Pacific Journalism Review (Pacific Media Centre, School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology)
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REVIEW: Radio Australia speaking to the world: Review of Australia Calling: The ABC Radio Australia Story, by Phil Kafcaloudes
No full textAustralia Calling: The ABC Radio Australia Story, by Phil Kafcaloudes, ABC Books, 2022. 224 pages. ISBN: 9780646852430.
RADIO AUSTRALIA was conceived at the beginning of the Second World War out of Canberra’s desire to counter Japanese propaganda in the Pacific. More than 70 years later its rebirth is being driven by a similarly urgent need to counter propaganda, this time from China. Set up within the towering framework of the ABC, Radio Australia was, and remains, an institution with a lively multilingual culture of its own. Sometimes it has thrived and sometimes, especially in recent decades, it has struggled as political priorities and media fashions waxed and waned within the ABC and the wider world
Pacific media freedom since the pandemic
Full text linkCommentary: This article discusses the status of media freedom in the Pacific region and the impact of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. It primarily draws on informed comments made by experienced Pacific journalists of an online discussion in December 2021. Further, it updates the situation in several Pacific countries, based on reflections made by the same journalists in March 2023. There have been two major developments in 2023: the newly elected government in Fiji has repealed the country’s controversial media law while the government of Papua New Guinea considers introducing a media law. The article highlights the importance of ongoing vigilance with regard to media freedom in Pacific Island countries.
It also considers the impact of media freedom in Pacific Island countries during the unprecedented health crisis
Anti-vaccination conspiracy theories: Pacific Islands communities and the media
Full text linkThis article is intended to provide an overview of the role of anti-vaccination conspiracy theories in Pacific Islands communities in New Zealand, setting it within the broader context of the Pacific and among Pasifika communities in Australia during the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of their key roles in Island communities and communicating information about COVID-19, it focuses on the role of churches, drawing a contrast between evangelical/Pentecostal and mainstream religious bodies. Research findings suggest that much of the language used to oppose vaccination derived ultimately from the United States and that an inclination towards End Times eschatology was likely to have been key to the spread of conspiracy theories. However, the article also suggests that in spite of the presence of conspiracy theories and the media’s concentration on the controversial behaviour of Bishop Brian Tamaki, most mainstream Pacific churches were highly alert to the reality of the virus and supportive of their communities
REVIEW: Disinformation and the end of democracy? Review of How to Stand up to a Dictator: The Fight for our Future, by Maria Ressa
No full textHow to Stand up to a Dictator: The Fight for our Future, By Maria Ressa. London: Penguin Random House, 2022. 301 pages. ISBN 978073559208.
AS WE marched in our pink tee-shirts in solidarity with the diaspora supporting outgoing Vice-President and opposition leader Leni Robredo in Auckland’s Centennial Park in the lead up to the Philippine presidential election in May 2022, the thought weighed heavily on our minds: ‘Surely, Filipinos wouldn’t elect the son of dictator Ferdinand Marcos just 38 years after his corrupt father had been ousted by People Power.
Benefits of the project model capstone: Key experience themes for journalism students
Full text linkCapstone units are culminating experiences typically offered in the final semester of a tertiary degree. Capstones are common across higher education, and are increasingly being offered in university journalism programs. However, there is no consensus about the most effective capstone for journalism. At least three models have been identified: the project, the newsroom simulation and the internship. While traditionally popular, the newsroom simulation and internship models have certain limitations, some of which have become more pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journalism educators see merit in the project model but it is not widely used. To date, there has been a lack of research about how journalism students respond to the various capstone options. The study presented here makes a contribution to this field by describing graduating students’ feedback about a new project model capstone unit offered through an Australian journalism undergraduate program. It describes some of the key themes to emerge from survey responses from three cohorts of graduating students. The project experience was found to enhance both tradecraft and transferable ‘life skills’, and helped many students feel more prepared to enter the workforce. The project shows significant promise as a valid alternative capstone experience for journalism students
Training journalists in New Zealand: The industry view of training 1979-2002
Full text linkCommentary: What skills should student journalists and then working journalists be taught? This paper is an analysis of two decades of reports by editors in the New Zealand media on what they wanted to see. The reports were part of the annual Commonwealth Press Union review of the year. They show a focus by editors on the practical, craft skills of journalism, even as academics and teachers were questioning what was best. The reports cover the years 1979-2002. Many of the same issues then are still being faced; how do you ensure training is up to standard, what do young journalists need to know, how to deliver training to journalists during their careers, and how to ensure that a diverse range of people enters the industry? These questions remain today.
