Pacific Journalism Review : Te Koakoa

EDITORIAL: Gaza, genocide and media: Will journalism survive?

2024-07-02T03:52:52+00:00

30th Anniversary Edition of Pacific Journalism Review: When editor Philip Cass and I, as founding editor, started planning for this 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review, we wanted a theme that would fit such an important milestone. At the time when we celebrated the second decade of the journal’s critical inquiry at Auckland University of Technology with a conference in 2014, our theme was ‘Political journalism in the Asia Pacific’, and our mood about the mediascape in the region was far more positive than it is today (Duffield, 2015). Three years later, we marked the 10th anniversary of the Pacific Media Centre, with a conference and a rather gloomier ‘Journalism under duress’ slogan. The PJR cover then featured a gruesome corpse at the height of Rodrigo Duterte’s callous and bloodthirsty ‘war on drugs’—and on media—in the Philippines. Three years later again the PMC itself had been closed in spite of its success.

EDITORIAL NOTE: After the editorial of Pacific Journalism Review and the lead article in this edition (Vol 30, No 1&2) about the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were printed, the Australian journalist was set free and he arrived back in Australia after a plea bargain. The winner of his country’s Walkley Award for journalism excellence, Assange was freed by a US federal court in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, on 26 June 2024 after a plea bargain to plead guilty to one charge of violating the US Espionage Act and the judge sentenced him to 62 months, jail time already served in the UK on remand. His 14-year struggle for freedom was over, but his lawyers say they will press for a full US presidential pardon.

War on Palestine: How the fates of Gaza and Julian Assange are sealed together

2024-07-01T21:21:28+00:00

Commentary: Were they being properly reported, two critically important court hearings in February 2024, in London and The Hague, would expose the US ‘rules-based order’ as a hollow sham. Both posed globe-spanning threats to our most basic freedoms. Neither received more than perfunctory coverage in Western establishment media such as the BBC. One was a week-long hearing by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over a United Nations General Assembly request for an advisory opinion over Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and the other was a last-ditch appeal of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange against efforts by the United States to extradite him so that he can be locked away for the rest of his life.

Israel’s war on journalism: A Kiwi journalist’s response

2024-07-01T21:23:26+00:00

Whether it is termed as ‘self-defence’ or ‘mowing the lawn’, the Israel Defence Force (IDF) has common phrases to describe its ongoing attacks on the besieged Palestine enclave of Gaza. The phrases obscure the devastation of death and disaster in the 2023/24 genocidal war on Gaza. While global reports have tended to focus on the horrendous and rapid climb of civilian casualties, especially women and children, Gaza has also claimed the worst ever death rate of journalists, many apparently targeted by the IDF because of their profession. Journalists in this article argue that it is time to ‘call these [Israeli state] terrorists by their true name: enablers of genocide.’

Legacy media outlets also stand in dock over Gaza: How RNZ, ABC and other Western media failed to challenge Israeli war narratives

2024-07-02T03:52:39+00:00

As Israel faces charges at the International Court of Justice in The Hague of breaching the 1948 Genocide Convention, for many people Western media institutions also stand in the dock. Critics have pointed to a media failure to effectively challenge a narrative that framed Israel’s actions in terms of an erroneous claim to Israeli ‘self-defence’, a de facto diplomatic cover for war crimes, ethnic cleansing and probable acts of genocide. In the Pacific, news leaders at Radio New Zealand (RNZ) and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), by alleged omission, story framing, inaccuracies, passive editorial stances, including a refusal to adjudicate contentious claims when the evidence was available, fall into the category. Such failures call into question claims of due impartiality, a fundamental tenet media outlets use to anchor their credibility as trusted sources of news. Failure to adequately create awareness of Israeli crimes also raises questions over whether state-funded public broadcasters are fulfilling the informational needs of democratic citizenship and serving the public interest, or whether they are serving the interests of a Western power elite.

