Budding AUT Māori, Pasifika filmmakers now have sights on media industry

By Violet Cho: Pacific Media Centre

Winners at AUT University’s inaugural Flavorz09 film festival for student video makers on Friday night say they are now inspired to break into the industry.

Sophie Johnson, who won the year three prize of $350 for her 12 minute documentary, The Makings of a Kaitiaki, was delighted with her success.

“I worked quite closely with a group of eight people and I know how hard each of them worked. I feel really honoured to receive this tonight,” she said.

“It was so amazingly rewarding. Then to be able to see your images up on the big screen like this, and see people’s reactions, it is so rewarding.”

The film was a short biopic about kuia Nganeko Minhinnick, a kaitiaki of the Manukau.

Hosting the public showing of 11 Māori, Pasifika and diversity short films for AUT’s Pacific Media Centre, presenter John Utanga, a producer of TVNZ’s Tagata Pasifika programme, was impressed with the quality.

Utanga, who is also chair of the PMC, pledged to consider some of the programmes for possible broadcast.

His message to communication studies students was to strive for quality work and to have a good attitude.

‘Affectionate look’
The second-year prize of $150 went to Karleen Bidois, Ashleigh McEnaney and Natasha Munton for their four minute documentary Ka Tuituia, described as an “affectionate look at Isabella Sharrock, her whanau and her Karakeke taonga”.

Bidois said she hoped to work with Māori Television when she graduated.

“I feel emotional, excited and very surprised by the outcome. But I also know that I worked really hard to produce such a film from the bottom of my heart.”

She had not realised her passion for media before coming to AUT.

“Now I am hungry for it and I want to do it for the rest of my life.”

Organiser Dr David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre, said the festival was an “inspirational showcase” for quality programmes being made by students on Māori and Pasifika themes.

One film, Beyond the Ropes, also featured women’s wrestler Sangita Patel, a New Zealand-born Indian known in the business as “Alita Capri”.

Tongan music
Strong applause also greeted the documentary The Modern Afo of Tonga, directed by John Pulu, which features Tonga Kru and Three Houses Down and examines temporary Tongan music styles.

Pulu’s programme is being broadcast on the Pacific Viewpoint television show.

The festival was supported by television staff, including acting curriculum leader James Nicholson and Jim Marbrook, and Tui O’Sullivan, equity coordinator in AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies, who also gave a mihi.

O’Sullivan said she was delighted with the festival.

“It would be great if it could be an annual event because the calibre of the work is really impressive.”

Pictured: Top: Kuia Nganeko Minhinnick in a still from Sophie Johnson's The Makings of a Kaitiaki; presenter John Utanga, of Tagata Pasifika; and television lecturer Jim Marbrook with students. More pictures on Pacific Scoop.

Violet Cho is a postgraduate journalism student from Burma in AUT’s School of Communication Studies.

Public right to know - new PJR edition

Pacific Media Watch

Trauma and exiled writers, the challenge of environmental journalism in Delta land, issues of editorial “slant” in health reporting and use of te reo Māori in newspapers are some of the topics featured in the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review.

The October edition is a special “Public right to know” joint issue published by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism and AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre.

A selection of eight peer-refereed papers, mostly drawn from the PR2K7 conference with the theme “Giving them what they want” (PR2K), has been published in this edition co-edited by professor Wendy Bacon, director of the ACIJ.

The PR2K conferences, which have been held regularly since 2000, have mostly focused on how the right of people to know what is happening has been frustrated by legal, political and social constraints on the media in the Asia-Pacific region.

“While these key concerns remain, in 2007 and 2008 the conference organisers challenged participants to present papers which explored how contemporary media developments are shaping and being shaped by new relations with the public,” Bacon writes in the editorial.

Bacon herself contributed a major role in one of the key research articles, along with two Bangladeshi colleagues, about the urgency of environmental coverage of Delta land, showing up the “neglect” of reporting ecological devastation by Australia and New Zealand media in some parts of the region and why change is needed.

This year is the Year of Climate Change in the South Pacific and several small island nations have stretched their resources to provide better environmental reporting.

John Carr focuses on journalism as storytelling and argues that a “viable public sphere” needs narrative templates for critical social, political and environmental issues that need to engender a sense of shared participation.

