New PJR challenges Pacific censorship, political ‘shackles’

MEDIA RELEASE 27 May 2013

New PJR challenges Pacific censorship, political shackles

AUCKLAND: Fijis brand of post-coup media censorship and other Pacific political curbs have been challenged in the latest Pacific Journalism Review published today.

Even if the Fiji media are shackled, conferences in 2010 and 2012 provided opportunity and space to engage in some open dialogue, including criticism of the regime authorities, the AUT-published international journal says.

The proceedings were not confined to the Suva conference venue, or within Fijis borders this is the digital age after all.

Many of the papers by Pacific journalists and media analysts were presented at a Media and Democracy in the South Pacific conference hosted at the University of the South Pacific last September.

Other articles, in the edition, co-edited by USPs Shailendra Singh and AUTs Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie, feature New Caledonia, West Papua and climate change reporting in the region.

Canadian communications professor and author Robert A. Hackett warns of significant democratic shortcomings in the medias watchdog, public sphere, community-building and communication equity roles.

He advocates critical selectivity over wholesale adoption of Western media models in the South Pacific to avoid some entrenched shortcomings.

Such shortcomings have been highlighted in Shazia Usmans study on the Fiji print medias coverage of female candidates in the countrys 2006 elections.

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New PJR challenges Pacific censorship, political ‘shackles’