Archives - Page 2

• The public right to know: 'Giving them what they want'

  Vol. 15 No. 2 (2009)

  Children climbing on dead mangroves in Kiribati. Cover photo ©Maria Timon/Pacific Calling Partnership.
  Editors: David Robie and Wendy Bacon

  Trauma, environmental journalism, health reporting and te reo Māori in new PJR
  Trauma and exiled writers, the challenge of environmental journalism in Delta land, issues of editorial “slant” in health reporting and use of te reo Māori in newspapers are some of the topics featured in Pacific Journalism Review.  The October 2009 edition is a special “Public right to know” joint issue published by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism and AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre. A selection of eight peer-refereed papers, mostly drawn from the PR2K7 conference with the theme “Giving them what they want” (PR2K), has been published in this edition co-edited by professor Wendy Bacon, director of the ACIJ.
  
  The PR2K conferences, which have been held regularly since 2000, have mostly focused on how the right of people to know what is happening has been frustrated by legal, political and social constraints on the media.

• Diversity, identity and the media

  Vol. 15 No. 1 (2009)

  © Malcolm Evans, 2009
  Editor: David Robie

  PJR targets Fiji censorship, cross-cultural reporting
  Censorship and the assault on human rights and freedom of expression in Fiji are featured in Pacific Journalism Review. The AUT Pacific Media Centre-based publication publishes this week a special article by an "insider" on the military regime's political and social "reforms". The 246-page edition, themed around "Diversity, identity and the media" issues, analyses the junta that dealt an unprecedented "mortal blow" to press freedom in the South Pacific's most crucial country for regional cooperation. The insider article, "Fragments from a Fiji coup diary", concludes that the New Zealand government needs to have "secret contacts" with the Suva regime to help investigate corruption and to help restore the country on the road towards democracy.

• The public right to know: Reporting futures

  Vol. 14 No. 2 (2008)

  Photo: © Sean Hobbs: Freelancer John Martinkus on assignment for SBS Dateline in Kunar province, Afghanistan, in 2005.

  Editors: Chris Nash, Tony Maniaty, Jan McClelland and David Robie
  
  PJR features political blogging, TV war reporting
  Political blogging and digital technology’s impact on television war reporting are featured in the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review launched in Sydney at the weekend with a collection of Public Right to Know media research papers. Launched by former Australian Centre for Independent Journalism director Chris Nash at the PR2K conference, the edition features several articles analysing the run-up to last year’s Australian federal election that swept Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party into power in Canberra while Helen Clark’s Labour-led government in New Zealand is struggling for survival with an election due on November 8.

  A joint edition produced by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (UTS) and AUT University's Pacific Media Centre.

• The future of mainstream media

  Vol. 14 No. 1 (2008)

  Cartoon: © Malcolm Evans
  Editors: Grant Hannis and David Robie

  THE FUTURE OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA
  1. Commentary: The news media – the Prime Minister’s view Helen Clark 
  2.  Commentary: The smartest guys in the room – covering the Enron saga Bethany McLean
  3. Commentary: The power of print remains undiminished Tim Pankhurst
  4. Testing times: Kiwi journalists and the military Denise Mackay and Margie Comrie

• Media and digital democracy

  Vol. 13 No. 2 (2007)

  Cartoon: © Malcolm Evans
  Editors: Charu Uppal, Shailendra Singh, Patrick Craddock and David Robie

  Military blamed over rash of post-coup political blogs
  A senior Fiji journalist believes the military is partly responsible for the number of political blogs that have expanded the media landscape in Fiji since the fourth coup in December last year. Sophie Foster, a former deputy editor of The Fiji Times, says blogs flourished because of the restrictions the military had placed on dissenting opinion in the mainstream media and across the nation in general. A postgraduate student in Pacific media studies at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Foster said that while some blog content was racist, defamatory, provocative and irresponsible, the argument for a free, responsible press was also strengthened as an option worth maintaining in any society. Her article, entitled, “Who let the blogs out? Media and free speech in post-coup Fiji”, is published in the latest Pacific Journalism Review. 
  
