Pacific Journalism Review (Pacific Media Centre, School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology)
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Fact check: Still not core journalism curriculum: Report from WJEC Roundtable
No full textFact-checking has become a global industry, with more than 417 fact-checking outlets in 100 countries operating in 69 languages (Stencel, Ryan & Luther, 2023). According to the Duke Reporters’ Lab, half of the world’s fact checkers are associated with media outlets, but there are also 24 affiliated with academic institutions. Although the work is time consuming and resource intensive, fact-checking has increasingly been introduced to journalism programmes at universities and in professional settings. This expert article brings together some insights from a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) World Journalism Education Council (WJEC) roundtable event ‘Fact-Check and Verification as Core Journalism Curriculum’ hosted by RMIT University in Australia in 2021, alongside relevant literature exploring the nature and presence of fact-check based education approaches at that time. It concludes that while fact-checking and verification are important skills for student journalists, fact checkers do not necessarily need to be journalists, nor indeed have journalistic training. However, more students are needed who are excellent journalists and the authors argue that fact-checking is just part of that training
REVIEW: Behind the war on Gaza – how Israel profits globally from repression: Review of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel exports the technology of occupation around the world, by Antony Loewenstein
No full textThe Palestine Laboratory: How Israel exports the technology of occupation around the world, by Antony Loewenstein. Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 2023. 265 pages. ISBN 9781922310408.
JUST MONTHS before the outbreak of the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza after the deadly assault on southern Israel by Hamas resistance fighters on 7 October 2023, Australian-German 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’
The morals that shape the news: A study of Aotearoa New Zealand’s newsrooms
Full text linkThis article explores the personal interpretation of the moral world Aotearoa New Zealand newsroom leaders are guided by when shaping the news, or, in other words, it poses the question: Do personal moral values play a role in Aotearoa New Zealand newsroom? In this study, we examine whether newsroom leaders view morals as a driver in news-shaping, or whether the news values of objectivity, accuracy and fairness prevail over personal morals when it comes to informing the news. The research was conducted by interviewing six newsroom leaders from different media companies in Aotearoa New Zealand and the interview data were analysed within the theoretical and philosophical framework adopted from Lakoff (2002). The research suggests that working professionals in the media industry were not able to discern where their morals ended and where the professional news values started. Furthermore, the interviewees affiliated with public service media responded that upholding moral values would not have a financial impact on the news media organisation, whereas those affiliated with private media responded that it would
Documenting hidden apartheid in the Indian diaspora
Full text linkCommentary: This article provides an account of an independent filmmaker’s work in documenting some of the stories from the global Indian diaspora. Based in Aotearoa New Zealand, with ancestral connections to Fiji, East Africa, UK, US and India, and using documentary making with both its journalistic and artistic purposes, the author firstly refers to the literatures that identifies documentary-making as journalism, diaspora, and the caste system. She then situates herself within the South Pacific Indian diaspora, before describing her experience in the making of the documentary entitled Hidden Apartheid: A Report on Caste Discrimination. The article concludes by reflecting on her role and the role of documenting hidden discrimination where it exists throughout Indian communities of the diaspora
War on Palestine: How the fates of Gaza and Julian Assange are sealed together
Full text linkCommentary: Were they being properly reported, two critically important court hearings in February 2024, in London and The Hague, would expose the US ‘rules-based order’ as a hollow sham. Both posed globe-spanning threats to our most basic freedoms. Neither received more than perfunctory coverage in Western establishment media such as the BBC. One was a week-long hearing by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over a United Nations General Assembly request for an advisory opinion over Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and the other was a last-ditch appeal of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange against efforts by the United States to extradite him so that he can be locked away for the rest of his life.
EDITORIAL NOTE: After the editorial of Pacific Journalism Review and the lead article in this edition (Vol 30, No 1&2) about the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were printed, the Australian journalist was set free and he arrived back in Australia after a plea bargain. The winner of his country’s Walkley Award for journalism excellence, Assange was freed by a US federal court in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, on 26 June 2024 after a plea bargain to plead guilty to one charge of violating the US Espionage Act and the judge sentenced him to 62 months, jail time already served in the UK on remand. His 14-year struggle for freedom was over, but his lawyers say they will press for a full US presidential pardon
A (non) agenda setting study: News coverage of electric vehicles and their popularity in Aotearoa New Zealand
No full textThis article explores the news media framing of electric vehicles (EVs) in New Zealand and theorises the role it may have played in the uptake of EVs in the country. The results were unexpected; the positive valence of EVs, battery life, carbon emissions, the environment, range, public or personal costs, positive public opinion, positive evaluative language, and battery reusage were not emphasised at all in coverage. Despite the lacklustre media coverage of EVs in New Zealand, the sales of EVs went up. This disconnect between previous research detailing the importance of positive media framing and subsequent behaviour has implications for further research examining media effects. 