 
Failure of political governance in Fiji: Dysfunctional policy and the media
Full text linkFailure of political governance in Fiji is a common place where lack of democratic bargaining, political transparency, and accountability has led to political dysfunction and often political strife in the Pacific Island countries such as Fiji due to endless coups and lack of democratic accountability including suppression of the media and critical journalism. Democratic deficit theory highlights that so-called democratic governments such as Fiji fall short of fulfilling the principles of democracy in their practices and operation because of military coups, regime formation based on decrees and ethnic policies and controls on media based on coup traps where coup masters map the future state of the country entirely on ideologically engineered and institutionally supported political infrastructures.
 
REVIEW: A fascinating, timely account of ABC ‘soft power’: Review of International Broadcasting and Its Contested Role in Australian Statecraft: Middle Power, Smart Power, by Geoff Heriot
No full textInternational Broadcasting and Its Contested Role in Australian Statecraft; Middle Power, Smart Power, by Geoff Heriot. Melbourne, VIC: Anthem Press. 2023. 292 pages. ISBN 9781839985041
In May 2023, Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong announced what she called a ‘transformational package of support’ for the Pacific, including money for infrastructure, security and criminal justice. It came amid growing competition with China in the Pacific. included in the package was a promise to ‘leverage’ Australia’s strengths, including broadcasting (and sports links), as part of an Indo-Pacific Broadcasting Strategy, enabling more Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) members to access Australian content. Australian external broadcasting was firmly back in the spotlight
FRONTLINE: ‘Voice of the voiceless’: The Pacific Media Centre as a case study of academic and research advocacy and activism
No full textFor more than a decade, the pioneering Pacific Media Centre at Aotearoa’s Auckland University of Technology led the way in journalism research and publication, publishing the globally ranked peer-reviewed journal Pacific Journalism Review, monographs, and a series of media and social justice books and documentaries. Perhaps even more important was the centre’s role in nurturing young and challenging Asia-Pacific student journalists and communicators seeking social change and providing them with the opportunity, support, and encouragement to enable them to become confident changemakers and community advocates. This article is a case study of a style of academic advocacy and activism that was characterised by its own multiethnic stakeholders’ advisory board as ‘the voice of the voiceless’. A feature was the ‘talanoa journalism’ model (Robie, 2014), focused more on grassroots people and community resilience, especially faced with the global COVID-19 pandemic and climate crisis. The inspired initiative ended with a change of management to a more neoliberal approach to education at the university with scant appreciation for the vision.
Original DOI as first published in the Okinawan Journal of Island Studies (Japan):https://doi.org/10.24564/000201973
PHOTOESSAY: Refugee migration: Turning the lens on middle Australia.
Full text linkThis non-traditional research paper explores the role of photojournalism and documentary photography in shifting the power dynamic inherent in photographing refugee migrants in Australia—the refugee as an object of photographic scrutiny. It draws on visual politics literature which argues refugees have been subjected to a particular ‘gaze’, where their migration narratives are mediated, mediatised, dissected and weaponised against them in the name of journalistic public accountability in and for the Global North. This photo-documentary praxis project subverts this ‘gaze’ of the Global North and decolonises the power dynamics of the visual politics of refugee migration by turning the lens on middle Australia. Instead of questioning refugees, this project asks what is our moral responsibility to support them? These images are drawn from three years of photographically documenting the Meanjin (Brisbane) community that rallied around and eventually triggered the release of about 120 medevaced refugee men locked up in an urban motel in Brisbane for more than a year in 2020-21. In these images taken outside the detention centre, community members go ‘on the record’ to articulate their motivations for taking a stand—an enduring Fourth Estate record of their social and political stance as active participants within the mediated democratic process of holding power accountable in the refugee migration space. The refugees central to this project have now been released into the community but as they continue to languish in an immigration purgatory, the project is ongoing and continues to manifest through an activist journalism framework, drawing on human rights-based photojournalism practice