AUCKLAND (Pacific Media Watch): The author of a new book on Pacific media and politics has hit out at copycat cybercrime laws designed to curb freedom of expression on social media and independent blog news sites.
Pacific Media Centre director professor David Robie, author of Don't Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific, made the comments at the book launch on AUT University on Thursday.
Speakers at the event included the AUT Dean of Creative Technologies, Professor Desna Jury; Wiremu Tipuna, Takawaenga Māori at AUT (Ngati Kahungunu); Dr Steven Ratuva, president of the Pacific Islands Political Studies Association (PIPSA); publisher Tony Murrow of Little Island Press; and Pacific Islands Media Association (PIMA) chair Sandra Kailahi.
TV New Zealand's Pacific correspondent, Barbara Dreaver, sent a "launch" message which was read out by Kailahi.
According to Murrow, the book, with its focus on killings of journalists in the Philippines, and massacres, rape and torture in West Papua and Timor-Leste, highlights just how widespread the tragedies of the Pacific really are.
The book is also a critique of the mainstream media which ignores and under-reports Pacific issues.
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Pacific Media Watch
