Reviews Readers held the key to early media success - Pacific ...

MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
Reviews
DR ALLISON OOSTERMAN is
associate editor and reviews editor
on Pacific Journalism Review.
Readers held
the key to early
media success
Extra! Extra! How the people made
the news, by David Hastings, Auckland:
Auckland University Press, 2013. 287pp.
ISBN 9781869407384 (pbk)
IT HAS been many years since an
author has produced a New Zealand
press history that has so resolutely
taken to task previous research
in this field. But David Hastings has
done this with his new book on the
early newspaper scene in Auckland,
Extra! Extra! How the people made
the news.
Journalist and author Hastings
has refuted earlier arguments by
historians, such as Patrick Day, that
newspapers were instruments of
social control ‘devised by the ruling
elite for the dual purpose of making
money and exercising power through
their influence on public opinion’.
Rather, says Hastings, newspapers
were ‘shaped by their communities
and were constantly having to adjust
as social interests and standards
changed’ (p. 3).
A paper’s success or failure ‘depended
on its ability to provide news
that interested its readers’. Hastings
questions the standard narrative of
the ‘corrupted ideal’ proposed by Day
that early papers up to the 1860s were
political and reliant on political patronage
but then became commercial
enterprises. With his detailed investigations
of the early Auckland newspapers,
in particular New Zealander,
Southern Cross, The New Zealand
Herald and Auckland Evening Star,
Hastings contends that news was not
290 PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 19 (1) 2013

invented by commercialism but was
the discovery that certain topics had
always been interesting to readers and
had commercial value when ‘packaged,
printed and sold’. He is talking
about such topics as crime, disasters
and other extraordinary events (p. 6).
Hastings has concentrated his
research on the ‘newspaper wars’
in Auckland in the 19th century and
aims to ‘explain what forces and influences
made the four papers what they
were’ (p. 8).
‘The narrative that emerges calls
into question some of the standard
assumptions, generalisations and halftruths
that have been recycled through
the admittedly limited historiography
on the subject,’ he says (p. 9). Dutch
historiographer Frank Ankersmit
as long ago as 1997 lamented the
overproduction of histories on every
conceivable subject such that it was
almost impossible for a reader to
obtain a comprehensive view (Ankersmit,
1997, p. 277).
As Hastings notes, this is not the
case for New Zealand’s press history
where scholarship in the field is rather
limited, although Redmer Yska’s
Truth, in 2010, was a welcome addition.
Considering the lack of interest
shown by many of the country’s
newspapers in conserving their valuable
historical records and documents
it is not surprising the field is under-
MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
researched. It is notable that even as
a Herald journalist Hastings has not
used, or been able to use, any minute
books, letter books, wage books, or
other 19th century company records
from his employer.
Nobody seems to know where
any of these records are, whether
it is for the Herald or for the Star.
Repeated attempts by this writer to
discover what old records have been
preserved have come to nought.
Sadly this is a similar story
around the country, except for perhaps,
Dunedin, where some of the
early Otago Daily Times records have
been deposited in the Hocken Library.
Hastings would not have been able
to do such a good job on the early
Auckland newspaper scene if it hadn’t
been for the personal manuscripts of
some of the major figures such as
Henry Brett, David Burn, Thomson
Leys et al.
Some of the ‘standard narratives’
that Hastings has contested
in his book include the idea that
papers were started solely for political
purposes, that they had no interest
in covering local news, that the
establishment of the national press
agency, the UPA, lead to a uniformity
of news coverage and that there was
no clash of ideas because newspapers
served the interests of the ruling elite
(p. 9). It was never that simple, says
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MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
Hastings. Newspapers fought their
battles and the prize was profit and a
say in politics, but readers were the
key to success or failure (p. 10).
Having laid out his argument in
the introduction, Hastings then sets
about proving it with his detailed and
fascinating research into the early
newspaper battles in Auckland starting
with the birth of the New Zealander,
which lasted for a little more than
20 years, and locked in a fierce battle
with the Southern Cross, founded in
1843. It was this battle between these
papers that Hastings claims revealed
much about the ‘intense commercial
and political pressures that all newspapers
came under as well as the overriding
importance of reader interests
in deciding the victor’ (p. 14).
