Roland Koroi
SUVA: The recent ruling by the New Zealand Press Council against an article in the Sunday Star-Times on Fiji by New Zealand reporter Michael Field is not the first that has been made against him.
Field was also taken to task in 2008 by the New Zealand Broadcast Standards Authority for making false, inaccurate and unbalanced comments against Fiji on Radio New Zealand.
This week the New Zealand Press Council upheld a complaint by Foreign Minister Murray McCully who accused the Sunday Star-Times of publishing a "grossly inflated" piece on the possibility of Fiji PM Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama attending the World Cup in 2011.
The article was written by Michael Field and Marc Hinton.
The council agreed with McCully that various assertions made by the newspaper, including its headlines and caption, failed to meet journalistic standards of accuracy, fairness and balance.
In 2008, Fiji Solicitor-General Christopher Pryde complained about Field to the New Zealand Broadcast Standards Authority accusing him of giving an “uneducated, ill-informed, deeply biased, unbalanced, and false account of events in Fiji".
The authority upheld four of Pryde’s complaints against Field, ruling that most of Field’s comments were inaccurate.
Field has been banned from Fiji and other Pacific countries like Tonga and Kiribati – with the Fiji government accusing him of being slanted and unbalanced. - Fiji Broadcasting Corporation News/Pacific Media Centre
Fiji dictator Bainimarama's World Cup freebie
NZ Press Council ruling No. 2186
The truth as Michael Field sees it - Columnist Crosbie Walsh's opinion
Pacific Media Watch
