Pacific Journalism Review (Pacific Media Centre, School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology)
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EDITORIAL: Elusive issues of identity
Get PDFThe concept of the ‘indigenous public sphere’ is intended to describe the highly mediated public ‘space’ for developing notions of Indigeneity, and putting them to work organising and governing the unpredictable immediacy of everyday events (Hartley and McKee, The Indigenous Public Sphere, 2000, p. 3)
One of the major conclusions of John Hartley and Alan McKee’s study is that, in the Australian media, indigenous people are central to a drama about Australian national identity. Stars rather than victims, indigenous people are caught up in a media narrative over which ‘they have little individual control, but which is nevertheless telling their story’ (p. 7).
 
Journalism and indigenous public spheres
Get PDFJournalism has played—and continues to play— a crucial role in 'imagining' indigenous people and their affairs for most non-indigenous over racism of the colonial press, institutionalised racism is manifested in the sytematic omission of indigenous voices in the news media. Indigenous sources make up a fraction—between one fifth to one third— of all sources used by journalists in stories about indigenous affairs. This alarming statistic has remained unchanged in Australian journalism for the past 20 years and is a prominant feature of news coverage of Native people in the United States and Canada (Weston, 1996;Meadows, 2001). Adam (1993) reminds us that journalism is 'a form of expression that is an invention. It is a creation—a product of the Imagination—in both an individual and a cultural sense.
REVIEWS: Hounding the 'great voyager': Review of The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas, by Anne Salmond
No full textReview of The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas, by Anne SalmondCook has had a great reputation as an idealised 'great voyager' and Enlightenment figure, meticulous and reasoning in some accounts (see for example, Beaglehole's editions of Cook's journals), but is also available to be demonised as a representative of an precursor to cultural imperialism and colonialism in the Pacific: the kitchen, it could be said, is alread over-populated with 'Cooks'. Yet for all the many volumes already produced on the subject of Cook, The Trail of the Cannibal Dog,by anthropologist and historian Anne Salmond, should be seen as a valuable addition, in that it extends the scope of the discussion of the voyages and the cultural contact they endagered. 
Grierson's ghost never dies: The Fiji Film Unit 1970-1985
Get PDFThis article exlpores what happens when a documentary film form developed within a specific social, ideological, institutoinal, and aesthetic context—namely, the so-called British Documentary Movement, under the aegis of John Grierson—is deployed in several layers of argument involved, but I will pursue only one of them in the space available here. At a kind of metatheoretical level, it is arguable that Indigenous and Asian cultures are inimical to core values of the Western documentary project: in particular, to the belief in, and rhetorical power of, the material, historical word. In these societies, what might be called 'spiritual' or 'other' worlds have as much everyday reality as Griersonian 'actuality'. 
‘Rolling Thunder’: Changing communication and the Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjara public sphere
Get PDFTom O'Regan and Philip Batty in Australian Television Culture, identify a problematic confrontation between westernised concepts of 'publicness' and the notions of that 'publicness' found within Aboriginal cultural practices. O'Regan and Batty acknowledge the role that tradition plays in mediating the integration of indigenous communities within contemporary Australia. They suggest an array of issues that very among communities. Some variables include proximity to European settlement, the traditional food sources, and the distance from the ocean
Contested homelands: Darwin’s ‘itinerant problem’
Get PDFDarwin has the largest Aboriginal population of any Australian city at nearly nine per cent, and the Northern Territory has nearly 28 per cent of the indigenous population. While the greater majority of the indigenous population in Darwin lives in circumstances not unlike their non-indigenous neighbors, a number are, out of necessity, more transient, moving between remote communities and the city, visiting friends and relatives who may be in hospital or prison, seeking work or escaping uneviable conditions in the interior. It is important to preface the present study with a word on social and historical context, as the representation of indigenous issues in 'the Territory' is founded upon historical and cultural constructions of Aboriginality. What underpins this long-running moral panic about homeless indiginous people? First, the history of Aboriginal people in Australia has been one of the disposession, cultural genocide and displacement. 
Keeping public cyberspace open: Lessons from the Pacific Islands
Get PDFA number of empirical and conceptual lessons can be drawn from a closer look at atypical, non-western uses of the internet. Drawing on a study of two pioneering discussion forums, the Kava Bowl (KB) and the Kamehameha Roundtable (KR), maintained by diasporic Pacific Island communities, this article celebrates the existence of open, accessible cyberspaces in an increasingly privatised internet environment. The day to day operation of the KB/KR fora are argued to demonstrate the limitations of classical ‘public sphere’ thinking. In particular, the way in which power and influence is rendered in these online formations calls for a new conceptualisation of ‘public-ness’. Michel de Certeau’s concept of ‘everyday life’ is argued to provide a fertile link between Pacific Island internet practices and broader internet debates. In conclusion, it is argued that the way in which the ‘public’, the ‘private’, and ‘technology’ are construed in Western literatures, leaves non-western internet practices subsumed under ethnocentric and techno-determinist assumptions about the interrelationships between technology, culture and society
INTRODUCTION: Media accountability
Get PDFThe sole aim of media is to make as much money as they can. Or again, the media are to serve only the people in power, political or economic. If you agree to that, you might as well stop reading this. This issue of Pacific Journalism Review is predicated on the principle that media should serve the public. Journalists can only achieve that if they enjoy independence from financial and political pressures. It is not often enough underlined that they cannot enjoy that independence without the support of the public, the masses of voters and consumers. There is no way the profession can obtain public support unless it listens to readers/listeners/viewers— unless it is accountable to them
Plagiarism and fabulism: Dishonesty in the newsroom
Get PDFIn New Zealand, various journalism ethics codes either specifically condemn news media plagiarism—the passing off by a reporter of another's work or part work as one's own—or demand standards of accuracy and honesty that would preclude its use. Obviously the codes also preclude fabulism—outright story invention. In regard to the two, ascribing blame for plagiarism is the more problematic. This is because the public nature of news and the press's imperative to background and disseminate invariably lead to shades of grey. There is no such ambiguity for fabulism. This article therefore concentrates on plagiarism, discussing fabulism only because the two sins are often confused, especially when some high—profile transgressors have been guilty of both. Because plagiarism's definitional boundaries can be blurred, this paper examines—in the context of print journalism—the complexity of the problem and the difficulties inherent in finding workable solutions. To do this, on the path toward a definitional understanding, if not absolute definition, it considers underlying legal and ethical frameworks, historical and cultural origins, and the temptations and grey areas thrown up by the internet. In response to anecdotal public relations industry concerns it also includes a brief discussion of the rights and wrongs of reproducing press release material in its entirety
Holding the line? Keeping independent may be a close-run thing for media in PNG
Get PDFThis investigation deploys journalistic expertise and method to bring information about media and government relations in Papua New Guinea up to date. The researcher identifies the news agenda by means of a press review over two weeks; discusses the issues raised with informed interviewees from government, media and universities; and checks the information against published research. The report traces a tense media-government relationship, marked by mutual recrimination over access to information. While government observes principles of free speech, and day-by-day relations are cordial, there have been recurrent moves towards regulation of news media, and many instances of intimidation of journalists. A general context of economic stress, official corruption, and violence exacerbates negative feelings, despite efforts on both sides to maintain détente. The relationship is seen heading towards a possible show-down over Rimbunan Hijau, the timber company widely accused of environmental crimes, abuse of citizens and corruption of high officials