Pacific warned against media gagging
Title -- 4086 REGION: Pacific warned against media gagging
Date -- 9 June 2003
Byline -- None
Origin -- Pacific Media Watch
Source -- Wansolwara, June edition 2003
Copyright -- USP Journalism
Status -- Unabridged
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PACIFIC WARNED AGAINST MEDIA GAGGING
Earlier story:
www.usp.ac.fj/journ/docs/news/wansolnews/2003/2003May/wansol0505031.html
By Naziah Ali
SUVA (Wansolwara/Pacific Media Watch): The media in the South Pacific should be wary of efforts by some regional governments to impose control through legislation, says the international editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, Hamish McDonald.
The Pacific media, he says, could lose its way if politicians are allowed to put pressure on it with any type of legislation.
McDonald was the keynote speaker at last month's Fiji Human Rights media awards night in Suva.
He said recent developments concerning government attempts to gag the media in Tonga, Papua New Guinea and Kiribati were worrying. He described the media situation in Fiji as encouraging but shortly after his interview with Wansolwara, the government submitted controversial draft media legislation.
McDonald said the media situation in Tonga was "decaying". The government there has introduced legislation to ban the Taimi 'o Tonga newspaper.
In PNG, the government is threatening to punish anyone who publishes or broadcasts any "negative" comments about the country.
"It is absolutely dangerous for everyone in PNG, not just the journalists, but academics also, to write papers on the economy and against the government," McDonald said. He said the performance and growth of the Pacific media was vital for the region.
McDonald said the overseas media was taken by surprise when the first coup in the South Pacific was staged by Fiji army strongman Sitiveni Rabuka in 1987.
The Sandline Affair in PNG and the coup in the Solomons also caught the Australian and the international media sleeping, he said.
This was because despite the strategic location of the Pacific, the Australian media had not devoted enough resources to the region.
Stories from the region still found it difficult to make news in the Australian media as space was very tight in the foreign pages and regional news had to fight for attention with other international news.
While the Sydney Morning Herald gathered stories from all over the world, stories from the Pacific were given low priority unless there was a coup or a disaster, McDonald said.
But in such instances, overseas journalists "parachute” into the Pacific without the in-depth understanding of the issues, and were found to be skimming the surface in their reporting, drawing criticism, he said.
PACIFIC MEDIA WATCH is an independent, non-profit, non-government organisation comprising journalists, lawyers, editors and other media workers, dedicated to examining issues of ethics, accountability, censorship, media freedom and media ownership in the Pacific region. Launched in October 1996, it has links with the Journalism Program at the University of the South Pacific, Bushfire Media based in Sydney, Journalism Studies at the University of PNG (UPNG), the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ), Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, and Community Communications Online (c2o).
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