helm Mai Life Magazine, producing award-winning journalism that uncovered corruption, celebrated community triumphs and addressed pressing social issues.

In his speech, he expressed gratitude to Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and the coalition government for their role in repealing the MIDA Act, paving the way for greater media freedom.

“For 16 years, our media landscape was constrained. We cannot let this moment pass without leaving a strong legacy of free spirit and free speech for future generations.”

As general secretary of the Fiji Media Association, Simpson announced initiatives to establish a journalism institute and Press Club and revealed that Savusavu will host the Pacific Media Summit in 2026, inviting regional media to converge and celebrate the power of storytelling.

“FijiNikua is more than just a magazine; it’s a platform for meaningful stories.

“In an era dominated by social media and short-form content, this magazine offers a space for complete, in-depth narratives that inspire and connect us.”

The launch event closed with a call to action, inviting all Fijians to embrace and support FijiNikua as a platform for stories that define and reflect the heart of the nation.

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

A group representing local councils in Aotearoa New Zealand is calling for the Local Democracy Reporting programme to be expanded after the media company NZME announced a proposal to close 14 community newspapers.

The LDR programme funds local authority coverage at various publications and is managed and funded by RNZ with support from NZ On Air.

It covers most regions, apart from Waikato, Hawke’s Bay, the Kāpiti Coast, Otago, and parts of Manawatū-Whanganui and Canterbury.

• READ MORE: Local Democracy Reporting
• Other LDR reports at Asia Pacific Report

Local Government NZ, a body representing most councils, said the programme should be expanded to all communities.

“Community newspapers have long played a key role in councils sharing what’s happening locally — from roading, parks and emergency management to big decisions about the future of their region,” LGNZ president Sam Broughton said in a statement.

Broughton was concerned NZME’s plan to shut 14 papers would have a devastating impact on a combined 850,000 readers.

“We are concerned that a move like this could have a negative impact on turnout in next year’s local elections.”

Isolating rural communities
Central Hawke’s Bay mayor Alex Walker said the lack of news coverage would isolate rural communities.

“The axeing of the 14 newspapers would mean that communities like Hawke’s Bay are left with a single subscription-only news outlet, that’s focused more on urban areas,” she said.

“These newspapers are also an effective two-way communication tool between council and the people they serve; particularly our older or more remote population who do not always have access to electronic media.”

The group suggested that the LDR programme’s scope be expanded to cover the rest of the country.

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

The Palau Media Council has condemned a political lawsuit against the publisher of the Island Times as an “assault on press freedom” with the Pacific country facing an election on Tuesday.

In a statement yesterday, the council added that the lawsuit, filed by Surangel and Sons Co. against Times publisher Leilani Reklai over her newspaper’s coverage of tax-related documents that surfaced on social media, was an attempt to undermine the accountability that was vital to democracy.

The statement also said the lawsuit raised “critical concerns about citizens’ access to information and freedom of the press.

• READ MORE: Palau newspaper sued by president’s family company ahead of general election
• Media freedom at stake? Palau newspaper faces defamation lawsuit
• Regional Asia Pacific media freedoms

Palau recently topped the inaugural Pacific Media Freedom Index for press freedom.

“This lawsuit, combined with government’s statements endorsing that Island Times reported mis-information on its coverage of the tax related document and the decision to ban Island Times from Surangel and Sons [distribution] outlets, raises critical concerns about citizens’ access to information and the freedom of the press — both of which are cornerstones of a democratic society,” the statement said.

“The council sees this legal action as an assault on press freedom and an attempt to undermine the accountability that is vital to democracy.”

The statement said that Reklai, one of Palau’s senior journalists, was being targeted simply for reporting on documents that were already in the public domain.

“She did not originate the information but responsibly conveyed what these documents suggested, raising questions about the current administration’s narrative on corporate tax contributions,” the council said.

‘Journalistic duty’
“Reporting on such information is a journalistic duty to ensure transparency in tax policies and government incentives impacting the private sector.

“The Island Times, by publishing these documents, has provided a platform for clarifying public understanding of the new PGST tax law’s impact on major corporations and the actual tax contributions of Surangel and Sons.

“These issues are clearly within the public’s right to know, and the council emphasises that media plays a crucial role in reporting such findings and promoting informed debate.

The council said it stood in solidarity with Reklai and all journalists who strived to find and uphold the truth.

“In a healthy democracy, a free and open press is essential for informed citizens and responsible governance.”

Pacific Journalism Review (PJR) began life three decades ago in Papua New Guinea and recently celebrated a remarkable milestone in Fiji with its 30th anniversary edition and its 47th issue.

Remarkable because it is the longest surviving Antipodean media, journalism and development journal published in the Global South. It is also remarkable because at its birthday event held in early July at the Pacific International Media Conference, no fewer than two cabinet ministers were present — from Fiji and Papua New Guinea — in spite of the journal’s long track record of truth-to-power criticism.

Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister Biman Prasad, a former economics professor at The University of the South Pacific (USP) and a champion of free media, singled out the journal for praise at the event, which was also the occasion of the launch of a landmark new book. As co-editor of Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific with Shailendra Singh and Amit Sarwal, Prasad says the book aimed to analyse recent developments in the Pacific because if sustainable peace and stability remain elusive in the region then long-term development is impeded.

Papua New Guinea’s Information and Communication Technologies Minister Timothy Masiu, who has faced criticism over a controversial draft media policy (now in its fifth version), joined the discussion, expressing concerns about geopolitical agendas impacting on the media and arguing in favour of “a way forward for a truly independent and authentic Pacific media”.

Since its establishment in 1994, the PJR has been far more than a research journal. As an independent publication, it has given strong support to Asia-Pacific investigative journalism, socio-political journalism, political-economy perspectives on the media, photojournalism and political cartooning in its three decades of publication. Its ethos declared:

While one objective of Pacific Journalism Review is research into Pacific journalism theory and practice, the journal has also expanding its interest into new areas of research and inquiry that reflect the broader impact of contemporary media practice and education.

A particular focus is on the cultural politics of the media, including the following issues: new media and social movements, indigenous cultures in the age of globalisation, the politics of tourism and development, the role of the media and the formation of national identity and the cultural influence of Aotearoa New Zealand as a branch of the global economy within the Pacific region.

It also has a special interest in climate change, environmental and development studies in the media and communication and vernacular media in the region.

PJR has also been an advocate of journalism practice-as-research methodologies and strategies, as demonstrated especially in its Frontline section, initiated by one of the mentoring co-editors, former University of Technology Sydney professor and investigative journalist Wendy Bacon, and also developed by retired Monash University Professor Chris Nash. Five of the current editorial board members were at the 30th birthday event: Griffith University’s Professor Mark Pearson; USP’s Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, the conference convenor; Auckland University of Technology’s Khairiah Abdul Rahman; designer Del Abcede; and current editor Dr Philip Cass.

As the founding editor of PJR, I must acknowledge the Australian Journalism Review which is almost double the age of PJR, because this is where I first got the inspiration for establishing the journal. While I was head of journalism at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1993, I was really frustrated at the lack of quality Pacific-specific media and journalism literature and research to draw on as resources for both critical studies and practice-led education.

So I looked longingly at AJR, and also contributed to it. I turned to the London-based Index on Censorship as another publication to emulate. And I thought, why not? We can do that in the Pacific and so I persuaded the University of Papua New Guinea Press to come on board and published the first edition at the derelict campus printer in Waigani in 1994.

We published there until 1998 when PJR moved to USP for five years. Then it was published for 18 years at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), mostly through the Pacific Media Centre, which closed in 2020. Since then it has been published by the nonprofit NGO Asia Pacific Media Network.

When celebrating the 20th anniversary of the journal at AUT in 2014, then AJR editor professor Ian Richards noted the journal’s “dogged perseverance” and contribution to Oceania research declaring:

Today, PJR plays a vital role publishing research from and about this part of the world. This is important for a number of reasons, not least because most academics ground their work in situations with which they are most familiar, and this frequently produces articles which are extremely local. If “local” means London or Paris or New York, then it’s much easier to present your work as “international” than if you live in Port Vila of Pago Pago, Auckland or Adelaide.

Also in 2014, analyst Dr Lee Duffield highlighted the critical role of PJR during the years of military rule and “blatant military censorship” in Fiji, which has eased since the repeal of its draconian Media Industry Development Act in 2023. He remarked:

The same is true of PJR’s agenda-setting in regard to crises elsewhere: jailing of journalists in Tonga, threatened or actual media controls in Tahiti or PNG, bashing of an editor in Vanuatu by a senior government politician, threats also against the media in Solomon Islands, and reporting restrictions in Samoa.

At the 30th anniversary launch, USP’s Adjunct Professor in development studies and governance Dr Vijay Naidu complimented the journal on the wide range of topics covered by its more than 1,100 research articles. He said the journal had established itself as a critical conscience with respect to Asia-Pacific socio-political and development dilemmas, and looked forward to the journal meeting future challenges.

I outlined many of those future challenges in a recent interview with Global Voices correspondent Mong Palatino. Issues that have become more pressing for the journal include responding to the changing geopolitical realities in the Pacific and collaborating even more creatively and closely on development, the climate crisis, and unresolved decolonisation issues with the region’s journalists, educators and advocates. To address these challenges, the PJR team have been working on an innovative new publishing strategy over the past few months.

View the latest Pacific Journalism Review: Gaza, genocide and media – PJR 30 years on, special double edition. The journal is indexed by global research databases such as Informit and Ebsco, but it is also available via open access for a Pacific audience here on the Tuwhera publications platform at Auckland University of Technology.

This article is republished from ANU’s Devpolicy Blog. Dr David Robie is founding editor of Pacific Journalism Review, former director of the Pacific Media Centre, and previously a head of journalism at both the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of the South Pacific.

A pivotal book, Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific, has been released at the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference hosted by the University of the South Pacific earlier this month in Suva, Fiji.

This conference, the first of its kind in 20 years, served as a crucial platform to address the pressing challenges and core issues faced by Pacific media.

Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, the convenor of the conference and co-editor of the new book, emphasised the conference’s primary goals — to stimulate research, discussion, and debate on Pacific media, and to foster a deeper understanding of its challenges.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Media Conference reports

“Our region hasn’t escaped the calamitous impacts of the two biggest events that have shaken the media sector — digital disruption and the covid-19 pandemic,” he said.

“Both events have posed significant challenges for news media organisations and journalists, to the point of being an existential threat to the industry as we know it. This isn’t very well known or understood outside the news media industry.”

Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific, authored by Dr Singh, Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad, and Dr Amit Sarwal, offers a comprehensive collection of interdisciplinary research, insights, and analyses at the intersection of media, conflict, peacebuilding, and development in the Pacific – a region experiencing rapid and profound change.

The book builds on Dr Singh’s earlier work with Professor Prasad, Media and Development: Issues and Challenges in the Pacific Islands, published 16 years ago.

Dr Singh noted that media issues had grown increasingly complex due to heightened poverty, underdevelopment, corruption, and political instability.

“Media and communication play vital roles in the framing of conflict, security, and development in public and political discourses, ultimately influencing progression or regression in peace and stability. This is particularly true in the era of digital media,” Dr Singh said.

Dr Amit Sarwal said that the primary aim of the new book was to address and revisit critical questions linking media, peacebuilding, and development in the Pacific. He expressed a desire to bridge gaps in training, publishing, and enhance practical applications in these vital areas particularly amongst young journalists in the Pacific.

Professor Biman Prasad is hopeful that this collection will shed light on the intricate relationship between media, peace, and development in the Pacific. He stressed the importance of prioritising planning, strategising, and funding in this sector.

“By harnessing the potential of media for peacebuilding, stakeholders in the Pacific can work towards a more peaceful and prosperous future for all,” Professor Prasad added.

Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific has been published under a joint collaboration of Australia’s Kula Press and India’s Shhalaj Publishing House.

The book features nine chapters authored by passionate researchers and academics, including David Robie, John Rabuogi Ahere, Sanjay Ramesh, Kalinga Seneviratne, Kylie Navuku, Narayan Gopalkrishnan, Hurriyet Babacan, Usha Sundar Harris, and Asha Chand.

Dr Robie is founding editor of Pacific Journalism Review, which also celebrated 30 years of publishing at the book launch.

The 2024 Pacific International Media Conference was organised in partnership with the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN).

• Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific, edited by Shailendra Singh, Biman Prasad and Amit Sarwal. Suva, Fiji: Kula Press; Shhalaj.
  

As an economy, Fiji has paid a “very high price for being unable to protect freedom” but people can speak and criticise the government freely now, says Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad.

He highlighted the “high price” while launching the new book titled Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific, which he also co-edited, at the Pacific International Media conference in Suva last week.

Prasad, a former University of the South Pacific (USP) economics professor, said that he, in a deeply personal way, knew how the economy had been affected when he saw the debt numbers and what the government had inherited.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Media Conference reports

Professor Prasad says the government had reintroduced media self-regulation and “we can actually feel the freedom everywhere, including in Parliament”.

USP head of journalism associate professor Shailendra Singh and former USP lecturer and co-founder of The Australia Today Dr Amrit Sarwal also co-edited the book with Professor Prasad.

While also speaking during the launch, PNG Minister for Information and Communications Technology Timothy Masiu expressed support for the Fiji government repealing the media laws that curbed freedom in Fiji in the recent past.

He said his Department of ICT had set up a social media management desk to monitor the ever-increasing threats on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and other online platforms.

Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad speaking at the book launch. Video: Fijivillage News

• promote media self-regulation;
• improve government media capacity;
• roll out media infrastructure for all; and
• diversify content and quota usage for national interest.

He said that to elevate media professionalism in PNG, the policy called for developing media self-regulation in the country without direct government intervention.

Strike a balance
Masiu said the draft policy also intended to strike a balance between the media’s ongoing role in transparency and accountability on the one hand, and the dissemination of developmental information, on the other hand.

He said it was not an attempt by the government to restrict the media in PNG and the media in PNG enjoyed “unprecedented freedom” and an ability to report as they deemed appropriate.

The PNG Minister said their leaders were constantly being put in the spotlight.

While they did not necessarily agree with many of the daily news media reports, the governmenr would not “suddenly move to restrict the media” in PNG in any form.

The 30th anniversary edition of the research journal Pacific Journalism Review, founded by former USP Journalism Programme head Professor David Robie at the University of Papua New Guinea, was also launched at the event.

The PJR has published more than 1100 research articles over the past 30 years and is the largest media research archive in the region.

Republished from Fijivillage News with permission.

ADDRESS: By Professor Vijay Naidu

I have been given the honour of launching the 30th anniversary edition of the Pacific Journalism Review (PJR) at this highly significant gathering of media professionals and scholars from the Asia Pacific region.

I join our chief quests and others to commend and congratulate Dr Shailendra Singh, the head of USP Journalism, and his team for the organisation of the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference.

This evening, we are also gathered to celebrate the 30th birthday of Pacific Journalism Review/Te Koakoa.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Media Conference reports

At the outset, I would like to warmly congratulate and thank PJR designer Del Abcede for the cover design of 30th anniversary issue as well as the striking photoessay she has done with David Robie.

Hearty congratulations too to founding editor Dr David Robie and current editor Dr Philip Cass for compiling the edition.

The publicity blurb about the launch states:

“USP Journalism is proud to celebrate this milestone with a journal that has been a beacon of media excellence and a crucial partner in fostering journalistic integrity in the Pacific.”

This is a most apt description of the journal, and what it has fostered over three decades.

Dr Lee Duffield and others have written comprehensively on the editorials and articles covered by the Pacific Journalism Review.

I will just list some of the diverse subject matter covered over the past 10 years:

• PJR edition celebrating the journal’s existence for 20 years with the coverage of political journalism in the Asia Pacific — a book edition (2015);
• Documentary Practice in the South Pacific (2015);
• Endangered Journalists (2016);
• Journalism Education in the Pacific (2016);
• Climate Change in Asia-Pacific (2017);
• Journalism Education in Asia-Pacific (2017);
• Disasters, Cyclones and Communication (2018);
• Journalism Under Duress (2018);
• Terrorism Dilemmas and Democracy (2019);
• Media Freedom in Melanesia (2020);
• Climate Crisis and Corona Virus: Rethinking the social world (2020);
• Pacific Crises: Covid, Climate Emergency and West Papua (2021);
• Media Change, Adaptation and Culture (2022);
• Governance, Disinformation and Training (2023); and
• Gaza, genocide and media — PJR 30 years on, another special double edition (2024)

The editorial in the 30th anniversary double edition manifests this focus — “Will journalism survive?”, by David Robie

Unfolding genocide
Mainstream media, except for Al Jazeera, have collectively failed to provide honest accounts of the unfolding genocide in Gaza, as well as settler violence, and killings in the West Bank. International media stand condemned for its complicity in the gross human rights violations in Palestine.

The media have been caught out by the scores of reports directly sent from Gaza of the bombings, maiming and murder of mainly women, children and babies, and the turning into rubble of the world’s largest open-air prison.

The widespread protests the world over by ordinary citizens and university students clearly show that the media is not trusted.

Can the media survive? Indeed!

