PJR wins global creative industries award

Pacific Media Centre

Pacific Journalism Review has won a Creative Stimulus Award for academic journals in the inaugural Academy Awards of the Global Creative Industries in Beijing, China, this month.

The journal, published by AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre and now in its 16th year, was one of five international journals to receive awards.

Other journals honoured include the British-based International Journal of Cultural Studies.

Professor Barry King of AUT’s Faculty of Creative Technologies, who was present for the awards ceremony as part of the 5th Creative China Harmonious World International Forum on Cultural Industries, accepted the prize on PJR’s behalf.

Professor King, who is on the advisory board of the PMC, said: “The inclusion of PJR with world class journals such as the International Journal of Cultural Studies is a testament to its development into a journal of reference and international quality in the field of journalism practice and education.

“AUT’s international reputation in a key partner market benefits significantly from the efforts of the editor, Associate Professor David Robie, and his team.”

The award citation said that in view of its “innovation and contribution in reporting hot topics” PJR was being awarded the title of “Motivated Thinking Periodical”.

During the conference, the Global Academic Association of Cultural Industries (GAACI) was established.

In the initiation ceremony, Professor Fan Zhou, dean of the Institute of Cultural Industries (ICI), Communication University of China (CUC); and Professor John Hartley, foundation dean of the Faculty of Creative Industries at Australia's Queensland University of Technology, delivered the founding declaration.

Six other members in different fields of cultural industries, including AUT's Professor King, also participated in the ceremony.

Other universities include the University of Adelaide, Australia; Belgium's Free University of Brussels; Chulalongkorn University of Thailand; Keio University of Japan; and Singapore's Nanyang Technology University.

Professor Fan said: "The association will build a cooperation platform by sharing research and teaching resources and experience, including staff exchange, joint research programmes and academic conferences to promote the development of education and research in cultural industries."

Pictured: Top: Professor Barry King (third from right) at the inauguration of the Global Academic Association of Cultural Industries (GAACI) in Beijing. Middle: PJR editor Dr David Robie with the plaque and certificate (Photo: Melanie Curry-Irons/AUT). Above: The latest edition of PJR.

Institute for Cultural Industries (CUC)
Database for Pacific Journalism Review articles
PJR website

Pacific journalists defend free media in latest PJR

Pacific Media Centre

Sophie Foster, assistant editor of the Fiji Times, is among leading journalists who have lambasted curbs on media freedom in the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review.

She condemned the “growth of self-censorship” within Fiji’s media industry while revealing the findings of a recent survey of mainstream journalists.

Foster took sudden leave at the Fiji Times after a newsroom upheaval last week that saw former editor-in-chief Netani Rika resign and Sunday Times editor Fred Wesley become appointed acting chief editor.

She wrote in the “Media freedom in Oceania” edition of PJR being published by AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre tomorrow that self-censorship was already a feature of the Fiji news media.

“With journalists now coming face to face with the fact that the whole truth or freedom of expression is not being fully exercised, some are now having to consider self-censoring stories they work on – because they know that, unless they do, their stories won’t meet the censors’ approval,” she wrote.

“The fact that journalists are beginning to consider this course of action – considering going against their professional ethics and beliefs – is a telling factor and a worrying one for the future of freedom of expression in Fiji.”

According to her survey, the “vast majority” of responding journalists said they needed censorship lifted to do their job better.

The survey also found that “100 percent” of respondents did not believe the work they did was a threat to security.

“Many of the journalists who do the work they do in Fiji, do so because they believe they are in the midst of delivering a public service and a public good – one that involves them being the watchdog for the average citizen, keeping an eye on the injustices, insufficiencies, inaction and highlighting these things for the purpose of making a better Fiji,” Foster wrote.

Most of the edition commentaries were presented at the UNESCO World Press Freedom Day conference hosted by the University of Queensland in Brisbane in May.

Authors include Papua New Guinea Chief Ombudsman Chronox Manek, Pacific Freedom Forum coordinator Lisa Williams-Lahari and co-chair Susuve Laumea; Samoa Observer publisher and editor-in-chief Savea Sano Malifa, Cook Islands News managing editor and secretary/treasurer of the Pasifika Media Association (PasiMA) John Woods; Transparency Vanuatu president Marie-Noelle Ferrieux Patterson; Vois Blong Yumi Project leader Francis Herman; and Pacific Media Centre director Associate Professor David Robie.