He moves on to the impact of
The New Zealand Herald and the rise
of the Auckland Evening Star as its
major competitor.
The histories of these papers
would be nothing without the men
who ran or wrote for them and Hastings
paints a lively picture of the men
of the early Auckland press. From
John Williamson to Henry Brett,
Hugh Carleton to Thomson Leys,
Joseph Wilson to William Berry, these
men fought the battle for readership,
sometimes succeeding and in the case
of the New Zealander and Southern
Cross, eventually failing. None of the
successful editors, claims Hastings,
lost sight of the golden rule—that the
‘readers held the key to victory in the
newspaper wars and what they wanted
most of all was news’ (p. 251).
Extra! Extra! is an important
book, and not before time. This is a
scholarly, well researched and eminently
readable book of interest to the
wider public as much as to academics
studying in this field. It might be the
spur for others to research and write
about other notable New Zealand
newspapers.
However, unless the historical
documents are available, such as diaries
and personal papers that families
have donated to research libraries, I
fear the mysterious disappearance of
press records will stymie any attempt.
References
Ankersmit, F. R. (1997). In Jenkins, K.
(Ed.), The postmodern history reader.
London: Routledge, p. 277.
Yska, R. (2010). Truth: The rise and fall
of the people’s paper. Nelson: Craig
Potton Publishing.
292 PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 19 (1) 2013

Professor JUDY McGREGOR
is head of the School of Social
Sciences at AUT University and a
former newspaper editor.
MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
Meticulous
study of
early colonial
infanticide
Women, Infanticide and the
Press,1822-1922: News narratives
in England and Australia, by Nicola Goc.
Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2013.
203pp, ISBN 9781409406044 (pbk)
EVERY ONCE in a while an
academic researcher will privately
concede they would like to
have written the book they have
reviewed. Count me in that category.
Nicola Goc’s examination of
news narratives of infanticide from
1822-1922 in Britain and Australia
reveals painstaking scholarship. It
yields insights into the primacy of
crime news, the ideology of infanticide
news discourse, the privileging
of medical and legal voices in
courtroom reportage, and the personification
of infanticide women as
maternal deviants, mad women or
as celebrity subjects of newspaper
campaigning.
That said, this is not an easy book
to read, but more of that later.
The author begins by asking:
‘How do you make sense of such a
brutal act?’ (p. 1). She structures her
book against personal narratives in
news discourse, many taken from
the national English newspaper The
Times, of acts committed during
1822-1833 variously described as ‘inhuman
atrocity’, ‘child murder’ and
‘shocking infanticide’. She examines
in some depth the impact of the 1834
New Poor Law with its pernicious
bastardy clause and what she terms,
with a passing nod to Stanley Cohen,
the 1860s maternal panic.
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MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
The next section of Goc’s book is,
in my opinion, the most original section,
examining infanticide in the Van
Diemen’s Land Press and what was
known as ‘bush madness’. The case of
Mary McLauchlan, a convict publicly
executed after an unjust judicial decision
for the alleged strangulation of
her male child, is a searing indictment
of a patriarchal penal society.
While Mary had revealed the
name of the child’s father before she
went to the gallows, she was dissuaded
from publicly denouncing the
immoral colonial ‘seducer’ or maybe
rapist. He saved his reputation despite
widespread elite knowledge of his
identity that was aided and abetted
by the press, while Mary lost her life.
Equally as compelling, through
the textual analysis that Goc provides,
is the story of Sarah Masters, not the
least because the town of Masterton
in New Zealand is named after her
former husband, Joseph, who later
left Tasmania for New Zealand where
he become a respected pioneer. The
case of Harriet Lovell, who may have
killed her four children, is another
graphic and powerful exploration
through news texts of the harshness of
mothering in the Australian outback.
Goc uses critical discourse analysis
to elicit meaning from the historical
news texts she has examined
and relies on John E. Richardson’s
294 PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 19 (1) 2013
methodology because it allows for
an interpretation of the meanings of
text rather than mere quantification of
textual features and the derivation of
meaning from this numbering. Nothing
wrong with this.
