12:51 PM |
Media advocate calls for new Pacific free press approach
Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Pacific Media Watch in Brisbane.
A Cook Islands free press advocate has called for news activists to borrow a leaf out of the regional HIV/AIDS campaign book to give Pacific news media a new bill of health.
Speaking at the UNESCO World Press Freedom Day global conference at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Lisa Williams-Lahari said media advocates could learn a lot from the tactics of the HIV/AIDS campaign in the Pacific.
Williams, founder of the Pacific Islands Journalism Online network and WAVE women's media advocacy group, said that in the 1980s HIV/AIDS had been regarded by the media as somebody else's problem – "it was seen as a death sentence by God to gay men, adulterers and prostitutes".
Later, it was often reported on through "talking heads" – many from the church – and in the context of ethics, stigma and discrimination.
However, at the 1998 Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) conference in French Polynesia, a young Tahitian journalism graduate from the University of the South Pacific, Maire Bopp du Pont, herself HIV-Positive spoke out against media "fear mongering" over the issue. (See also Scoop investigation, Time Runs Out On South Pacific HIV/AIDS Crisis.)
Williams said the journalist's courage had opened up a media space exploring cultural, social, sexual and religious "taboos" and challenged the Pacific media to rethink coverage of sensitive issues.
This led to Bopp winning the PINA Media Freedom Award the following year and her path of media advocacy, including the establishment of the Cook Islands-based Pacific Islands Aids Foundation.
Apply lessons
Williams said journalists now needed to apply the lessons from the HIV/AIDS public health challenge to the way they addressed issues of ethics, freedom, truth and accountability in the Pacific media.
She described the problems facing the region's journalism as a challenge of "crisis proportions".
Speaking about a controversy over the future of Suva-based PINA and a heated debate about whether the regional body and its news service Pacnews should relocate from Fiji, Williams said journalists needed to seek greater accountability and transparency about their own media industry.
"We will always have our dictators or tyrants [in the Pacific]. But we need to get our own house in order," she said.
Susuve Laumaea, co-chair of the Pacific Freedom Forum and a columnist for the Sunday Chronicle in Papua New Guinea, said the Pacific media faced many threats.
"We have a monarchy in Tonga, a military dictatorship in Fiji and a constitutional democracy in Papua New Guinea. All the other nations in the Pacific that are independent face a diverse list of problems," he said.
Savea Sano Malifa, publisher of the Samoa Observer and one of the veteran Pacific media freedom campaigners, spoke about hypocrisy towards Fiji.
Samoan media laws
"Where is the free and peaceful Pacific? There is no freedom and no peace," he said.
"Samoa is not free. Fiji is not free. PNG is not free. Solomon Islands is not free."
While the Samoan prime minister had been criticising the Fiji regime leader Commander Voreqe Bainimarama over the draconian draft media decree, Samoa had its own controversial media laws, including criminal libel, which had chilled media freedom.
Fiji Times deputy editor Sophie Foster spoke of a survey she had conducted which indicated "100 percent" of journalists consulted believed they had been affected by the censorship regime over the past year.
"The truth is hidden by censorship," she said, adding that they did no believe their watchdog role was a threat to "national security".
Other journalists spoke of her courage in speaking out about Fiji.
In the second day of the media freedom conference, a Chilean journalist, Monica Gonzalez Mujica, a heroine of the struggle against the Pinochet dictatorship in her country, will be awarded the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Award.
Source: Pacific Media Watch.
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pacific islands media association
pima.nius@gmail.com
aotearoa, new zealand
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