These are not the best of times for the media.

“At the time when we celebrated the second decade of the journal’s critical inquiry at Auckland University of Technology with a conference in 2014, our theme was ‘Political journalism in the Asia Pacific’, and our mood about the mediascape in the region was far more positive than it is today,” writes David.

“Three years later, we marked the 10th anniversary of the Pacific Media Centre, with a conference and a rather gloomier ‘Journalism under duress’ slogan.”

The editorial continues:

“Gaza has become not just a metaphor for a terrible state of dystopia in parts of in the world, it has also become an existential test for journalists — do we stand up for peace and justice and the right of a people to survive under the threat of ethnic cleansing and against genocide, or do we do nothing and remain silent in the face of genocide being carried out with impunity in front of our very eyes? The answer is simple surely.

“And it is about saving journalism, our credibility and our humanity as journalists.” (emphasis added).

Contemporary issues
Besides the editorial, the 30th anniversary edition continues the PJR tradition of addressing contemporary issues head on with 11 research articles, 2 commentaries, 7 book reviews, a photo-essay, 2 obituaries of Australia’s John Pilger and West Papua’s Arnold Ap, and 4 frontline pieces. A truly substantial double issue of the journal.

The USP notice on this 30th anniversary launch says “30 years and going strong”. Sounds like the Johnny Walker whisky advertisement, “still going strong”. This is an admirable achievement as well as in PJR’s future.

It is in contrast to the NZ Journalism Review (University of Canterbury), for example, which survived only for nine years.

Founded at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1994 by David Robie, PJR was published there for four years and at the University of the South Pacific for a further four years, then at Auckland University of Technology for 18 years before finally being hosted since 2021 at its present home, Asia Pacific Media Network.

According to Dr Robie, Pacific Journalism Review has received many good wishes for its birthday. Some of these are published in this journal. For a final message in the editorial, he recalled AUT’s senior journalism lecturer Greg Treadwell who wrote in 2020:

“‘Many Aotearoa New Zealand researchers found their publishing feet because PJR was dedicated to the region and interested in their work. PJR is central to journalism studies, and so to journalism and journalism education, in this country and further abroad. Long may that continue’.

“In answer to our editorial title: Yes, journalism will survive, and it will thrive through new and innovative niche forms, if democracy is to survive.

“Ra whānau Pacific Journalism Review!

Steadfast commitment
I have two quick remaining things to do: Professor Wadan Narsey’s congratulatory message, and a book presentation.

Professor Narsey pays tribute to David Robie for his steadfast commitment to Pacific journalism and congratulates him for the New Zealand honour bestowed on him in the King’s Birthday honours. He is very thankful that David published 37 of his articles on a range of issues during the dark days of censorship in Fiji under the Bainimarama and Sayeed-Khaiyum dictatorship.

I wish to present a copy of the recently published Epeli Hau’ofa: His Life and Legacy to Professor David Robie and Del Abcede to express Claire Slatter and my profound appreciation of the massive amount of work they have done to keep PJR alive and well.

It is my pleasure to launch the 30th anniversary edition of PJR.

‘Far more than a research journal’
In response, Dr Robie noted that PJR had published more than 1100 research articles over its three decades and it was the largest single Pacific media research repository but it had always been “far more than a research journal”.

“As an independent publication, it has given strong support to investigative journalism, sociopolitical journalism, political economy of the media, photojournalism and political cartooning — they have all been strongly reflected in the character of the journal,” he said.

“It has also been a champion of journalism practice-as-research methodologies and strategies, as reflected especially in its Frontline section, pioneered by retired Australian professor and investigative journalist Wendy Bacon.

“Keeping to our tradition of cutting edge and contemporary content, this anniversary edition raises several challenging issues such as Julian Assange and Gaza.”

He thanked current editor Philip Cass for his efforts — “he was among the earliest contributors when we began in Papua New Guinea” — and the current team, assistant editor Khairiah A. Rahman, Nicole Gooch, extraordinary mentors Wendy Bacon and Chris Nash, APMN chair Heather Devere, Adam Brown, Nik Naidu and Gavin Ellis.

He also paid tribute to many who have contributed to the journal through peer reviewing and the editorial board over many years — such as Dr Lee Duffield and professor Mark Pearson of Griffith University, who was also editor of Australian Journalism Review for many years and was an inspiration to PJR — “and he is right here with us at the conference.”

Among others have been the Fiji conference convenor, USP’s associate professor Shailendra Singh, and professor Trevor Cullen of Edith Cowan University, who is chair of next year’s World Journalism Education Association conference in Perth.

Dr Robie also singled out designer Del Abcede for special tribute for her hard work carrying the load of producing the journal for many years “and keeping me sane — the question is am I keeping her sane? Anyway, neither I nor Philip would be standing here without her input.”

But it has always been “far more than a research journal”, he added at the launch of the 30th anniversary edition at the Pacific International Media Conference in Fiji yesterday.

Speaking in response to The University of the South Pacific’s adjunct professor in development studies and governance Vijay Naidu who launched the edition, he spoke of the innovative and cutting edge style of PJR.

• WATCH NBC NEWS: Launch of Pacific Journalism Review 30th edition
• READ MORE: Professor Vijay Naidu’s PJR launch comments
• Other Pacific Media 2024 reports

“As an independent publication, it has given strong support to investigative journalism, sociopolitical journalism, political economy of the media, photojournalism and political cartooning — they have all been strongly reflected in the character of the journal,” he said.

“It has also been a champion of journalism practice-as-research methodologies and strategies, as reflected especially in its Frontline section, pioneered by retired Australian professor and investigative journalist Wendy Bacon.

“Keeping to our tradition of cutting edge and contemporary content, this anniversary edition raises several challenging issues such as Julian Assange and Gaza.”

He thanked current editor Philip Cass for his efforts — “he was among the earliest contributors when we began in Papua New Guinea” — and the current team, assistant editor Khairiah A. Rahman, Nicole Gooch, “extraordinary mentors” Wendy Bacon and Dr Chris Nash, APMN chair Dr Heather Devere, Dr Adam Brown, Nik Naidu and Dr Gavin Ellis.

Paid tribute to many
He also paid tribute to many who have contributed to the journal through peer reviewing and the editorial board over many years — such as Dr Lee Duffield and Professor Mark Pearson of Griffith University, who was also editor of Australian Journalism Review for many years and was an inspiration to PJR — “and he is right here with us at the conference.”

Among others have been the Fiji conference convenor, USP’s associate professor Shailendra Singh, and professor Trevor Cullen of Edith Cowan University, who is chair of next year’s World Journalism Education Association conference in Perth.

Dr Robie also singled out designer Del Abcede for special tribute for her hard work carrying the load of producing the journal for many years “and keeping me sane — the question is am I keeping her sane? Anyway, neither I nor Philip would be standing here without her input.”

He also complimented AUT’s Tuwhera research publishing platform for their “tremendous support” since the PJR archive was hosted there in 2016.

The new book, Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific, was also launched at the event.

• Launch of Pacific Journalism Review 30th edition (@01:20).  FB video: NBC News

Meanwhile, New Zealand media analyst and commentator Dr Gavin Ellis mentioned the Pacific Journalism Review milestone in his weekly Knightly Views column:

On a brighter note

This month marks the 30^th anniversary of Pacific Journalism Review, the journal founded and championed by journalist and university professor David Robie. PJR has provided a unique bridge between academics and practitioners in the study of media and journalism in our part of the world.

The journal is now edited by Dr Philip Cass, although Robie continues to be directly involved as associate editor and editorial manager. The latest edition (which they co-edited) explores links between journalists in the South Pacific with the conflict in Gaza, together with analysis of the wider role of media in coverage of the plight of Palestinians.

A special 30th anniversary printed double issue is being launched at the Pacific International Media Conference in Fiji. The online edition of PJR is now available here.

Sustaining a publication like Pacific Journalism Review is no easy feat, and it is a tribute to Robie, Cass and others associated with the journal that it is entering its fourth decade strongly and with challenging content.

A New Zealand author, journalist and media educator who has covered the Asia-Pacific region since the 1970s says liberation “must come” for Kanaky/New Caledonia.

Professor David Robie sailed on board Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior until it was bombed by French secret agents in New Zealand in July 1985 and wrote the book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior.

He has also been arrested at gun point in New Caledonia while on a mission reporting on the indigenous Kanak uprising in the 1980s and wrote Blood on their Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific.

• LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES: Kanak ‘liberation must be granted’
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia crisis reports

The Asia Pacific Report editor told RNZ Pacific’s Lydia Lewis France was “torpedoing” any hopes of Kanaky independence.

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

Pacific Journalism Review, the Pacific and New Zealand’s only specialist media research journal, is celebrating 30 years of publishing this year — and it will mark the occasion at the Pacific Media International Conference in Fiji in July.

Founded at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1994, PJR also published for five years at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji before moving on to AUT’s Pacific Media Centre (PMC).  It is currently being published by the Auckland-based Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN).

Founding editor Dr David Robie, formerly director of the PMC before he retired from academic life three years ago, said: “This is a huge milestone — three decades of Pacific media research, more than 1000 peer-reviewed articles and an open access database thanks to Tuwhera.

• READ MORE: The Pacific Media International Conference 2024
• The Pacific Journalism Review website

“These days the global research publishing model often denies people access to research if they don’t have access to libraries, so open access is critically important in a Pacific context.”

Current editor Dr Philip Cass told Asia Pacific Report: “For us to return to USP will be like coming home.

“For 30 years PJR has been the only journal focusing exclusively on media and journalism in the Pacific region.

“Our next edition will feature articles on the Pacific, New Zealand, Australia and Southeast Asia.

“We are maintaining our commitment to the Islands while expanding our coverage of the region.”

Both Dr Cass and Dr Robie are former academic staff at USP; Dr Cass was one of the founding lecturers of the degree journalism programme and launched the student journalist newspaper Wansolwara and Dr Robie was head of journalism 1998-2002.

The 20th anniversary of the journal was celebrated with a conference at AUT University. At the time, an Indonesian-New Zealand television student, Sasya Wreksono, made a short documentary about PJR and Dr Lee Duffield of Queensland University of Technology wrote an article about the journal’s history.

The Life of Pacific Journalism Review.  Video: PMC/Sasya Wreksono

Many journalism researchers from the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) and other networks have been strong contributors to PJR, including professors Chris Nash and Wendy Bacon, who pioneered the Frontline section devoted to investigative journalism and innovative research.

The launch of the 30th anniversary edition of PJR will be held at the conference on July 4-6 with Professor Vijay Naidu, who is adjunct professor in the disciplines of development studies and governance at USP’s School of Law and Social Sciences.

Several of the PJR team will be present at USP, including longtime designer Del Abcede.

A panel on research journalism publication will also be held at the conference with several editors and former editors taking part, including former editor Professor Mark Pearson of the Australian Journalism Review. This is being sponsored by the APMN, one of the conference partners.

Conference chair Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, head of journalism at USP, is also on the editorial board of PJR and a key contributor.

A community-based Asia-Pacific network of academics, journalists and activists has now gone online with an umbrella website for its publications, current affairs and research.

The nonprofit Asia Pacific Media Network, publishers of Pacific Journalism Review research journal, has until now relied on its Facebook page.

“The APMN is addressing a gap in the region for independent media commentary and providing a network for journalists and academics,” said director Dr Heather Devere.

• READ MORE: The Pacific Journalism Review open access research website

“Our network aims to protect the free dissemination of information that might challenge political elites, exposing discrimination and corruption, as well as analysing more traditional media outlets.”

Pacific Journalism Review editor Dr Philip Cass said: “For 30 years, PJR has been the only journal focusing exclusively on media and journalism in the Pacific region.”

APMN has members in Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Indonesia and the Philippines and has links to the Manila-based AMIC, Asia-Pacific’s largest communication research centre.

Deputy director and founding editor of PJR, Dr David Robie, was awarded the 2015 AMIC Asia Communication Award for his services to education, research, institution building and journalism.

Conference partner
The new website publishes news, newsletters, submissions, and research, and the network is a partner in the forthcoming international Pacific Media Conference being hosted by the University of the South Pacific on July 4-6.

APMN is also a partner with Auckland’s Mount Roskill-based Whānau Community Centre and Hub.

Many of the team involved were a core group in AUT’s Pacific Media Centre which closed at the end of 2020.

• APMN’s website can be accessed here

By Aisha Azeemah in Suva

With the lights on one of his sneakers blinking as he ran through the gallery, a little boy looked up at several works of art. One of them was a sculpture of his grandfather: the man who changed how we see the Pacific — Epeli Hau’ofa, a name renowned across the Pacific as writer, as artist, as mentor, as friend.

The great Hau’ofa certainly wore many hats and made his mark on many lives, and his influence did not end the day his breath did in 2009.

The Tongan-Fijian writer and anthropologist was, among other things, the founder of the University of the South Pacific’s Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies.

• READ MORE:  Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies

A man who recognised the need for a place where fellow creatives could create, he can be credited with nurturing several generations of Pacific writers and artists.

His own work, particularly his side-splitting short stories and his 1993 paper titled “Our Sea of Islands” which sought to destroy the notion that Pacific Islands were small and insignificant in the larger world around us, will live on forever in the hands of academics.

But now, those who knew and loved the man have gone the extra step to ensure his name lives on. On March 7, 2024, a book titled “Remembering Epeli Hau’ofa: His Life and Legacy” was launched at the University of the South Pacific’s Laucala Campus in Fiji.

The book, a compilation of the memories of and odes to Hau’ofa, was compiled and edited by Eric Waddell, Professor Vijay Naidu and Dr Claire Slatter.

Poetry opening
Current director of the Oceania Centre for Arts and a renowned artist himself, Larry Thomas, called the book launch to order. Professor Sudesh Mishra read out a poem he wrote about Hau’ofa that can be found in the opening of the book itself.

The book was officially launched by USP Deputy Vice-Chancellor Dr Giulio Masasso Tu’ikolongahau Paunga, sharing the tale of a younger Hau’ofa amused at Dr Paunga’s very formal tie to an otherwise informal event years ago, a look he recreated for the launch event.

“Remembering Epeli Hau’ofa is a book about a visionary,” the book’s foreword by Archbishop Emeritus of the Anglican Church, New Zealand and Polynesia, Winston Halapua says.

“Epeli was a leader who opened our eyes to the pulsing reality around us, the reality which sustains and connects us.

“This book, written in his memory, draws a portrait of a man with great mana who will continue to have wide influence on thinking and action throughout the region.”

Hau’ofa’s love for the Pacific and our oceans is legendary. As such, the book would have been incomplete without an excerpt of his own words expressing the feeling of belonging shared by all Pacific Islanders. Hau’ofa wrote:

“Wherever I am at any given moment, there is comfort in the knowledge stored at the back of my mind that somewhere in Oceania is a piece of earth to which I belong.

“In the turbulence of life, it is my anchor. No one can take it away from me. I may never return to it, not even as mortal remains, but it will always be homeland.

“We all have or should have homelands: family, community, national homelands. And to deny human beings the sense of homeland is to deny them a deep spot on earth to anchor their roots.”

Enlivened by humour
The book launch, a highly emotional event for some attendees but enlivened by humour in every speech and conversation in a very Hau’ofa style was an apt way to celebrate the comedic genius’ life.

His own family, community, and fellow nationals, it seems, will never forget him.

Several notable art pieces were displayed at the Oceania Centre for the book launch, including the piece by Lingikoni E. Vaka’uta that serves as the cover art for the book, an oil on canvas piece titled “The Legend of Maui slowing the sun”.

Another is “Boso”, a 1998 welded scrap metal sculpture of Epeli Hau’ofa himself, by artist Ben Fong.

The event was attended by noted academics, artists, friends, fans of the late Epeli Hau’ofa, and several members of the Hau’ofa family, including his son and aforementioned grandson.

Epeli Hau’ofa’s stories are sure to knock the wind out of you.

• The book “Remembering Epeli Hau’ofa: His Life And Legacy” is free to download here.

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

Just months before the outbreak of the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza after the deadly assault on southern Israel by Hamas resistance fighters, Australian investigative journalist and researcher Antony Loewenstein published an extraordinarily timely book, The Palestine Laboratory.

In it he warned that a worst-case scenario — “long feared but never realised, is ethnic cleansing against occupied Palestinians or population transfer, forcible expulsion under the guise of national security”.

Or the claimed fig leaf of “self defence”, the obscene justification offered by beleaguered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his two-month war of vengeance, death and destruction unleashed upon the people of Palestine, both in the Gaza Strip and the Occupied West Bank that has killed at least 14,850 Gazans — the majority of them women and children — and more than 218 West Bank Palestinians.

• READ MORE:  ‘Can’t believe I’m out’: First Palestinians released from Israeli prisons
• Israel-Hamas war live: PM says 12 Thai captives released amid Gaza truce
• Prisoners, captives set to be released after Gaza truce takes hold
• The Palestine Laboratory wins the 2023 Walkley Award for books
• Beware the Israeli-led ‘war on terror’ – Antony Lowenstein

As Loewenstein had warned in his 265-page exposé on the Israeli armaments and surveillance industry and how the Zionist nation “exports the technology of occupation around the world”, a catastrophic war could trigger an overwhelming argument within Israel that Palestinians were “undermining the state’s integrity”.

