12:58 PM |
Media people defend coverage of Fiji under the regime
The Fiji regime is critical of media coverage in Australia and New Zealand but journalists responsible for coverage say the news media do a fair job in the context of censorship and a shortage off sources.
Pacific Scoop
Report – By Shannon Gillies
Claims of inaccurate reporting by Fiji regime authorities at New Zealand and Australian media have been dismissed by most editors and correspondents canvassed by Pacific Scoop who say most reporting is "fair and factual" and the country gets the press it deserves.
This is in spite of state censorship now backed up by a media decree.
Permanent Secretary of Information Sharon Smith-Johns said recently Fiji generally suffered poor representation in the New Zealand and Australian press.
She claimed the reports did not reflect what was happening on the local level and impacted on Fiji's representation in New Zealand and Australia.
Smith-Johns told Pacific Scoop the "misrepresentations" could impact on the Fijian economy and nation's stability.
"One example is the sensational reports on the typhoid outbreak reported in Navosa – an interior and isolated region on the main island," she said.
Tourism belt
"Despite the region's remoteness from the tourism belt, reports were churned out that portrayed the outbreak as nation-wide. These reports were calculated to undermine the rapidly growing tourism industry but failed because tourists had a better grip of the reality on the ground."
Pacific correspondent Campbell Cooney of the ABC News Asia Pacific News Centre, speaking personally, says he believes coverage of the regime is fair and factual, but there were times when there was a tendency for reports to focus on the "inflammatory".
"While the news outlets I mostly report for, Radio Australia and Australia Network provide quite a bit of coverage of what has happened in Fiji, coverage of issues there by Australian domestic news outlets is mostly contained to events like the expulsion of journalists, and diplomats, and the odd inflammatory statement by [interim prime minister] Commodore Frank Bainimarama or one of his colleagues about how either, or both countries are bullying him," he says.
Cooney says that to represent Fiji's situation, a definition of the state must be made.
"Can we separate Fiji as a country and its citizens, from its leadership and government, which at the moment is a military backed regime, unelected and ruling by decree since the constitution was scrapped last year?
"I don't think this is inflammatory as a description. It is what it is."
'Big man politics'
Based on Cooney's experiences reporting from Fiji, and from talking to those who live there, people were coming up against "big man politics".
"This is the acceptance of whoever has the biggest stick, or gun. And that while you might not like what they are doing, it is best to just leave them be and go back to the village if things get to hot."
Andrew Holden, editor of the Christchurch Press, believes Fiji has caused the current "substantially negative" reporting.
This coverage is justified, though he said he was sure other people would disagree.
Fiji is represented in Australia and New Zealand as a "political pariah for obvious reasons," he says.
"Otherwise as a tourist destination, with occasional sports reporting, it is not a major site of general news."
He believes his paper's coverage of Fiji is fair. The reporting is under restrictions the Fiji government has placed on media within the country.
The Fiji government imposed a Media Industry Development Decree on June 25.
The new law ends media self-regulation and has set up a Media Development Authority and Media Tribunal to govern the news media industry.
"We are generally reliant on phone conversations rather than the preferred first-hand accounts.
No promotions
"The Press travel section, by my direction, no longer runs promotional travel stories on the country while the current media bans are in place."
Cooney says New Zealand and Australian media are viewed as a nuisance in Fiji.
"Recently the country's new Permanent Secretary for Information, an Australia-born woman, has tried to form a warm bond in an attempt to influence coverage. Without much success it must be said.
"Bainimarama is a much sought after interview target, but has proven a clever player by limiting his appearances."
Some media figures are blacklisted. New Zealand reporters Michael Field, Barbara Dreaver and Sia Aston have been expelled.
Australian reporters and newspaper executives have also been deported.
"But the point should be made they became unpopular because their stories critical of Fiji were actually seen in Fiji in print and on TV, and therefore went against the line of the regime," Cooney says.
"Generally, given that the regime has successfully cut off a lot of the sources of international news, combined with the fact that outside its populated centres there is little uptake of online news, they are not highly concerned about what is written about them."
The current reporting of Fiji is impacted by how it is being governed.
"Media organisations have made it clear that this is a military backed regime, that it has no mandate, and that it is creating laws there that suit it, and have refused to describe it, or Commodore Bainimarama, with the legitimacy he demands Fiji's media treats him with."
Bias criticised
Pacific Media Centre director David Robie, who has lived in Fiji for several years and is a former head of journalism at the University of the South Pacific, says Fiji has often been represented by "systematic bias" in the New Zealand and Australian media.
In general, journalists fail to provide contextual information around the events they are reporting on.
This is partly due to a lack of awareness of many reporters who do not appreciate the complexities of the cultural and political interplays in Fiji, he says.
He believes the pro-coup regime should be soundly condemned but more media effort should also be made on reporting policies in depth.
"There has always been a tendency to report Fiji in simplistic terms, such as an Indo-Fijian versus indigenous Fijian axis, possibly because Fiji is seen through a New Zealand prism and issues such as redressing of Maori grievances over land and culture.
"This is wrong. Eighty three percent of Fiji land is inalienable – it belongs to the indigenous mataqali and so is a very different situation from New Zealand.
"The critical real conflict in Fiji is between indigenous Fijians themselves, partly through traditional rivalries through the three chiefly confederacies, and between urban privileged elites and rural communities that have often been failed by their democratic politicians."
Few speakers
Radio New Zealand International reporter Megan Whelan says one of the problems with covering Fiji is that under the current censorship regime there is a shortage of people to talk to. The station has tried to represent Fiji as fairly as possible but the Fiji government was not as accessible as they could be, she says.
"The regime doesn't talk much, although this is getting better."
Frequent requests to speak to Commodore Bainimarama over the past couple of years have been, denied even when Radio New Zealand International reporters travelled to the country.
"Other commentators, politicians, and civil society are now reluctant to talk to the media, even foreign media.
"Within those restraints, I think we do an amazing job with our Fiji coverage. Certainly, the interim government would like the media to forget that it is a military regime, but it is important that, because the local media is so restricted, we report as accurately possible.
But she adds the practice of airline junkets to provide coverage of tourism stories "is alive and well".
Shannon Gillies is a postgraduate student on the Asia Pacific Journalism course at AUT University.
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