  The edition has been jointly produced by the University of the South Pacific journalism programme and AUT University's Pacific Media Centre.
  
  

• Journalism Downunder: Census 2006 and the NZ journalist

  Vol. 13 No. 1 (2007)

  Cartoon: © Malcolm Evans
  Editors: Ian Richards and David Robie

  Journalists want changes to training and pay, NZ research shows
  A survey of more than 500 New Zealand journalists has revealed marked unhappiness about levels of pay, resourcing and training. The “Big Journalism 2007” survey found that, while many individual journalists are very satisfied with aspects of their jobs, overall most want improvements in (respectively) pay, support, mentoring and staffing levels. They want more opportunity for discussion and input into ethical and professional issues such as sensationalism, more guidance on how to cope with commercial and advertising pressures, and more time and resources to pursue investigations. The survey, titled "Under-paid, under-trained, under-resourced, unsure about the future - but still idealistic", published in the latest Pacific Journalism Review, is the first to ask NZ journalists what they think about a variety of topics such as quality of news coverage and their ethics and standards. The survey was conducted jointly by Massey University lecturers James Hollings, Alan Samson and Dr Elspeth Tilley, and Waikato University Associate Professor Geoff Lealand. It builds on Dr Lealand's previous surveys of NZ journalists.

• Eco-journalism and security

  Vol. 12 No. 2 (2006)

  Photo: © Ben Bohane
  Editor: David Robie

  Anti-terror laws threaten media freedom
  Australia’s tough anti-terror laws have impacted strongly on the media and contrasted with more relaxed policies in New Zealand and the Pacific, says a report in the latest Pacific Journalism Review. A survey of the status of anti-terrorism legislation and the media in the region has revealed marked differences in the impact on news organisations in Australia, NZ and the Pacific. “Australia has clearly taken a strong anti-terrorism position, reflecting its partnership with the United States and the United Kingdom in the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’ invasion of Iraq,” write Bond University media law Professor Mark Pearson and researcher Naomi Busst. The authors also cite the terrorist bombings in the tourist hub of Bali in 2002 and 2005 as major factors in the tough Australian laws. Australia’s “spate of legislation since 2001 has made it a model jurisdiction for the tightening of the powers of enforcement and security agencies in the battle against terrorism, but in the process it has drawn strong criticism from civil rights groups and media organisations for compromising the basic freedoms of its citizens and the press”.

  Ben Bohane's photo gallery

• Contemporary gender issues

  Vol. 12 No. 1 (2006)

  Cartoon: © Malcolm Evans
  Editors: Janet Bedggood and Allison Oosterman

  This "Contemporary gender issues" edition of Pacific Journalism Review features many leading journalists and researchers. This was the first of two editions distributed this year as part of  Journalism Education of Association of New Zealand (JEANZ) membership. The edition was jointly edited by Dr Janet Bedggood and Allison Oosterman. Editorial extract: "Sex is a fundamental division in all societies; all human behaviour has a biological base. The differences between men and women often involve inequalities, and this stratification is frequently seen as due to innate characteristics present in all societies. But what we do with our biological capacities is mainly a matter of learning. Anthropologists tell us that people learn their gender roles; knowing how to be a woman or a man in any society, is culturally learned. Historically, the diversity of traditional gender roles across the Pacific reveals many forms of gender difference. Women’s status varied in the region. The complexity of cultural behaviour and belief systems, the variability in the gender divisions of labour and sociopolitical systems show there were a range of determinants of female and male activities. Men and women were treated differently and behaved differently."