That catastrophe has indeed arrived. But in the process as part of growing worldwide protests in support of an immediate ceasefire and calls for a “free Palestine” long-term solution, Israel has exposed itself as a cruel, ruthless and morally corrupt state prepared to slaughter women and children, attack hospital and medical workers, kill journalists and shun international norms of military conflict to achieve its goal of destroying Hamas, the elected government of Gaza.

Interviewed by Al Jazeera today after a four-day temporary truce between Israel and Hamas took effect, author Loewenstein described the conflict as “apocalyptic” and the most devastating in almost 80 years since the Second World War.

He also blamed the death and destruction on Western countries that had allowed the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) to “get away with things that no other country could because of total global impunity”.

‘Genocide Joe’
The United States, led by a feeble and increasingly lame duck President Joe Biden – “genocide Joe”, as some US protesters have branded him — and several Western countries have lost credibility over any debate about global human rights.

As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan says, the US and the West have enabled the ethnic cleansing and displayed a double standard by condemning Hamas for its atrocities on October 7 while giving Israel a blank cheque for its crimes against humanity and war crimes in both Gaza and the Occupied West Bank.

We are relieved to confirm the safe release of 24 hostages.
We have facilitated this release by transporting them from Gaza to the Rafah border, marking the real-life impact of our role as a neutral intermediary between the parties.

— ICRC in Israel & OT (@ICRC_ilot) November 24, 2023

In fact, as Erdoğan has increasingly condemned the Zionists, he has branded Israel as a “terror state” and says that Israeli leaders should be tried for war crimes at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

It has also been disturbing that President Biden has publicly repeated Israeli lies in the conflict and Western media has often disseminated these falsehoods.

Media analysts say there is systemic “bias in favour of Israel” which is “irreparably damaging” the credibility of some news agencies and outlets considered “mainstream” in the eyes of Arabs and others.

Loewenstein, who was awarded Australia’s 2023 Walkley Award in the journalism book category tonight,  warned in The Palestine Laboratory that “an Israeli operation might be undertaken to ensure a mass exodus, with the prospect of Palestinians returning to their homes a remote possibility” (p. 211).

Many critics fear the bottom line for Israel’s war on Palestine, is not just the elimination of Hamas — which was elected the government of Gaza in 2006 — but the destruction of the enclave’s infrastructure, hence the savage assault on 25 of the Strip’s 32 hospitals (including the Indonesian Hospital) and bombing of 49 percent of the housing for 2.3 million people.

Loewenstein reports:

“In a 2016 poll conducted by [the] Pew Research Centre, nearly half of Israeli Jews supported the transfer or expulsion of Arabs. And some 60 percent of Israeli Jews backed complete separation from Arabs, according to a study in 2022 by the Israeli Democracy Institute. The majority of Israeli Jews polled online in 2022 supported the expulsion of people accused of disloyalty to the state, a policy advocated by popular far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir” (p. 211).

Dangerous escalation
Loewenstein saw the reelection in November 2022 of Netanyahu as Prime Minister and as head of the most right-wing coalition in the Israel’s history as ushering in a dangerous escalation of existential threats facing Palestinians.

The author, who is himself of Jewish origin, cites liberal Israeli columnist and journalist Gideon Levy in Haaretz reminding his readers of “an uncomfortable truth” after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Levy wrote that the long-held Israeli belief that military power “was all that matters to stay alive , was a lie” (p. 206). Levy wrote”

“The lesson Israel should be learning from Ukraine is the opposite. Military power is not enough, it is impossible to survive alone, we need true international support, which can’t be bought just be developing drones and drop bombs.”

Levy argued that the “age of the Jewish state paralysing the world when it cries “anti-semitism” was coming to a close.

The daily television scenes — especially on Al Jazeera and TRT World News, arguably offering the most balanced, comprehensive and nuanced coverage of the massacres (in contrast to such media as BBC and CNN with journalists embedded with the Israeli Defence Force — have borne witness to the rogue status of Israel.

Turkey’s President Erdoğan has been one of the strongest critics of Netanyahu’s war machine, warning that Israel’s leaders will be made accountable for their war crimes.

His condemnation has been paralleled by multiple petitions and actions seeking International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutions against Israeli leaders, including an arrest warrant for Netanyahu himself.

Toxic ideology
According to Loewenstein, Israel’s “Palestine laboratory” and its toxic ideology thrives on global disruption and violence. As he says:

“The worsening climate crisis will benefit Israel’s defence sector in a future where nation-states do not respond with active measures to reduce the impacts of surging temperatures but instead ghetto-ise themselves, Israeli-style. What this means in practice is higher walls and tighter borders, greater surveillance of refugees, facial recognition, drones, smart fences, and biometric databases (p. 207).”

By 2025, Loewenstein points out, the border surveillance industrial complex is estimated to become worth US$68 billion, and Israeli companies such as Elbeit Systems are “guaranteed to be among the main beneficiaries.”

Three years ago Israel spent $US22 billion on its military and was is 12th biggest military supplier in the world with sales of more than $US345 million.

The potency of Palestine as a laboratory for methods of controlling “unwanted people” and a separation of populations is the primary focus of Loewenstein’s book. The many case studies of Israeli apartheid with corporations showcasing and profiting from the suppression and persecution of Palestinians are featured.

The book is divided into seven chapters, with a conclusion, headed “Selling weapons to anybody who wants them,” “September 11 was good for business,” “Preventing an outbreak of peace,” “Selling Israeli occupation to the world,” “The enduring appeal of Israeli domination,” “Israel mass surveillance in the brain of your phone,” and “Social media companies don’t like Palestinians.”

How Israel has such influence over Silicon Valley — along with many Western governments — is “both obvious and ominous for the future of marginalised groups, because it is not just the Jewish state that has discovered the Achilles heel of big tech”.

‘Real harm’ against minorities
Examples cited by Loewenstein include India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi successfully demanding that Facebook remove posts critical of his government’s handling of the covid pandemic of 2020, and evidence of Facebook posts causing “real harm against minorities” in Myanmar and Russia as well as India and Palestine.

The company’s global policy team argued that they risked having the platform shutdown completely if they did not comply with government requests. Profits before human rights.

Loewenstein refers to social media calls for genocide against the Muslim minority having “moved from the fringes to the mainstream”. Condemning this, Loewenstein remarks: “Leaving these comments up, which routinely happens, is deeply irresponsible” (p. 197).

He argues that his book is a warning that “despotism has never been so easily shareable with compact technology”. He explains:

“The ethnonationalist ideas behind it are appealing to millions of people because democratic leaders have failed to deliver. A Pew Research Centre survey across 34 countries in 2020 found only 44 percent of those polled were content with democracy, while 52 percent were not. Ethnonationalist ideology grows when accountable democracy withers, Israel is the ultimate model and goal” (p. 16).

The September 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and Washington “turbocharged Israel’s defence sector and internationalised the war on terror that the Jewish state had been fighting for decades” (p. 49).

War against journalists
Along with health workers (200 killed and the total climbing), journalists have suffering a heavy price for reporting Israel’s relentless bombardment with at least 48 dead (including media workers in Lebanon, the death toll has topped 60).

The Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters without Borders has accused Israel of seeking to “eradicate journalism in Gaza” by refusing to heed calls to protect media workers.

“The situation is dire for Palestinian journalists trapped in the enclave, where ten have been killed in the past three days, bringing the total media death toll in Gaza since the start of the war to 48. The past weekend was the deadliest for the media since the war between Israel and Hamas began.”

RSF also said Gaza from north to south had “become a cemetery for journalists”.

Of the 10 journalists killed between November 18-20, at least three were killed in the course of their work or because of it. They were: Hassouna Sleem, director of the Palestinian online news agency Quds News, and freelance photo-journalist Sary Mansour who were killed during an Israeli assault on the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on November 18.

According to RSF, they had received an online death threat in connection with their work 24 hours prior to them being killed.

Journalist Bilal Jadallah was killed by an Israeli strike that hit his car directly as he was trying to evacuate from Gaza City via the district of Zeitoun on the morning of November 19.

He was a prominent figure within the Palestinian media community and held several positions including chair of the board of Press House-Palestine, an organisation supporting independent media and journalists in Gaza.

Killed with family members
Most of the journalists were killed with family members when Israeli strikes hit their homes, reports RSF.

It is offensive that British and US news media should refer to Hamas “terrorists” in their news bulletins, regardless of the fact that the US and UK governments have declared them as such.

As a former journalist with British and French news agencies for several years, I wonder what has happened to the maxim that had applied since the post-Second World War anticolonialism struggles — one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. Thus “neutral” descriptions were generally used.

As President Erdoğan, has already pointed out, Hamas are nationalists fighting against 75 years of Zionist Israeli colonialism and apartheid. Palestine is the occupied territory; Israel is the illegal occupier.

Loewenstein argues in his book that Israel has sold so much defence equipment and surveillance technologies, such as the phone-hacking tool Pegasus, that it had hoped to “insulate itself” from any political backlash to its endless occupation.

However, the tide has turned with several countries such as South Africa and Turkey closing Israeli embassies and recalling their diplomats and as demonstrated by the UN General Assembly’s overwhelming vote last month for an immediate humanitarian truce.

There is a shift in global opinion in response to the massive price that the Palestinian people have been paying for Israeli apartheid and repression for 75 years. While Iran has long been portrayed by the West as a threat to regional peace, the relentless and ruthless bombardment of the Gaza Strip for seven weeks has demonstrated to the world that Israel is actually the threat.

However, Israel is on the wrong side of history. Whatever it does, the Palestinians will remain defiant and resilient.

Palestine will become a free, sovereign state. It is essential that international community pressure ensures that this happens for a just and lasting peace.

• The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel exports the technology of occupation around the world, by Antony Loewenstein. Scribe Publications, Melbourne, 2023. Reviewer Dr David Robie is editor and publisher of Asia Pacific Report.

A major daily newspaper in Solomon Islands received nearly US$140,000 in funding from the Chinese government in return for pledges to “promote the truth about China’s generosity and its true intentions to help develop” the Pacific Islands country, according to a leaked document and interviews.

The revelation comes amid Western alarm over growing Chinese influence over the strategically located country, which switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 2019 and then signed a surprise security agreement with Beijing last year.

Solomon Islands journalists have complained of a worsening media environment, as well as what is perceived to be a growing pro-China slant from local outlets that have accepted funding from the People’s Republic.

• READ MORE: How China’s creeping influence undermines Pacific media freedom — Shailendra Singh
• Other Pacific media and China reports
• The OCCRP website

A document obtained by OCCRP shows how one of these outlets, the Solomon Star newspaper, received Chinese assistance after providing repeated and explicit assurances that it would push messages favorable to Beijing.

Reporters obtained a July 2022 draft funding proposal from the Solomon Star to China’s embassy in Honiara in which the paper requested SBD 1,150,000 (about $137,000) for equipment, including a replacement for its aging newspaper printer and a broadcast tower for its radio station, PAOA FM.

The Solomon Star said in the proposal that decrepit equipment was causing editions to come out late and “curtailing news flow about China’s generous and lightning economic and infrastructure development in Solomon Islands.”

The document shows the Chinese embassy had initially offered SBD 350,000 in 2021, but revised this number upward in recognition of the newspaper’s needs.

A dozen pledges
In total, the proposal contains roughly a dozen separate pledges to use the Chinese-funded equipment to promote China’s “goodwill” and role as “the most generous and trusted development partner” in Solomon Islands.

In interviews, both the Solomon Star’s then-publisher, Catherine Lamani, and its chief of staff, Alfred Sasako, confirmed the paper had made the proposal, but declined to speak in detail about it.

Sasako said the newspaper maintained its independence. He said any suggestion it had a pro-Beijing bias was “a figment of the imagination of anyone who is trying to demonise China.”

Sasako said the paper had tried unsuccessfully for more than a decade to get assistance from Australia’s embassy in the country. Other Western countries, such as the United States, had neglected Solomon Islands for decades and were only now showing interest because of anxiety over Chinese influence, he added.

“My summary on the whole thing is China is a doer, others are talkers. They spend too much time talking, nothing gets done,” he said.

Press delivered
OCCRP was able to confirm that the printing equipment the Solomon Star had requested was indeed purchased and delivered earlier this year.

“I can confirm what was quoted was delivered in February and the payments came from the Solomon Star,” said Terry Mays, business development manager of G2 Systems Print Supply Division, the Brisbane, Australia, based supplier named in the proposal.

The Solomon Star funding is just one part of a regional push to get China’s message out in the Pacific Islands, as well as build relationships with the region’s elites, reporters have found.

Earlier this month, OCCRP reported on an aborted deal in the northern Pacific nation of Palau involving the publisher of the country’s oldest newspaper and a Chinese business group with links to national security institutions.

Bernadette Carreon and Aubrey Belford report for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). OCCRP is funded worldwide by a variety of government and non-government donors. OCCRP’s work in the Pacific Islands is currently funded by a US-government grant that gives the donor zero say in editorial decisions.

By Antony Loewenstein

The Israeli defence industry inspires nations across the globe, many of which view themselves as under threat from external enemies.

The Taiwanese foreign minister, Joseph Wu, recently told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that: “Every aspect of the Israeli fighting capability is amazing to the Taiwanese people and the Taiwanese government.”

Wu explained that he appreciated how Israel protected its own country because, “basically, we [Taiwan] have barely started. The fighting experiences of Israel are something we’re not quite sure about ourselves. We haven’t had any war in the last four or five decades, but Israel has that kind of experience”.

• READ MORE: Antony Loewenstein: Palestine a testing ground for war tech
• Middle East Eye
• Antony Loewenstein’s website

Wu also expressed interest in Israeli weapons, suggesting his country had considered their usefulness in any potential war with China.

“Israel has the Iron Dome,” he said, referring to Israel’s defence system against short-range missiles. “We should look at some of the technology that has been used by the Israelis in its defence. I’m not sure whether we can copy it, but I think we can look at it and learn from it.”

It isn’t just Taiwan imagining itself as akin to Israel. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in April 2022 that his vision for his nation was to mimic “the Jewish state“.

Two months after Russia’s illegal invasion of its territory, Zelensky, who is a long-time supporter of Israel, argued that “our people will be our great army. We cannot talk about ‘Switzerland of the future’ — probably, our state will be able to be like this a long time after. But we will definitely become a ‘big Israel’ with its own face.”

Zelensky went on to explain that what he meant was the need in the future to have “representatives of the armed forces or the national guard in all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas; there will be people with weapons.”

The Palestine laboratory
This admiration for Israel is both unsurprising and disturbing. The praise for Israel almost always completely ignores its occupation of Palestinian territory — one of the longest in modern times — and the ways in which this colonial project is implemented.

When Taiwan, Ukraine or any other country looks to Israel for innovation, it’s a highly selective gaze which completely disappears the more than five million Palestinians under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.

The appeal of the Palestine laboratory is endless. I’ve spent the last years researching this concept and its execution in Palestine and across the globe.

My new book, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World, uncovers how Israel has used the occupied Palestinians as the ultimate guineapigs when developing tools of repression, from drones to spyware and facial recognition to biometric data, while maintaining an “enemy” population, the Palestinians, under control for more than half a century.

Israel has sold defence equipment to at least 130 countries and is now the 10th biggest arms exporter in the world. The US is still the dominant player in this space, accounting for 40 percent of the global weapons industry.

Washington used its failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a testing ground for new weapons. During the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, the war has been a vital “beta test” for new weapons and sophisticated forms of surveillance and killing.

But Israel has a ready-made population of occupied Palestinians over which it has complete control. For more than five decades, Israeli intelligence authorities have built an NSA-level system of surveillance across the entire occupied Palestinian territories.

Nowhere is completely immune from listening, watching or following.

In the last decade, the most infamous example of Israeli repression tech is Pegasus, the phone hacking tool developed by the company NSO Group. Used and abused by dozens of nations around the world, Mexico is its most prolific adherent.

I spoke to dissidents, lawyers and human rights activists in Togo, Mexico, India and beyond whose lives were upended by this invasive, mostly silent tool.

Israeli state and spyware
However, missing from so much of the western media coverage, including outrage against NSO Group and its founders who were Israeli army veterans, is acknowledgement of the close ties between the firm and the Israeli state.

NSO is a private corporation in name only and is in fact an arm of Israel’s diplomacy, used by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Mossad to attract new friends in the international arena. Despite being blacklisted by the Biden administration in November 2021, the company still hopes to continue trading.

My research, along with that of other reporters, has shown a clear connection between the sale of Israeli cyberweapons and Israel’s attempts to neuter any potential backlash to its illegal occupation.

From Rwanda to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to India, Israeli spyware and surveillance tech are used by countless democracies and dictatorships alike.

Beyond Pegasus, many other similar tools have been deployed by newer and lesser-known Israeli companies, though they’re just as destructive. The problem isn’t just Pegasus — it could close down tomorrow and the privacy-busting technology would transfer to any number of competitors — but the unquenchable desire by governments, police forces and intelligence services for the relatively inexpensive Israeli tech that powers it.

