AUCKLAND (Pacific Scoop / Pacific Media Centre): The Pacific Scoop team is covering the Pacific Islands Forum in the Cook Islands this week and it will be the third year in a row that the Pacific Media Centre has poured its efforts into bringing this in-depth journalism education initiative to the region.
Last year in Auckland, a team of 10 postgraduate AUT University journalism students were accredited with the Forum and provided more than a week’s coverage of the main events, focusing on development issues facing Pacific Islands people.
This year, the PMC has teamed up with the Cook Islands News and is sending masters student Henry Yamo fropm Papua New Guinea to Rarotonga. He will be the only journalism student at the event.
Filling some gaps
Yamo says he is going with the intention of filling some gaps in reporting.
“I will look at development issues with a Pacific picture and not just one part of the Pacific,” he says.
“This is an ideal time to give a holistic view of the Pacific and get an understanding of how Pacific nations are collaborating through this regional Forum to support each other.”
He hopes he can cover other Melanesian issues for the wider education of Pacific Scoop’s broad readership.
“Apart from Fiji, other Melanesian countries have hardly been on the New Zealand and international news radar so will be looking for interesting issues involving any of them, including agreements with development partners or commitments taken on board.”
Reporting partnership
Director of the Pacific Media Centre Professor David Robie says AUT is the only one of 10 journalism schools in New Zealand covering the event and Pacific Scoop has reported on the ground for three years running, starting with Port Vila in 2010.
“Thanks to editor John Woods, we have a partnership with the Cook Islands News and will share some pooled stories,” he says.
“In fact, we have a double barrelled industry partnership involved in this coverage because we already work closely with Scoop Media, which enabled us to establish Auckland-based Pacific Scoop as the Asia-Pacific Journalism course publication.”
Dr Robie says the coverage will focus on where there are large gaps in the mainstream media in New Zealand.
“You will notice that critical issues such as West Papuan self-determination, largely ignored by the mainstream, get emphasis from us. Other important issues for us include climate change, culture, education, regional fisheries, resource development and exploitation, migration and fairer migrant labour opportunities in Australia and NZ, and media freedom and expression rights.”
Alastair Thompson, editor of the Wellington-based Scoop, heaped praise on last year’s reporting team and says the Forum has always been a focus for Scoop.
“For nearly a decade Scoop has covered this event and myself and former co-editor Selwyn Manning attended several forums in person,” he says.
New bar set
“Last year, however the Pacific Scoop team’s coverage of the forum in Auckland set a new bar in New Zealand for coverage of this key Pacific Island diplomatic event, providing what was described by some as the best coverage any media outlet has provided.
“These days the traditional media are finding it increasingly difficult to cover even the big set piece diplomatic exchanges. And the fact that the team from the PMC are able to fill this void so ably is something that Scoop is extremely proud it has been able to assist happen.”
The Cook Islands News team covering the event consists of: Editor John Woods, chief reporter Matariki Wilson, political reporter Rachel Reeves, general reporters: Calida Smylie (AUT graduate), Matiu Workman (AUT graduate) and Rachel Smith. The Pacific Media Centre is sending Henry Yamo to report, and will have AUT’s Asia-Pacific journalism students covering issue-based reports and Pacific Media Watch contributing editor Alex Perrottet coordinating from Auckland. The daily Pacific Scoop Forum updates and archive are here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
Alex Perrottet