John Roberts and Chris Nash examine the reporting by two Sydney newspapers of the controversial issues of a safe injecting room in the face of complaints of bias.

Investigative journalism
Marni Cordell presents a pilot study on the state of investigative journalism in Australia with a focus on the ABC’s flagship Four Corners programme. PMC director associate professor David Robie provides a comparative case study on the controversial Fiji news media “review” in the lead up to the regime imposing martial law and censorship at Easter.

Other articles outside the main PR2K theme include a study of the “intentional use” of te reo Māori in New Zealand newspapers in 2007 by the Kupu Taea project at Massey University, a comparative study of teenage views on journalism as a career in Australia and NZ by professor Mark Pearson of Bond University, and a New Caledonian mediascape from aid analyst Nic Maclellan.

The review section includes a feature essay on the book Shooting Balibo written by Tony Maniaty about the murders of the “Balibo Five” television reporters and journalist Roger East by invading Indonesian troops in East Timor in 1975.

This edition, co-edited by Jan McClelland and Dr Robie, has been dedicated to AUT research administrator Jillian Green, who had been a strong colleague, friend and supporter of PJR and this month lost her struggle with cancer.

The next edition of PJR has the theme “reporting conflict” in association with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and will be published in May 2010.

• Pacific Journalism Review can be ordered on the PJR website www.pjreview.info or through the ACIJ www.acij.uts.edu.au

• Call for papers for May 2010.
• Pacific Journalism Review
  

Bullets and mines give Violet's job an edge

By Brenda Cottingham

The first thing Burmese journalist Violet Cho noticed about New Zealand’s news media was its different news priorities – like a burglary story on page one of the NZ Herald.

The kind of journalism she does involves avoiding being shot or having her limbs blown off by land mines.

“I couldn’t believe that a burglary would be so important that it warranted being on page one,” she told Whitireia Journalism School students during a visit to Wellington this month.

She is surprised at the New Zealand media’s lack of international coverage and focus on local issues.

Violet has emerged from the unlikely roots of a Thai refugee camp, and is in New Zealand taking her journalism education a step further.

She fled Myanmar/Burma (she uses both names) with her family to Thailand when she was seven, and says growing up in a refugee camp was not easy.

A lot of young people were depressed in the camps, which indirectly spawned journalism and led to her career.

She was taught basic journalism by a South African woman, and with the help of the camp’s community leader, was able to covertly set up a radio transmitter within her camp, which raised spirits.

Telling the stories
Since taking up journalism, she has aimed to tell the stories of the people, but says getting even a simple story could prove dangerous and difficult because of the Burmese military presence.

In 2005, she risked her life reaching a remote Burmese village.

“The Burmese conflict policy is to shoot on sight,” says Violet.

The people of the village were teaching children to use whatever materials they had, which included a large stone-face used as a blackboard.

Violet, an indigenous Karen, holds a Burmese passport, and says Burma is a corrupt country where those in power do not share the wealth, and drugs and trafficking are just a few of the problems.

After she completes her journalism studies at Auckland University of Technology, she hopes to visit her family, who now live in America, before returning to work in Thailand.

Her dream is to see a free Myanmar and to work there.

Violet - who is hosted in New Zealand on the AUT University's Pacific Media Centre inaugural Asian Journalism Fellowship supported by the Asia: NZ Foundation - would like NZ journalists to visit Myanmar to write about the lives of the people and their hardships.

Picture: Violet Cho at Whitireia. Photo: Brenda Cottingham

Brenda Cottingham is a student journalist at Whitireia Journalism School in Wellington. This story was published originally on Newswire.

Karen journalist in critical voice for change
In exile - Bryan Crump on Radio NZ National's Nights (Nov 2)

New AUT media programme targets Pacific journalists

By Christopher Adams: Pacific Media Centre

A shortage of Pacific Islanders undertaking journalism training in New Zealand will be addressed next year with the introduction of a new course at AUT University.

The Graduate Diploma in Pacific Journalism will incorporate the core papers from the Bachelor in Communications Studies degree with a journalism major, along with electives focusing on the Asia-Pacific region.

Tagata Pasifika producer John Utanga says while many Pacific students pass through communications programmes around the country, most do not choose to major in journalism.