India is even looking for alternatives to NSO Group with a less controversial history.

The Palestine laboratory is so successful because nobody wants to seriously regulate the fruits of its labours.

Ideological alignment
The extent of Israeli collusion with 20th and 21st century repression is overwhelming.

Perhaps the most revealing was the deep relationship between apartheid South Africa and Israel. It wasn’t just about arms trading, but an ideological alignment between two states that truly believed that they were fighting for their very existence.

In 1976, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin invited South African Prime Minister John Vorster, a Nazi sympathiser during the Second World War, to visit Israel. His tour included a stop at Yad Vashem, the country’s Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

When Vorster arrived in Israel, he was feted by Rabin at a state dinner. Rabin toasted “the ideals shared by Israel and South Africa: the hopes for justice and peaceful coexistence”. Both nations faced “foreign-inspired instability and recklessness”.

Israel and South Africa viewed themselves as under attack by foreign bodies committed to their destruction. A short time after Vorster’s visit, the South African government yearbook explained that both states were facing the same issue: “Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples.”

A love of ethnonationalism still fuels Israel today, along with a desire to export it. Some arms deals with nations, such as Bangladesh or the Philippines, are purely on military grounds and to make money.

Israel places barely any restrictions on what it sells, which pleases leaders who don’t want meddling in their actions. Pro-Israel lobbyists are increasingly working for repressive states, such as Bangladesh, to promote their supposed usefulness to the West.

Israel and the global far right
But Israel’s affinity with Hungary, India and the global far right, a group that traditionally hates Jews, speaks volumes about the inspirational nature of the modern Israeli state. As Haaretz journalist Noa Landau recently wrote, while explaining why Netanyahu’s government defended the latest arguably antisemitic comments by Elon Musk about George Soros:

“The government’s mobilisation in the service of stoking antisemitism is not surprising. It is the fruit of a long and consistent process in which the Netanyahu government has been growing closer to extreme right-wing elements around the world, at the expense of Jewish communities it purports to represent.”

It’s worth pausing for a moment to reflect on this undeniable reality. Israel, which claims to represent global Jewry, is encouraging an alignment between itself and a hyper-nationalist, bigoted and racist populism, regardless of the long-term consequences for the safety and security of Jews around the world.

Israel has thrived as an ethnonationalist state for so long because the vast bulk of the world grants it impunity. European nations have been key supporters of Israel, willing to overlook its occupation and abuse of Palestinians.

According to newly declassified documents from the files of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, between 1967 and 1990 it’s clear that West Germany was becoming more critical of Israel’s settlement project in Palestine, but the main concern was protecting its own financial interests in the region if a regional war broke out.

In a document written on 16 February 1975 to the deputy director of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Western Europe, Nissim Yaish, before Israel’s Foreign Minister Yigal Allon’s visit to West Germany, Yaish explained the thinking in his country’s diplomatic bureaucracy:

“There is unanimity that this time such a war will have a far-reaching impact on all its affairs internally and externally and that it could wreak a Holocaust on the German economy. Based on this attitude, West Germany is interested in rapid progress toward a [peace] agreement.”

Western silence
But there has rarely been any serious interest in pursuing peace, or holding Israel to account for its blatantly illegal actions, because the economic imperative is too strong. Even today, when another Nakba against Palestinians is becoming more possible to imagine, there’s largely silence from Western elites.

Germany has banned public recognition of the 1948 Nakba and criminalised any solidarity with the Palestinian people. Germany is also keen to buy an Israeli missile defence system, confirming its priorities.

This is why Israeli apartheid and the Palestine laboratory are so hard to stop; countless nations want a piece of Israeli repression tech to surveil their own unwanted populations or election meddling support in Latin America or Africa.

Without a push for accountability, economic boycotts and regulation or banning Israeli spyware — the EU is flirting with the idea — Israel can feel comfortable that its position as a global leader in offensive weapons is secure.

This article was first published in the Middle East Eye.

The University of the South Pacific’s regional journalism programme has penned three milestone Memorandums of Understanding that will usher in greater collaboration with media industry partners over student upskilling and training, joint workshops and seminars, and publication of the award-winning training newspaper Wansolwara.

Papua New Guinea’s National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) have formalised three-year MOU partnerships with the region’s longest running journalism programme at Laucala campus.

They were signed by NBC managing director Kora Nou and PINA managing editor Makereta Komai respectively.

• READ MORE: Other USP journalism education reports

The signing ceremony was witnessed by PNG’s Minister for Communication and Information Technology Timothy Masiu — a former journalist — and USP’s deputy vice-chancellor (regional campuses and global engagement) Dr Giulio Paunga.

“It is indeed history because we have never had such an MOU between this prestigious university and our National Broadcasting Corporation, which is a flagship of PNG,” said  Masiu.

“The intention of this MOU is basically threefold — student training, staff exchanges and joint workshops, seminars, research activities. We are really looking forward to this; very interesting times ahead for NBC and your university.”

To further strengthen the MOU, Masiu announced a F$10,000 funding support for the journalism programme through the PINA office. NBC’s managing director is also current chair of PINA.

Masiu as a journalist
Masiu also shared his excitement and delight at being part of the signing ceremony and reminisced about his time as a broadcaster for NBC, and later a journalist for The National daily newspaper in Port Moresby.

Dr Paunga said the university was also currently working closely with the PNG government and the progress of this collaboration demonstrated great things to come between the two countries, its people and future students.

USP Journalism programme coordinator Associate Professor Shailendra Singh said the programme was doing some good work in journalism in Fiji and the region. He commended Komai and Nou for their cooperation and vision over the MOU.

“The MOU we have signed is going to take the training and development of our journalists to another level,” he said.

“We have been training journalists for a long time. Under this MOU, we will be able to decide our own agenda when it comes to training and research, instead of everything being designed from someplace else and us merely implementing it.

“We know PNG will be sending students to study at USP. Talks are underway and if that happens then there will be greater collaboration and interaction between students coming from PNG.”

Dr Singh said USP had 12-member countries and PNG was set to become the 13th member if talks went according to plan.

Fiji Times partnership

Earlier, on May 3 — World Press Freedom Day — USP Journalism signed the first MOU with Fiji Times Limited. The partnership includes, among other supportive initiatives, the publication of Wansolwara, twice a year.

The first Wansolwara edition for 2023 was published in The Sunday Times last week and featured 32 pages of news, sports and special reports written and produced by USP journalism students across Fiji and the region.

Dr Singh said the partnership with Fiji Times Ltd was also a boost for the programme.

“This is a historic moment, not just for us but also for our students, as this will give them the exposure they need to contribute and improve the standard of journalism in our region,” he said.

“Fiji Times Ltd has been supportive of the USP Journalism Programme for many years, and this partnership will strengthen their commitment to promote a free and fair environment for journalists.”

Fiji Times Pte Ltd general manager Christine Lyons said the company would cover the printing of Wansolwara twice in the academic year. This amounted to one publication per semester.

“It will be circulated as an insert in The Fiji Times as part of its corporate social responsibility,” she said.

Fiji Times Ltd was represented by editor-in-chief Fred Wesley at the May MOU signing.

Viliame Tawanakoro is a final-year student journalist at USP’s Laucala Campus. He is also the 2023 student editor for Wansolwara, USP Journalism’s student training newspaper and online publication. Republished in a partnership between Asia Pacific Report and Wansolwara.

Journalist, author and media academic David Robie has launched an independent news and current affairs website to complement his long-established Asia Pacific Report.

While Asia Pacific Report will continue to cover regional affairs, the new website — dubbed Café Pacific, the same name as his blog which is being absorbed into the new venture — will focus on more in-depth reports and make available on open access a range of books and articles previously hidden behind paywalls.

Café Pacific will be operated on a Creative Commons licence basis as is APR.

• READ MORE: The new Café Pacific website
• Other reports from the author/publisher

Dr Robie, formerly founding director of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre and a professor of Pacific journalism, described the website project as “innovative”.

The about page says: “Café Pacific : Media freedom and transparency is the Asia-Pacific news articles archive and website of journalist and author David Robie, published with the support of Multimedia Investments Ltd in collaboration with Asia Pacific Report, EveningReport.nz and the Asia Pacific Media Network, and contributing colleagues, academics and freelancers.”

“There is a real need for an outlet such as this — specialist Asia-Pacific websites are rare,” says Dr Robie.

“It will be a rather eclectic website, but will focus on many of the critical issues that are either ignored in mainstream media or underplayed — such as climate justice, decolonisation in ‘French’ Polynesia and Kanaky New Caledonia, digital divide, education equity, environmental integrity, human rights, media freedom, podcasts, sustainable development and the crisis in West Papua.”

Recent scoops
Among recent scoops on the website were publication of the detailed “what we told the French Prime Minister” document of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) and several exclusive West Papua reports.

The website will also be a repository for Dr Robie’s past journalism, books and academic research, making publications more publicly accessible.

Dr Robie praised EveningReport.nz and Multimedia Investments managing director Selwyn Manning for his “perceptive” role in designing and developing the website.

“Selwyn has a long track record of supporting student and alternative journalism as witnessed with first Pacific Scoop and then Asia Pacific Report. And now we see it again with Café Pacific.”

Selwyn Manning and security analyst Dr Paul Buchanan will resume their popular weekly podcasts, “A View From Afar”, about current issues on EveningReport.nz and social media outlets tomorrow at noon.

• The promo for Thursday’s programme
• Listen to the podcasts
• Watch the podcasts
• Midday Thursdays (NZT)
• 8pm Wednesdays (EDT)
• Past episodes

From Island girl to an airline pilot seems like the Disney fantasy Moana yet nothing could further from the truth when it comes to Silva McLeod who turned fantasy into reality with heartbreak along the way.

Born in the small Tongan village of Vava’u in the days when we watched and marvelled as jets few overhead, Mcleod never dreamed one day that she would be there in the sky flying jet planes to all manner of destinations.

In her recently released memoir,  Island Girl to Airline Pilot: A Story of Love, Sacrifice and Taking Flight, she tells her story.

The book details when and where she meets her Australian husband Ken who went to Tonga to work in building a hospital. She was working as a waitress in a bar when she first met him.

However, unlike other Palagi (white men) visiting the islands and making promises they never intended to keep, Ken — according to her autobiography that initially reads like a Mills & Boon novel — was a perfect gentleman as he slowly courted her.

“At first, it wasn’t the done thing to do… Unfortunately, the picture we have that white men come in — it’s not a very nice picture, but that’s how it was — they impregnate the Tongan girl and then nick off, and mum and dad, nan and pa will have to clean up the mess,” she writes.

“So, this is quite rare, a young handsome Pālagi came to our island, and we found a common attraction to each other. My family feared the worst … so it wasn’t very well received in the beginning.

Language ‘huge barrier’
“Language was a huge barrier at the beginning, because my family couldn’t speak a word of English and Ken couldn’t speak a word of Tongan.

“So how could Ken make a conversation that might help my family accept the situation? But it didn’t take long.”

Ken eventually whisked her away to Melbourne in 1980, and while her dreams were put on the backburner while the couple raised a family.

She did ultimately realise her dream to become Tonga and possibly the Pacific female airline pilot, beginning as a flying instructor, then flying for Royal Tonga Airlines, Australian Flying Doctor Service and eventually Virgin International Airlines.

And, at the time of doing this interview, she was waiting to hear about her health results to find out whether she could keep flying.

Becoming a pilot “was never really a dream, because I could never envision reaching it or getting there,” Mcleod  says.

“It was more like a fantasy because it was never going to happen.

Both ways to the beach
“Growing up in Vava’u, in a tiny little island of Pangaimotu, 200 people live there: you walk one way you reach the beach; you turn around 180 degrees you reach the beach.

“So, to dream of eventually becoming an airline pilot one day, or even just flying an aeroplane was unreachable — so I kept it as a fantasy.

“I can just visualise myself as a child running outside every time I hear a sound of an aircraft and I was there [looking] at the sky until the aircraft disappeared.

“The curiosity in me … was getting a little bit too much, running away with the thought of ‘oh wow, how clever is that, imagine the people that are flying that machine… wouldn’t it be amazing to operate such a machine, because it defies gravity?

“The fantasy was right from a young age, but it wasn’t a dream because I didn’t think that I’d get there.”

Mcleod’s world while growing up was limited, she says: “like wanting to reach for a piece of coconut but finding your arms are bound”.

At the time growing up in the 1970s in Vava’u, television and  newspapers weren’t easily accessible, so glimpses of the lives and places outside of the immediate community were limited, she says.

‘I can’t get out’
“It felt like, ‘I can’t get out’. It’s the same right across the Pacific Islands, it’s not just Tonga.

“We have such a rich culture and living in it … it’s just part of you and something I will treasure and value for the rest of my life.

“But then on the other hand, it’s restrictive because there’s nothing else to do.

“You go to school and then after that there was no university, there was no job. What could  you  do on an island? You couldn’t see a future.

“We are bound by culture, we bind by family, we bind by religion. It’s like you are free but you are bound to something.

“That’s just the way it is, and that’s just the island life, and you just grow up understanding it and it’s part of you.”

Now, with internet connectivity many Pasifika children view a more open world, she says.

Done her family duty
Settling in Melbourne and raising two daughters who are happily married with their own kids, she has done her family duty.

Then in a conversation with Ken, Mcleod spoke of her dream of becoming a pilot. However, instead of laughing, her husband told her that she could do it.

“Yes you have to be good at mathematics to be pilot and it takes hard work so no fantasy is ever easy,” she said.

Not long after, Ken became sick with cancer, and underwent chemotherapy. Mcleod focused on his recovery until her husband asked her about what it would take to get her started. He bought her a birthday present of vouchers for an introductory flight, and the rest is history.

Six years later, she earned her air transport pilot’s licence and became  the first Tongan woman to qualify as a pilot, and later a flight instructor.

The work brought Mcleod satisfaction, though she frequently faced both racism and sexism along the way, such as callers would say they wanted to speak to “Mr McLeod”.

Sexism, racism and misogynism, she has experienced it all, but as she said, “my book isn’t about that, I just wanted to tell my story through my eyes”.

An eye on Boeing 777s
As a pilot, Mcleod was “quite happy just flying 737s all around” but  followed with interest as Boeing 777s were developed and introduced, with automated fly-by-wire technology.

“I was based in New Zealand for nearly 12 months — loved my time there. That was on the 737s, so I did all of the domestic routes in New Zealand as well as all the South Pacific islands.

“At first I was based in Christchurch, then when moved Auckland a group of us pilots pooled our allowance and took an apartment at Auckland’s viaduct and we just loved it there, Ken came along and joined us,” she said.

Mcleod then  began working for the Virgin stable  and was trained to pilot 777s there — another thing ticked off her bucket list.

When she joined Royal Tongan Airlines and became  the first pilot  to speak fluent Tongan to the largely Tongan passengers over the intercom, it gave her such pride.

Defining her life
Mcleod underlines her story that flying aeroplanes does not define her life. Her journey, family, cultural identity and partnership with Ken determined her life.

Alas Ken died recently from cancer as the covid-19 pandemic swept through the world, and McLeod says that  until the end they remained both close and committed to breaking down barriers of skin colour and culture.

“I was a wife first, a mother, a grandmother, a carer, and I just call myself a worker … whatever field you have it’s no different. I just wanted to tell my story,” she says.

“And if my story inspires young Pacific women to be who they want to be, then so be it, but that was not my ambition. I just wanted to tell my story,” she says heading out the door to a nearby golf course.

•  Island Girl to Airline Pilot: A Story of Love, Sacrifice and Taking Flight, by Silva Mcleod. Melbourne: Exisle Publishing. ISBN: 9781922539618
  

Whistleblower Owen Wilkes was a tireless and formidable researcher for the Pacific, peace and disarmament. Before the internet, he combed publicly available sources on weapons systems and defence strategy.

In 1968, he revealed the secretive military function of a proposed satellite tracking station in the South Island, and while working in Sweden he was charged with espionage and deported after photographing intriguing but publicly visible installations.

In a new book about his life, Peacemonger, edited by May Bass and Mark Derby, Nicky Hager writes about Wilkes’ research techniques:

Owen Wilkes was an outstanding researcher, a role model of how someone can make a difference in the world by good research. But how did he actually do it? Owen managed to study complex subjects such as Cold War communications systems, secret intelligence facilities and foreign military activities in the Pacific.

There are many important and useful lessons we can learn from how he did this work. The world needs more public interest researchers, on militarism and other subjects. Owen’s self-taught research techniques are like a masterclass in how it is done.

• READ MORE: Other reports about Owen Wilkes and Peacemonger

Lots of information isn’t secret, just hard to find
Owen worked for many years, sitting at his large desk at the Peace Movement office in Wellington, researching the military communications systems set up to launch and fight nuclear war. How was this possible?

We are a bit conditioned currently to imagine the only option would be leaked documents from a whistleblower. The first secret of Owen’s success is that he had learned that large amounts of information on these subjects can be found and pieced together from obscure but publicly available sources.