• Media ethics and accountability

  Vol. 11 No. 2 (2005)

  Cartoon: © Malcolm Evans
  Editors: David Robie, Jean-Claude Bertrand

  Press councils and M*A*S in the Pacific
  The September 2005 edition of Pacific Journalism Review, published in New Zealand, is devoted to media ethics and accountability systems (M*A*S). One article, by Shailendra Singh, considers "six South Pacific island countries that have have adopted, or are in the process of adopting, self-regulatory M*A*S mechanisms following government pressure: Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu. M*A*S have been slow to take root in Oceania. Apart from Papua New Guinea, Fiji is the trend-setter in the region. Following the establishment of the Fiji Media Council in the mid-1990s, several other South Pacific island countries were keen to the follow the lead. Tonga now has a similar body with a code of ethics and which includes public members empowered to receive and adjudicate on complaints against the media. In Samoa, a study has been carried out in order to establish a media council-type body. The Solomon Islands Media Council has close ties with the PNG Media Council.

  Full details of the Pacific M*A*S systems are in PJR, Vol 11(2), September 2005.

• Media and the Indigenous public sphere

  Vol. 11 No. 1 (2005)

  Caricature: The Queensland Figaro, 1887. Image courtesy of Ross Woodrow, Racial Image Archive, The University of Newcastle, Australia

  One of the major conclusions of the John Hartley and Alan McKee 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).

• Media ownership and democracy

  Vol. 10 No. 2 (2004)

  Cartoon: © Malcolm Evans
  Editor: Wayne Hope
  Editorial: Corporate media news , Wayne Hope Commentaries:

  • 1. Media ownership policies: pressure for change and implications -  Steven Barnett
  • 2. Welcome to Havana, Mr Corleone: issues of media ownership and control – Robert W. McChesney
• The public right to know

  Vol. 10 No. 1 (2004)

  Cartoon: Peter Sheehan, The Walkley Magazine 2004.
  Editor: David Robie

  Special PR2K edition with ACIJ, Sydney
  This special edition of Pacific Journalism Review published a selection of the papers presented at the Public Right to Know (PR2K) Conference in Sydney in October 2003. The annual PR2K conferences are a project of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) at the University of Technology, Sydney. The 2003 conference was the third in the series.

• Iraq and the media war

  Vol. 9 No. 1 (2003)

  Editor: David Robie

  As many readers will know, Pacific Journalism Review was published for nine years in the Pacific – initially at the University of Papua New Guinea from November 1994, and then most recently at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. This issue marks the relocation of the journal from Suva to the School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology. The issue following this one, with the theme of ‘Media ownership and democracy’, will mark a decade of publication. Throughout this time the journal has been at the forefront of critical reflections on the role of the media and journalism practices in the Pacific region; a role it will continue to serve in its new location.

  Inaugural edition published at Auckland University of University.

• Foreign ownership: How NZ media is dominated

  Vol. 8 No. 1 (2002)

  Editor: David Robie
  
  Articles include: THE SPEIGHT CRISIS: COUP EDITORIAL CONTENT: Analysis of the Fiji 2000 political crisis, by Lynda Duncan. Both The Fiji Times and the Daily Post reinforced the colonial myth that Fijian chiefs are the rightful rulers of Fiji, emphasising that Fiji, and this presumably means Fijians, was not ready for a multiracial constitution. 

  This edition is the fourth published at the University of the South Pacific. 

• Crisis and coverage

  Vol. 7 No. 1 (2001)

  Editor: David Robie

  Cover: PARADISE EXPOSED: Is the region's Fourth Estate up to it?  By Mary-Louise O'Callaghan
  Should the local press bear some of the responsibility for the political turmoil that has engulfed the South Pacific, asks this article in the first of a series of regional perspectives on crises and how the news media have handled them. Great news is rarely good news for the countries involved. Pages 10-19.
  
  This edition is the third published at the University of the South Pacific.

• Blood on the Cross: East Timor and West Papua

  Vol. 6 No. 1 (1999)

  Editor: David Robie

  Cover: BLOOD ON THE CROSS  By Mark Davis.
  An ABC Four Corners team investigates allegations about the role of the International Red Cross and the British military in a massacre in the Southern Highlands of Irian Jaya during May 1996. The text of the controversial programme which won Davis a 1999 Walkley Award.  

  This edition is the second published at the University of the South Pacific.

