Pacific Journalism Review (Pacific Media Centre, School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology)
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REVIEW: New book explores never-ending Chamberlain saga : Review of Feral Media: The Chamberlain Case 40 years on, by Belinda Middleweek
No full textFeral Media: The Chamberlain Case 40 years On, by Belinda Middleweek. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly, 2021. 188 pages. ISBN 9781922454454.
I HAVE only seen the Rock once and that was on a junket with TAA, flying a bunch of journos from a week in Perth back to Townsville via the Alice and Darwin. Our 727 circled in a banking turn over the big red monolith to give us all a good look. I never had the slightest desire to get any closer. Like anybody working and travelling in the North I knew what the bush was like—bloody hot and full of things that can kill you. The desert was even worse
REVIEW: Like the pandemic, climate action is urgent : Review of Climate Aotearoa: What’s happening and what we can do about it, edited by Helen Clark
No full textClimate Aotearoa: What’s happening and what we can do about it, edited by Helen Clark. Auckland: Allen & Unwin, 2021. 327 pages. ISBN 9781988547633
WHEN the publication of Climate Aotearoa was heralded by Radio New Zealand in April 2021 it was featured along with a striking image and a quote from the collection editor, former prime minister Helen Clark. The illustration by Vinay Ranchhod was a dazzling red lobster in a boiling pot.
'I would liken [the challenge of climate change] to being the lobster in the pot and the pot starts to heat, and by the time it’s realised it’s being cooked, it’s too late to change. Its fate is sealed.
'That’s in essence the message: you’ve got time to act, the window is closing. And if you don’t, you’re going to get over those tipping points from which there’s no return.' (‘Time for action’, 2021
Crisis communication and COVID-19: Covering two Pacific tragedies with storytelling
Get PDFCommentary: Frontline journalism in the age of COVID-19 has posed particular challenges in dealing with personal risk, tackling an ‘infodemic’ of misinformation, and providing valuable news that can be used in vulnerable Pacific countries that have struggled with soaring infections and limited health infrastructure and resources. Five Pacific countries or territories have borne the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic—Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Papua New Guinea, and Timor-Leste. This article introduces two examples of public health storytelling in crisis communication, one being a pregnant Papua New Guinea woman who walked 25 kilometres to the nearest hospital—and died on reaching her destination; the other a pregnant Fijian nurse who died after battling COVID-19.  
The weather is never neutral: Then and now
Get PDFCommentary: Reporting on the weather may seem at first glance to be a very light story, but it can actually be a serious reflection of how we see ourselves and our changing perception of the world. In 1996, the author embarked on a light-hearted survey of 23 daily papers to find what New Zealand newspapers’ weather reports said about their attitudes to the world. In the middle of the 2020 COVID lockdown he re-ran the survey to see what had changed.
 
The journalist’s ‘toolbox’ of competencies in the Digital-Global Age: Reflections on the global state of research
Get PDFThe different crises that journalism continues to face worldwide make it imperative to talk about the journalist’s ‘toolbox’, a set of competencies that journalists must have in this so-called age of disruption. This article maps the global state of research on journalistic competence, offers ways of conceptualising journalistic competencies and provides the necessary context by which the development of the competency construct can be understood. What are the approaches in studying journalistic competence and what perspectives are dominant, clashing, or need to be challenged? The state of research shows an imbalance in perspectives: Studies on journalistic competencies are concentrated in US, Europe, and the Nordic states. The environments beyond the Western context or the ‘Global North’, so to speak, continue to be underrepresented, despite a strong research and journalism tradition unique to some of the Global South regions. Secondly, the industry perspective continues to dominate the discourse, although it has been described as hostile to innovation and critical reflection. The article ends with a call not just to further define and theorise journalistic competencies, but also to de-westernise the discourse
SPECIAL REPORT: Watchdogs under pressure: Pacific Islands journalists’ demographic profiles and professional views