The heart of his research method was long hours spent poring over US government records and military industry magazines, gathering the precious crumbs of detail like someone panning for gold.

Behind the large desk were shelves and shelves of open-topped file boxes, each with a cryptic title. These boxes were full of photocopied documents and handwritten notes from his researching. This may all sound very pre-internet; indeed it was largely pre-digital.

But what Owen was doing would today be called “open source” research and his work is far superior to that carried out by many people with Google and other digital tools at their fingertips. Probably his favourite source of all was a publicly available US defence magazine called Aviation Week and Space Technology. The magazine (now online) is written for military staff and arms manufacturers, keeping them informed about developments in weapons, aircraft and “C3I” systems, which stands for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence systems: one of Owen’s main areas of speciality.

The magazine also covered Owen’s speciality of “space based” military systems, such as military communication and surveillance satellites. In Owen’s files, which can be viewed at the National Library in Wellington, Aviation Week and Space Technology appears often. In a file box called USA Space Systems is a clipping from 1983 about the US Air Force awarding a contract for a ballistic missile early warning system (nuclear war-fighting equipment). The article revealed that the early warning system would be based at air force bases in Alaska, Greenland and Fylingdales, England — three clues about US foreign military activities.

By reading and storing away details from numerous such articles, spanning many years, Owen built up a more and more detailed understanding of military and intelligence systems.

The other endlessly useful source Owen used was US Congress and Senate hearings and reports about the US military budget. This is where each year the US military spells out its military construction plans, new weapons, technology programmes and the rest; often with figures broken down to the level of individual countries and military bases.

Senior military officials appear at hearings to explain the threats and strategies that justify the spending. As with the military magazines, Owen systematically mined these reports year after year for interesting detail.

He was especially keen on the US Congress’ Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Military Construction Appropriations. His files on US antisatellite weapons, for instance, contain a document from this subcommittee about new Anti-Satellite System Facilities (project number 11610) based at Langley Air Force base, Virginia. It had been approved by the president in the renewed Cold War of the mid-1980s to target Soviet satellites. Details like this were pieces in a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle.

When he was based at the Peace Movement Aotearoa office in Wellington, from 1983 until about 1992, Owen spent long hours at the US Embassy library studying the Military Construction Appropriations and other US government documents. Each year the library received copies of the documents as microfiche (microphotos of each page on a film). Owen was a familiar visitor, hunched over the microfiche reader making notes and printing out interesting pages.

Many times this gave the first clue of construction somewhere in the world, pointing to that country hosting some new US military, nuclear or intelligence activity. The annual US military appropriation information is available to a researcher today. In fact it is now more easily accessed since it is online. But, if anything, Owen’s pre-digital techniques make it clearer how this research is done well. It’s a good reminder that the best sources of information are most often not in the first 10 or 20 hits of a Google search, the point where many people stop looking.

Experience and persistence
An important ingredient in all these methods is persistence. The methods usually work best if, like Owen, a researcher sticks at them over time. Sticking at a subject means you start to recognise names and places in an otherwise boring document, appreciate the significance of some fragment of information and understand the big picture into which each piece of information fits.

Someone who reads deeply and studies a subject over a number of years can in effect become, like Owen, an expert. They may, like him, have no formal university qualifications. But they can know more about their subject than nearly anyone else, which is a good definition of an expert. They recognise the names and places and appreciate the significance of new evidence.

A textbook example of this was when Owen returned to New Zealand in the early 1980s and went to see a recently discovered secret military site near the beach settlement of Tangimoana in the Manawatu.

Owen, who had spent years studying secret bases around the world, was the New Zealander most likely to know what he was looking at. There, on one side of the base, was a large circle of antenna poles: a CDAA circularly-disposed antenna array. It instantly told him the Tangimoana facility was a signals intelligence base. It had the same equipment and was part of the same networks as the bases he had studied in Norway and Sweden.

Ensuring his research was noticed
The purpose of Owen’s work was to make a difference to the issues he researched. A final and vital part of the work was getting attention for the findings of his research. Owen often spoke in the news and he wrote about the issues he was studying. Research, writing and speaking up are essential ingredients in political change. The part of this he probably enjoyed most was travelling and speaking in public to interested groups.

During the 1980s, he had major speaking tours to countries including Japan, the Philippines, Australia and Canada (and often around New Zealand). During these trips he would present information about military and intelligence activities in those countries. A 1985 trip to Canada, which he shared with prominent Palau leader Roman Bedor, was typical. He was in Canada for seven weeks, speaking in most parts of the country and numerous times on radio and television.

One of the things he emphasised was that Canadians, as residents of a Pacific country, should be thinking about what was going on in the Pacific. One of Owen’s recurrent themes was the importance of being aware of the Pacific.

The final ingredient of a good researcher is caring about the subjects they are working on. This can be heard clearly in everything Owen wrote about the Pacific. He described the Pacific being used for submarine-based nuclear weapons and facilities used to prepare for nuclear war. He talked about the big powers using the Pacific as the “backside of the globe”, epitomised by tiny Johnston Atoll west of Hawai’i where the US military does “anything too unpopular, too dangerous and too secret to do elsewhere”.

He talked about things that were getting better: French nuclear testing on the way out; chemical weapons being destroyed. But also the region being used as a site for great power rivalry; and, under multiple pressures, the small Pacific countries being at risk of becoming “more repressive, less democratic”. He cared, and that was at the heart of being a public-interest researcher for decades.

Many of the problems he described are still occurring today. More research, more good research, on these issues and many others is crying out to be done.

• An extract from Peacemonger – Owen Wilkes: International Peace Researcher, edited by May Bass and Mark Derby. Published by Raekaihau Press in association with Steele Roberts Aotearoa. This article was first published by Stuff and is republished with the book authors’ permission. David Robie is one of the contributing authors.
  

Peace campaigners, activists and Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific stalwarts were among those who gathered in Auckland this evening to celebrate publication of a new book dedicated to the remarkable mahi of the late international peace researcher Owen Wilkes.

This Auckland launch of Peacemonger at Grey Lynn’s Trades Hall was the second of three such events following one in Christchurch last week and a third planned for Wellington on February 24.

Speakers included three of the four Auckland contributors to the book — event organiser Maire Leadbeater, Dr Bob Mann and Dr David Robie — with the fourth, Dr Peter Wills, sending his apologies. Dr Robie also shared a message from Swedish researcher Paul Claesson.

Guest speakers Bob Woodward and Lyn Hume reflected on the Peace Movement and the remarkable achievements over many years.

Activist musician Roger Fowler rounded off the evening with a performance.

Photographs: Del Abcede/WILPF and APR

• Peacemonger: Owen Wilkes: International peace researcher, edited by May Bass and Mark Derby. Wellington: Raekaihau Press, 196 pages. $35. ISBN 978-1-99-115386-9

Owen Wilkes book launch

1 of 8

COMMENT: By Paul Claesson in Stockholm

I got to know Owen Wilkes through friends in 1980, when as a 22-year-old student I ended up in a housing collective where his ex-partner lived. He was then at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), having recently arrived from the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), and was, in addition to his collaboration with Nils-Petter Gleditsch, already in full swing with his Foreign Military Presence project.

He hired me as an assistant with responsibility for Spanish and Portuguese-language source material.

During this time I got to know Søren MC and Kirsten Bruun in Copenhagen, who had recently launched the magazine Försvar — Militärkritiskt Magasin. I contributed a couple of articles and was then invited to participate in the editorial team.

• READ MORE: Peacemonger – a tribute to peace researcher Owen Wilkes out now

A theme issue about the American bases in Greenland grew into a book, Greenland — The Pearl of the Mediterranean, which apparently caused considerable consternation in the Ministry of Greenland. The book resulted in a hearing in Christiansborg.

I was also responsible for a theme issue about the DEW (Early Warning Line) and Loran C facilities on the Faroe Islands. I was in Stockholm when SÄPO’s spy target against Owen started, and I was there the whole way.

SÄPO interrogated me a couple of times, and at one point during the trial, when I took the opportunity to hand out relevant material about Owen’s research — all publicly available — to journalists in the audience, I was visibly thrown out of the case by a couple of angry young men from FSÄK (the security service of the Swedish defence establishment).

Distorted by media
Owen and I saw each other almost every day — sometimes I stayed with him in his little cabin in Älvsjö — and together we wondered how his various activities, such as his innocent fishing trip in Åland, were distorted in the media by FSÄK and the prosecutor’s care (SÄPO had subsequently begun to show greater doubt about Owen’s guilt).

In 1984-85, after he had been expelled from Sweden, I was Owen’s house guest at his farm in Karamea, Mahoe Farm, on New Zealand’s West Coast, at the northern end of the road. He was in the process of selling it.

With his brother Jack, he had started a commercial bee farm, and together we spent an intensive summer — harvesting bush honey, pollinating apple and kiwifruit orchards and building a small harvest house for the honey collection.

In the meantime, we sold — or ate up — the farm’s remaining flock of sheep. When the farm was sold, we moved to Wellington — I was offered a room in the Quakers’ guest house, where I joined the work at Peace Movement Aotearoa’s premises on Pirie Street.

Then Prime Minister David Lange had recently let New Zealand withdraw from ANZUS, as a result of his government’s refusal to allow US Navy ships to call at port unless they declared themselves disarmed of nuclear weapons.

As a result, PMA organised a conference with the theme nuclear-free Pacific, with participants from all over the Pacific region. Together with Owen, Nicky Hager and others I contributed to the planning and execution of the conference.

Surveying US signals intelligence
Before this, Owen and Nicky had begun surveying American signals intelligence facilities in New Zealand. I took part in this, ie. with a couple of photo excursions to Tangimoana.

Owen and I kept in touch after my return to Sweden. What I remember best from his letters from this time — apart from his musings about his work as a government defence consultant — are his often comical anecdotes about his adventures in the bush, where his task was mainly to map Māori cultural remains before they were chewed up into pieces by the forest industry.

His sudden death took a toll. I got the news from his partner May Bass. I would have liked to have flown to NZ to attend the memorial services for him, but ironically they coincided with my wedding.

Owen played a very big role in my life. I admired him, and miss him all the time. More than anyone else I have known, he deserves to be remembered in writing. I was therefore very happy when I heard about the time and energy devoted to this book project. My sincere gratitude.

• Peacemonger: Owen Wilkes: International peace researcher, edited by May Bass and Mark Derby. Wellington: Raekaihau Press, 196 pages. $35. ISBN 978-1-99-115386-9
• Book launch: 5.30-7.30, 16 December 2022, Trades Hall, 147 Great North Road, Grey Lynn. All welcome. More information

Owen Wilkes (1940–2005) was known throughout the Pacific and across the world as an outstanding researcher on peace and disarmament.

His work:

• exposed plans to build a US Navy satellite tracking station in the Southern Alps
• identified a foreign spy base at Tangimoana (near Bulls)
• led to job offers from leading peace research institutes in Norway and Sweden — and an espionage charge for taking photographs during a cycling holiday, and
• supported local campaigns against foreign military activity in the Philippines, and for a nuclear-free Pacific.

Born in Christchurch, Owen Wilkes was an internationalist and a dedicated New Zealander — a subsistence farmer on the West Coast (where his self-built eco-home was demolished by the local council), an archaeologist, tramper and yachtsman.

In this forthcoming book, edited by historian Mark Derby and Wilkes’ former partner May Bass, experts in their own fields who knew and worked with him reflect on his achievements and his legacy. The contributors include:

Ingvar Botnen
Nils Petter Gleditsch
Nicky Hager
Di Hooper
Murray Horton
Maire Leadbeater
Robert Mann
Neville Ritchie
David Robie
Ken Ross
Peter Wills

The book, published by Raekaihau Press in association with Steele Roberts Aotearoa, has a timeline, a bibliography of Owen’s publications in several languages, and an index.

The book is being published on November 23.

• More information

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).

“These are dark times for our nation”, former US President Donald Trump declared when he announced his mansion at Mar-A-Lago had been raided by FBI agents on Monday night Florida time.

An assault like this “could only take place in broken, Third World countries […] corrupt at a level not seen before”.

“They even broke into my safe!” he went on, comparing the FBI action to Watergate:

What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democrat National Committee? Here, in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45th President of the United States.

• READ MORE: The January 6 hearings have been spectacular TV, but will they have any consequences for Trump?
• Watergate at 50: the burglary that launched a thousand scandals
• US Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade – but for abortion opponents, this is just the beginning

Watergate was the hotel–office complex in Washington, home to the Democratic Party national headquarters, which was famously burgled in June 1972 by political operatives working for the re-election of Richard Nixon.

After more than two years of tortuous judicial and political inquiries, Nixon became the first — and still the only — American president to resign.

Trump says MAL has been searched by feds pic.twitter.com/UEC5KE5pJm

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 8, 2022

The differences between the raid on Trump’s mansion and Watergate are obvious. Trump’s mansion was raided by law officers executing a legally issued search warrant.

They entered by the front door and searched openly. Watergate was an illegal break in by political operatives acting secretly.

And where Trump, playing to his shrinking base, claimed last night’s raid was undertaken by “Democrats”, it was in fact conducted by a group of FBI agents. The Florida raid took place to enforce the law; the Watergate action broke the law.

Speculation intense
As of late Monday night Washington time, neither the FBI nor the Justice Department had made an official announcement about the raid.

However, on the basis of background comments by various officials, most media reports agree that its purpose was to secure various documents, including classified material, from Trump’s presidency. Some reports said the FBI officers left with 15 boxes of documents.

Trump had failed to meet the requirements of the innocuous-sounding national Archives Act, which exists to minimise the scope for corruption and abuse of process.

Trump has treated these legal obligations, and any accountability provisions, with contempt. Indeed, a soon to be published book by New York Times political correspondent, Maggie Haberman, includes photos showing Trump used to flush unwanted documents down the toilet.

The FBI raid follows the recent critical scrutiny of Trump’s actions in inciting a riot against the Capitol on January 6, 2021, when the congressional vote for the presidential election was declared. While politically humiliating to Trump, it is not clear that any legal action will follow from those hearings.

Congress has no power to initiate such action, and some speculate that Attorney-General Merrick Garland is reluctant to be seen to be undertaking politically motivated prosecutions.

Trump, speaking of himself in the third person, asserted in his statement on the FBI raid that “the political persecution of President Donald J. Trump has been going on for years.”

Loyalty or else
More than anything, that response is testimony to Trump’s paranoid worldview, which demands the loyalty of those around him despite any inconvenient principle or evidence to the contrary.

In another soon-to-be published book, Trump’s former White House chief-of-staff, John Kelly, a retired marine general, recounts how Trump said he wanted his generals to be loyal to him the way Hitler’s were loyal to him under Nazi rule.

One of the Watergate reporters, Bob Woodward, wrote a series of books about Trump and interviewed him several times. He reported an episode where Trump went through the faces of various Democratic congressional figures watching him deliver his State of the Union address, most of whom — according to Woodward — looked bland, bored or unemotional.

After each of them, Trump exclaimed to Woodward “look at the hate” – “they hate me”.

“It was a remarkable moment,” Woodward commented.

A psychiatrist might say it was a projection of his own hatred of Democrats. But it was so intense that it did not resemble the subdued reaction of the Democrats. His insistence that it was “Hate!” was unsupported by the images […] This Trump spectacle was unforgettable and bizarre.

From the Roe v Wade anti-abortion and anti-gun control rulings of the Supreme Court, to charges against Trump’s supporters for violence on January 6, to the various dubious activities of Trump himself, much in American politics looks likely to be played out in the courts over the next year or two — far more than is healthy in a democracy.

But when Trump has slashed and burnt his way through many political conventions, recourse to legal sanction may be the only means of protecting democracy. These are dark times for the American nation, but for precisely the opposite reason Trump asserted.

Dr Rodney Tiffen is emeritus professor, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

A new Asia Pacific social justice research and publication nonprofit has awarded a diversity communications trophy to a West Papuan postgraduate student who has advocated for the education and welfare of his fellow students.

Several dozen Papuan students trying to complete their studies were stranded in Aotearoa New Zealand by a sudden scholarship cancellation.

Laurens Ikinia, 26, has been campaigning since February for his fellow students to carry on with their studies in New Zealand after Jakarta scrapped their Papuan autonomy government scholarships.

• READ MORE: Other Asia Pacific Report Network reports

However, while presenting the Storyboard Award for diversity journalism to Ikinia, interim chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network, Dr David Robie, said today the prize was primarily marking the work of the communication studies student during the pandemic in 2020 when he “raised the profile” of the tiny Papuan community in Aotearoa New Zealand with many articles.

“His efforts have gone on from strength to strength combining the skills of journalism and as a communications advocate,” he said at the ceremony in the Whānau Community Hub in Mt Roskill.

“Laurens Ikinia has done West Papua proud, and we’re also very proud of his work.”

The Storyboard Award was first created in 2006 with the first winner being Qiane Matata-Sipu, creator of Nuku: Stories of 100 Indigenous Women. Other winners have included John Pulu of Tagata Pasifika; Alex Perrottet, formerly of RNZ; Sri Krishnmurthi of Pacific Media Watch; and Alistar Kata and Blessen Tom of TVNZ’s Fair Go.

