LONDON (University of Westminster News / Pacific Media Watch): A New Zealand-based media freedom monitoring and advocacy agency has played a significant independent role in the Pacific region for almost two decades, a global media and protest conference has heard.
Originally founded jointly at the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of Technology, Sydney, in September 1996, Pacific Media Watch is now based at AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre.
The case of the unjust jailings of the “Tongan three” in a celebrated contempt of Parliament case in the kingdom of Tonga in 1996 led to the formation of the voluntary media freedom group, said PMC director Professor David Robie.
“The Tongan jailings of Taimi ‘o Tonga publisher Kalafi Moala – one of the doyens of South Pacific media – deputy editor Filokalafi ‘Akau’ola and pro-democracy MP ‘Akilisi Pohiva led to the genesis of PMW, which later became a regional Pacific media freedom monitor based at UPNG in Port Moresby,” he told the Protest and the Media conference hosted by the University of Westminster and the British Journalism Review.
Moala wrote about the saga in his 2002 book Island Kingdom Strikes Back.
A website was established at the UTS Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) by investigative journalist Peter Cronau and UPNG’s David Robie to campaign for the release of the jailed Tongans and to produce an independent media freedom resource and monitor.
Since then, PMW has also been based at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji before being established in New Zealand in 2002 and has produced more than 8000 text reports and multimedia items in its AUT archives.
Case studies
The PMW paper presented at the conference gave case studies of coverage of key issues and also cited the experiences of current and past editors on the service, including Taberannang Korauaba (Kiribati Independent), Josephine Latu-Sanft (African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) media liaison), Alex Perrottet (Radio NZ International) and Daniel Drageset (Radio Norge).
In 2009-10, PMW was supported by a grant from the Pacific Development and Conservation Trust.
In a video interview with the University of Westminster media team after the conference talk, Dr Robie told Sumi Sadurni that a climate of self-censorship was a major problem facing some Pacific media while some courageous journalists bucked the trend.
“One of the biggest worries at the moment is Fiji because we have had a military-backed regime there since 2006. And Fiji is also the base of the largest journalism school in the South Pacific, the University of the South Pacific, which has had a long, proud record of a free press; it publishes its own newspaper Wansolwara and has its own radio station, Radio Pasifik.
“But now students are learning in a [national] environment of … self-censorship.”
Full report on the Protest and the Media conference
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Pacific Media Watch
