Pacific Journalism Review (Pacific Media Centre, School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology)
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Unpacking Fiji internet law narratives: Online safety or online regulation?
Get PDFCommentary: It took approximately 6 seconds, with 27 votes against 14 on the 16 May 2018 at 5:03pm for the Fiji Parliament to pass the Online Safety Bill (Fijian Parliament, 2018b). Thereafter, the Bill came into force as the Online Safety Act, 2018 (Fijian Government, 2018), despite concerns about its impact on free speech. This commentary examines how the public was conditioned by certain prominent actors, such as the Attorney-General and Media Industry Development Authority (MIDA) chair, with support from government-aligned media. The Online Safety Bill had been touted as legislation designed to protect Fijians from harmful online activities (Doviverata, 2018; Nacei, 2018). However, the Bill’s implementation was preceded by a set of supportive media-facilitated narratives that seems almost too convenient. This commentary scrutinises the series of media facilitated narratives that justified the Online Safety Act. The discussion briefly examines the connection between the media, blogs and social media in Fiji. It then explores the media facilitated narratives to provide a brief critique of the Act as a so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ for safety while risking responsible political free speech. Finally, it seeks to answer whether it is about online ‘Safety’ alone, or ‘Regulation’ of online media
Post-disaster recovery is a marathon, not a sprint: The need for a state-sponsored recovery scheme
Get PDFThis study explores the recovery experiences of survivors of a flash flood event, five years after a natural disaster in South East Queensland. In-depth interviews were conducted with 33 of the original cohort of 120 post-disaster interviewees who experienced sudden traumatic bereavement and/or their own near-death experience. The data reveals that many of the survivors and rescuers were in worse—or far worse—situations than they had been in the weeks and months immediately after the disaster. Interviewees identified the worsening of their situation as being caused by systems failures by civil authorities, health care systems, welfare programmes and the insurance industry. Further research is recommended to assess the needs of people affected by natural disasters and the viability of a state-funded recovery scheme that could expedite personal, family and community recovery. The proposed scheme is based on the Queensland WorkCover scheme that scaffolds recovery and return to work for injured workers. 
Australian media coverage of two pivotal climate change summits: A comparative study between COP15 and COP21
Get PDFFrom an international perspective Australia’s ‘climate change wars’ can be challenging to grasp (Chubb, 2014). Part of the explanation to the protracted divisions on meaningful action on climate change can be found in media coverage of the issue. This makes Australia an interesting case study from an international and journalism studies perspective.This article compares the coverage in two major Australian newspapers of the two pivotal climate change summits in Copenhagen in 2009 and in Paris 2015. The primary research question was: in what way, if any, has the reporting of two major international climate change meetings in The Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph changed over time? The project used a mixed methods approach drawing on longitudinal content analysis data and interviews conducted with senior Australian journalists. The approach generated rich data allowing for a discussion using the ‘wicked policy problem’ framework (Head & Alford, 2013)
PHOTOESSAY: Buried in debt only to have their loved ones get a burial
Get PDFThe photoessay Healing The Wounds From the Drug War was the trail of people’s lives that have been disrupted by this brutal campaign in the Philippines. It was about what happens to those people left behind after the killings. Some who survive end up in decrepit jails. The families of the dead, mostly from the poor who get by in hand-to-mouth existence, end up buried in debt only to have their loved ones get a burial. But it also a story of hope for those given a new lease of life by organisations willing to assist in the rehabilitation of drug addicts
REVIEW: Noted; Moral quandary over social and political use of mobile phones
No full textThe Moral Economy of Mobile Phones: Pacific Islands Perspectives, edited by Robert J. Foster and Heather A. Horst. Canberra: ANU Press, 2018. 163 pages. ISBN 978-1-7604-6208-6 (print); 978-1-7604-6209-3 (e-book)
WHILE anthropologists have mainly studied mobile phone use at an individual or group level, the entry of Digicel into Pacific nations’ mobile markets over the past decade has introduced a wider set of issues that are explored here in detail
Journalism, journalism education and a region's integration: The case of Southeast Asia
Get PDFThe 50-year-old Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is now in its third year implementing the mechanics of regional integration. How does this region-wide development affect journalism in individual countries and in the region? This qualitative research sought to find out the meaning and implications of regional integration to journalism practice and education in Southeast Asia. There is enthusiasm over developing a model on ‘ASEAN-centered journalism and journalism education’, however there are country-level realities that news organisations and journalism schools face before proceeding to even attuning reportage and journalism instruction to the needs of ASEAN
A tale of two statues: Contemporary conflict reporting constraints and the Battle of Baghdad
Get PDFAlthough television conflict reporting has usually been limited by risks to journalists’ safety, the death throes of Baathist Iraq in April 2003 provided viewers with a unique opportunity to vicariously witness the fall of a large modern city. Yet if the iconic moment of the Second Gulf War came when Saddam Hussein’s statue in Firdos Square was toppled, then it was at the expense of another image event which unfolded earlier a short distance away. Because the US military’s violent destruction of the equestrian statue close to the ‘Hands of Victory’ monument better encapsulates the conflict than the sterile bloodless ‘cakewalk’ description it’s usually labelled with. This article shows how the tale of these two statues is also in some ways the tale of two Fox News correspondents, and how an alienation from military service conditions and methods can leave reporters and their audiences with no sense of what the participants on their screens endured in order to reach Baghdad; or what they had also inflicted upon others. In retrospect, the circumstances which allowed one Fox reporter to provide the world with what might have been its first taste of live, unedited combat footage seem more like an accidental success than the result of systemic best practices. Especially when this network and even its most credible host remain committed to ensuring a particular partisan perspective dominates all their broadcasts
SPECIAL REPORT: The Qatar-Gulf crisis: The attack on media freedom and the West’s loss of moral authority
Get PDFFour Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia in mid-2017 launched a brazen attack on media freedom by demanding that Qatar shut down the Al Jazeera television network, as part of a list of demands prompted by a diplomatic crisis. The standoff has not ended although the immediate threat to Al Jazeera appears to have abated. The world's media responded to the threat to Al Jazeera by convening in Doha for a conference in July 2017 and by issuing a statement containing recommendations for the protection of freedom of expression
OBITUARY: Journalism as a weapon: The life of Patrick John Booth
Get PDFMany countries have their Watergate moment, a scandal that envelopes not only mystery, intrigue, and human tragedy, but also something bigger, some kind of challenge to a country’s deepest beliefs about itself. What the US journalism scholar Michael Schudson called a country’s central moral values. For New Zealand, a good case could be made that our Watergate moment was the Thomas case. Like Watergate, it revealed ugly truths about corruption within some of our most respected institutions, and investigative journalism played a central role. Like Watergate, it was also a collective loss of innocence, and opened a very deep wound
OBITUARY: Yasmine Ryan—a sketch of an extraordinary journalist’s international career
No full textThere is yet much to learn from journalist Yasmine Ryan’s experience, who died tragically in conflicted circumstances in Istanbul, Turkey, on 30 November 2017 after a stellar career reporting in international conflict zones, from the Pacific to the Middle East. One element is relevant to journalism and communications curriculum. We all live in complex times, and for those who choose to exercise their professional craft in regions of conflict, there is a clear need to develop an awareness of how dangerous situations impact on us. The author of this article argues that professional development in this specific area of journalist safety must be designed to provide the individual an ability to self-assess and determine what kind of help is needed and how to access it before a crisis (whether internal or external) erupts