Fact check: Still not core journalism curriculum

2024-07-02T03:52:38+00:00

Fact-checking has become a global industry, with more than 417 fact-checking outlets in 100 countries operating in 69 languages (Stencel, Ryan & Luther, 2023). According to the Duke Reporters’ Lab, half of the world’s fact checkers are associated with media outlets, but there are also 24 affiliated with academic institutions. Although the work is time consuming and resource intensive, fact-checking has increasingly been introduced to journalism programmes at universities and in professional settings. This expert article brings together some insights from a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) World Journalism Education Council (WJEC) roundtable event ‘Fact-Check and Verification as Core Journalism Curriculum’ hosted by RMIT University in Australia in 2021, alongside relevant literature exploring the nature and presence of fact-check based education approaches at that time. It concludes that while fact-checking and verification are important skills for student journalists, fact checkers do not necessarily need to be journalists, nor indeed have journalistic training. However, more students are needed who are excellent journalists and the authors argue that fact-checking is just part of that training.

After the killing fields: Post-pandemic changes in journalism employment in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand

2024-07-02T03:52:34+00:00

This article continues a longitudinal national study of journalism employment in Australia and contributes to new understandings of journalism employment in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Results suggest a shift in the organisational landscape of the media in Australia, with an expansion of large organisations at the ‘top,’ and a considerable loss of small micro-ventures (largely based online) at the ‘bottom.’ Implications include stronger centralised editorial control at the corporate level, urbanisation and homogenisation of media producers and product, and reduced opportunities for creative entry-level roles.

When safe is not enough: an exploration of improving guidelines on reporting mental illness and suicide

2024-07-02T03:52:33+00:00

Mental illness, coping, and suicide-related stigma are influenced by social discourse. Legacy, digital and social media create and amplify existing attitudes and contribute to mindsets and behaviour, including suicidality. While internationally there have been guidelines for several decades, the focus has been on ‘safe’ language and word choices that highlight problems. However, these guidelines have not prevented deaths by suicide and have contributed to the prevalence of catastrophising of normal unpleasant emotions and social problems as mental illness. With calls in government reviews and by consumers for greater focus on consumer-centred suicide prevention and the advent of increasing biopsychosocial stressors from COVID-19, consideration of other approaches to and inclusions in media guidelines are timely and prudent. In this article, we explore how a consumer-centred coping approach would augment existing media guidelines to influence community attitudes and behaviours in a way that contributes to health and wellbeing, as well as suicide prevention.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and future newsrooms: A study on journalists of Bangladesh

2024-07-02T03:52:32+00:00

Many Western and economically developed countries have already incorporated Artificial Intelligence (AI) into their newsrooms. As the media industry is constantly addressing new technological advancements, media scholars are highly confident about the combination of AI and the newsroom. This research investigates AI as a new prospect in the Bangladeshi journalism arena, focusing on the current state of AI usage and projecting the future by evaluating professional journalists’ ‘Mental Readiness’ across a variety of media companies. In the first phase, from the survey of 107 working journalists from 20 different news organisations, this study finds that journalists possess a mostly positive attitude towards AI and are willing to incorporate current technologies in their newsrooms. The majority of journalists are informed, yet many of them lack sufficient AI literacy. In the second part, in-depth interviews with five newsroom editors reveal that it is difficult for Bangladesh to make a significant transformation within a short period. Most of them believe that providing AI-enabled newsrooms in a developing country like Bangladesh is still a long shot, owing to economic and technological constraints.

A (non) agenda setting study: News coverage of electric vehicles and their popularity in Aotearoa New Zealand

2024-07-02T03:52:37+00:00

This article explores the news media framing of electric vehicles (EVs) in New Zealand and theorises the role it may have played in the uptake of EVs in the country. The results were unexpected; the positive valence of EVs, battery life, carbon emissions, the environment, range, public or personal costs, positive public opinion, positive evaluative language, and battery reusage were not emphasised at all in coverage. Despite the lacklustre media coverage of EVs in New Zealand, the sales of EVs went up. This disconnect between previous research detailing the importance of positive media framing and subsequent behaviour has implications for further research examining media effects.

