SUVA: A Suva-based journalism academic says the Fiji Times new owners’ significant business interests in Fiji raise new questions about its future editorial independence.
Australia-owned News Limited’s enforced sale of Fiji’s oldest paper to the locally-owned Motibhai Group is due to be finalised this week.
The head of journalism at the University of the South Pacific, Shailendra Singh, says there is general relief the newspaper is in good business hands but there is now another dilemma.
“In terms of local ownership people are saying it’s a mixed bag because of Motibhai’s considerable business interests in Fiji. People are asking how will this affect the Fiji Times editorially? Will the publishers be editorially neutral?”
Shailendra Singh says the Fiji Times is a good acquisition for the Mothibhai Group which now has a powerful advertising vehicle for its large number of diversified companies in Fiji.
* Last week, Pacific Media Centre director David Robie wrote about the implications of the sale in two items on his blog Cafe Pacific, describing the sale as a coup for Asia-Pacific publishers at the expense of the long-held Australian publishing domination of the two largest Pacific Islands media markets - Fiji and Papua New Guinea.
http://cafepacific.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-pacific-murdoch-times-are-changing.html
http://cafepacific.blogspot.com/2010/09/motibhai-wins-race-for-fiji-times.html
Pacific Media Watch
