Pacific Journalism Review (Pacific Media Centre, School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology)
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Media freedom in Melanesia: The challenges of researching the impact of national security legislation
Get PDFCommentary: In a global context of national security anxiety, governments across the world are passing an increasing number of laws in response to terror-related threats. Often, national security laws undermine media freedom and infringe on democratic principles and basic human rights. Threats to media freedom and abuse of journalists are also increasing in Melanesia. This commentary argues that in a regional context of repetitive political coups, failures in governance, high levels of corruption, insurrections, or even media crises, the tensions between national security legislation and media freedom need to be examined cautiously. The authors suggest that strong methodological and theoretical frameworks that allow for serious consideration of cultural practices and protocols will be necessary to conduct research examining these tensions in Melanesia
Forgetting PNG? Australian media coverage of Papua New Guinea
Get PDFCoverage of Papua New Guinea in Australian media has been a source of resentment and dissatisfaction since the former Territory’s independence in 1975. A survey of media content in Australia has been made, to retrace collaborative research during 2007-11 that showed overall low volumes of coverage much of it negative in cast. The Australian ABC provided some exception, maintaining a Port Moresby correspondent. The present study finds the volume of coverage has increased slightly with indications of more positive approaches in reporting on the country. It contrasts disinterest in PNG among established press and commercial television, with the ongoing contribution of ABC, and the ‘new media’ Guardian Australia making a targeted and well-serviced entry into the field
A crucible for bottom-up regionalism? The digital renaissance: West Papuan media suppression and social media in the Pacific
Get PDFCommentary: West Papua has one of the most repressive media landscapes in the world. Consequently, West Papuans have increasingly harnessed social media platforms to broadcast human rights violations committed in West Papua. Through this, Pacific Islanders around the region are increasingly leveraging social media as a political tool for showing solidarity and support for West Papuans. As a result, in recent years there has been a regional groundswell in support for West Papuan demands for self-determination, with prominent political figures such as Peter O’Neill of Papua New Guinea, and Gordon Darcy Lilo alluding to the awareness on West Papuan issues that have been raised through social media. This commentary explores how the rise of West Papua solidarity, is resulting in a heightened Pacific regional consciousness at the community level
West Papuan control: How red tape, disinformation and bogus online media disrupts legitimate news sources
Get PDFIndonesia ranks 124th out of 180 countries in the 2019 Global Press Freedom Index, West Papua (meaning the two provinces of Papua and West Papua) as the most closed region to foreign media coverage. There are patterns of threats that implicate the safety and security of local journalists in the territory. A clearing house, an intricate red-tape system, was re-introduced in May 2019 to screen foreign journalists coming to the region of West Papua. Once a permit is granted, security forces supervise the selected journalists during their work in the region. Over the past 10 years, there have been two deaths, multiple assaults, arrests on local journalists and deportations of international journalists. Most of the cases remain open with no clear investigation process. Disinformation using bogus online media disrupts the work of legitimate news sources. There is no freedom of expression or freedom of information in West Papua
COVID-19 dissensus in Australia: Negotiating uncertainty in public health communication and media commentary on a novel pandemic
Get PDFThe emergence of an epidemic or pandemic presents significant challenges for public health communication. The shifting and uncertain nature of an epidemic or pandemic necessitates a dynamic communication strategy. However, negotiating uncertainty and information gaps can be challenging for both government and media. This commentary focuses on two aspects of selected Australian media commentary on the COVID-19 pandemic: media commentators’ negotiation of gaps in the available information about the pandemic and commentators’ assessment of perceived initial inconsistency in the government’s public health messaging. It analyses how a perceived inability to reconcile gaps in the expert advice can be interpreted by media commentators as an indication of public health communication failure
FRONTLINE: The nexus of political documentary and alternative journalism: Addressing the social world
No full textThis article is a critical commentary of how political documentary embodies the traits and functions of alternative journalism. I explore this notion through Obrero (‘worker’) my independent documentary project about the labour migration of Filipino workers to Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand, after the earthquake in 2011. This article maps out the points at where the theories and practices of alternative media and documentary intersect. Analysing political documentary as a format of alternative journalism has links to the long tradition of film and video production as a tool for social critique. As a form of practice-based research, Obrero falls under the rubric of alternative journalism—able to represent the politically marginal sectors of the polity and report on issues underreported in the mainstream press. This article concludes that a distribution plan that is responsive to fragmenting audiences works best when alternative journalism no longer targets a niche but transborder audiences