The morals that shape the news: A study of Aotearoa New Zealand’s newsrooms

2024-07-02T03:52:35+00:00

This article explores the personal interpretation of the moral world Aotearoa New Zealand newsroom leaders are guided by when shaping the news, or, in other words, it poses the question: Do personal moral values play a role in Aotearoa New Zealand newsroom? In this study, we examine whether newsroom leaders view morals as a driver in news-shaping, or whether the news values of objectivity, accuracy and fairness prevail over personal morals when it comes to informing the news. The research was conducted by interviewing six newsroom leaders from different media companies in Aotearoa New Zealand and the interview data were analysed within the theoretical and philosophical framework adopted from Lakoff (2002). The research suggests that working professionals in the media industry were not able to discern where their morals ended and where the professional news values started. Furthermore, the interviewees affiliated with public service media responded that upholding moral values would not have a financial impact on the news media organisation, whereas those affiliated with private media responded that it would.

Social media ecology in an influencer group: Intersection between Fiji's media and social media

2024-07-02T03:52:41+00:00

Social media use in Fiji has expanded in recent years and has become a ubiquitous feature in wider society. Social media ecology focusses and examines the dimensions of an online environment and its interplay with human experiences in user engagement. These dimensions with human experiences in user engagement, can provide an insight into how influential social media groups can become in shaping discourses and views. To examine and discuss the social media ecology of an influencer group, the article details one of Fiji’s largest and most influential online groups. To do this, the article uses digital ethnography, supplemented with social media analytics. This study provides key findings in the social media ecology of influencer groups and online behavior. These findings may have implications for further research in media, citizen journalism, viral content creation and online political campaigning.

Documenting hidden apartheid in the Indian diaspora

2024-07-02T03:52:40+00:00

Commentary: This article provides an account of an independent filmmaker’s work in documenting some of the stories from the global Indian diaspora. Based in Aotearoa New Zealand, with ancestral connections to Fiji, East Africa, UK, US and India, and using documentary making with both its journalistic and artistic purposes, the author firstly refers to the literatures that identifies documentary-making as journalism, diaspora, and the caste system. She then situates herself within the South Pacific Indian diaspora, before describing her experience in the making of the documentary entitled Hidden Apartheid: A Report on Caste Discrimination. The article concludes by reflecting on her role and the role of documenting hidden discrimination where it exists throughout Indian communities of the diaspora.

Media fuss over stranded tourists, but Kanaks face existential struggle

2024-07-02T03:52:51+00:00

Commentary: For two weeks in May 2024, protests by pro-independence indigenous Kanaks in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia erupted into a wave of rioting; erection of barricades; and burning of factories, shops and homes with the deaths of seven people – five Melanesians and two gendarmes. Since the late 1980s the Kanak independence movement had been consistently engaging with the 1988 Matignon then 1998 Nouméa Accords with Paris in an evolving process as part of their struggle for self-determination. The Nouméa Accord set out a framework for transferring power to the people of New Caledonia, through a series of three referenda. However, after France moved to unilaterally break with the Accords and declare independence as being off the table that the country returned to a state of unrest. This article recalls the influence of one of the leaders of the 1980s upheaval, Éloi Machoro.

