AUCKLAND (Radio New Zealand Sunday / Pacific Media Watch): Global investigative journalist John Pilger has described a new book on media and human rights in the Pacific as an "extraordinary secret history".
Radio New Zealand's Sunday Morning host Wallace Chapman today interviewed the author of Don't Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific, Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre at the Auckland University of Technology.
Dr Robie talked about his great, great grandfather James Robie, editor of the Caledonian Mercury in Scotland in the 1850s - a "political stirrer and human rights campaigner"; his early career in media, travels in Africa; his "French connection" leading into his Pacific journalism and education commitment and "deliberative journalism" investigative techniques.
Pilger wrote: "This is an extraordinary 'secret history' of a vast region of the world of which David Robie has been a rare expert witness. What makes this epic work so timely is that it allows us to understand the Asia-Pacific at a time of renewed Cold War ambitions and dangers."
Today's Wallace Chapman interview podcast (23min 46sec):
Information about the book at Little Island Press
Secret histories of the Pacific
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
David Robie