The author states that critical
discourse analysis follows on from
Michel Foucault’s ground-breaking
discourse analysis work relating to
knowledge and power. The author is
very attracted to Foucault’s notion of
‘society of blood’ ( in fact ‘society
of blood’ is mentioned at least seven
times in the book) where power was
rooted in ‘blood relation’ to examine
infanticide women who threatened
the domestic ideal of womanhood
and who were seen as a direct threat
to the family.
At one level, Foucault is a strange
choice as an over-arching perspective.
Goc herself states,
It may seem more than a little strange
that this study looks to Foucault for
an understanding of infanticide and
infanticide press discourse when in
Foucault’s work on power, language
and knowledge he not only largely
ignores the female subject, but is also
silent on news journalism and the
power of the press discourse (apart
from a brief mention of sensational
18th-century broadsides) (p. 7).
Given criticism of Foucault by feminists
and his omission in journalism

studies on the basis of perceived difficulty,
the author’s choice of theoretical
framework is brave.
However, it is not so much Foucault’s
theories that make this book
difficult to read, but the over-egging
of him in the pudding as the dominant
(domineering?) theoretical framework.
As an example of this overegging,
Goc describes the coverage
of Harriet Lovell’s trial verdict by
reference to the ‘bold and capitalised
descending headlines’ (p. 137):
MOUNTAIN RIVER TRAGEDY.
Mrs Lovell Charged with Murder.
Question of Insanity Raised.
Found Not Accountable for Her
Actions.
(Mercury, 24 July 1912, p.2)
Readers get the nuances instantly as
they read these descending headlines
as cryptic, one-sentence, news stories.
But in case we didn’t, Goc labours
the point with more Foucault:
The headlines provided readers
with ‘the crime, its punishment and
its memory’ (Foucault 2008b, p. 90)
in four lines, assuring readers that
the judicial system and medicine had
‘dealt’ with the maternal aberration
that was Harriet Lovell’ (p 137).
The constant and continuing reference
to Foucault’s canon of work,
and other stylistic repetitions in the
book (for example, did we need
MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
seven examples of collocations, the
coupling of proximate words) seriously
alter the flow of the narrative
for the reader at various points in the
structure of the book. The power and
potency of the selected portions of
texts used by Goc have a meaning,
a resonance, and an ideology in their
own right. It often pays to trust the
intelligence of the reader who is as
complicit in their own interpretations,
as is the author.
That quibble aside, this is a
meticulous book of the infanticidal
actions of young women in England
and Australia in the 19th and early
20th centuries. It demonstrates their
desperation, their resistance, and in
some cases their deaths against the
social, political and legislative history
of the day as reported by the press.
This book will have particular appeal
for crime news researchers, for those
interested in the lives and stories of
women, and for fans of Foucault.
PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 19 (1) 2013 295

MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
EDGAR MASON is a media
commentator and academic.
Solid grounding
on race in
sport issues
Race, Racism and Sports Journalism,
by Neil Farrington, Daniel Kilvington,
John Price and Amir Saeed.
London and New York: Routledge,
2012. 172 pp. ISBN: 9780415676403
(pbk)
THIS SLIM volume is in the
Routledge tradition of highly
current but also academically reputable
overviews of important media
studies and political issues. Overall
it lives up to expectations as a useful
guide to theory. Recent racial issues
in European sport, particularly
football, have highlighted the need
to think more deeply about the problem
and overcome the widely-held
notion that racism is somehow now
behind us.
The authors cover a number
of particularly British concerns for
sports journalism and race in the
wider UK society. The University of
Sunderland offers a strong concentration
in sports journalism with emphasis
on racial issues so it is appropriate
all four writers are academics at that
institution.
296 PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 19 (1) 2013
The overview of the issues in
British race relations and the early
chapter on theory are particularly
helpful for a sound undergraduate
grounding. It may be, however, that
non-British students and scholars
find the examples used a rather
patchy compilation. For example the
chapters on football and cricket tend
to meander into issues of immigrant
and non-immigrant sportsmen (sic)
and lose focus on the overall issues
of race in sports journalism.
Surprisingly rugby union and
rugby league do not feature at all apart
from a brief mention of Māori not
featuring in New Zealand cricket.
