AUCKLAND (Pacific Media Watch / ABC Radio Australia): New Zealand media have been called on to take Pacific issues more seriously.
Adrian Stevanon, of Māori Television's Native Affairs current affairs programme in Auckland, said in an interview with Radio Australia that most media outlets are failing to cover the Pacific region properly.
He also said that having more Pacific Island reporters in newsrooms might help raise the profile of Pacific issues.
Stevanon first raised this issue with Pacific Media Centre’s Jamie Small in an article published earlier this week.
According to Stevanon New Zealand news media can improve in many areas:
It [New Zealand media] does alright. It can do much better. I mean, you know, we do pretty average, I think. Domestic issues, we do okay. In terms of what’s really happening in the Pacific we do not that good. I mean, we find out that if in Samoa they’re changing the side of the road, or if they’re gonna change, you know the dateline.
But we don’t hear about, you know, some really significant issues that are happening there. The other things in the Pacific, like the potential decolonisation of Tahiti, you wouldn’t have heard about that in mainstream news here. And you won’t hear about the devastating things that are happening in West Papua. So you know, I think with all of the things that are happening in the region we do a pretty bad job.
Listen to the full interview with Adrian Stevanon here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
Pacific Media Watch
