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AUCKLAND (Pacific Media Watch): This year World Press Freedom Day on Sunday is focused on the themes of gender and the media, digital safety for journalists and their sources and the concept of independent and quality media.
Visiting Haaretz journalist Amira Hass believes independent media are needed and she warns of the growing dangers to journalists, especially in the Middle East.
The award-winning journalist who specialises in Israeli-Palestinian affairs is in New Zealand for a two-week tour to speak to media people and journalists and will address an AUT University audience about the "dilemmas as a 'non-objective' journalist" on Wednesday.
She told Pacific Media Watch today independent media were needed to "expose or to bring real news much more often, on a regular basis and to be liberated from all sorts of economical concerns".
The independent media, for example, have taken the form of "bloggers and websites" established by left-wing activists in Israel and are run voluntarily.
"This is very important because it pushes some of the mainstream media to also cover these issues, so they act as a competitor," she said.
Journalists in danger
But Amira Hass believes the ability for journalists to do their job, especially in Middle Eastern countries, is becoming more dangerous.
"Authorities are preventing journalists from working and from publishing the facts and the news and the realities," she said.
"Many have been killed, which is the worst of all."
The situation of the journalism industry in the Western world was very different.
"Journalists have more freedom to report, but in general, the readership and audiences do not want to know what their governments are doing and what their peers are causing," she said.
Concern for governments
According to Hass, journalists in the Asia-Pacific region should be "concerned" about the actions of their governments.
"You should be concerned about the complicity or disregard of your governments to human conditions in nearby countries," she said.
Practitioners in the region should also be wary of where their governments "should not be collaborating with oppressive regimes".
Where violence was concerned or covered by the media, Hass said, journalists needed to "learn how to describe oppressive realities, also when they don't reach the peak".
"There should be more coverage of the Israeli occupation in Palestine, not only when it culminates in mass killings and hostilities, like in the Gaza war," she said.
"Sometimes it seems that media, in general, think that news is only when there is blood and the press needs to relieve itself of this axiom."
Critical timing
Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie said it was critical timing for the visit to New Zealand by Amira Hass.
"The world is reflecting on the dangers and risks for journalists and the need for more independent journalism to coincide with the UNESCO-backed World Media Freedom Day," he said.
"Amira Hass is an inspiring example of a fearless independent journalist and her message is really important for us.
"In New Zealand, there is a tendency to take media freedom for granted, or to confuse it with the freedom of media ownerships, unlike in Pacific countries where Media Freedom Day on May 3 is taken seriously every year."
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
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