Given the number of Polynesians

and Māori plying their football trade
in British and French rugby of both
codes, and the arrival of featured
North African and sub-Saharan players
in French rugby and soccer, this
is an oversight which could have
been rectified to make the book more
comprehensive.
Women sportspeople do not feature
except in the complicated case of
South African runner Caster Semenya
who faced the double indignity of
questions about both her race and
gender. Surely women of colour in
sport have to contend with these issues
throughout their athletic careers.
One of the most influential thinkers
on race issues is Frantz Fanon.
The authors are particularly interested
in his idea that black people, in this
case athletes, have to put on a ‘mask
of whiteness’ in order to fit into the
dominant white society. This was
particularly true in Fanon’s Caribbean
during colonial times and many
scholars have tried to apply the theory
to post-colonial and migrant people in
the UK and elsewhere. The complications
these peoples face include the
complexities of social class in societies
which feature upward mobility as
a social good.
An athlete who becomes a professional
in a featured UK sport such as
football or cricket may be accused
of leaving his people behind. The
MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
authors grapple with this issue in the
case of black Formula 1 star Lewis
Hamilton. We must ask ourselves as
the authors do; Is Hamilton black, half
black, middle class, a role model or
all of the above? Sports journalists
routinely have to make professional
decisions along these lines when reporting
Hamilton and his sport.
The authors argue persuasively
that the press guidelines as they currently
exist in the UK do not provide
adequate guidance. Journalists need
the angles to sell their stories both to
editors and audiences. Race is often
seen as the angle most in tune with
reader/viewer perceptions.
They also argue with good reason
that reporters write within the context
of popular views of race which may
run contrary to sociological and indeed
biological thinking on race. Race
is a social rather than a biological
construct yet many people subscribe
to myths which can be demonstrated
as untrue. Black Africans are often
framed as unbeatably fast—does this
make them achievers in a white world
or simply racially superior in a narrow,
racially-defined way? Based on
the myth some have even argued that
people of African descent don’t even
have to train hard to win!
When white French runner Christophe
Lemaitre broke the 10s mark
for the 100 metres, he was labelled
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MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
‘White Lightning’ and sports reports
routinely emphasised his colour. Is
this racist? Is his colour critical to
news stories about his achievement?
The UK guidelines require that race
not be featured unless it is critical to
the news story being reported. Media
people could argue that Lemaitre’s
race or colour are essential to the news
of this event. We could argue that the
mythology of black superiority in
sprints has created the need for the
story to be framed racially.
The authors are attentive to the issue
of diversity in the sports reporter’s
newsroom. Few Asian and black
students choose sports journalism
perhaps because they feel they won’t
fit in to the dominant culture. New
Zealand has had to think about this
issue as well. Few women and fewer
Māori and Pasifika choose sports
reporting as a career.
For all the decline in job prospects
and the relatively weak pay
structure this is still an issue for balanced
reporting and wider community
interests being covered. Are talented
women and minorities choosing law,
accountancy and medicine? Perhaps
we need to know.
Overall this book is a useful
guide to theory and to a British view
of current race issues in reporting.
This currency will make most of the
chapters dated very quickly.
Another weakness for Pacific and
New Zealand students is the lack of
helpful American examples. The US
has strengthened its support for minorities
in a number of both federal
and corporate initiatives such as the
NFL’s ‘Rooney Rule’ requiring that
minority candidates be shortlisted for
head coaching jobs. Federal funding
requirements for university sports
have emphasised and enforced gender
equity in particular. This resulted
from new court interpretations of Title
IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
This publication is a fitting addition
to a well-stocked journalism
library.
298 PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 19 (1) 2013

PAT CRADDOCK is a New
Zealand-based global media
educator and consultant.
Pacific
journalists
and frontline
freedom
Pacific Media Freedom 2011: A
status report, by Alex Perrottet and David
Robie. Auckland: Pacific Media Centre and
Pacific Media Watch. 2011, 44pp. ISBN 978-
1-927184-06-6
MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
Fragile freedom: Inaugural Pacific
press freedom report, by various
contributors. Sydney: Asia-Pacific
office of International Federation of
Journalists, 2012, xx pp. No ISBN
TWELVE countries feature in the
new Fragile Freedom, Inaugural
Pacific press freedom report, a
publication concerned with strengthening
press freedom and the rights
of media workers in the Pacific.
