2007-ongoing
Pacific Media Watch is an Asia-Pacific media monitoring digital repository collected and published by postgraduate students and staff at AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre and also by contributing journalists. Originally established at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), the dynamic archive was reestablished on a DSpace server at AUT in 2007 with assistance from an AUT research grant. The database is currently being assisted by a development grant by the Pacific Development and Conservation Trust.
Launched in Sydney in October 1996, PMW was the Pacific’s first regional media website. It has links with the regional Journalism Programme of the University of the South Pacific, Journalism Studies at the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG), Divine Word University in PNG, National University of Samoa and the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ).
Independent and watchful, PMW was founded as an independent, non-profit, non-government network by journalists Peter Cronau (based then at the ACIJ) and David Robie (based then at the University of Papua New Guinea). The archive was originally hosted by the Association of Progressive Communications (APC) in Sydney.
Its genesis was the jailing of two journalists, Kalafi Moala and Filokalafi ‘Akau’ola, and a “whistleblowing” pro-democracy member of Parliament in Tonga, ‘Akilisi Pohiva, for alleged contempt in September 1996. The journalists and MP were later freed by the Supreme Court which ruled their imprisonment was unconstitutional. PMW played an important role in the campauign to free the three men, including organising a petition of more than 100- media signatures from the region. The DSpace digital PMW database until mid-2010.
The new PMX database: www.pacmediawatch.aut.ac.nz
Pacific Development and Conservation Trust grants
2000 Fiji coup archive
An archive of the University of the South Pacific Journalism Programme news reports and pictures of the 2000 Fiji coup at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Alex Perrottet
