Pacific Journalism Review (Pacific Media Centre, School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology)
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NOTED: Lost in translation
No full textReview of: Understanding Micronesia: A cultural guide for researchers and visitors, by Tim Hogan. Penang, Malaysia: Southbound Press. Communication for Development and Social Change Series. 2008. 98pp. ISBN 9789389054491.New Zealand media and journalists largely equate the ‘Pacific’ with Polynesia. The focus of reportage and understanding the region begins with the Cook islands and ends with Niue, Samoa and Tonga, with a limited grasp of Fiji. Anything west of Nadi, the Melanesian nations, gains cursory attention and Tahiti Nui (Polynesian) and Kanaky (Melanesian) are all but ignored
A reflection on environmental awareness and the media in Fiji
Get PDFIssues of ‘failed’ nation-states, political meltdowns, coups and increasing militarisation have dogged the recent postcolonial history and environment of the Pacific. This, aside from the political and economic effects generally ascribed as the main societal impacts from such crises, has important social and cultural effects that are largely undocumented by academia as well as the media. The effects of political crisis on creativity through censorship, for example, are not adequately covered in current research and scholarship. The ‘Oceans and Nations: “Failed” States and the Environment in the Pacific’ symposium was organised concurrently with the Pacific Science Inter-Congress at the University of the South Pacific on 8-12 July 2013. This commentary and several other papers presented at this symposium are being published as part of this themed edition of Pacific Journalism Review. This article reflects on the role of the media in Fijians’ awareness, of environmental issues. It considers the question of whether local cultural and linguistic factors make the media a suitable source of information on the environment for Fijians, and proposes a method for future research that would help to answer this question
Melanesia’s test: The political quandary of West Papua
Get PDFWest Papuans often say that the conflict in their homeland, the self-determination struggle against Indonesian territorial control and the impact of a heavy military presence, are a regional issue. As a people, the West Papuans have historically identified as being Pacific Islanders and particularly as Melanesians. If a regional solution is required to address the political quandary of West Papua, it is informative to adopt a regional lens and explore the way the other Melanesian countries, especially the governments and media, respond to the situation there; also how they engage with Indonesia over West Papua. Events of the last few years within the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) have made it clear that some leverage is being applied on the issue in the geopolitical domain. At the same time, mainstream media coverage of events unfolding in West Papua, as well as the MSG’s response, has been largely missing. However, a true internationalisation of the West Papua issue has arrived and deserves close inspection
Review: A riveting media chronicle of giving voice to the voiceless
No full textReview of: Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific, by David Robie. Foreword by Kalafi Moala. Auckland: Little Island Press in association with the Pacific Media Centre. 2014, 362 pp. ISBN 978-1877484-25-4Most journalists work to earn a decent living. Some join the profession to rub shoulders with the rich and famous, benefitting from close proximity to the powers that be. David Robie, the doyen of journalism in the South Pacific region, has pursued a different type of journalism, as this book attests. An exceptional individual, apart from being an award-winning journalist, a prolific author and a committed journalism educator, Robie has set new standards of journalism practice and politics in a part of the globe which receives scant coverage in the international media. During the early 1990s, as associate editor of the London-based and now defunct Gemini News Service, a ‘Third World-oriented’ news features service, this reviewer had the privilege to work with Robie, who regularly contributed thoughtful, well-researched but never preachy articles and commentaries from the South Pacific region, which were circulated among the agency’s more than 100 newspapers around the world
Noted: Exposing celebrity reportage
No full textReview of: Conflict Coverage Promotion: High Quality or High Concept? By Chris Veits. Hamburg: Anchor Academic Publishing, 2014, 95pp. ISBN 978-3-95489-200-6.Due to his background in entertainment television Chris Veits would seem uniquely qualified to conduct a semiotic analysis of the conflict coverage promotional spots on CNN International and Al Jazeera English. However, admirers of Al Jazeera English might be surprised to learn how both networks routinely employed high concept material in the segments lauding their reporting of the multinational intervention in Libya and the broader Arab Awakening. Although at times semiotic approaches can seem like the scrutiny of minutiae, the unusual choice of promotional clips provides an opportunity to demonstrate how image centric these channels’ claims about their professional integrity and morality really are
Content and source analysis of newspaper items about Māori issues: Silencing the ‘natives’ in Aotearoa?
