AUCKLAND (Pacific Scoop/Pacific Journalism Review/Pacific Media Watch): Investigative journalists, film makers, academics and media freedom campaigners from across the Asia-Pacific region will converge on AUT University later this month for a conference on political journalism.
The conference on November 27-29, hosted by AUT’s Pacific Media Centre, also celebrates 20 years of publication of the research journal Pacific Journalism Review.
Ces Oreña-Drilon, an award-winning Filipino television journalist once kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf rebels, will deliver one of the keynote addresses on developments in the trial of the Maguindanao massacre in the Southern Philippines in 2009 when 34 journalists were murdered by a local warlord’s militia.
The killings constitute the world’s worst ever death toll of news people in a single attack.
Drilon is being brought to New Zealand for a visit by the Asia New Zealand Foundation.
Celebrated journalist and film maker Max Stahl from Timor-Leste – the man who exposed the 1991 Indonesian massacre at Santa Cruz cemetery to the world – will give the PJR birthday keynote address about what he describes as “anti-news”. He will also be screening part of an experimental film based on East Timor’s struggle for independence from Indonesia.
Media freedom
Repúblika editor-in-chief Ricardo Morris will give a third keynote address about media freedom in Fiji under the former military backed regime and since the general election in September.
He will be joined by lecturers, researchers and recent graduates of the University of the South Pacific talking about their struggle to protect media freedom.
Film makers screening films and talking about their investigative work include Professor Annie Goldson (the Dotcom saga) of Auckland University, AUT’s Jim Marbrook (Cap Bocage) and Alister Barry of Vanguard Films (Hot Air).
Other speakers and paper presenters will include Nick Chesterfield of West Papua Media news agency discussing how journalists can work undercover in West Papua yet protect their sources; and researchers on climate change, asylum seekers and the widely condemned “Pacific solution”; Māori and cultural social media representations; and the emerging surveillance societies in Australia and New Zealand.
“This should be a stimulating and challenging media conference confronting and exploring many of the issues of our times,” said Professor David Robie, conference convenor.
“One of the most interesting presentations will be on asylum seekers in the Pacific and the contemporary pressures of the surveillance state on journalists.”
Venue: WG126, Sir Paul Reeves Building, Governor Fitzroy Place, AUT University, Auckland. 27-29 November 2014
The conference curtainraiser at AUT
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Pacific Journalism Review
