SYDNEY (West Papua Media / Asia Pacific Report / Pacific Media Watch): For the first time in a decade, West Papua Media has been taking a break from regular publication to focus on improving our infrastructure, and work on several innovative new projects that will support credible, quality journalism on the ground in West Papua.
We feel without a current sustainable funding base and savings in the bank, we are unable to ethically provide the correct amount of support currently needed for our brave clandestine stringers and journalists to expose themselves in the field at this point.
We are working hard to create the mechanisms so that they are armed always with real time digital security and support when they do venture into the field, and are able to report safely.
These mechanisms we are working hard to develop so that anyone who needs to tell a story of their world – in Papua to begin with – is able to do so, and have their voice heard, and treated with respect.
Currently the amount of fake media, recycled and out of context torture photos and misreporting is creating a situation where social media is now dismissed by the powerful around the world as rumour and propaganda.
The work we are currently doing is supporting the capacity of West Papuan people inside West Papua to get their own voices heard with the stories they want to tell. Not the stories that outsiders want told for their own clickbait donation agendas, or misreported, or not told full stop.
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