Get PDFWhile global scholarship on journalists’ professional views has expanded tremendously over recent decades, the Pacific Islands remains somewhat of a blind spot, with only sporadic research. To address this gap in our knowledge, this study reports the results of a comprehensive survey of 206 Pacific Islands journalists in nine countries, providing a much-needed update of journalists’ demographic profiles, role conceptions, ethical views and perceived influences. Our analysis finds that while journalists are now older, more experienced and better educated than 30 years ago, they are still younger and less well-educated than their counterparts in many other parts of the globe. In the digital age, some old challenges persist in relation to their roles: While journalists are committed to holding power to account and aiding in the development of their countries, they continue to face political and economic challenges that make their tasks difficult and sometimes even perilous.This study was funded by The University of the South Pacific, the United States Embassy in Fiji and the Pacific Media Centre, formerly based at the Auckland University of Technology
Papua and the public: News framing of the 2019 Asrama Papua conflict
No full textThe 2019 Asrama Papua conflict in Surabaya initiated many discourses on racial discrimination and police brutality towards Papuan students in Indonesia. The question arises as to how the public perceive news framing and its effects on public opinion. This question will be answered by examining reports in the newspapers Kompas (published in Jakarta) and Jubi (Jayapura, Papua) which display quite different thematic and rhetorical structures. As secondary research, this article aims to assess the public opinion on the framing of the incident based on Berger and Luckmann’s Social Construction of Reality. Through qualitative focus group discussion, this study examines people’s perceptions of news media framing and its effect on the shaping of public opinion towards an ethnic minority group. The results show that media framing reinforces a certain idea of public opinion towards minority groups through various factors such as Perspective of Reporting and Depth of Reporting, both of which differ in Kompas and Jubi as a result of differences in their audiences. Differences were also found in such factors as the thematic structure between lens of sympathy and lens of antagonism. Ultimately, this research suggests that the public possess an awareness of news framing, thus giving them the capability to construct their own critical viewpoints towards media and the incident
COVID-19 vaccine online misinformation in Fiji: Preliminary findings
Get PDFDigital media, opens a vast array of avenues for lay people to effectively engage with news, information and debates about important science and health issues. However, they have also become a fertile ground for various stakeholders to spread misinformation and disinformation, stimulate uncivil discussions and engender ill-informed, dangerous public decisions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, antivaccination social media accounts are proliferating online, threatening to further escalate vaccine hesitancy. The pandemic signifies not only a global health crisis, it has also proven to be an infodemic characterised by many conspiracy theories. Prior research indicates that belief in health-related conspiracies can harm efforts to curtail the spread of a virus. This article presents and examines preliminary research findings on COVID-19 vaccine related misinformation being circulated on Fijian Facebook Forums
REVIEW: Noted: Entire region ignored by UNESCO manual: Review of Reporting on Migrants and Refugees: Handbook for Journalism Educators, UNESCO
No full textReporting on Migrants and Refugees: Handbook for Journalism Educators. Paris: UNESCO, 2019. 304 pages. ISBN 9789231004568
WHILE this book will be of immense benefit to anybody teaching about the broader issues of immigration and trying to train journalists and journalism students to write on the topic with more understanding, it is a pity that it so effectively ignores the Pacific. This book has some excellent ideas and some really useful guidelines on how to report on migrants more sympathetically and with more understanding, but it is very heavily focussed on Africa and Europe—and Europe to a large extent means Germany
REVIEW: Safeguarding press freedom, ending impunity in the Philippines: Review of the Philippine Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists.
No full textPhilippine Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists. Manila: Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication and International Media Support. 2019. 45 pages. ISBN 9789718502204
A DECADE after the world’s worst atrocity inflicted on journalists in a single event, a remarkable publishing event happened in Manila that could set a trend in the global fight against impunity for the killers of journalists. On the eve of the date marking the massacre of 58 people—including 32 journalists, a broad coalition launched a strategic blueprint for the survival of news workers. I was privileged to be present at this stellar event, the only New Zealand journalist or media academic to be invited to the launch of the Philippine Plan of Action in the Safety of Journalists (PPASJ)