When read alongside a monograph
from the Pacific Media Centre, Pacific
Media Freedom 2011: A status
report, published the previous year
as the region’s first media freedom
dossier (and republished as a monograph
in May 2012), these two documents
shed insight into the inter-
acting tensions between journalists
and the power structures they work
alongside and within.
In the chapter on the Solomon
Islands, the IFJ report notes that the
wantok system protects its media
members but it also puts a risk factor
on their independence, as an ethnic
group may also exert pressure to
hamper or compromise a journalist’s
ability to report fairly. The Deputy
Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands
talks about media freedom but
Dorothy Wickham, a senior journalist
with more than 20 years experience
of radio, TV, print and a freelancer
for overseas media says she has
been sexually and verbally harassed
by politicians and had her personal
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MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
vehicle burnt in front of her house.
Lisa Williams-Lahari, a founding
member of the Pacific Freedom
Forum and Pacific coordinator for the
IFJ Media for Democracy and Human
Rights in the Pacific project nails key
factors that threaten journalism. Poor
pay and lack of decent working conditions
play their part and some ethical
breaches which occur are often linked
to a lack of senior journalists and a
weak editorial frontline.
Readers may see a confirmation
of her views in the debacle facing
The Fiji Times over its publication
of stories in 2011-2012 that landed
it in court on charges of contempt
of court with a fine being sought of
F$500,000 and a six-month imprisonment
term for the editor-in-chief.
In mitigation, lawyers for The Fiji
Times argue that the publication was
the result of errors in the newsroom.
It appears that the editor was away,
the job was given to someone else
who gave it to someone else and the
error occurred.
The PMC and Pacific Media
Watch freedom monograph by Alex
Perrottet and Dr David Robie includes
a two-page matrix chart with headings
for killings, abductions, assaults,
formal censorship, police arrests etc.
(Robie is also interviewed at length
in a new half-hour IFJ-funded Media
Freedom in the Pacific report for television
produced by the University of
the South Pacific (Pollock, 2012). It
is clear that West Papuan journalists
face more dangers than any other
Pacific journalists with two killings,
five abductions, eight assaults and
two police arrests during the March
2010-2011 year. The situation has
been bad ever since.
Foreign journalists are unwelcome.
Only three journalists accompanied
by ‘minders’ were allowed
into West Papua during 2011. The
authors of the monograph conclude
that the situation for journalists is not
likely to change in West Papua while
the international community remains
inactive on media safety and there is
300 PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 19 (1) 2013

MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
impunity for the security forces on
media abuses.
Papua New Guinea has the largest
number of people working in the
media industry in the South Pacific
region, but it is dogged by a poor
salary structure, lack of direction
from managers that compromise the
quality of journalism, plus a bubbling
brew of violence and intimidation.
At a Media Rights Workshop held
in Port Moresby in 2011, journalists
said that police in search of a reporter
stormed the newsroom of The Sunday
Chronicle. They entered the premises
and threatened staff, but that story was
not reported.
Vanuatu Daily Post Publisher
Marc Neil-Jones faced intimidation
and threats in 2011 when his office
and person were attacked. The minister
involved faced charges of inciting,
abetting assault and unlawful assembly.
The case ended with the minister
pleading guilty to aiding and abetting
and paying a small fine of US$162.
Compare this to the fine of
US$116,000 given in legal costs and
damages to Prime Minister Derek
Sikua of the Solomon Islands and
his secretary and the fines and jail
sentences that may be imposed on
journalists, editors and publishers
in Fiji for their breaching of content
regulations.
Not examined in Fragile Freedom
or the Pacific Media Freedom
2011 is the limitation of internet access
to the public. Nice words are said
about social media and new media
platforms turning information gatekeeping
on its head.
I don’t accept this view. There is
a 7.6 percent usage of the internet in
Vanuatu. Solomon Islands has 3.4 per
cent. Timor-Leste has 0.2 per cent.