Challenges for campus and community media in Asia-Pacific diversity

2024-07-02T03:52:38+00:00

The ‘watchdog’ model has created a journalism culture that is too adversarial and creates conflicts rather than helping to solve today’s problems/conflicts. The panellists assess new journalism paradigms in the Asia-Pacific region where the media is able to make powerful players to account for facilitating the development needs of communities, especially those in the margins of society. A challenge for contemporary journalism schools is to address such models in a global context of ‘development rights’ with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as a benchmark. In the Pacific Islands context, journalists face a challenging news reporting terrain on their news beats, especially in the Melanesian countries of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Besides dealing with political instability, coups, civilian unrest and complex developmental issues, journalists must contend with hostile governments and draconian media legislation. The talents, idealism and storytelling skills of Pacific journalists can be cultivated and strengthened to produce independent platforms and models of journalism that challenge the status quo. Examples of this campus strategy include Radio Pasifik, Wansolwara, Pacific Scoop and Asia Pacific Report.

Media plurality, independence and Talanoa: An alternative Pacific journalism education model

2024-07-02T03:52:44+00:00

The shrinking mainstream media plurality in Aotearoa New Zealand provides a context for examining publication of campus-based media where student and faculty editorial staff have successfully established an independent Asia-Pacific digital and print press over the past two decades. New Zealand’s largest city Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) has the largest urban population of Pacific Islanders globally—more than 300,000 people in a total of 1.7 million (Pasifika New Zealand, n.d.), earning the moniker ‘Polynesian capital of the world’. The presenter has had a pioneering role with four university-based journalism publications in the Pacific region as key adviser/publisher in Papua New Guinea (Uni Tavur, 1993-1998); Fiji (Wansolwara, 1998-2002); and Aotearoa/New Zealand (Pacific Scoop, 2009-2015; Asia Pacific Report, 2016 onwards), and also with two journalism school-based publications in Australia (Reportage, 1996, and The Junction, 2018-2020) (Robie, 2018). In early 2021, he was co-founder of the Asia Pacific Media Network | Te Koakoa Incorporated which has emerged as a collective umbrella for academics, student journalists and independent reporters producing innovative publications, including the research journal Pacific Journalism Review and a strengthened Asia Pacific Report, which draw on a cross-disciplinary range of media contributors and scholars in other professions. These contributors are mindful of the challenges of reportage about the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This article explores an independent journalism model drawing on professional outlets for Asia-Pacific students and how an investigative and storytelling model like ‘Talanoa Journalism’ can be an effective bridge to alternative media careers and addressing ‘blind spots’ in legacy news media.

Nurturing resilient journalists: A Fiji case study of student news reporting in challenging Pacific environments

2024-07-02T03:52:43+00:00

This article examines the multifaceted learning experiences University of the South Pacific (USP) journalism students gain from practical training. It is the latest in a series of papers on applied learning and teaching at USP journalism. Applied training methods take into account the challenges of the Pacific news reporting terrain in which USP journalism graduates will operate once they start work. The article reiterates that the best way to condition future journalists for their work environment is to expose them to the elements. The article uses USP student journalists’ coverage of the 2018 and 2022 Fiji elections as background case studies of practical experience and learning outcomes.

Time to rethink 'watchdog' journalism in the Pacific

2024-07-02T03:52:42+00:00

For more than five decades, ‘Watchdog Journalism’ has been taught as the yardstick for a free media. With the so-called ‘mainstream’ media becoming increasingly commercialised—both in a global scale and domestically—and with the media being primarily owned by business conglomerates, the ‘watchdog’ model has created a journalism culture that is too adversarial and creates conflicts rather than helping to solve today’s problems/conflicts. A new paradigm of watchdog journalism is needed where the media is able to hold powerful players to account for facilitating the development/livelihood needs of communities, especially those in the margins of society. This new paradigm of journalism needs to focus on ‘development rights’ rather than ‘human rights’ taking into account many aspects of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs should be looked at in terms of a new definition of human rights where the journalist could play a similar role to that prescribed in ‘watchdog’ journalism theory, but looking for solutions rather conflicts, and include a larger field of stakeholders which need to be made accountable such as governments, big business and particularly conglomerates—even NGOs and faith-based organisations. This watchdog role needs to be applied to trade agreements and other treaties, including those addressing climate change. To develop a new journalism culture to address these issues, media training programmes in the Pacific need to rethink their strategies and examine how to promote independent social media models that are economically and sustainably viable.

