AUCKLAND (Pacific Journalism Review / Pacific Media Watch): Pacific Journalism Review has today called on journalists to keep faith with their fundamental job of being an “outsider” – confronting, not acting as a handmaiden to power.
The media research journal, in its third edition dealing with investigative journalism methodologies, has featured several major investigations, including Munster award-winning journalist Jo Chandler for her series on sorcery in Papua New Guinea and other issues.
Images by Russian human rights photographer Vlad Sokhin on"witchcraft" in the PNG Highlands have been featured on the cover and inside the edition.
In the editorial by issue co-editor Professor Wendy Bacon, the journal has warned over the business model pressures that have threatened “sustained high quality investigative journalism”.
“As we go to press, photographers’ jobs at Fairfax media are threatened. Journalists have mobilised to focus public attention on the role of photographers as newsgatherers,” Bacon wrote.
“Walkley Award-winning Fairfax photographer Kate Geraghty’s picture of asylum seekers holding up their identity cards as they are transported in buses into the Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea in 2013 is a reminder of how images recorded by journalists courageous enough to defy official restrictions on media have both humanised and publicised the plight of asylum seekers in our region.
'Lack of resources'
“While high quality journalism of this kind still exists inside traditional mainstream organisations and should be strongly supported, a lack of resources and media organisation leadership means that media is as likely to celebrate power as it is to challenge it.”
She cited Seymour Hersh, a leading investigative reporter of his era, who was critical of US journalists that he described as being “too timid and close to power”.
“He reminded journalists their fundamental job was to be an ‘outsider’, confronting, not acting as a handmaiden to power,” Bacon wrote.
The latest edition of the journal, published by the Pacific Media Centre, has also featured articles by New Zealand’s Science Media Centre Peter Griffin on investigative business models, and research critiques on New Zealand comparative newspaper values, and mainstream coverage of Māori issues.
The edition has been co-edited by Professor Bacon and Associate Professor Tom Morton of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ), and Professor David Robie of the PMC.
The journal will be celebrating 20 years of publication in a regional conference with the theme “Political journalism in the Asia-Pacific” at AUT University on November 27-29.
PJR 20th Anniversary Conference
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Pacific Journalism Review