What’s in a name? A history of New Zealand’s unique name suppression laws and their impact on press freedom
Get PDFThe principle of open justice, including the media’s right to attend and report on criminal courts, must be balanced with the protection of individuals’ privacy and an accused person’s fair trial rights. Prohibiting media from identifying those involved in criminal cases is one way privacy and fair trial rights may be protected in New Zealand. Court news was not always restricted in this way: 115 years ago all parts of criminal court proceedings could be reported and media decided what information was censored. In 1905, New Zealand judges were given the power to suppress court evidence to protect public morality, and 15 years later, the power to suppress the names of certain first offenders to give them a second chance. The laws now stretch to suppressing many kinds of evidence and the identities of some people accused and convicted of New Zealand’s most serious crimes. Investigation of the 115-year-long evolution of New Zealand’s name suppression laws illuminates a piecemeal, but severe, curtailment of media freedom and a trend of imposition of increasingly complex laws which journalists must keep abreast of, understand and observe to prevent appearing before the courts themselves
The future journalists of Timor-Leste: Job expectations, knowledge and skills on multimedia journalism
Get PDFIn April 2019, Jakarta-based UNESCO with two lecturers from the Department of Communication Science at Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) and one researcher at PR2Media prepared a plan to hold multimedia journalism training workshops at the Department of Social Communication (DSC) of the Universidade Nacional Timor Lorosa’e (UNTL) in Timor-Leste (East Timor). This article describes the current aspirations of the trainees related to their future media and journalism career in East Timor as well as the reflective evaluations of the Indonesian trainers on the training complemented with students’ pre-test and post-test survey on multimedia journalism knowledge and skills. Participants on the multimedia journalism training carried out in July-August 2019 were adept with the required technological skills. Their biggest challenges came from basic language and journalism skills, such writing in good Tetum, Portuguese, Indonesian or English (in East Timor, Tetum and Portuguese are the official languages, while Indonesian and English were designated as ‘working’ languages), covering the stories, and presenting the stories in a journalistic style. Despite these challenges, they were finally able to produce basic multimedia stories with a local perspective on the designated news site
REVIEW: A symbol of all that is wrong with the ‘war on terror’: Review of Prisoner 345 and Lost Stories Retold
No full textPrisoner 345: My 2330 days in Guantánamo, by Sami Alhaj. Doha, Qatar: Al Jazeera Media Network, 2019. 126 pages. No ISBN. The Refugee’s Messenger: Lost Stories Retold, edited by Tarek Cherkaoui. Istanbul, Turkey: TRT World Research Centre, 2019. 192 Pages. ISBN 978-605-9984-28-7
A RECENT article in the Middle East Eye pilloried the United States lack of preparedness for the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic. Lamenting that if only the world’s richest democracy could have instead of frittering away trillions of dollars on ‘endless wars’ invested in the country’s health infrastructure, the world would be in a better place today. Washington had ‘built an entire infrastructure to counter terrorism and criminalise Muslim communities’, spending almost $6.4 trillion on pointless wars that had killed off half a million people since September 11 2011 (Hilal & Raja, 2020). Yet, which was the biggest threat – the elusive target of the so-called ‘war on terror’, or the pandemic, which killed more than 20,000 Americans and infected a further 500,000 (with numbers still rising when this edition of PJR went to press)
Injustice versus insecurity: Climate-induced displacement in the Fijian and New Zealand public discourses
Get PDFDebate surrounding climate-induced displacement has attracted considerable critical attention in recent years. This debate has engendered diverse perspectives including the North-South divide, solidarity with affected people and climate justice. In this study, the authors consider how various policy advocates have attempted to influence public discourses about climate displacement in Oceania. Using Ulrich Beck’s concept of risk, we analyse discourse in policy documents and in Fijian and New Zealand newspaper articles. Our investigation found that climate action related to addressing the adaptation and insecurity of the affected people were prominent in the Fijian discourse. However, in the New Zealand discourse, action addressing climate displacement was less prevalent, but the displacement as a threat to the country’s national security was prominent. In this article, the authors analyse potential reasons underpinning these patterns of discourses