Challenging the Pacific ‘blind spots’ through images

2024-07-02T03:52:48+00:00

Photoessay: A unique feature of Pacific Journalism Review, compared with many other journalism and media research journals, has been a particular focus on photography and documentary. Contributors have been eclectic and varied, ranging from activist photojournalist John Miller (Ngāpuhi), who charted the new wave of Māori assertiveness from the first Nga Tamatoa protest at Waitangi in 1971 and who offered a research portfolio on the Ngatihine Land/Forestry legal dispute in Northland Aotearoa, to Ben Bohane’s ‘Melanesian mythical places with unreported conflicts’, to Kasun Ubayasiri’s ‘Manus to Meanjin’ study of refugee migration, to Filipino Fernando G. Sepe’s stunning but shocking portrayal of President Rodrigo Duterte’s extrajudicial ‘war on drugs’ (in reality a ‘war on poverty’), through to Todd M. Henry’s Tongan ‘Gangsters in Paradise’ and the realm of kava in New Zealand. At least a dozen portfolios have been published by the journal and this article examines and reflects on some of the highlights. The photoessay is completed with a portfolio of protest photographs from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand during eight months of Israel’s War on Gaza.

OBITUARY: John Pilger, a 'maverick' globe-spanning journalist

2024-07-01T21:45:25+00:00

Obituary: The breadth of Australian-born British-domiciled investigative journalist John Pilger’s journalism was staggering. Over five decades, he covered wars and/or social conflicts in Australia (frequently) Burma, Cambodia, Chagos Islands, Chile, China, Czechoslovakia, Iraq, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Okinawa, South Africa, Timor Leste, Vietnam, the UK and the US etc. He produced powerful documentaries about these issues. He was truly a globe-spanning journalist, and as he described himself a 'maverick' who gave a voice to those who did not have a voice. He died aged 84.

OBITUARY: Arnold Clemens Ap: His West Papuan legacy lives on

2024-07-02T03:52:45+00:00

Arnold Clemens Ap was born on 1 July 1946 on Numfor Island in Biak, at the time, part of the Dutch colony of Netherlands New Guinea. After schooling at church missions in Biak, he studied geography at the Teacher Training School of Cenderawasih University in Abepura, Jayapura, between 1967 and 1973. That year, he was appointed as the curator of the university’s museum, known as Loka Budaya, which became a centre for West Papuan cultural revival. His work to collect and perform songs in Papuan languages played a vital role in the development of a West Papuan national identity, transcending colonial boundaries and inter-tribal conflicts. He was murdered by Indonesian special forces in 1984. This year, 26 April 2024, marked the 40th anniversary of the death of this charismatic cultural leader. For West Papuans, in exile and at home, it has been an important time for commemoration.

REVIEW: A grim year ahead, but some cause for optimism

2024-07-02T03:52:49+00:00

Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions 2024, by Nic Newman. Oxford: Reuters Institute. 2024. 46 pages. DOI: 10.60625/risj-0s9w-z770

EVERY day more and more online content is disappearing behind paywalls as publishers try to protect their dwindling revenues. Whether readers confronted by paywalls will bother to subscribe or simply seek the information elsewhere—or just give up and look at another Beyonce listicle—is one of the scenarios prompted by the appearance of the latest set of predictions about the future from the Reuters Institute.

REVIEW: Behind the war on Gaza – how Israel profits globally from repression

2024-07-01T21:46:43+00:00

The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel exports the technology of occupation around the world, by Antony Loewenstein. Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 2023. 265 pages. ISBN 9781922310408.

JUST MONTHS before the outbreak of the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza after the deadly assault on southern Israel by Hamas resistance fighters on 7 October 2023, Australian-German investigative journalist and researcher Antony Loewenstein published an extraordinarily timely book, The Palestine Laboratory. In it he warned that a worst-case scenario—‘long feared but never realised, is ethnic cleansing against occupied Palestinians or population transfer, forcible expulsion under the guise of national security’.