Publication of PJR
The APMN, formally founded earlier this month, was established to continue publication of Pacific Journalism Review, first launched at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1994 and published in recent years at the University of the South Pacific then Auckland University of Technology.

The network’s objectives also include providing resources to benefit “First Nations and other communities, and in support of fair representation for voiceless and diverse community interests”.

Gathered at the ceremony were academics, researchers, community advocates and journalists – including several stalwarts of the former Pacific Media Centre – and also “wantok” supporters of Ikinia.

A spokesperson for the Whānau Hub, Nik Naidu, said it was “exciting to be working with like-minded groups committed to social justice”.

“It certainly feels as if we are part of an important initiative — it’s a privilege to be part of such an inclusive and welcoming community,” said Dr Heather Devere, one of the network members.

Pacific Journalism Review editor Dr Philip Cass said it was encouraging that the 28-year-old journal now had a new home and his editorial team were busy working on the next edition due out next month.

Institutional support
Ikinia reported that for most of the 27 Papuan students who were impacted on by the loss of government scholarships and were still in Aotearoa they were being assisted by a mix of institutional support through accommodation and waiving of fees and public fundraising.

In the case of nine students in Palmerston North who had completed their carpentry course, they had been offered jobs and were applying for work visas.

Ikinia said that on behalf of the International Alliance of Papuan Students Association Overseas (IAPSAO) he was offering “our humble and sincere gratitude” for all the assistance provided in New Zealand.

He also said that student president Yan Wenda and secretary Christian Tabuni had returned to the Papuan capital Jayapura in a bid to seek government support.

“They’ve met Governor Lukas Enembe in person to talk about the struggle faced by all West Papuan students who are currently studying overseas,” he said.

It is believed the governor had issued instructions for the payment of outstanding fees.

Ikinia also thanked Auckland University of Technology for its support and community groups such as Pax Christi that have been fundraising.

La Dépêche de Tahiti, the oldest and last major daily newspaper in French Polynesia, has finally closed after publishing for almost six decades.

The last edition — a weekender — was published today with a front page editorial declaring “Merci” — “Thank you” — to its readers and supporters.

The 40 employees — journalists, administrative employees and technicians — have all been sacked with no guarantee of any redundancy pay.

• READ MORE: Other media reports in Tahiti

La Dépêche, once owned by the French Robert Hersant publishing group, was taken over in 2014 by a consortium led by Dominique Auroy, a businessman with hotel and waste interests. At the time, journalists were worried about their future employment and editorial policy changes.

Also in 2014, the business group halted publication of the other daily newspaper, Les Nouvelles de Tahiti, the first Polynesian daily which had been losing money.

The Nouvelles had a reputation for publishing political and financial investigative exposes. But the new managers considered the editorial policy too “aggressive”.

Since 2014, the management made a series of financial blunders causing debts for La Dépêche de Tahiti  — such as over rents and social benefit charges — and were convicted for “hampering trade unions”.

Also disappeared
Now this daily newspaper has also disappeared. Just one daily publication remains in French Polynesia, a free online publication, Tahiti-Infos, with a paid print edition, published by Fenua Communication. This was taken over in 2012 by Patrick Moux, who is also the Shell Petroleum local boss.

Commentators and critics are describing the loss of La Dépêche as a “sad day for press pluralism” in French Polynesia. So far there has been no reaction from Polynesian politicians.

Lucile Guichet-Tirao is a television journalist with Polynésie la 1ère.

A Frontline investigative journalism article on the politics behind the decade-long Bougainville war leading up to the overwhelming vote for independence is among articles in the latest Pacific Journalism Review.

The report, by investigative journalist and former academic Professor Wendy Bacon and Nicole Gooch, poses questions about the “silence” in Australia over the controversial Bougainville documentary Ophir that has won several international film awards in other countries.

Published this week, the journal also features a ground-breaking research special report by academics Shailendra Singh and Folker Hanusch on the current state of journalism across the Pacific – the first such region-wide study in almost three decades.

• READ MORE: Pacific Journalism Review – the articles

Griffith University’s journalism coordinator Kasun Ubayasiri has produced a stunning photo essay, “Manus to Meanjin”, critiquing Australian “imperialist” policies and the plight of refugees in the Pacific.

The main theme of the double edition focuses on a series of articles and commentaries about the major “Pacific crises” — covid-19, climate emergency (including New Zealand aid) and West Papua.

Unthemed topics include journalism and democracy, the journalists’ global digital toolbox, cellphones and Pacific communication, a PNG local community mediascape, and hate speech in Indonesia.

This is the first edition of PJR published since it became independent of AUT University last year after previously being published at the University of Papua New Guinea – where it was launched in 1994 – and the University of the South Pacific.

Lockdowns challenge
“Publishing our current double edition in the face of continued covid-driven lockdowns and restrictions around the world has not been easy, but we made it,” says editor Dr Philip Cass.

“From films to photoessays, from digital democracy to dingoes and disease, the multi-disciplinary, multi-national diversity of our coverage remains a strength in an age when too many journals look the same and have the same type of content.”

“We promise this journal will have a strong focus on Asian media, communication and journalism, as well as our normal focus on the Pacific.”

Founding editor Dr David Robie is quoted in the editorial as saying the journal is at a “critical crossroads for the future” and he contrasts PJR with the “oppressively bland” nature of many journalism publications.

“I believe we have a distinctively different sort of journalism and communication research journal – eclectic and refreshing,” he said.

The next edition of PJR will be linked to the “Change, Adaptation and Culture: Media and Communication in Pandemic Times” online conference of the Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) being hosted at AUT on November 25-27.

• Pacific Crises: Covid, climate emergency and West Papua, Pacific Journalism Review, edited by Philip Cass and David Robie, September 2021

Those born after 2001 have only known a world “at war on terror”.

This means a generation growing up under under fears and moral panics about Muslims and unparalleled security measures around their bodies and lives.

In my new book, Coming of Age in the War on Terror, I look at what this has meant for young Muslims in Australia as they navigate their political identities at school.

• READ MORE: These young Muslim Australians want to meet Islamophobes and change their minds. And it’s working
• Auckland terror attacker ‘brainwashed’ by neighbours, mother says

In 2018 and 2019, I interviewed and held writing workshops with more than 60 Muslim and non-Muslim high school students across Sydney who were born around the time of the September 11 terror attacks.

We explored their fears, their levels of trust with peers and teachers and political expression in a post 9/11 world.

No matter how many Muslim students spoke to me about their typically adolescent hobbies and interests, almost every student spoke about the impact of political and media discourse in their everyday lives.

Abdul-Rahman, a 17-year-old Muslim boy at an Islamic school in western Sydney, put it this way:

I’m not afraid of terrorism. I’m afraid of being accused of being a terrorist.

Another student, Laila, told me:

I’ve always had this almost preconceived guilt attached to me […] [It’s] the million messages in the media, politicians, popular culture, all these little things that add up and add up.

‘Countering violent extremism’
For teenagers to talk about themselves as potentially “accused” is devastating, but not particularly surprising.

For two decades, millions of federal and state dollars have been poured into “countering violent extremism” programmes targeting Muslim youth. There has been no subtlety here.

Counter-terrorism policies have been announced by politicians on the steps of mosques, with a focus on geographic and demographic populations deemed “at risk” (in other words, suburbs with large Muslim populations).

Consultations and round tables with government over “national security” have been highly publicised. Meanwhile, Islamophobic attacks have been condemned by politicians and the police because of how they might “undermine” relationships of cooperation between intelligence and law enforcement and the Muslim community.

The public has been routinely reassured the government is tackling the “problem” of young Muslim Australians, “with strong, deradicalisation programmes, working with Muslim communities”.

The figure of the vulnerable but also dangerous Muslim youth pops up time and time again, from moral panics around young “homegrown” terrorists, to attempts to introduce “jihadi watch” schemes in schools.

The pressure to self-censor
This landscape trickles down into young people’s everyday lives, including their schools.

The pressure to self-censor and manage your political and religious expression at school was a common theme among many students, resonating with what academics in the United Kingdom describe in their research.

Anticipating how their tone, words and emotion would be interpreted by teachers and peers restricted students’ political expression.

This included a young Palestinian girl who had to push back against teachers, who reprimanded her for wearing a “Free Palestine” t-shirt at school, to students who refrained from writing about Iraq or Afghanistan as part of assignments because they had been cautioned not to “bring overseas conflicts into the classroom”.

Other students talked of staying quiet if controversial topics came up in class, such as news of a terrorist attack involving Muslims, or media headlines about Islam.

I also met students who tried to appear as “good” or “moderate” Muslims (which inevitably meant apolitical) and erased all traces of their Muslimness to “fit in”.

Feeling targeted, isolated
In 2015, there was a media frenzy about youth radicalisation in prayer rooms in Sydney’s state schools. I interviewed students at a school in north-west Sydney three years later and they spoke about how that controversy had been felt in their school life.

Most of the students from suburbs and schools who came under media and political scrutiny as “problematic” had felt targeted and isolated. One student withdrew from his Muslim peers, abandoned his prayers at school, took different routes to school to avoid being hassled by the media, and “shut down” in class.

I got dragged into an argument with other kids in class about me following the same religion as these terrorists […] but my tone […] I came off very aggressive […] then I was scared, because that’s what people think of as radical extremists […] I felt like I’d be taken straight to the principal and you would have to deal with that. So I shut up.

We need a new approach
After two decades of seeing young Muslims as “problems” to be contained and managed, it is time we approached them in a different way.

Adolescence is a time to encourage critical thinking and support young people navigating their political identities and agency. Young people need to be empowered to work through their political and religious ideas and identities in safe, supportive environments. They need to be seen as individuals in their own right, not members of a demonised, racialised collective.

The vast majority of the young Muslims I spoke to were matter-of-fact about the global rise of Islamophobia and racism. They knew about certain jokes and assumptions in the popular vernacular (for example, “Allahu Akbar and bomb jokes” or “terrorist” equals “Muslim”).

Many were concerned about what this meant as they grew up and left school. They worried about facing discrimination at work and being able to practise their faith openly. They also knew how this suspicion and dehumanisation had been triggered by wider discourses and policies over which they had no power.

It is not up to the 9/11 generation to change this. We need teachers, politicians and the media to create a culture where young Muslims feel accepted and secure in their right to express their religious and political identities.

• This article was produced as part of Social Sciences Week, running 6-12 September. A full list of 70 events can be found here. Randa Abdel-Fattah will appear in a webinar on the “Implications of 9/11: 20 years” at 6pm on Thursday September 9.

Dr Randa Abdel Fattah is a DECRA research fellow, Macquarie University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

The Philippine Center For Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) has named former Rappler reporter and book author Carmela Fonbuena as its next executive editor, reports Rappler.

“We are very pleased that Carmela has decided to be at the helm of PCIJ at a time when journalism in the Philippines and elsewhere is facing challenges on multiple fronts,” the PCIJ said in a statement.

The transition comes at a time when freedom of the press is under siege in the Philippines by the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, whose allies have sought to bring down independent news outlets critical of his administration.

• READ MORE: PMC focuses on Asia-Pacific ‘journalism under duress’ for 10th birthday event

Fonbuena succeeds Malou Mangahas, who led the PCIJ for 11 years, visited New Zealand as guest speaker of the Pacific Media Centre during its 10th anniversary celebration, and retired in early 2020.

Floreen Simon, who stood in as acting executive director during the transition, will become the deputy executive director while still heading PCIJ’s training desk.

Fonbuena’s work
Fonbuena has been a journalist for 17 years, and has co-written four books on Philippine elections and government contracting.

She recently launched a book on the Marawi siege on Mindanao Island, which she covered on the ground in 2017.

Fonbuena was a senior reporter for Rappler from 2011 to 2018 and was the head researcher of GMA’s Bawal ang Pasaway public affairs programme. Prior, she worked as a researcher for the investigative news magazine, Newsbreak.

Recently, she has been contributing in-depth pieces for the British news website, The Guardian.

She earned an MA in political communication at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom as a Chevening scholar, and is a graduate of journalism from the University of the Philippines in Diliman.

Asia Pacific Report republishes Rappler articles with permission.

A new Fiji magazine published by a New Zealand-based media collective made its debut this weekend to mark Fiji’s 50th Independence Day anniversary.

The first monthly edition of Fiji Dynamics was launched yesterday, 10th October 2020 – Fiji Day.

The editorial team is made up of senior Fiji journalists and media personalities who now live and work in Aotearoa-New Zealand.

• READ MORE: Children recreate the Deed of Cession to mark 50 years of freedom – The Fiji Times
• Graham Davis: Happy 5oth Independence Day, Fiji

Fiji Dynamics aims to help inspire and further enhance the rich diversity of New Zealand’s multicultural communities.

One of the organisers, Rachael Mario, from the Whānau Community Centre, is delighted at having a place for community groups to share their stories.

“By promoting our views, identity and culture, ths magazine will unite our communities, and help inspire our youth,” she said.

“The new magazine reflects and defines the Fiji community. With this being Fiji’s 50th anniversary of independence, and also Fijian Language week, it makes this even more special.”

One of the articles published in this inaugural edition, was this reflection below by Professor Steven Ratuva, director of the Macmillan Brown Pacific Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of Canterbury:

REFLECTIONS FOR THE PAST 50 YEARS: FIJI’S CHALLENGES AND HOPES

By Professor Steven Ratuva

I vividly remember that memorable day, 10 October 2970, as a young village boy attending Yale Dustrict School in Kadavu, when the British flag was lowered for the last time and the new sky blue Fijian flag with its colourful design was hoisted amid the cheers and tears.

It was a moment of youthful hope and optimism, and now 50 years later, I am reminiscing and reflecting on a journey so full of intrigue and challenges as well as resilience and hope.

Governments and constitutions have come and gone, either through democratic elections or illegal use of force, but Fiji as a collective of ordinary people living their ordinary lives, remain the cornerstone of hope in a country scarred by ethno-political tension, economic inequality, contestation of power by competing groups and abuse of authority by leaders.

Since independence, Fiji underwent a multicultural experiment under Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, which saw two main contending forces, communal nationalism (ethnic and cultural groups demanding attention) and civic nationalism (unity and common identity) competing for supremacy in syncretic and complex ways.

There were moments of contractions and accommodation taking place simultaneously and by and large there was a sense of equilibrium until the first coup in 1987 when communal nationalism expressed itself in a seriously violent way with the help of the military.

This was repeated in 2000. While the 2006 coup was meant to reverse the trend using the fallacious “clean-up” narrative, it merely entrenched an ethno-business and political patronage under the tutelage of an all-powerful despotic clique.

The neoliberal reforms which followed have led to the dysfunction of the civil service, accumulation of crippling debt, nepotism and the formation of an ethnic clique system operating under the guise of “merit” and “de-ethnicisation”, which undermines the spirit of multiculturalism, equity and diversity.

Despite these setbacks, the sense of shared resilience and collective benevolence of the people is a reason why we have not had an ethnic civil war as we have seen in Rwanda, Solomon Islands, Bosnia and Sudan.

• Read the full article at Fiji Dynamics

Described by a Guardian reviewer as “superb hate-reading”, writer and columnist Anand Giridharadas‘s latest book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World investigates the hypocrisy of billionaire “do-gooders”.

He questions how and why we have become reliant on the philanthropy of the super-rich to help solve our biggest global issues, and their role in eroding the public institutions that should be leading the way.

Giridharadas is an editor-at-large for Time magazine and was a foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times from 2005 to 2016. His two previous books are India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking and The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas.

LISTEN: Kim Hill interviewing author Anand Giridharadas

He told Saturday Morning he once rubbed shoulders with the elite at Aspen Institute but had a revelation when seminar rooms there were named after some of the “worst actors in American and global life, David Koch for example and others”.

“We were discussing how to make the world better. And it occurred to me that some of these very people in the room had flown into Aspen from their jobs making the world worse.

“They worked for some of the Silicon Valley tech companies putting our democracy at risk, monopolising the economy and political power, they worked for food companies … lobbying against nutrition wavering, they worked for employers that fought against … raising minimum wages. And then they would fly to Aspen to talk about solving problems they were causing.”

Giridharadas said there was a spectrum of complicity – from the naive to the shrewd – among the richest and most powerful people in the world.

‘Shrewd’ financial crisis actions
He referred to the actions of Goldman Sachs in the global financial crisis of 2008 as shrewd.

“Tech is where the new money, the new power is.”

Tech elites like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, felt privileged because of their finances and that they had mastery over a specific set of tools which they could use to change the world, he said.

“This vision is fundamentally incompatible with democracy.”

He said neoliberalism was a notion that “you should always do what’s good for money because when you do what’s good for money, people benefit somehow”.

But the money never trickles down.

“This was a fraudulent ideology from the beginning.”

‘Reputation laundering’
At the heart of the argument of “winner takes all”, he said flamboyant do-gooding around the world increased one’s chokehold on wealth and power.

“You first get rich by cutting every possible social corner you can cut – you avoid taxes if you can avoid them, you use trusts and Cayman Islands accounts, you lobby for bottle service public policies that are good for you and your rich friends and bad for most people, you avoid paying people in creative ways by suppressing minimum wage, outsourcing to contractors.”