Get PDFThis article reports on a content analysis of newspaper items from Aotearoa/New Zealand about Māori issues, focusing on level of coverage, topics and sources. Results from analysis of a representative sample of news items from six months over 2007-2008 were compared with two previous pilot studies in 2004 and early 2007. The study found that the mass media covered Māori stories at very low rates, worked a narrow range of topics and prioritised Pākehā sources over Māori, even in articles specifically about Māori issues. The authors sketch an indigenous theory of media news processes and relate these findings to already published thematic and discourse analyses of the materials from the same database to illustrate the roles of mass media coverage in the dynamics of national life in Aotearoa
REVIEW: Enthusiasm for journalism evident throughout
No full textBook review of: Intro: A beginner's guide to journalism in 21st century Aotearoa/New Zealand, edited by Grant Hannis (3rd ed) Wellington: New Zealand Journalists Training Organisation, 2013, 371pp. ISBN 9780473266424.Good journalism courses have long been accustomed to the challenge of squeezing in more and more elements, as new skills jostle for a place alongside still-essential basics. These courses not only reflect the spectrum of industry practice—and it’s an increasingly spreading one—but are trying to future-proof their students even as industry itself really can’t say how it will all turn out. So a single handbook to cover everything for the trainee faces the same challenges when it comes to trying to cram it all in
Photoessay: Melanesian mythical places with unreported conflicts: A portrait
No full textAs a photojournalist who has lived and journeyed through the ‘Black Islands’, Vanuatu resident Ben Bohane was drawn to them because they still seemed like mythical and remote places in an increasingly familiar world, while many of their conflicts went largely unreported. There were family connections too. So beginning in 1994, he ran a naval blockade to cover the war in Bougainville and soon found others too, wars the rest of the world had conveniently forgotten: in East Timor, West Papua as well as Bougainville. Then there were riots in New Caledonia, civil war in the Solomon Islands and coups in Fiji. The following is an introductory extract and a portfolio of images from Bohane's 2013 monograph, Black Islands: Spirit and War in Melanesia.Caption: Radio Free Bougainville on the air with ‘Philip’ at the microphone. Central Bougainville, PNG 1994 (p. 157). © BEN BOHAN
Student Reporting Abroad: A journalism project built on internationalisation
Get PDFThis article updates research by the writer on overseas reporting trips for Australian Journalism students, conducted since 2000. It describes changing educational contexts, with expanded internationalisation and work integrated learning. A precursor of both, the trips project provides a Faculty-level model for implementing such changes. Previous research, to 2008, recorded 60 students making nine field trips, to Southeast Asia, China, Papua New Guinea or Europe. Participants working as foreign correspondents for campus-based media outlets, would apply that experience to theoretical work, e.g. on international journalism or inter-cultural issues. The research has supported arguments for internationalisation of the curriculum, positing that intensified experience will concentrate the mind, improve skills and stimulate reflection. The present work goes further, with more individual and detailed probing of student responses. As a case study, nine participants travelling to South-east Asia and Europe in 2012 documented their experience and their reflective work. The investigation concludes such travel programmes can be highly effective in core learning
HRECs and journalism research: The uneven playing field
Get PDFThis article continues an ongoing investigation into the problems that contemporary researchers in Australia using journalism as a methodology face in meeting the bureaucratic requirements of Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs). This discussion in the peer-reviewed literature includes Richards (2009), Turner (2011), Lindgren and Phillips (2011), Romano (2012) and two articles by the author (Davies 2011a, 2011b). These two articles explored the flexibility built into the HREC’s guiding document, the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research, in 2007 in order to make it possible for research that does not fit the standard scientific model to gain timely approval. The professional discussion has also included public conversations at the Journalism Education Association of Australia (JEAA) annual conferences and on the organisation’s online discussion list. It is evident from these discussions that some researchers find the ethics application process sufficiently arduous that research using journalism as a methodology is effectively not possible for them. Meanwhile, others find the approval process to be painless and beneficial to their work. This raises the question of whether these differences are due to the researchers’ competence in lodging applications for approvals, or differences in the approach taken by the various university-based HRECs. The novel contribution of this article to the discussion is quantitative data illustrating the diversity of approaches taken by HRECs to applications regarding research using journalism as a methodology and reflection on the implications for investigative journalism