REVIEW: Even amidst the pain, author manages to show kindness

2024-07-01T21:35:22+00:00

Excommunicated. A multigenerational story of leaving the Exclusive Brethren, by Craig Hoyle. Auckland: Harper Collins, 2023. 327 pages. ISBN 9871775542018

IN THIS deeply personal memoir, Sunday Star-Times journalist Craig Hoyle turns his lens on his own family and the destructive effects upon them of their religion. Growing up in an Exclusive Brethren family meant closeness and warmth, but it also meant strict discipline, public prayers every day, and not really having schoolfriends for young Craig. It also meant there were family members nobody talked about because they had transgressed increasingly arbitrary sets of rules, or called out high-handed or incompetent leadership.

REVIEW: Story of Rabaul eruptions has lessons for wider Pacific

2024-07-01T21:49:55+00:00

Return to Volcano Town: Reassessing the 1937-43 volcanic eruptions at Rabaul, by R. Wally Johnson and Neville Threlfall (editors). Canberra: ANU Press, 2023. 410 pages, ISBN 9781760466039.

EARLY one morning in 1953 my father and kiap David Hook set out from Popondetta to climb Mount Lamington in what was then the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. Mount Lamington had exploded in January 1951, the largest eruption on January 21 releasing a pyroclastic flow that roared down the mountain and killed an estimated 3000 people. The carriers working with my father and the patrol officer abandoned them as the approached the mountain and it was towards the end of the day that my father came home, his boots cut to ribbons by the volcanic rock, his clothes ragged and soaked in sweat and his pockets full of colour slide film.

REVIEW: Contrasting Al Jazeera’s forensic October 7 report with TVNZ’s Tame interview

2024-07-01T21:51:42+00:00

October 7, directed by Richard Sanders, Al Jazeera Investigations (Documentary); Israeli-Hamas War: Israeli Ambassador on rising deaths in Gaza,TVNZ Q&A with Jack Tame (Current Affairs).

FOR a more informed report of what actually took place when Hamas fighters broke through the perimeter fences surrounding Gaza to attack Israel on 7 October 2023, Al Jazeera’s hour-long documentary, October 7, which was broadcast on March 20, exposed the lies of the Israeli/US propaganda machine, and has been pivotal in transforming the Palestine/Israel narrative and so too the politics of the Middle East.

REVIEW: Defending the right to confidential sources and whistleblowers

2024-07-02T03:52:50+00:00

Journalists and Confidential Sources: Colliding Public Interests in the Age of the Leak, by Joseph M Fernandez. Routledge Research on Journalism Series. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2021. 287 pages. ISBN 9780367474126

IN 2015, media law professor Joseph M. Fernandez co-authored a comprehensive article for Pacific Journalism Review (Fernandez & Pearson, 2015) about the status of Australia’s shield law regime, drawing on his research to see whether it met journalists’ expectations and whistleblower needs in an era of unprecedented official capabilities. It didn’t, as can be seen from growing concerns over court cases that, according to the peak journalists’ organisation Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), ‘clearly demonstrate Australia’s patchy and desperate journalist shields fail to do their job’.

REVIEW: Noted: Planning for the survival of megacities

2024-07-01T21:35:53+00:00

Come Hell or High Fever. Readying the World’s Megacities for Disaster, by Russell W. Glen. Canberra: ANU Press. 2023. 482 pages. ISBN 9781760465537.

WITH a title straight out a Tom Clancy novel and a writing style that manages to combine facts, analyses and deep understanding of his topic with the pace of a thriller, Russell Glen’s book is as entertaining and it is thought provoking. Russell predicts that the world’s largest urban agglomeration, like Tokyo, are at risk from a variety of disasters and that it is vital for local and national leaders to think seriously about how to deal with them.