“In the current era there is so much more choice, but we know that while some students do the journo component, not enough do,” says Utanga, who is also current chair of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre.

“The bottom line is fewer people have chosen that option over the last few years – hence the reason for getting a Pacific-focused journalism course up and running,” he says.

Both Utanga and TVNZ Pacific affairs correspondent Barbara Dreaver, along with Tagata Pasifika’s Lisa Taouma, trained on Manukau Institute of Technology’s Pacific journalism course in the late 1980s.

“That was focused on Pacific journalism, and the idea was to get Pacific kids interested in journalism,” says Utanga.

The course closed in 1994 after government funding was phased out, and no similar course has been run since.

Dr Alan Cocker, head of AUT’s School of Communication Studies, says the new course is aimed at Pacific journalists who are already in the industry, but are looking to up-skill.

It is also available for Pacific journalists from the region or other Pasifika people looking for a career change into the media industry.

Diverse communities
“One of the key things is that AUT University, as part of its strategic plan, puts a lot of emphasis on serving the diverse groups of Auckland – particularly the Māori and Pasifika communities.”

Dr Cocker says the creation of the new programme was initiated by Pacific Media Centre director Associate Professor David Robie, who ran similar courses as head of journalism programmes at universities in Fiji and Papua New Guinea before joining AUT.

Dr Robie says the new programme has been “in the pipeline” for about three years while awaiting school and government approval.

A Pacific journalist with “mana in the industry” would be recruited to run the programme.

“AUT University has set itself a strategic goal of becoming the preferred university for Māori and Pasifika students,” he says.

But he adds there is a perception in Pacific communities that journalism is not a “highly desired” career path.

“It’s certainly not well-paid and often Pacific families encourage their young people to go into careers like law or medicine.”

He says the profile of journalism as a career path needs to be raised in Pacific communities.

But despite this, Dr Robie says a “coming of age” is currently taking place in New Zealand-based Pacific journalism.

“Two young, up and coming Pacific journalists have been in Samoa covering the tsunami disaster – the New Zealand Herald’s Vaimoana Tapaleao and Radio New Zealand’s Leilani Momoisea -and they are both graduates of AUT.”

The Graduate Diploma in Pacific Journalism is due to begin in March 2010, and could take up to about a dozen students in its first year.

Christopher Adams is a Graduate Diploma in Journalism student at AUT University.

Graduate Diploma in Pacific Journalism. No fixed deadline for applications, but best to apply early.

See also Pacific Scoop

Australia, NZ 'misunderstand' Fiji politics, coup leader tells Māori TV

"Let's Be Frank" is due to be aired again on Māori Television tomorrow (Friday) night at 10pm.

By David Robie, of Pacific Media Watch

Fiji’s military-backed prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama has vowed not to be bullied by Australia and New Zealand, and has defended his curbs on the Pacific country’s media.

“I’m trying to do what is good for Fiji, not what’s good for New Zealand, not what’s good for Australia,” he told Māori Television’s current affairs programme Native Affairs presenter Julian Wilcox in an interview broadcast last night.

But he added that Fiji “treasured” its traditional relationship with both countries and blamed the neighbouring governments for the current damaged relationship.

Bainimarama said New Zealanders did not understand democracy in Fiji and he hinted that an improvement might come in relations with New Zealand if Prime Minister John Key “changed his views” on Fiji.

He said it would be “a good thing” for the future relationship if New Zealand appointed a new high commissioner to the vacant post in Suva.

Bainimarama was interviewed in Suva during “48 hours in the Pacific’s military zone” last week, as the bilingual Māori and English public broadcaster billed the special report.

The wide-ranging Wilcox interview and a report by Carmen Parahi on grassroots responses from Fiji Islanders to the military regime coincided with a brief visit to Suva by the special Commonwealth emissary, former NZ Governor-General Sir Paul Reeves.

“This is our one and only chance to right the wrongs. We have had four coups. We don’t want any more coups,” Bainimarama said.

‘No secret’
Asked by Wilcox why he had seized power in December 2006, Bainimarama replied: “It was no secret that what we wanted to do was get rid of corrupt practices [under the previous elected government of Laisenia Qarase], get rid of the racial policies that were around us – especially the racial policies that were going to take our country down …

“It boiled down to the public service not doing their thing … their bit.