Even a large Pacific country like Fiji
can only claim internet access for 16.6
percent of the population.
How much of this internet coverage
is urban and how much is rural?
In a number of villages there is no
electricity. Internet access in several
countries is also expensive compared
to the average worker income.
The real benefits of the limited
internet access in many Pacific countries
go to the media who talk with
the outside world and with other
broadcasters. Government and commercial
businesses are the other main
beneficiaries.
The chapter on Samoa in Fragile
Freedom raises questions. What
impact does the media have on the
potential audience of under 200,000
people that is exposed to 18 radio and
television outlets and several newspapers?
Who benefits in Samoa from
an internet audience of 4.7 percent?
A Code of Ethics with the power
ful acronym of JAWS guides the
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MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
Samoa media industry. There are
calls to review part of the code where
journalism conflicts with the cultural
content of accepting traditional gifts.
There is no clear consensus among the
media on whether these gift tokens
qualify as sua or, according to the
code, as bribery. Some leading journalists
argue that sua is part of their
culture, but for the Samoa Observer
newspaper, the policy is clear. Accept
no gifts.
I expect Fragile Freedom to appear
each year, applaud its work, and
I hope Pacific Journalism Review
sees it way to publish another PMC
monograph on Pacific media freedom
next year. Both appearing at the same
time would be a bonus.
Reference
Pollock, D. (2012). Media freedom in the
Pacific. Director. [Video documentary]:
Suva: International Federation
of Journalists and the University
of the South Pacific. 26min. Available
online at: www.youtube.com/
watch?v=xLANV10xm5M
DREADLOCKS:
OCEAN, ISLAND
AND SKIES
SPECIAL EDITION
Edited by Mohit Prasad
This special edition of the literary journal
Dreadlocks incorporates proceedings
from Oceans, Islands and Skies - Oceanic
Conference on Creativity and Climate
Change. The conference highlighted the
role of writers, artists and the media in
environmental challenges in the Pacific.
The conference was held from 13-17
September 2010 at the Laucala Campus
of the University of the South Pacific
in Suva.
Pacific Studies | Vol 6/7 |
ISBN 978-1-927184-02-8
March 2012 , RRP: $35
Published by: Pacific Writing
Forum and the University of
the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji;
Pacific Media Centre (AUT
University), Auckland
PACIFIC MEDIA CENTRE
AUT UNIVERSITY
Order from Little Island
Pressand bookshops
littleisland.co.nz
302 PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 19 (1) 2013

JAMES HOLLINGS is a senior
lecturer in global journalism at
Massey University.
MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
Shameful
exposé of
Afghan war
but not enough
media grunt
He Toki Huna(The Hidden
Adze): New Zealand in Afghanistan.
Documentary directed by Kay Ellmers
and Annie Goldson, 2013. 60min.
NEW ZEALAND’S war in Afghanistan
is our longest-ever
foreign engagement. Our troops have
been there for 10 years—more than
World Wars One and Two combined.
It has cost the country around $300
million, and one soldier has died for
every year the New Zealand military
has been there.
And for what? That is one of the
questions this documentary, perhaps
the first serious attempt on film to
question New Zealand involvement in
the International Security Assistance
Force, tries to answer.
It is a slick effort—it opens with
close-ups of freelance Kiwi journalist
Jon Stephenson. He tells us, on the
way to an interview, about the risk
of attack from insurgents. There is
jerky in-car footage, no doubt meant
to suggest imminent danger, bracketed
by shots of ute-riding men with
Kalashnikovs and RPGs.
Cut to a sinister humming soundtrack,
burnt-out Russian tanks, the
inhospitable grandeur of the Afghan
countryside. All very Lawrence of
Arabia, beautifully shot, romantic,
pretty to watch.
The main theme, it eventually
emerges, is the lack of serious media
scrutiny of New Zealand’s role, both
in the so-called provincial reconstruction
team in Bamiyan province, and
as special forces SAS. Stephenson is
portrayed as a lone figure, virtually
the only person to defy warnings
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MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
about the risks of acting independently,
and to go and see for himself Perhaps the biggest black hole
the time; a dark and shameful stain.
what local Afghans really think of our has been around the role of the
engagement.