Research papers include several about the three-month-old Media Industry Development Decree, “collaborative journalism”, the non-government organisation and civil society community and “life under censorship” in Fiji (by Shailendra Singh of the University of the South Pacific), and one article focuses on two newspaper case studies in media freedom in Tonga.

In the editorial, Associate Professor Martin Hadlow of UOQ's School of Journalism and Communication noted that the UNESCO conference “provided a platform for journalism and media professionals from the Pacific region to gather in special pre and post-conference workshops to discuss concerns and fears about repressive regimes”.

Supported by a grant from the UNESCO Office of Pacific States, this edition of PJR – now in its 16th year of publication – was jointly edited by Martin Hadlow, Marsali Mackinnon and managing editor David Robie.

PJR website
Order copies of v16(2) here
Malcolm Evans website

Latest PJR poses ‘price of freedom’ challenge

Pacific Media Centre

Editors, journalists and media researchers face the challenge of the “price of freedom” and the cost of reporting global conflict in the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review.

Writing in the edition, Shooting Balibo author Tony Maniaty, who was a consultant for a recent film on the killing of six Australian-based journalists – including a New Zealander – in East Timor, makes a strong plea for wider acceptance of international humanitarian laws.

“As a first move ... we need to stop viewing and presenting war as an heroic enterprise, and see it for what it fundamentally is – an inhuman, horrific and desperate act by people devoid of imagination, for whom brute force is not the last resort, but usually the first,” he says.

Maniaty, of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ), is a guest speaker at a war reporting seminar being organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the New Zealand Red Cross in partnership with AUT University and its Pacific Media Centre (PMC) on May 24.

The special edition of the journal, published by the PMC, highlights the new Australian code to protect the safety of journalists and notes the lack of an equivalent for New Zealand media.

The edition will be launched at the seminar, which will include a screening of the film Balibo and a debate about the cutting edge of journalists’ safety in war zones by leading war correspondents TV3’s Mike McRoberts, TVNZ’s Sunday current affairs programme presenter Cameron Bennett and independent journalist Jon Stephenson.

Both Bennett and Stephenson have commentaries featured in the journal, which has published a series of papers from war reporting conferences co-hosted by the ICRC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the ACIJ in Sydney, and ICRC, New Zealand Red Cross and Massey University in Wellington, in May last year.

New York-based Reuters global multimedia editor Chris Cramer writes on the “challenges to journalists’ safety and welfare” and has recorded a video message for the Auckland seminar.

“Is the industry in such a mess, in such chaos and crisis, that fair and balanced reporting from conflict zones, as well as other locations, is simply too expensive for much of the industry to bear?” he asks in PJR.

“Who does the reporting when reporters can’t afford to get on an aircraft? Even drive a few hundred kilometres to cover the story? What price a free press if our business models can’t sustain our work?”

Contributors to the edition include journalists on both sides of the Tasman, media educators, lawyers, Red Cross figures, war correspondent trainers and military media minders.

Other unthemed research articles published include political blogs on Fiji – a ‘cybernet democracy’ case study, local news in community broadcasting and an analysis of Pacific Island nations’ climate change strategies at Copenhagen 15.

Editors of this edition are Professor Wendy Bacon of the ACIJ, PMC director Dr David Robie and Alan Samson of Massey University.

Pacific Journalism Review
New Zealand Red Cross
More information on the seminar

PMC, Red Cross plan war reporting seminar

Pacific Media Centre

The Pacific Media Centre, International Committee of the Red Cross and New Zealand Red Cross are jointly hosting twin special events on reporting wars at AUT University next month. They are:

4.30-6.45 pm, May 24, WA224 (AUT city conference centre): Screening of the film Balibo about the killing of six journalists in East Timor in 1975. Followed by a Q and A session with one of the film's consultants.

7.15-9pm : Reporting Wars: The Ongoing Challenges seminar, featuring a special video message from Chris Cramer of Reuters, New York, and a panel debating cutting edge issues, including the safety and protection of journalists.