“We have removed just about all the people for abuse of authority, abuse of office and abuse of funds. These people were part of the elite group of government …

“It was nepotism throughout and we could see that. So we wanted to get rid of it.”

Bainimarama called for more understanding of the complexities of the Fiji political and social system and why changes were needed.

“People see this nation as a failed state. The European Union sees it as a failed state. The Commonwealth, the whole reason why they have suspended us is that they see this nation as a failed state.

“The [Pacific Islands] Forum, Australia and New Zealand see this nation as a failed African state.
“You have a preconceived idea of what is happening [in Fiji] when you don’t understand what is happening here … and people don’t want to understand because you want to interfere in the way we do business.

Peacekeeping
“In fact, right now … Australia is trying to get us out of the United Nations peacekeeping [role]. What benefit will there be for the Australians? Would it benefit the Māori, for instance; would it benefit the Aborigines if we were removed from the UN peacekeepers?

Wilcox: “You feel Fiji is being bullied by, principally New Zealand and Australia?”
Bainimarama: “Yes, because you don’t understand what is happening here, what we’re trying to do.

“All you see is the military removing an elected government and it wants to remain in power for the next five years [until an election in 2014].

“Yes, we removed an elected government – for good reason. We wanted to bring about development in this country. We wanted to bring this country forward instead of keeping us in the old cannibalistic days.”

Asked why Bainimarama had not left it to elections and democracy to make political reforms, the self-appointed prime minister said the politicians “don’t want reforms – if they bring about reforms, the people won’t vote for them”.

Bainimarama said an authoritarian government was needed to make the political and electoral reforms in Fiji needed to ensure no more coups would happen.

“In Fiji, you don’t come up with your own vote. Your vote is dictated by the chiefs, it is dictated by the Great Council of Chiefs, it is dictated by the provincial councils, and it is dictated by the [Methodist] Church.

‘Not democracy’
“So it’s not your vote. So don’t tell me that it’s democracy.”

Asked by Wilcox about media censorship, Bainimarama said: “The press is still churning out newspapers. The TV station is still on, the radio is still on.

“What we have censored is irresponsible reports, that’s what we have censored.”
Wilcox: “What exactly does that mean?”

Bainimarama: “That you report the facts. I am sure Māori Television understands that …
“The media are free to express what they want – just say the right things, don’t say rubbish.”

Challenged to talk to the people of Fiji about how they viewed his regime, Native Affairs reporter Carmen Parahi contributed a segment on responses from ordinary Fiji Islanders.

Taking a quick break from a game of touch rugby at Lami, Radio Fiji sports reporter Sikeli Qounadovu said: “Life goes on. The politicians are causing the headaches, while we are enjoying ourselves.

“He [Bainimarama] has done a lot for the rural areas of Fiji compared to other leaders … We let them do what they think is for the good of the country.”

Positive view
Several speakers in the Suva city markets were also positive about the state of Fiji.
However, the media were less complimentary.

Fiji Times editor-in-chief Netani Rika, recent winner of the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) Pacific Media Freedom Award and who came in for personal criticism from Bainimarama during the interview, was not available for on camera comments.

But he declared that the Fiji Times would continue its independent role.

Merana Kitione, news manager of Fiji Television, described the daily censorship operation, adding that it spite of the repression it was “business as usual” at the station.

However, asked by Parahi if Fiji Television feared being closed, she replied: “I can’t answer that question – no comment.”

A Native Affairs studio panel discussion following the Bainimarama interview featured a former senator, Dr Ratu Epeli Nailatikau, and Nik Naidu, spokesperson of the Auckland-based Coalition for Democracy in Fiji.

Both speakers argued for dialogue with the regime but while Naidu called for a free media to enable wider debate with the Fiji public, politicians, civil society and aid donors, Dr Nailatikau said dialogue needed to exclude the media.

Asked by Wilcox to put media censorship in Fiji in perspective, Naidu said: “If this was Fiji, what would happen is the military would be here by now, close down the station, most probably put all of us into custody, and this programme would not air.”