Bottle service, he explained, was like at a nightclub, where a patron commits to spending a large sum for it.

“You now have a lot of money, but you also have a lot of resentment if these connections are going to be made by people about what’s going on.

“Then what you do is you turn around and you start donating a fraction of that money to various forms of elite do-gooding – philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, for-profit social enterprises, maybe something involving Africa even if you’ve never been.”

He called this “reputation laundering”.

Do-gooding a smokscreen
Giridharadas said a person with money and a selfless demeanour could easily reach policymakers.

He said elite do-gooding was a smokescreen so the rich and powerful could continue to have their way.

There was a need for thought leaders to combat plutocracy, he said.

“A lot of these very wealthy business people are smart enough at business to make money and keep power, they’re not intellectuals, they’re not thinkers and they’re not necessarily gifted at spinning the web for justifications for their rule, so there is a need for quirk thinkers to supply the argumentation for an age of plutocracy.”

• Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing The World (Penguin Random House).

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

Many people have revelled in a return to a simpler life in recent weeks. While lockdown restrictions are eased in many places around the world, people will return to a faster-paced, more cluttered lifestyle.

But does it have to be that way? Can we live a simpler life post-lockdown?

With a dramatic decrease in consumer activity, US philosophy professor Emrys Westacott believes this is a time to reflect on whether the type of society we had built was, in fact, the kind of society we want.

READ MORE: Al Jazeera live updates – Obama criticises US coronavirus response

Dr Westacott, author of the 2016 book Wisdom of Frugality, said that while a more frugal lifestyle might not be the path for everyone, now was the time for many people to consider what they wanted in life.

For many, that will be a more simpler, frugal life.

The problem is, however, that our society is set up on a high level of economic activity, premised on the chains of buying and selling, and without it operating at a certain level of activity, it grinds to a halt, as seen in recent weeks.

The key was a more rational distribution of employment, Dr Westacott told RNZ Sunday Morning.

More comfortable life
“If there was a more equitable distribution of wealth, which is perfectly achievable with, both through companies having more rational pay structures, and also through taxation, I think people could and actually would choose a pleasantly comfortable life where they might be able to work 25 or 35 hours a week instead of 45 or 50 hours a week.”

That was provided there was a fair pension, decent public transport, housing and healthcare available.

Moving into life out of lockdown, people should reflect on what they want in life, what gives them pleasure and what matters, he said.

“But I would really hope we would take the opportunity to reflect more generally on what type of society we actually want.”

Neoliberalism – assuming market forces know best and produce best outcomes – had been the dominant philosophy in the last 40 years, Dr Westacott said.

“I think the pandemic spells the end of the neoliberal era and I think the idea that government should be small and inactive and everything should be left to market forces has seen its day.”

Few possessions
People had few possessions until there was an explosion of prosperity in the 20th Century, and now people have garages, basements and houses full of stuff, and full themselves with too much food, Westacott said

He hoped the pandemic would be the start of a shift to a more consumer-free society.

Regardless, it will be “game changer”.

“I think it’s going to be one of the great historical events. In the United States I think it will compare to, not so much to 9/11, as to World War II and the Depression and the Civil War. I think it is a huge gamechanger, but I think there will be a long period of great difficulty.

“I am kind of optimistic but I think there is going to be a pretty tough period ahead.”

• This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.
• If you have symptoms of the coronavirus, call the NZ Covid-19 Healthline on 0800 358 5453 (+64 9 358 5453 for international SIMs) or call your GP – don’t show up at a medical centre.
• Follow RNZ’s coronavirus newsfeed

NZME is insisting a deal for it to purchase media rival Stuff is still on the cards, despite Stuff’s owner saying it has wrapped up talks with no deal.

Stuff and NZME are seeking leave to appeal the High Court decision blocking their merger.

NZME said today it was asking the government to allow it to buy Stuff for a nominal $1.

READ MORE: NZME seeks urgent approval … to help ‘save jobs, newspapers’

Stuff’s owner, Australia’s Nine Entertainment, responded that it had terminated talks with NZME over a purchase plan last week and no deal was in place.

In the latest twist, NZME has since told the NZX that it believed it was still in a “binding exclusive negotiation period with Nine and does not accept that exclusivity has been validly terminated.”

Stuff chief executive Sinead Boucher told staff this morning the announcement by NZME came as a surprise.

“There is no deal between NZME and Nine.

Clear no transaction message
“We are really not sure why NZME took this step, given the clear message from our owners that there would be no transaction.”

She said she would get more information and share it during the day.

In its initial announcement this morning, NZME said it was seeking Commerce Commission approval and special legislation from the government by the end of the month to purchase Stuff.

The commission has previously declined clearance for a merger of the two companies, saying it would substantially lessen competition, both for advertisers and readers. That decision was subsequently upheld by the High Court and the Court of Appeal.

NZME said in this morning’s market announcement the acquisition of Stuff would lower the costs of producing news, and ensure a committed local news media outlet into the future.

NZME believed the New Zealand media sector was too small for the current number of quality participants, the statement said.

“Consolidation is urgent in the face of dramatically declining advertising revenue and current general economic conditions.

NZME thinks it is ‘best owner’
“NZME continues to believe that it is the best owner for Stuff as it is best placed to preserve mastheads, newsrooms and jobs. NZME considers that in the current New Zealand media landscape, NZME’s acquisition of Stuff will not substantially lessen competition in any market.”

Last month NZME, which owns The New Zealand Herald, regional papers and radio stations including Newstalk ZB, announced 200 jobs would go due to sliding advertising revenue amid the covid-19 downturn. It also asked the remaining staff to take a 15 percent pay cut for the next three months.

Stuff also asked its employees to take a pay cut. Stuff staff earning more than $50,000 were asked to take a 15 percent reduction, the executive team 25 percent, and chief executive Sinead Boucher cut her salary by 40 percent.

Stuff was bought by Australian-listed media group Nine Entertainment in late 2018 but has been on the sale block for months.

In November last year NZME confirmed it had been in talks with Nine about a possible purchase and had put a proposal to the government regarding a possible transaction including a “ringfence” agreement for Stuff’s editorial operations.

Between them, NZME and Stuff own most of New Zealand’s newspapers.

• Other NZME and Stuff merger reports

After 81 years of publication, The NZ Listener, one of the Bauer Media stable of publications, closed last month when the Germany-based publisher shut down its New Zealand operation. In this article, Jeremy Rees reflects on the report of a Commission of Inquiry that investigated a decision by the Board of the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation on 25 July 1972 to terminate the editorship of Alexander MacLeod with three months’ pay, effective immediately. The Listener had only had three editors since its launch as a broadcasting guide in 1939. Its founder Oliver Duff and successor Monty Holcroft, the revered editor of 18 years, built it up as a magazine of culture, arts and current events on top of its monopoly of listings of radio and television programmes. Both men managed to establish a sturdy independence for the magazine which was still the official journal of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service, later to become the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation.

Five years ago, when I left The New Zealand Herald after 15 years employment, I decided I would leave carrying my belongings packed in a brown cardboard box.

It is not quite as odd as it sounds now. One of the most common images after the Global Financial Crisis was employees leaving the office with their belongings packed in a distinctive box. You can search it now.

Enron? There are the employees leaving with cardboard boxes. Lehman Brothers? The same cardboard box. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? Same thing. Every time I looked at press agency photos of people leaving work, I looked for the cardboard box.

So, when I left the Herald for another job in 2015, I bought myself the cardboard box and packed up my few things. I said goodbye to colleagues, had a drink or two and then picked up the box, took it home and stored it in the attic.

Some years later, I found it. It didn’t look how I remembered. On the outside was written in felt pen, “Library, bin”. I had picked up the wrong one. Inside were dozens of unwanted and browning reports from the 1960 and 1970s. My box was long gone to the landfill. I had the reports even the Herald Library didn’t want.

During the Covid-19 lockdown, I climbed into the attic to toss it out. But, curious and with a bit of time to kill, I decided to pick one report to see if it was interesting. I picked out the 1972 Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Dismissal of the Editor of the New Zealand Listener.

On 25 July 1972, the Board of the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation decided to terminate the editorship of Alexander MacLeod, with three months’ pay, effective immediately. The Listener had only had three editors since its launch as a broadcasting guide in 1939. Its founder Oliver Duff and successor Monty Holcroft, the revered editor of 18 years, built it up as a magazine of culture, arts and current events on top of its monopoly of listings of radio and television programmes. Both men managed to establish a sturdy independence for the magazine which was still the official journal of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service, later to become the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation.

So, the dismissal of the editor was a sizable event.

Straight away, news reports raised the possibility of political interference.

Turbulent year
The year 1972 was a turbulent one. It was the year of Nixon in China, anti-Vietnam War protests. In New Zealand, the Holyoake years were ending, the electorate tired of National after 12 years; there were protests about the impending 1973 Springbok tour. On all these issues, MacLeod was a liberal. His editorials would later be characterised as “idealistic liberalism”.

Some of his editorials worried the board. They thought they lacked “balance”.

By all accounts, MacLeod was a good journalist, but Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand  describes him as “erratic”. He had been recruited from England to replace Holcroft and immediately increased The Listener’s foreign coverage. Witnesses praised his literary ability. He took his weekly editorial very seriously as a public figure.

At the same time, the board had been warned of some troubling dealings with staff. The Public Service Association forwarded staff complaints about him. There was a falling out with a “sub-editor in Auckland”. In another incident, MacLeod objected to the choice of the “Listener Appointments Committee” (one of three Listener committees cited in the report) of a new “Listener Secretary/Typiste”. He threatened to give her no work if she was hired. She didn’t stay long.

Into this volatile mix was thrown a magazine redesign. The “Listener Sales Committee” (another committee) wanted change to arrest circulation declines, maybe even a change of direction. It had discussed the possibility of running a little less culture and current events and a bit more entertainment and listings, like the BBC’s Radio Times. It proposed a “popular magazine of good quality and not subject to criticism over controversial editorials”. Did it really need an editorial? The board said it would consider it.

In early July, the NZBC Board formally asked its editor for his thoughts on the editorials. It invited him to the meeting of July 25 to discuss the matter.

The result was unexpected and fateful.

Oddly rambling missive
A week before the meeting, MacLeod sent the board a letter. Ostensibly setting out his views on editorials, it is an oddly rambling missive, setting out a series of complaints, among them that the Director-General of Broadcasting had not acted properly according to the Listener Staff Manual in a staff dispute.

MacLeod goes on to say that he does not wish to speak to the board about editorials; he only wants to be heard if the board decides to drop them. The later commission report pointed out it was not quite clear if he was coming to the July 25 meeting or not.

Certainly, the board thought he was. It was one of the first items of business. The board duly convened at 11 am, on the floor above The Listener editor’s office.

At 11.20 am, the board’s secretary rang MacLeod’s secretary and asked that he come up. The editor rang back to say he was busy. He said he had indicated he couldn’t come. At 11.35 am, the chairman asked the secretary to ring again. He got through and asked him to come up. MacLeod again said no. He had had no notice of the meeting, he had no wish to speak, he couldn’t leave his desk as The Listener was going to press in two hours. At 11.45 am, the editor wrote a note to the chairman. “I am short of staff and my presence here is absolutely required. No disrespect is intended, it is merely for professional reasons I cannot leave.” He went on to say that he had had his say in his letter and only needed to talk to the board if it “did certain things”.

At 12.55 pm the board wrote a note to the editor directing him to come at 2.30 pm. MacLeod did not see it at first; he had gone to a lunch meeting of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs to hear the speaker. When he found it, he wrote another letter to the board upstairs. “I regret that for reasons I have already explained—namely that this is a press day and my chief sub-editor and chief reporter are both absent—it will not be possible to attend.”

(The chief Subeditor gave evidence to the commission that the editor had given him the rest of the day off and said he could handle the magazine himself.)

At 2.50 pm, the board secretary rang the editor and, in effect, told him to get up to the board now. The secretary said he told the editor to “drop everything” and “come right up”. In the language of the commission he was told that the direction to attend was “absolute and unqualified”. MacLeod replied, he couldn’t right now but he could come at 4 pm.

Telephoned their lawyers
At some point in all these to-ings and fro-ings, Mrs MacLeod came to the office for two hours and she and her husband telephoned their lawyers.

By mid-afternoon, the board had had enough.

At that point the board passed a motion: “the employment of Mr A J MacLeod, editor, New Zealand Listener, be terminated on three months’ notice.”

And it resolved he be relieved of his duties forthwith.

Into this fraught moment, dropped one last letter from MacLeod downstairs. He said his editorial duties should have passed by 4 pm: “This is to confirm my availability.”

Such a dramatic action was always going to make headlines and raise questions. A few weeks later, the National Government of “Gentleman Jack” Marshall ordered a Commission of Inquiry under Ernest Albert Lee, OBE, a retired Christchurch judge, perhaps best known for his work in getting the Totalisator Agency Board (TAB) established. He was to determine if the board had acted properly and if was there any political interference.

One by one, the board members gave evidence to the inquiry that they had lost confidence in MacLeod. In different ways, they felt he was challenging their authority and had to go. One felt that there would only be ‘chaos’ if officers could ignore the board.

Letters, notes respectful
MacLeod’s lawyers claimed the editor’s letters and notes to the board were at all times respectful. And anyway, they asked, why couldn’t the Director-General of Broadcasting, who was at the meeting, just walk downstairs and talk to MacLeod, rather than summoning him repeatedly?

Commissioner Lee found that the editor’s behaviour was “completely inexcusable”.

“He obviously had made up his mind…. he would go in his own time.”

Lee found that MacLeod had enough time to go to a lunch meeting, have his wife in the office for two hours, write notes to the board, ring his solicitor and give his chief sub half a day off, but couldn’t walk up the stairs to talk about editorials.

“It seems to me that it was not the editor’s privilege to decide if he would go or not.” And as for the board going down to see the editor, there was no reason at all for them to “go cap-in-hand” to an employee.

But was the board influenced by politics?

Commissioner Lee was attracted to the somewhat tortured argument that the board could not have been political because if it was it wouldn’t have done something as stupid as sacking a liberal editor just months before the 1972 General Election.

Political affiliations snapshot
Interestingly, he does provide a snapshot of the political affiliations of the NZBC Board.
First up its chair, Major-General Walter McKinnon, who had just retired as the NZ Military’s Chief of General Staff. He was also the father of the McKinnon siblings who have been prominent in politics, diplomacy and public life. Don McKinnon was the Deputy Prime Minister under Jim Bolger and a former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth.

Commissioner Lee finds that the chairman bent over backwards on July 25 to ask the editor to attend but as to politics, he had little interest. “He made a small annual payment to an electorate branch of the National Party but had never participated in any political activity.”

Another member, Mrs McNab, had been active for National for 20 years and was a Dominion Councillor. Melville Tronson had been a National Party member for “8 or 9” years and had once been asked to be a candidate but declined. B E Brill was a National Dominion Councillor and became the National MP for Kapiti as Barry Brill.

Set against that was James Collins who was non-political; his interest lay in sales marketing. The inquiry report drily points out that Collins had made just one reference to The Listener in his time on the board, when he had suggested it explore every avenue to get more radio ads. “That was the sole reference he ever made to The Listener.”

Lastly, Reverend K Ihaka had once been asked to stand for Labour in Northern Māori but said no and pointed out that he dealt with all sorts of people from different parties.

So, was the decision to sack the editor political? Definitely not, concludes Commissioner Lee. His investigation finds the board felt it was dealing with a turbulent editor, who was challenging their authority by refusing to appear. He finds no direct evidence of interference.

But it’s hard not to escape MacLeod’s counter-argument in the commission report. The board may have acted with no political intent, but the editor believed his job was becoming politicised. MacLeod’s view seems to have been that great issues of war, racism and politics were being debated in the country and The New Zealand Listener had to be in the centre of them. The board said it never interfered in Listener editorials but it had also become concerned about “balance”.

Government ownership a problem
At least part of the problem seems to have stemmed from the government ownership of a magazine which dealt with current affairs. Throughout the commission, board members question how The Listener sat within the 1961 Broadcasting Act which demanded equitable, balanced reporting on radio and television. They were often exercised how their magazine could have opinionated editorials when radio and TV didn’t.

A year earlier, the “Listener Committee” (the third committee of The Listener mentioned to the inquiry) wrote a report to MacLeod saying The Listener had to maintain balance “along the same lines as the corporation is required by statute to follow in the its broadcast programmes”.

And just a month before the July board meeting, the Listener Committee had met (along with MacLeod) to discuss ways to make the paper more popular and to criticise “the controversial character of editorials”—it not being a broadcasting function to “express any particular point of view”. MacLeod said he remembered being told by a board member his editorials were “politically embarrassing” to the NZBC.

Board members told the inquiry they could recall conversations about some of MacLeod’s editorials. General McKinnnon remembered phoning MacLeod to offer information about the Vietnam War for which the editor he said was “grateful”. MacLeod, on the other hand, claimed McKinnon rang him after every anti-Vietnam War editorial, I “have no hesitation in saying…pressures were exerted”.

