Pacific Journalism Review (Pacific Media Centre, School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology)
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‘The silence of the Sphinx’: The delay in organising media coverage of World War II
Get PDFNone of those New Zealand men who served as official war correspondents in World War II are alive today to tell their stories. It is left to the media historian to try and piece together their lives and actions, always regretting that research had not started sooner. Sadly there is more information available about World War I and the life and actions of Malcolm Ross, the country’s first official war correspondent, than there is about New Zealand’s World War II correspondents. Nevertheless, remembering the work of these journalists is important, so this is a first attempt at chronicling the circumstances surrounding the appointment of the first of the official correspondents, John Herbert Hall and Robin Templeton Miller, for the 1939-45 conflict. The story of the appointment of men to cover the war, whether as press correspondents, photographers, artists or broadcasters, is one of ‘absurd delays’ which were not resolved until nearly two years of the war had passed
Big news in a small country—developing independent public interest journalism in NZ
Get PDFAs pared-down newsrooms across the United States increasingly generate content for pay-walled online platforms, some of the country’s best journalists are instead joining public interest start-ups in the hope of pursuing the type of investigative journalism projects the mainstream media is increasingly struggling to fund. The likes of Propublica, the Center for Public Integrity and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists have found a viable niche in the US media ecosystem, one built on innovation, collaboration, and philanthropic support. Could the success of these foundations be mirrored in a small country like New Zealand, where the media faces the same resourcing pressure but little philanthropic money goes into media-related ventures? This article is based on the author’s Fulbright Harkness Fellowship-funded research trip to the US, visiting the organisations mentioned above and others, and suggests that while the US model of public interest journalism is unlikely to work in New Zealand, aspects of it coupled with clever use of technology and crowdfunding platforms could be harnessed to create a viable nationally focused public interest journalism venture
REVIEW: Pernicious effect of promotion panned
No full textBook review of: Promotional Cultures: The Rise and Spread of Advertising, Public Relations, Marketing and Branding, by Aeron Davis. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013, 247 pp. ISBN 0745639836. Aeron Davis' new book promotes the argument that we are increasingly submerged in promotional discourses. This book will not rescue anyone from their impending drowning but nevertheless it searches the murky waters of public relations, marketing, promotions and advertising fishing out the pervasive and unrelenting promotional influences. The author draws on numerous theories to demonstrate the cultural shift we have made to become a promotional world. It draws on established media theorists such as Adorno, Barthes, Baudrillard, Blumer, Bordieu, Fiske and McQuail as well as more recent researchers to develop the argument that promotion has become an imperceptible and intrinsic part of our lives. This text is likely to have greater appeal to readers with prior knowledge of mass communications, journalism or public relations as it does not explain theories but glosses over them, for example, Barthes’ semiotics is briefly described as how a signifier and signified have varied individual meanings but can combine to form one sign. Davis refers to textual analysis by racing through the tools of news values, uses and gratifications, encoding and decoding, semiotics and postmodernism
Review: A PNG media era when development mattered
No full textReview of: Press, Politics and People in Papua New Guinea 1950-1975, by Philip Cass. Auckland: Unitec e-Press, 2014, 205pp. ISBN 978-1-927214-09-1Press, Politics and People should be required reading for people who are concerned with the history and current trajectory of Papua New Guinea. It is also a book with much to offer for university courses in journalism, history and social science methodology. Philip Cass shows in considerable detail how to research and write a detailed study about an important topic by employing a wide range of research methods, including interviews, content analysis of newspapers, analysing academic and popular literature, and engaging in archival searches. Significantly, he does not waste any time ‘interrogating the Other’, but sustains several arguments about the place of the press during a critical moment when major change was in the air for the people of Papua New Guinea
Investigative journalism in a socially networked world
Get PDFThis article explores how investigative journalists can join the network society by moving online, collaborating with other reporters and media outlets across regions and across national borders, yet publishing in newspapers which arguably remain the central stage of the public sphere (Carson, 2013). A better understanding of the potential of social media and web-based communications for undertaking journalistic investigations can lead to the adoption of a global perspective, enriching local, regional and national stories (Berglez, 2013). The research and collaboration for a transnational story published simultaneously in The Australian and collaboration in London in 2013 may provide insights into the potential for the use of social media platforms and web-based communications for finding stories, collaborating and following stories into the social media to find leads to follow-up stories. This article questions whether the synergies between mainstream media and social media platforms may yield potentially high impact stories for major masthead newspapers and thus contribute to their sustainability. Connectivity with news sources has always been an important resource for journalists. Online networks may have the potential to expand the range of voices that can be heard and the issues that can be covered
Research degrees in journalism: What is an exegesis?