Naidu also added it was an irony that Bainimarama was now calling for New Zealand to post a new high commissioner to Fiji when the military government had twice before expelled NZ high commissioners.

Dr Nailatikau said Fiji’s elected politicians had in the past divided the country with racism and the regime was contributing to a sense of unity.

Dr David Robie of Pacific Media Watch. This article is republished from the Pacific Media Centre's Pacific Scoop.
www.pacmediawatch.aut.ac.nz

PMC video storytelling on YouTube

Stories and short docos filed by Pacific Media Centre students and student journos on the AUT television course are posted on our YouTube site. Happy viewing.

Pacific Scoop boosts media outlets for student journalists

The launch of Pacific Scoop late last month has opened the door to increased Pacific and diversity stories by student journalists at AUT University and around the region.

By Steve Chae: Pacific.Scoop

Hopes are high that Pacific Scoop will open up a window on the region with its New Zealand and global audience, says the co-founder of Scoop.

Alastair Thompson said today the parent site had increased its international reporting in the decade since it was first launched.

“We have a very outward-looking viewpoint,” he told Pacific Scoop.

“Internet has given us an opportunity for international news media. From the outset, our audience was international.”

Hosted on Scoop.co.nz, Pacific Scoop was launched at the Māori Expo held at Auckland’s Vector Arena.

Thompson said while the total audience had increased, the international audience which used to make up 50 percent overall had now dropped to 30 percent.

“The main impact of Pacific Scoop will be to expose New Zealand media to more Pacific stories and this may have an impact on the New Zealand media,” he said.

Thompson said the support of AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre and the leading role of its director, Dr David Robie, was the key to launching the new website.

Dr Robie said Pacific Scoop would be a regional website including good student journalism from universities around the Pacific as well stories from experienced media contributors.

He said it was important that some of the stories blocked by “censorship or local sensitivities” would get a chance to run and the regional audience have a wider choice of information.

Dr Robie said New Zealand was a key part of the Pacific and a new website like this would boost the watchdog role in the region.

Scoop co-editor Selwyn Manning, who initiated the plan and launched the website during a studio interview by a team of Māori and Pasifika communication students at the Māori Expo, said it was important to chase the critical issues in the region.

“New Zealand is in the Pacific, and establishing fourth estate journalism here is the real work for us,” said Manning, who is former chair of the PMC.

He said there was an arc of instability in the Pacific region with Fiji and Tonga being the hot spots over constitution and democracy issues.

As for Pacific communities in New Zealand, Manning said there was a lot to do for the media to connect with the public and picking up trends.

Sandra Kailahi, an experienced Pacific journalist with TVNZ, said she had not yet checked the website but added it would be “an awesome opportunity to have another outlet for Pacific stories”.

Current PMC chair John Utanga, of TVNZ’s Tagata Pasifika, was unable to be at the launch, but posted a best wishes message saying: “This site’s a great idea – congratulations to all who made it possible. It will certainly be added to my list of must-view Pacific news sites.”

Manning said Pacific Scoop would provide a platform and audience by providing an interaction between student journalists with those in the industry.

“We have created a forum for one place where media and academics can come together. Our goal is to reach that potential for analysis and research.

“Students have vibrant and progressive ideas. We in the industry can learn from students,” he said.

The partnership between the PMC and Scoop had been in preparation for three years and establishing the website was the logical next step.

Manning is expecting 40,000 visitors a month for Pacific Scoop as a traffic rate.

The main Scoop site gets more than 500,000 visitors a month.

He said the traffic would not determine its success in the coming days.

Manning said Scoop would be counting on the innovation and quality of the content with editorial control lying with the PMC team.

Dr Robie said diversity stories were being welcomed for Pacific Scoop.

Community focused reporting was not of much interest in mainstream but the PMC would be tapping into the cultural dialogue, he said.

Ranjit Singh, a former publisher of the Fiji Daily Post and a current holder of an annual AUT/Pacific Islands Media Association postgraduate communications scholarship, said New Zealand media was not representing the changing face its own community.

“New Zealand is increasingly brown, but the media is too white,” said Singh.

Steve Chae is a Graduate Diploma in Pacific Journalism at AUT University. This article is republished from Pacific Scoop.

Pacific Scoop editorial policy