Pacific Journalism Review (Pacific Media Centre, School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology)
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REVIEW: Vital role of journalism underlined
No full textBook review of: Tragedy at Pike River Mine: How and Why 29 Men Died, by Rebecca Macfie. Wellington: AWA Press, 2013, 224pp. ISBN 9781877551901Journalist Rebecca Macfie felt the emotional shock waves of the Pike River Mine disaster in 2010. She was researching the background of the mining company for a weekly news magazine article to explain to readers how the accident that killed 29 men had happened when she was captivated by the story. Her research soon turned up information from which she ‘formed the view that the disaster was not an "accident", but rather a corporate failure of the worst order’ (p. 2). Macfie was thus galvanised into action to write a book that would make the Pike story understandable to a wide audience including the families, friends and colleagues of those who died, for New Zealanders and as an object lesson for business and government leaders
‘Carbon colonialism’: Pacific environmental risk, media credibility and a deliberative perspective
Get PDFThe effects of climate change are already occurring in all continents and across the oceans, and the situation has deteriorated since the last account in 2007, warned the United Nations scientific agency charged with monitoring and assessing the risks earlier this year. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report (IPCC, 2014), the world is ill-prepared to manage warming and an increase in magnitude is likely to lead to ‘severe and pervasive impacts that may be surprising or irreversible’. Seriously at risk are Small Island Developing States (SIDS), including several in the Pacific, such as Kiribati, Marshall Islands and Tuvalu. The UN has declared 2014 as the International Year of SIDS and a summit was hosted in Samoa during September. Living in one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to the impact of climate change and the challenges of aid effectiveness and adaptation funding, journalists are at a critical crossroads. This article examines environmental risk, media creativity and a contradiction between normative and traditional Western journalism values and the Pacific profession’s own challenges of ‘adaptation’ in telling the story of global warming with a deliberative perspective.Caption: Figure 2: Climate Change Warriors from Fiji: ‘We are not drowning. We are fighting.’ world.350.org/pacificwarriors
INTERVIEW: Jo Chandler: Gender, human rights and power investigations in Papua New Guinea
No full textINTERVIEW: A series of stories on the complexity and contradictions of Papua New Guinea, Australia’s closest neighbour, has won the 2013 George Munster award for independent journalism. The award is presented by the George Munster Trust and the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) at the University of Technology, Sydney. Freelance journalist and former senior writer for Fairfax Media, Jo Chandler won the award for her Papua New Guinea articles, published in 2013 in the now defunct online publication The Global Mail. Covering issues such as health and human rights; violence and justice; aid and development; gender and power, the stories illustrate the complexity and contradictions of PNG, Australia’s closest neighbour. These stories included ‘It’s 2013, And They’re Burning Witches’, an article which received more than one million page views, and the personal ‘TB and me’. Each story demonstrated strong investigative skills, rigorous fact checking and quality writing. At the award presentation on 17 March 2014 at UTS, Chandler took part in a conversation with ACIJ director associate professor Tom Morton about her stories, how and why she covered them and what continues to motivate her. The George Munster Award recognises excellence in journalism and commemorates George Munster, freelance editor, journalist and writer
Editorial: Meltdowns and militarisation
Get PDFDuring the Pacific Science Inter-Congress in Fiji in July 2013, an integrated symposium on ‘Oceans and Nations: “Failed” states and the environment’ in the Pacific, was hosted at the University of the South Pacific. The brainchild of USP’s Dr Mohit Prasad and professors Victor Bascara, Keith Comacho and Elizabeth DeLoughrey of the University of California at Los Angeles, this drew its inspiration from another conference at Laucala Bay some two years earlier. The 2010 Oceans, Islands and Skies Symposium (OIS), with papers published in a special edition of the USP literary journal Dreadlocks (Prasad, 2010-11) in 2012, had established the disruption to the traditionally organic and fluid nature of relations between artists, writers and performers in the Pacific by the contemporary crisis of the environment. A follow-up Oceans and Nations Symposium explored relations between impacts on the environment, and crisis in political and related development, among the emerging nation-states of the Pacific.Cover cartoon from Rod Emmerson, New Zealand Herald
Communicating climate change in the Pacific using a bottom-up approach
Get PDFWhile scientific evidence in support of climate change is growing, awareness and education about its effects, especially among vulnerable communities, is lacking, due to language and cultural barriers. Communities are unlikely to respond to government policies promoting mitigation and adaptation strategies without an improved perception of climate change risk at a local level. Mapping the flow of information between decision makers and citizens is an important part of this process. This article broadly explores the communication channels that are being used for awareness and knowledge sharing in the Pacific. At its core, the article discusses a way in which participatory media has been piloted to enable community discussion about issues around climate change in the Pacific Islands. The ‘bottom-up’ approach encourages participation of marginalised groups such as women, youth, and people with disabilities who bring diverse perspectives in content creation. This discursive space enables citizens to share knowledge and acquire better understanding of the impacts on livelihood and culture. However, a strong community network and consistent mentoring support are prerequisites for participatory media to have long term benefits