Challenges for campus and community media in Asia-Pacific diversity: INTRODUCTION
No full textThe ‘watchdog’ model has created a journalism culture that is too adversarial and creates conflicts rather than helping to solve today’s problems/conflicts. The panellists assess new journalism paradigms in the Asia-Pacific region where the media is able to make powerful players to account for facilitating the development needs of communities, especially those in the margins of society. A challenge for contemporary journalism schools is to address such models in a global context of ‘development rights’ with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as a benchmark. In the Pacific Islands context, journalists face a challenging news reporting terrain on their news beats, especially in the Melanesian countries of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Besides dealing with political instability, coups, civilian unrest and complex developmental issues, journalists must contend with hostile governments and draconian media legislation. The talents, idealism and storytelling skills of Pacific journalists can be cultivated and strengthened to produce independent platforms and models of journalism that challenge the status quo. Examples of this campus strategy include Radio Pasifik, Wansolwara, Pacific Scoop and Asia Pacific Report
REVIEW: Story of Rabaul eruptions has lessons for wider Pacific: Review of Return to Volcano Town: Reassessing the 1937-43 volcanic eruptions at Rabaul, by R. Wally Johnson and Neville Threlfall (editors)
No full textReturn to Volcano Town: Reassessing the 1937-43 volcanic eruptions at Rabaul, by R. Wally Johnson and Neville Threlfall (editors). Canberra: ANU Press, 2023. 410 pages, ISBN 9781760466039.
EARLY one morning in 1953 my father and kiap David Hook set out from Popondetta to climb Mount Lamington in what was then the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. Mount Lamington had exploded in January 1951, the largest eruption on January 21 releasing a pyroclastic flow that roared down the mountain and killed an estimated 3000 people. The carriers working with my father and the patrol officer abandoned them as the approached the mountain and it was towards the end of the day that my father came home, his boots cut to ribbons by the volcanic rock, his clothes ragged and soaked in sweat and his pockets full of colour slide film
Media plurality, independence and Talanoa: An alternative Pacific journalism education model
Full text linkThe shrinking mainstream media plurality in Aotearoa New Zealand provides a context for examining publication of campus-based media where student and faculty editorial staff have successfully established an independent Asia-Pacific digital and print press over the past two decades. New Zealand’s largest city Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) has the largest urban population of Pacific Islanders globally—more than 300,000 people in a total of 1.7 million (Pasifika New Zealand, n.d.), earning the moniker ‘Polynesian capital of the world’. The presenter has had a pioneering role with four university-based journalism publications in the Pacific region as key adviser/publisher in Papua New Guinea (Uni Tavur, 1993-1998); Fiji (Wansolwara, 1998-2002); and Aotearoa/New Zealand (Pacific Scoop, 2009-2015; Asia Pacific Report, 2016 onwards), and also with two journalism school-based publications in Australia (Reportage, 1996, and The Junction, 2018-2020) (Robie, 2018). In early 2021, he was co-founder of the Asia Pacific Media Network | Te Koakoa Incorporated which has emerged as a collective umbrella for academics, student journalists and independent reporters producing innovative publications, including the research journal Pacific Journalism Review and a strengthened Asia Pacific Report, which draw on a cross-disciplinary range of media contributors and scholars in other professions. These contributors are mindful of the challenges of reportage about the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This article explores an independent journalism model drawing on professional outlets for Asia-Pacific students and how an investigative and storytelling model like ‘Talanoa Journalism’ can be an effective bridge to alternative media careers and addressing ‘blind spots’ in legacy news media
EDITORIAL: Gaza, genocide and media: Will journalism survive?
No full text30th Anniversary Edition of Pacific Journalism Review: When editor Philip Cass and I, as founding editor, started planning for this 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review, we wanted a theme that would fit such an important milestone. 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 (Duffield, 2015). 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 PJR cover then featured a gruesome corpse at the height of Rodrigo Duterte’s callous and bloodthirsty ‘war on drugs’—and on media—in the Philippines. Three years later again the PMC itself had been closed in spite of its success.
EDITORIAL NOTE: After the editorial of Pacific Journalism Review and the lead article in this edition (Vol 30, No 1&2) about the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were printed, the Australian journalist was set free and he arrived back in Australia after a plea bargain. The winner of his country’s Walkley Award for journalism excellence, Assange was freed by a US federal court in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, on 26 June 2024 after a plea bargain to plead guilty to one charge of violating the US Espionage Act and the judge sentenced him to 62 months, jail time already served in the UK on remand. His 14-year struggle for freedom was over, but his lawyers say they will press for a full US presidential pardon.