Get PDFThis article addresses the question of what might constitute an exegesis for a higher degree by research in journalism, and briefly canvasses issues for journalism as a disciplinary research practice. It starts by considering the craft/profession/discipline dichotomies to clarify the sort of journalism that might qualify as research, typically but not necessarily long form and/or investigative. It identifies the three core elements of the exegesis as a literature review, an exposition of the methodology and an evaluation of the success of the journalism component of the project in answering the research question. It notes that all journalism, like history and other humanities disciplines, is necessarily interdisciplinary, and therefore the journalistic methodology should interface with that of the cognate discipline. It argues that the singularity and value of journalism as a research practice lie in its combination of a reflexive empirical focus, a focus on contemporary phenomena and an intense engagement with the politics of knowledge. It suggests that meta-theoretical debates about reflexivity, space, time and fields are strongly applicable to methodological debates in journalism
2014 UNESCO Lecture: ‘No-one died covering celebrity news’
Get PDFCommentary: We enjoy freedom of speech in New Zealand, even though the Bill of Rights Act guarantee can be over-ridden. We have a variety of privately owned news media, even though the vast majority are owned by overseas interests. We have state-owned radio and television, even though our major television network was freed of its public service broadcasting obligations in order to pursue commercial goals. We have high quality tertiary institutions to train our future journalists, even though the ranks of our newsrooms have been systematically depleted. We have sophisticated telecommunications services, even though only 1 percent of us have optical broadband. The qualifications will not be lost on you. In other words, when I reflect on our good fortune I see that it is tempered by shortcomings, actual and potential. In this address I argue that the shortcomings are increasing and, if unchecked, ultimately threaten the way we function as a society
Noted: Taking scalps and vicious ‘attack’ politics
No full textReview of Dirty Politics: How attack politics is poisoning New Zealand's political environment, by Nicky Hagar. Nelson: Craig Potton Publishing, 2014, 166pp. ISBN978-1-927213-36-0.Nicky Hager's revelations of dirty tactics by the National Party will come as no surprise to those numbed by the vicious politics of the US, the UK or Australia, but they have raised hackles in New Zealand and no doubt prompted many people to wipe their hard drives as thoroughly as they can
Pacific Media Watch and protest in Oceania: An investigative free media case study
Get PDFIn the past three decades, global and regional media freedom advocacy and activist groups have multiplied as risks to journalists and media workers have escalated. Nowhere has this trend been so marked as in the Oceania region where some four organisations have developed a media freedom role. Of these, one is unique in that while it has had a regional mission for almost two decades, it has been continuously based at four university journalism schools in Australia, Fiji, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. Pacific Media Watch was founded as an independent, non-profit and non-government network by two journalism academics in the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) at the University of Technology, Sydney. Its genesis was the jailing of two Taimi ‘o Tonga journalists, ‘Ekalafi Moala and Filokalafi ‘Akau’ola, and a ‘whistleblowing’ pro-democracy member of Parliament in Tonga, ‘Akilisi Pohiva, for alleged contempt in September 1996. PMW played a role in the campaign to free the three men. Since then, the agency has developed an investigative journalism strategy to challenge issues of ethics, media freedom, industry ownership, cross-cultural diversity and media plurality. One of PMW’s journalists won the 2013 Dart Asia-Pacific Centre for Journalism and Trauma Prize for an investigation into torture and social media in Fiji. This article presents a case study of the PMW project and examines its history and purpose as a catalyst for independent journalists, educator journalists, citizen journalists and critical journalists in a broader trajectory of Pacific protest.Figure 1: A Pacific Media Watch Fiji torture and social media investigation series won the Dart Asia-Pacific Centre trauma journalism prize in 2013
FRONTLINE: Journalism practice and critical reflexivity: A death in custody interview
Get PDFCritical reflexivity is a relatively recent strand in journalism studies. It has its advocates, but there are few models. This article offers one possible model, of one moment of practice: an interview with the mother-in-law of an Australian Indigenous woman who died an avoidable death in prison. The critically reflexive approach taken in this research accommodates the individual, social, objective and subjective elements in a practice, and uses the tools provided by Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice and Donald Schön’s work on reflective practice and the reflective practitioner. Together, these approaches provide different but complementary conceptual, analytical, practice-based and narrative tools for making journalism practice, and journalists in the practice, an object of study. Critical reflexivity, by adding an inside perspective, is a valid method by which to add to the range of journalism studies that examine journalism from the outside. Such research allows for an inter-weaving of context, self, relationships, others, theory, history, facts, values and experiences, expanding and enriching our understanding of journalism practice and its place in society.Caption: Figure 1: 'The girl in Cell 4' article opening page of HQ, March/April 1997