The panel will include war correspondents Cameron Bennett (TVNZ), Mike McRoberts (TV3) and independent journalist Jon Stephenson. Guest speaker will be former ABC journalist Tony Maniaty, of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, who was at Balibo shortly before the TV journalists were killed. He is author of the recent book Shooting Balibo and was a consultant for the making of Balibo.

The seminar will be chaired by Dr Camille Nakhid of the PMC Advisory Board. It follows up two conferences on war reporting in Sydney and Wellington sponsored by the ICRC last May.

A special edition of Pacific Journalism Review will be launched at the event by Jean-Luc Metzker, head of the ICRC Delegation in the Pacific, based in Suva.

Refreshments will be served between the film screening and the seminar.

This will be a compelling event for media and communication professionals, journalism students, NGOs, and those interested in international humanitarian law - don't miss it. Open entry and free.

Register your interest with rosemarie.north@redcross.org.nz

• More information on the PMC website
• The seminar flyer
• Tony Maniaty's website
• ICRC
• NZ Red Cross
  

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
  

PJR praised for 'diversity' edition

Pacific Media Watch

New Zealand's Race Relations Commissioner, Joris de Bres, has awarded Pacific Journalism Review a citation in recognition of its latest edition dedicated to the theme of "diversity and identity".

The May edition of the journal, published by AUT University's Pacific Media Centre, highlights some of the complex diversity issues across the Asia-Pacific region, and De Bres says the issue "unpacks and focuses on the place and role of the media in facilitating diversity".

Topics include "culture clash" faced by Western journalists and foreign correspondents entering the Pacific region; diversity reporting in Aotearoa and the rise of "ethnic media"; and a review of the controversy over last year’s media report that Pacific peoples were a "drain on the New Zealand economy".

A feature article is written by a media "insider" in the People's Charter process in Fiji and examines censorship and its impact on freedom of expression in Fiji.

Managing editor and Pacific Media Centre director associate professor David Robie notes that “this edition provides some challenging and fresh insights into diversity reporting in New Zealand, from Fiji to Asian stereotypes … but it also celebrates some important achievements.”

Pacific Journalism Review

PJR targets Fiji censorship, cross-cultural reporting

Pacific Media Centre

Censorship and the assault on human rights and freedom of expression in Fiji are featured in the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review.

The AUT Pacific Media Centre-based publication, New Zealand's only peer-reviewed international media research journal, publishes this week a special article by an "insider" on the military regime's political and social "reforms".

The 246-page edition, themed around "Diversity, identity and the media" issues, analyses the junta that dealt an unprecedented "mortal blow" to press freedom in the South Pacific's most crucial country for regional cooperation.

The insider article, "Fragments from a Fiji coup diary", concludes that the New Zealand government needs to have "secret contacts" with the Suva regime to help investigate corruption and to help restore the country on the road towards democracy.

In other commentaries, Dr Murray Masterton analyses "culture clash" problems facing foreign correspondents and warns against "arrogance" by Western journalists when reporting the region. Television New Zealand's Sandra Kailahi examines the Pasifika media and Scoop co-editor Selwyn Manning looks at strategic directions in Asia-Pacific geopolitical reporting.

Malcolm Evans contributes a frothy profile of global political cartooning.

Research articles include demographics and independent cross-cultural reporting, media diversity and a NZ Human Rights Commission seminar, the "Asian Angst" controversy and xenophobia over Chinese migration, a Lake Taupo air space media case study, the Clydesdale report deconstructed and New Zealand women's magazines and gossip.

Bill Rosenberg provides the second of two annual New Zealand media ownership and trends surveys compiled for PJR.

"This edition provides some challenging and fresh insights into diversity reporting in New Zealand, from Fiji to Asian stereotypes," says managing editor Associate Professor David Robie.

"But it also celebrates some important achievements."

A strong reviews section includes books about the dark side of the pro-independence movement and media in Tonga, terrorism and e-policies in the Asia-Pacific region, conflict reporting, the making of a US president, editing and design in New Zealand and an extraordinary dissident Burmese political cartoonist.

* Annual subscriptions to Pacific Journalism Review (two editions a year): www.pjreview.info/subscriptions.html