Pacific Journalism Review (Pacific Media Centre, School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology)
Not a member yet
1090 research outputs found
Sort by
REVIEW: 'Digger' media out-manoeuvred by military
No full textReview of: Witnesses to War: The History of Australian Conflict Reporting, by Fay Anderson and Richard Trembath. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2011, 501 pp, ISBN 978-0522856446 (pbk)Witnesses to War: The History of Australian Conflict Reporting provides a thorough-going account of the developments and, importantly, of continuities which have characterised Australian reporting of foreign wars since the 19th century. It is a welcome addition to the growing body of conflict reporting literature, in particular to that which concerns the local experience. It is clear the forces which structure Australian war journalism have remained relatively constant throughout the 20th and 21st centuries
Finkelstein Report: Volume of media vitriol in inverse proportion to amount of evidence
Get PDFCommentary: After all the overheated rhetoric over the Finkelstein Report, it may be an anti-climax to know that the key issue is the right of reply, or the right of redress, to those who feel they have been misrepresented in the news. Such processes are now done through self-regulation by the Australian Press Council, while the Finkelstein Report sees this as insufficiently effective and recommends a government-funded statutory agency
REVIEW: How ‘alternative’ media can again be mainstream
Get PDFReview of Challenging the News: The Journalism of Alternative and Community Media, by Susan Forde. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 2011, 214pp. ISBN 978 0230243576 (pbk)Ironically, alternative and independent media were not always marginalised. Less than two centuries ago, they were the ‘mainstream’. They being the radical and working class media of Europe and the new world colonies. This is a central point made in Susan Forde’s Challenging The News in her search to find a refocused critique of the Fourth Estate notions that make sense of the contemporary alternative media’s role. An essential element, she concludes, is the ‘key importance that someone is watching the watchers; that media power itself must be monitored, assessed, critiqued, and challenged. Alternative journalists provide that critique’ (p. 169)
EDITORIAL: Independent journalism
Get PDFDiscussion about the role of journalism in universities too often leaves the impression that our main, and even only game, should be producing employees for major media corporations. This issue of Pacific Journalism Review assumes much more than that. The theme for the issue is investigative journalism, particularly material presented at the ‘Back to the Source’ investigative journalism conference hosted by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney in September 2011. This was the second regional investigative journalism conference; the first, hosted by the Pacific Media Centre, provided the theme for PJR (MIJT, 2011). These conferences, and indeed Pacific Journalism Review, are based on the notion that the goal of university based journalism is to develop links between journalists—whether full-time employees of major companies, freelancers, academics or students—in order to promote a more independent and critical culture of journalism in our region, without which democracy cannot flourish. This goal suggests a relationship much wider and more challenging than simply the production of qualified journalists
This wheel’s on fire: New models for investigative journalism
Get PDFIn the following pages of Pacific Journalism Review, the journal is publishing transcripts of Center for Investigative Journalism director Robert Rosenthal’s keynote address at the ‘Back to the Source’ investigative journalism conference in Sydney in September 2010; conference sessions in which Sue Spencer, Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie talk about their work on the Securency story; and Linton Besser and Dylan Welch of the Sydney Morning Herald describe their investigations of the New South Wales Crime Commission. Many other sessions featured at the conference; but these two transcripts give a strong sense of some of the new possibilities for investigative journalism, and of how investigative journalists practise their craft
Investigative journalism: Challenges, perils, rewards in seven Pacific Island countries
Get PDFThis article appraises the general state of investigative journalism in seven Pacific Island countries—Cook Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu—and asserts that the trend is not encouraging. Journalism in general, and investigative journalism in particular, has struggled due to harsher legislation as in military-ruled Fiji; beatings and harassment of journalists as in Vanuatu; and false charges and lawsuits targeting journalists and the major newspaper company in the Cook Islands. Corruption, tied to all the major political upheavals in the region since independence, is also discussed. Threats to investigative journalism, like the ‘backfiring effect’ and ‘anti-whistleblower’ law are examined, along with some investigative journalism success case studies
REVIEW: Hotchpotch, dry but worthwhile insights
No full textReview of: Beyond the Frontline, by Mike McRoberts. Auckland: Harper Collins, 2011, 256 pp. ISBN 978-1869509392The embers of the ongoing debate about the paucity or otherwise of in-depth foreign affairs coverage in New Zealand media will glow a little more brightly with this offering from Mike McRoberts. McRoberts’ trips abroad in his dual role as newsreader/journalist have made for good television—but have left some pondering the worth of ‘the New Zealand voice’ in mostly one-off stand-ups from world trouble spots
The media regulation debate in a democracy lacking a free expression guarantee
Get PDFTwo major inquiries into the Australian news media in 2011 and 2012 prompted a necessary debate over the extent to which rapidly converging and globalised news businesses and platforms require statutory regulation at a national level. Three regulatory models emerged—a News Media Council backed by recourse to the contempt powers of courts; a super self-regulatory body with legislative incentives to join; and the status quo with a strengthened Australian Press Council policing both print and online media. This article reviews the proposals and explores further the suggestion that consumer laws could be better utilised in any reform. It concludes with an assessment of the impact of the inquiries and their recommendations upon free expression in a Western democracy lacking constitutional protection of the media
Fiji’s coup culture 1987-2006: A media perspective
Get PDFSince attaining independence from Britain in 1970, Fiji enjoyed a period of ‘multiracial peace’ for 17 years under Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara and this gave the country the utopian slogan: ‘Fiji―the way the world should be.’ But was this really so? Beneath the notion of peace, democracy and racial unity was a racial volcano that erupted when democracy took another turn. Subsequent to the defeat of the chiefly-led Alliance Party in the 1987 election, a third-ranking military officer, Sitiveni Rabuka, staged a coup to topple a Fijian-led but Indian-dominated government. He later handed the controls back to indigenous Fijians. Since then, Fiji has never really tasted any long-lasting political peace, democracy or stability. Despite two constitutions and some five elections since the first coup, the Western concept of stable democracy has eluded Fiji. It has had four coups since 1987 and this notoriety relegated it to rogue state status with a ‘coup culture’, or as some academics and journalists have described it, became ‘coup coup land’. This article examines some issues relating to the prevalence of the coup culture in Fiji and, views them in the light of media coverage
REVIEW: Contradiction, paradox and ambiguity
No full textThe term ‘international news’ is illustrative of the conflicted nature of journalism. At one and the same time it is well understood and meaningful—and anachronistic in a global era. There is a tendency in many quarters to shy away from addressing an inherent instability in journalism, and instead bemoan the demise of the foreign correspondent, the symbolic ‘man [invariably a man] in gray flannel’ (Cohen, 1963, p. 17) who determined what was worth knowing about the world: a highly-privileged élite among élites. The expiration of the legend can be posited as the demise of journalism writ large