New Zealand Herald condemns media 'bleak future'
Title -- 4306 TONGA: New Zealand Herald condemns media 'bleak future'
Date -- 13 February 2004
Byline -- None
Origin -- Pacific Media Watch
Source -- New Zealand Herald, 13/2/04
Copyright -- NZH
Status -- Unabridged
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EDITORIAL: SAD OUTLOOK FOR PACIFIC DEMOCRACY
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?thesection=news&thesubsection=&storyID=3548884
Tonga media laws index: http://www.pmw.c2o.org/2003/tongadraftmediaresp.html
AUCKLAND (NZ Herald Online/Pacific Media Watch): Almost a year ago, an International Press Institute report painted a grim picture of press freedom in the Pacific. Throughout the region, it said, governments had little or no tolerance for journalists showing them in a poor light. The worst of a motley bunch was said to be Tonga, where corruption flourished and repressive legislation underpinned the rule of the royal family.
A year on, the institute would be even more scathing. The fragile status of the media has been reinforced by a number of occurrences, including the torching of a Papua New Guinean newspaper's offices by an armed gang, and the case in which a Solomons Islands Cabinet minister demanded money with menaces from the Solomon Star. Worst of all, free speech is now being suppressed in Tonga in the crudest and most lamentable of ways.
Late last year Tonga's royal-controlled Parliament passed two new laws, the Media Operators Act and Newspaper Act, which effectively prevent the distribution of the Taimi 'o Tonga (Times of Tonga), a bi-weekly published in Auckland. The Newspaper Act required publishers to apply for licences; unsurprisingly, the Taimi, Tonga's sole independent paper, was not granted one. Only those that could be guaranteed to toe the Government line were.
The crushing of the Taimi is a huge blow to democracy in Tonga and the clearest of pointers to a bleak future. Tongans seem to have recognised as much. They have watched King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV outlaw the paper several times, and the admirable resolve of Chief Justice Gordon Ward in overruling each bid as illegal and restricting freedom of the press. Thwarted by the judiciary, the King turned to constitutional change to rid himself of the Taimi's scrutiny. That move sparked a rare, possibly unprecedented, show of defiance - a march by 6000 to 10,000 angry Tongans on Parliament brought the country to a standstill.
The Government's motives are utterly transparent. Quite simply, it recognises that its inner workings and irregularities would not survive continued exposure in the pages of the Taimi. Its degree of irritation has been exacerbated by the paper's popularity among a populace showing less and less inclination to accept the divine right of the monarchy and the aristocracy - and more and more interest in Tongan affairs.
Deprived of information and insight, the people of Tonga will become increasingly disillusioned with the royal family. The strangling of the Taimi will not obliterate the stirrings of democracy; it will simply push them along a different, potentially more destructive, path. History shows this impulse can be accommodated by shrewd monarchies, but can never be denied.
The media's parlous state in the Pacific is a reflection of deeper woes. Freedom of speech has been described, quite accurately, as the first signpost for a fully democratic society. In Tonga it has been curtailed; in other countries, it often survives only in the most tenuous of circumstances. Freedom of speech is also apt to be the first human right to be lost when democracy is threatened. Once breached, it clears the ground for a full-scale assault on other basic freedoms.
The media's woes in the Pacific are of direct concern to New Zealand. If their plight presages a breakdown of democracy, it also foreshadows a wider decline in circumstance. Healthy democracy provides countries with their best shot at economic prosperity. When governance turns sickly, a descent to banana republic status is the frequent outcome. Mixed metaphor notwithstanding, Tonga's monarchy has already flirted with such a status; now it seems intent on embracing it. That will be far more calamitous for itself, and for the country, than any comment uttered through the media. Tonga's royal family, and other Pacific leaders, should be more sensitive to that threat and more mindful of the consequences of silencing those who would warn them of their frailties.
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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