• Daily Post buy-out deal

  Vol. 5 No. 1 (1999)

  Editor: David Robie

  This edition was printed in Suva and has been assisted with funding by UNESCO. It is being published in association with the Regional Journalism Programme and Pacific Writing Forum, University of the South Pacific.  

  Published at the University of the South Pacific.

• Media and mercenaries

  Vol. 4 No. 1 (1997)

  How Pacific Islands Monthly's James Ranuku portrayed the PNG Sandline players.
  Editor: David Robie

  Papua New Guinea's Chief Ombudsman Simon Pentanu says the South Pacific is a haven for probing journalism. Speaking at the launching of the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review and several other books, he noted that PJR focused on the Sandline affair with the theme "media and the mercenaries" and other regional press freedom issues, and was being published on the day after the second Sandline inquiry went into recess to prepare its report. "Sandline proved inconclusively that in PNG truth is stranger than fiction," Pentanu said. "How could such a stupid, costly decision - such as engaging Sandline - be made?" He added: "We are all convalescing from Sandline." The Chief Ombudsman also spoke in support of the University of PNG's School of Journalism, which has been at the centre of a week-long controversy about its future and shortage of staff. Paying tribute to coordinator David Robie, who is leaving to join the University of the South Pacific, Pentanu said: "The School of Journalism has, in a relatively short time, generated its own vibrancy and its own energy. It gives a positive image of the university as a place of ideas and intelligent and considered thought. It has produced the goods not only in terms of its graduates, but also in 'hard copy' such as Pacific Journalism Review and the award-winning Uni Tavur newspaper." - Post-Courier, 16 March 1998

  This edition was assisted with funding by the University of Papua New Guinea Research and Publications Committee and the Dutch-based Communication Assistance Foundation (CAF).  Published by the University of Papua New Guinea.

• News media under fire

  Vol. 3 No. 2 (1996)

  Editor: David Robie

  Media commentators see the jailings of two Taimi 'o Tonga journalists and an MP whistleblower in Tonga as the most serious threat to media freedom in the South Pacific since the Fiji coups in 1987. But Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka sees the harsh move as a lesson for journalists. Other critics regard the issue as one of a need for greater professionalism. Featured in this edition are the three winners in the inaugural Pacific Investigative Journalism Award and the judges' comments.

  This edition of Pacific Journalism Review was assisted with funding by the Communication Assistance Foundation (CAF) of The Netherlands.

   Published by the University of Papua New Guinea

• Ting Ting Bilong Mi

  Vol. 3 No. 1 (1996)

  Cartoonist: Campion Ohasio      Editor: David Robie

  Campion Ohasio is a Solomon islands cartoonist and journalist. Without any art lessons in his homeland - or anywhere - he honed his trenchant cartooning skills for three years on Uni Tavur, the award-winning newspaper produced by journalism students at the University of Papua New Guinea. This volume is a collection of his cartoons. This was the first special book edition of PJR.

  Published by the University of Papua New Guinea.

• PNG 'Under The Spell'

  Vol. 2 No. 1 (1995)

  The National's special report on two decades of Papua New Guinean independence, 1995.
  Editor: David Robie  

  Pacific Journalism Review was launched in 1994 at the University of Papua New Guinea. It was a modest effort to get the first regional magazine dealing with Pacific media, mass communication and journalism issues based at a Pacific tertiary institution up and running. But the high level of interest in Pacific Journalism Review is heartening.

  Published by the University of Papua New Guinea.

   

• The NBC radio gag

  Vol. 1 No. 1 (1994)

  Cover cartoon: Jada, The Times of Papua New Guinea 1994.
  Editor: David Robie

  Journalism and related information and mass communication issues have a dearth of outlets in the South Pacific. While the region's news media has developed technically in leaps and bounds in the last decade and journalistic standards have risen, the region's information profile remains much the same. The major newspapers remain dominated by foreign ownership - the newest daily, The National in Papua New Guinea, is Malaysian-owned - and television/radio remains, in spite of the increasing number of privately owned FM broadcasters, in the hands of the state or, in the case of PNG's EMTV, and Australian television network.

  Published by the University of Papua New Guinea.