Review: Capitalism's obsessions lead society awry
No full textReview of: Beyond Consumer Capitalism: Media and the Limits to Imagination, by Justin Lewis. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013. 232 pp. ISBN 978-0-7456-5024-1When critics take aim at a society gone awry through an obsession with consumption, wealth and individualism, their arguments are usually about political interests and structural forces. Justin Lewis’s book is a breath of fresh air, not only because it’s beautifully written and argued, but because he asks us to think about these pressing problems on an imaginative level. Imagine, he asks, if advertisements were banned? Or imagine if advertising creatives were told to produce any story rather than one aimed at selling
EDITORIAL: Journalism with integrity
Get PDFThis is the third issue Pacific Journalism Review has published on the theme of investigative journalism in recent years. Our first issue (PJR, 2011) followed the first regional Investigative Journalism conference held at the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology in December 2010. In that issue, we argued that universities and academic journalists have an important role to play in building a culture of investigative reporting in the region. This issue follows up on that suggestion by focusing particularly on investigative journalism produced in an academic context. The second edition followed the ‘Back to the Source’ conference hosted by the Australian Centre for Investigative Journalism (ACIJ) and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in September 2011 (PJR, 2012). Since our 2011 issue, pressures on the business model that once sustained high quality investigative journalism have continued to increase. As we go to press, photographers’ jobs at Fairfax media are threatened. Journalists have mobilised to focus public attention on the role of photographers as newsgatherers. Walkley Award-winning Fairfax photographer Kate Geraghty’s picture of asylum seekers holding up their identity cards as they are transported in buses into the Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea in 2013 is a reminder of how images recorded by journalists courageous enough to defy official restrictions on media have both humanised and publicised the plight of asylum seekers in our region
Newspaper quality, content and competition in New Zealand
Get PDFContent analysis results show that investment strategies and newspaper quality vary between companies in New Zealand. Indeed, Allied Press’ Otago Daily Times prints considerably more news than Fairfax papers with similar circulations, and almost as much news as the Christchurch Press. The results also provide some support for the theory that producing a relatively high quality newspaper, when quality is measured by the quantity of news published and number of journalists employed, is associated with relatively high readership. Vigorous competition between companies for dominance in the Queenstown newspaper market suggests that less concentrated newspaper ownership could increase competition and benefit consumers in other parts of New Zealand. Although the results are from 2006, strong similarities between the newspapers surveyed and more recent issues of these titles means the results and policy lessons drawn are still relevant
NOTED: Why so much grimness and so little hope?
No full textBook review of: The News: A User’s Manual, by Alain de Botton, London: Hamish Hamilton, 2014, 267pp., ISBN9780241146477. The News:Sociologists, ethnographers, political scientists have all focussed their critical faculties on journalism and the news, so it is not surprising, perhaps, that a philosopher might do the same. And with what relish does Alain de Botton aim his powerful intellect upon the news, freshly honed on such discrete topics as love, travel, happiness, religion, architecture and sex. In the developed world, he says, the news now occupies position of power at least equal to that formerly enjoyed by religion. However, the news does not merely report on the world, it is ‘constantly at work crafting a new planet in our minds in line with its own often highly distinctive priorities’. De Botton uses examples of headlines to illustrate the news’ focus on disaster and mayhem and asks, plaintively, why? ‘Why so much grimness and so little hope?
‘Failed’ or resilient subaltern communities? Pacific indigenous social protection systems in a neoliberal world
Get PDFThe notion of failed state is based on culturally, historically and ideologically slanted lenses and tends to rank post-colonial societies at the lower end of the Failed State Index (FSI). Likewise, the Social Protection Index (SPI) uses neoliberal and Western-based variables and tends to disadvantage subaltern post-colonial communities as in the Pacific. This article reverses this trend by arguing for a re-examination of the factors which shape the resilience and adaptability of local communities, something which has always been ignored by mainstream classificatory schemas such as the FSI and SPI. To this end, the article examines the indigenous and local human security and social protection systems in the Pacific and how these provide support mechanisms for community resilience and adaptation in the face of a predatory neoliberal onslaught and globalisation. It focuses on kinship, reciprocity, communal obligation and communal labour as examples of social protection mechanisms in four case studies—Fiji, Samoa, Kiribati and Vanuatu. Of significance here is the role of critical and progressive journalists and media in deconstructing the ideological and cultural bias embedded in these discourses