MacLeod remembered every discussion of an editorial; General McKinnon felt they were hardly discussed by the board all.

Things weren’t helped by a cover story on the impending Springbok tour showing some All Blacks with the headline, “No tour”. MacLeod said the Director-General of Broadcasting objected to it as “politically slanted journalism”.

Furthermore, MacLeod had angered the NZBC by suggesting in an editorial it had caved in to political pressure to “balance” a news report on losses in Vietnam. His editorial was thought disloyal to colleagues in the NZBC.

A sensitive time
All of this came at a sensitive time when the government was discussing whether to allow a second TV channel.

Perhaps, a different man may have handled all this differently. In his writings presented to the Commission of Inquiry, MacLeod comes across as a prickly and difficult cove. And the pressure seems to have crystallised in his mind around his editorial freedom. Commissioner Lee rather harshly calls it his “blind jealousy of his editorial role”.

So how independent could an editor be, especially the editor of a publicly funded magazine? The commission sort several views. One of its oddities is that MacLeod seemed to find his greatest support from experts outside the media, particularly a Victoria University business professor with the wonderful name of Stewart Wilfred Nivison Ransom. His argument appears to be that editors are likely to be single-minded, ambitious and aggressive, so harmonious relations with boards are unlikely. If there was conflict with the Broadcasting Act then maybe the act should be changed—or ignored.

At this point, Commissioner Lee grants Ransom his own exclamation mark of disapproval, the only one in the report!

Much more to his liking was the evidence of former New Zealand Herald editor, Orton Sutherland Hintz. He quotes him approvingly at length (although with a Christchurch judge’s knowledge of the media north of the Waimakariri he refers to Hintz’s paper as the “Auckland Herald”). Hintz argued that editorial independence was not absolute, that it is set by the direction of the proprietor or the board. And that editorials are not the view of the editor alone; they represent the view of the journal. In other words, the editor and an editorial are subject to the board’s policies.

If an editor received a directive from the board, they had three options; put it into effect, resign, or refuse and be dismissed. Hintz was firm; the board had the absolute right to keep an eye on the content of The Listener.

He did not believe the number of times the board sought to speak to MacLeod about his editorials was excessive.

The commissioner’s verdict
In the end, the Commission of Inquiry found completely in favour of the board.
Sitting on a box in my attic marked “Library. Bin”, I read the conclusions. They have the rhythm of a tumbril drumbeat.

Did the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation act properly in dismissing Alexander Joseph MacLeod as editor? The answer, said Commissioner Lee, was Yes.

Was any political interference or influence brought to bear on the corporation in making its decision? The answer was No.

Was the corporation influenced by any political consideration? The answer again No.

The report was delivered to His Excellency Sir Edward Denis Blundell, Knight Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint Gorge, Knight Commander of the most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief in and over New Zealand on the 13th day of October 1972. And that was largely that.

The country was in the midst of an election; six weeks later National’s long reign was ended by Norman Kirk’s Labour. Within a few months Kirk withdrew New Zealand troops from Vietnam, recognised China and ended the proposed 1973 Springbok tour.

Some 48 years later, reading a brown cardboard box of old reports, I haven’t been able to get one image out of my head. It’s like a film shot of a building with the outer wall removed to show the floors. On one floor, the Board of the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation. One floor below, an editor, joined occasionally by his wife, putting The Listener to bed and steadfastly refusing to walk upstairs to defend editorials.

Jeremy Rees is a journalist of some 30 years experience. Currently an executive editor at Radio New Zealand, he has been a former editor of the Weekend Herald and editor of nzherald.co.nz This article has been published by the Pacific Media Centre’s Asia Pacific Report by arrangement with Pacific Journalism Review.

• Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Dismissal of the Editor of the New Zealand Listener. (1972). Report by E A Lee. Wellington, NZ: Government Printer.
  
• The New Zealand Listener, 1939-2020

Media on both sides of the Tasman face apocalyptic times as the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic decimates the industry with Bauer Media NZ closing its doors and host of regional – 23 at the moment – Australian papers being shut down.

Add to that, the imminent closure of the Australian Associated Press on June 26 – although that had nothing to do with the virus – and there is not much to be optimistic about in the industry.

READ MORE: Bauer Media closures – so many livelihoods, so much destruction

“NZ journalism must not be left to languish. The sudden closure of Bauer Media NZ is devastating for New Zealand journalism and for the publics which depend on it in this time of national crisis,” said Dr Greg Treadwell, president of the Journalism Education Association New Zealand (JEANZ) in a statement issued yesterday, which was co-signed by Dr Tara Ross, head of journalism at the University of Canterbury and Charles Riddle, principal academic staff member, journalism, at Wintec.

“Iconic magazine titles that have been household names, some for generations, were today shut down, with the Covid-19 crisis blamed for the closures.

“Among the pages consigned to history today was the work of some of the country’s pre-eminent journalists. The implications for New Zealand democracy are serious.”

He described it as numerous blows to the media industry.

Essential industry reeling
“These closures have impacted an essential industry already reeling with multiple structural and commercial failures.

“Redundancies are under way or reportedly mooted for other major media companies in New Zealand.

“The Journalism Education Association of New Zealand urges the New Zealand government to keep public-affairs journalism at the forefront of its thinking as it moves to support New Zealanders during the Covid-19 crisis,” Dr Treadwell said.

Meanwhile, in Australia the Journalism, Education and Research Association (JERAA) has joined the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) in calling on the government to provide $40 million emergency funding from the Regional and Small Publishers Jobs and Innovation Package as a survival fund to keep regional and rural newspapers alive during the coronavirus crisis.

“I think that is a really important thing in Australia right now, New Zealand suffers from this as well,” Dr Treadwell said.

“But I completely understand our Australian colleagues calling on the government to support their community newspapers because they suffer from news deserts there, not just physical ones, but news deserts where whole communities have no local papers.

“This is happening in New Zealand as well, our community newspapers that are around here need to operate during the lockdown.

‘Dreadful state’
“I do think the New Zealand community newspaper scene is in a dreadful state.”

As, for Australia, in a statement JERAA said Saffron Howden’s evolving map of Australia showed 23 closed newspapers including the Sunraysia Daily, The Guardian – Swan Hill, Gannawarra Times, Loddon Times, Barrier Daily Truth, Yarram Standard, Great Southern Star, Latrobe Valley Express, Star News Group, Maryborough District Advertiser, Gulf Chronicle, North Central News, Shepparton News, New South Western Standard, Cape and Torres News, The Bunyip, Bairnsdale Advertiser, Warragul and Drouin Gazette.

In addition, JERAA also noted News Corp Australia’s decision to suspend the printing of 60 community titles in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia from April 9.

While these publications will continue to publish digital news, the loss of print products will be an accessibility issue in regions with aging populations or limited internet access, the JERAA statement said.

Dr Treadwell called on the government to support New Zealand’s community newspapers.
He expressed sympathy for the Kaiatia-based Northland Age and its editor Peter Jackson, which has closed after 116-years.

“The idea of the Northland Age no longer publishing is heart-breaking, the government needs to act, it’s not as if you can off a newspaper and turn it back on again,” he said.

In the JEANZ statement, he said: “While we commend the change that will allow community papers to publish during the national lockdown, the government should also make plans to ensure all New Zealanders continue to get high-quality information in the coming months.

“Not only will we need strong science and environment reporting, we will need in-depth, long-form and even creative journalism to tell the complex stories that will arise from this pandemic.

“A well-informed public will be essential. An adequately resourced news media, across both public and private sectors, is also critical in the current state of emergency, given the dramatically increased powers the state has at its disposal.”

Pacific facing crisis too
Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie, who is also deeply concerned about the impending crisis for many Pacific Islands media groups, said his response to the closures in Australia and New Zealand was “in a word – devastated”.

“The media in many respects has been dying a slow death, certainly in print. And although we have a number of small yet successful start-up digital media ventures, we have witnessed the gradual decline of quality media overall in New Zealand,” he said.

“In one foul swoop, a foreign-owned corporate, Bauer Media, has been allowed to destroy the heart of New Zealand’s magazine industry. And there has been barely a whimper.

“We no longer even have a strong media union – such as Australia has with the MEAA to stage at least some semblance of a defence. I find it quite outrageous that a German company can do this, one that has just reported group profits back home – just dump a cluster of NZ cultural icons in publishing with such titles as Metro, the Listener and NZ Woman’s Weekly with their long and proud histories.

“Especially when we are led to believe that the government tried to intervene and offered substantial financial support to keep the company going. One suspects that Bauer were planning to scuttle the magazines anyway and the pandemic simply provided the pretext.”

Dr Robie said he believed all media in New Zealand should have been treated as “essential services” – especially in this “so-called post-truth era when we are faced with an avalanche on lies, disinformation and fake news”.

“Many among the general public don’t know what to believe any more. We need more quality media with a trusted pedigree, not less.

“And community publications identified closely with their neighbourhoods and ethnic and diasporic media are also vitally important in our democracy. Closing or silencing of media inevitably weakens the robustness of our democracy.”

Apart from Bauer Media, the Northland Age and Radio Sport, Mediaworks has asked staff to take a 15 percent pay cut, Television New Zealand has frozen payrates, NZME is calling redundancies and Stuff staff have been warned to expect a cull.

• Newscorp Australia warns of coronavirus job cuts

The publisher of some of New Zealand’s best known magazines has folded amid the economic fallout from the national coronavirus pandemic lockdown.

Bauer Media, which publishes The Listener, Woman’s Day, New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, Metro, North and South and Next, says it is no longer viable and has shut its doors today.

Chief executive Brendon Hill said the Covid-19 lockdown had stopped magazine production and put the business in an untenable position.

READ MORE: Al Jazeera coronavirus live updates – Global cases surpass 900,000

He said magazines depended on advertising and it was unlikely that would recover to pre-crisis levels.

Business advisory firm EY has been appointed to work on an orderly wind-down of the business, and buyers are being sought for the magazines.

New Zealand Bauer staff were told this morning of the closure.

Hill said local staff would get full redundancy and other entitlements.

‘Devastating blow’
“This is a devastating blow for our committed and talented team who have worked tirelessly to inform and entertain New Zealanders, through some of the country’s best-loved and most-read magazines.”

Bauer carried out an urgent review of its New Zealand operations and considered all options to keep part or all the business open, including engaging with the New Zealand government, Hill said.

“An active search is underway to find buyers for our New Zealand assets, including our many iconic titles, however, so far an alternative owner has not been found,” he said.

At her daily coronavirus briefing, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she was “frankly gutted” to hear Bauer Media’s decision to close its doors today without seeking government assistance.

Describing the titles published by Bauer as part of New Zealand’s history, Ardern said the government actively sought to assist Bauer through this time.

She said Bauer rejected the government’s aid.

“Minister Kris Faafoi spoke to them and asked if they could take up the wage subsidy. They refused.

“In my view, from what I know of this situation, this appears to be a decision that has been made at the same time as Covid-19, but not because of it.”

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

• If you have symptoms of the coronavirus, call the NZ Covid-19 Healthline on 0800 358 5453 (+64 9 358 5453 for international SIMs) or call your GP – don’t show up at a medical centre.
• Bauer Media closures: So many livelihoods, so much devastation – Opinion by Joanne Black

Pacific Media Watch

Tuwhera, the open access repository and publisher of Auckland University of Technology, has added 16 years of back copy editions of Pacific Journalism Review to the digital resource.

The full text articles from a further 24 editions have been added, including all the original issues published by the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of the South Pacific.

Some of the research includes the Sandline mercenary crisis in Papua New Guinea, the 10-year Bougainville conflict and the Fiji military coups.

READ MORE: Pacific Journalism Review – Twenty years special edition

PJR now has 964 research articles and reviews on its Tuwhera open access database – the largest single collection of Pacific media research, scholarship and analysis.

Many of the articles also feature research in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, with contributing authors and editors who are members of the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC), Asian Media and Communication Congress (ACMC), Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA), Journalism Education Association of New Zealand (JEANZ) and Media Educators Pacific (MEP) prominent.

Writing a reflective article marking the journal’s achievements on the 20th anniversary of publication in 2014, Brisbane media educator Dr Lee Duffield wrote:

“Pacific Journalism Review since its inception has always emphasised its regional identity, adopting its own ‘Pacific’ style of discourse and inquiry.”

26th year
The journal, founded at UPNG in 1994 and now published by AUT, is in its 26th year of publication.

All the articles added to the archives here were published prior to 2011.

Five editions were published at UPNG and four at USP while the rest of 41 editions are from AUT, beginning in 2003,.

Many global issues such as media freedom and journalist safety, media accountability systems, communication in development, conflict reporting, climate change journalism, human rights and social media, gender and indigeneity have been examined.

Welcoming the launch of PJR, Dr Margaret Obi, then head of UPNG’s South Pacific Centre for Communication and Information in Development (SPCenCIID), wrote in the first edition: “The issue that is most prevalent in PJR is that of professional ethics, responsibility and accountability by journalists and media agencies and their role in informing and being informed without fear or favour.”

Founding editor Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre at AUT, says PJR is more than a research journal. He believes it has developed a unique character of engaged “critical inquiry”, as represented by its Frontline section encouraging journalism-as-research methodology.

“As an independent publication, PJR has given strong support to investigative journalism, socio-political journalism, political economy of the media, photojournalism and political cartooning in its almost three decades of publishing,” he adds.

Associate editor Philip Cass says that as PJR is the only journal covering journalism in the Pacific and Asia, the archives would prove to be an invaluable resource for academics and journalists.

“PJR provides a unique record of issues, viewpoints and research from academic and media practitioners,” he says.

The journal’s current editorial team is editor David Robie, associate editor Philip Cass, Frontline editor Wendy Bacon, assistant editors Khairiah Rahman and Nicole Gooch, and designer Del Abcede.

• PJR: two decades of critical inquiry
• Pacific Journalism Review
• PJR at AUT Shop online
• Tuwhera open access depository

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Zealand’s unprecedented “internet-native mass shooting” attack on two mosques, the New Caledonia independence referendum, Fiji’s general election and news media responses are featured in the latest Pacific Journalism Review being published next week.

Analysis articles in the “democracy and terrorism edition” include award-winning New Zealand Herald cartoonist Rod Emmerson and RNZ Mediawatch presenter Colin Peacock who says New Zealand will be learning to live with its “loss of innocence” for many months ahead.

Melbourne-based journalist, broadcaster and academic Nasya Bahfen also contrasts how multicultural Australia is “in real life” and “in broadcasting” with a breakdown of Census data.

READ MORE: Pacific Journalism Review on Tuwhera

“Including reflections in the wake of Christchurch, she shows how lack of media representation feeds into hateful stereotypes,” says PJR.

The research journal critiques the united stand taken by New Zealand’s mainstream news media over a set of agreed protocols for coverage of the trial of the accused perpetrator over the killings of 51 people – including one victim who died later – on 15 March 2019.

PJR notes in an editorial that “although many commentators view the protocol and coordinated policy around coverage as a considered and responsible approach to the atrocity and maintaining the principles of ‘open justice’, there has also been some criticism, especially internationally”.

The journal includes strong criticism of social media responses such as by Facebook and highlights the research on representations of Islam in New Zealand by PJR assistant editor Khairiah A. Rahman and Azadeh Emadi of Glasgow University published in the October edition, which was given widespread international coverage.

Fiji’s ‘coup culture’
Last November, Fiji held its second general election in 12 years – and the second since the 2006 military coup – and Sri Krishnamurthi of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre returned to his homeland to cover it.

He was determined to come to grips with the legacy of the “coup culture” and PJR publishes his analysis while Jope Tarai of the University of the South Pacific examines the impact of social media.

November also was the controversial referendum in New Caledonia when both Kanak and Caldoche (settler) citizens voted on whether the island territory should become independent from France.

Although the predicted “non” vote happened, it was far less decisive than expected, opening the door to two more referenda on independence and ongoing political fallout.

David Robie, who covered the New Caledonian uprising as a journalist three decades ago and wrote the 1989 book Blood on their Banner about the conflict, files a special report on the referendum and Lee Duffield, who also visited New Caledonia, analyses the future options.

This double edition of PJR also includes articles about the China Global Television Network’s news values relating to the 2015 Tianjin port explosions that killed 173 people, climate change in Bangladesh, the political economy of iwi and te reo radio broadcasting, the 2018 Malaysian general election and an anti-free speech law, communication narratives of Latin American women in New Zealand and many other topics.

A compelling colour photo essay, “Gangsters in Paradise”, by Todd Henry, linked to a project by Vice Zealandia is one of the edition’s highlights.

The journal, published by the Auckland University of Technology and now in its 25th year, is edited by David Robie and Philip Cass, assisted by Khairiah A. Rahman and Nicole Gooch.

As well as the hard copy edition, Pacific Journalism Review publishes on the open access indigenous Tuwhera digital platform at AUT and on several global databases:

• The PJR journal edition launch
• Call for papers for the next edition

By Sri Krishnamurthi

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

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

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

WATCH: The interview with Kalafi Moala

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

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

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

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

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

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