SAS, New Zealand’s special forces.
There are clips of very articulate Stephenson was the first, and only
English-speaking (and translated) Afghans,
interspersed with commentary their role, and particularly whether
journalist, to raise questions about
from New Zealand-based critics, such they had handed prisoners over to be
as Other People’s Wars author Nicky tortured (Brown, 2011). For daring to
Hager (2011), balanced with comment
from the New Zealand Defence to an extraordinary personal attack by
ask such questions, he was subjected
Force. Some of the most interesting Prime Minister John Key; the sort of
footage is of Stephenson asking the thing one might expect from a thirdrate
central Asian dictator.
locals what they think of the New
Zealand effort. Ill-directed, several Sadly, this film does not explore
said; if they wanted to do something those claims further. It does look at
useful, they should have built a dam one raid, and suggests we were misled
and brought them electricity. about the SAS’s role, but not really
Most effort has gone into patrolling;
another said the security was Unfortunately, in a film about
conclusively.
already good there anyway. They media scrutiny, it doth at times protest
seemed to view it rather like an uninvited
visit from a mother-in-law; about New Zealand media are ac-
too much. Some of the claims made
bossy, well-meaning, but ultimately cepted uncritically. More importantly,
ineffectual.
it suffers from its own lack of balance,
Watching Stephenson’s footslogging
around the villages, I felt questions to the faces behind these
by neglecting to put some of these
a growing cringe of embarrassment decisions.
at the timidity or lack of initiative of It would have been good to see
so many mainstream New Zealand Fairfax, APN and TV chiefs explain
journalists who have been there, paid themselves. Did they really have
for by the military, and not bothered to an ‘arrangement’ not to publish
venture beyond the compound. pictures of New Zealand soldier’s
From this distance, set against the faces? Why? What else are they selfcensoring?
Afghan villagers’ voices of which we
have heard so little, embedded journalism
looks even uglier than it did at send several journalists to each
Most of all, why, given they can
All
304 PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 19 (1) 2013

Blacks tour, could they not pay for
one independent journalist to cover
Afghanistan, when the much-smaller
Metro magazine could? Given the
scale and length of New Zealand’s
involvement, the wilful ignoring of
it by New Zealand media executives
just embarrassing, but almost sinister.
Nor does the film put the serious
questions about media manipulation
to any of the politicians responsible.
It ends, rather lamely, with a plea by
Stephenson for the worth of independent
scrutiny; which struck me
as almost a capitulation to the idea,
that the military’s spin doctors would
have us believe, that ‘real’ journalism
is dangerous to our troops.
In fact, real journalism might
have saved some of the troop’s lives,
by questioning earlier the Labour government’s
shameful delay in sending
LAVs, for example. A thoughtful and
worthwhile film, but behind the slickness,
some more journalistic grunt
would have helped.
MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
Communication,
Culture and Society
in Papua New Guinea:
Yu tok wanem?
Edited by
Evangelia Papoutsaki
Michael McManus
and Patrick Matbob
Preface and chapter
by David Robie
Young, emerging and
established researchers
write about issues involving
mainstream media, social
concerns, development and
the information gap in Papua
New Guinea.
References
Brown, R. (2011, April 26). More secrets
and lies. Public Address [weblog].
Retrieved on April 27, 2013, from
http://publicaddress.net/hardnews/
more-secrets-and-lies/
Hager, N. (2011). Other people’s wars:
New Zealand in Afghanistan, Iraq and
the war on terror. Nelson: Craig Potton
Publishing.
ISBN : 9781877314943
Published by
Divine Word University Press,
and Pacic Media Centre
PACIFIC MEDIA CENTRE
AUT UNIVERSITY
Order from Little Island Press
and bookshops
littleisland.co.nz
Price:NZ $35
www.pmc.aut.ac.nz
PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 19 (1) 2013 305

MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
Noted
TABERANNANG KORAUABA is
editor of the Kiribati Independent
and he researches climate change.
Pacific climate
change doco
lacks ‘media
impact’
The Hungry Tide, documentary
produced, directed and written by
Tom Zubrycki. 2011. 88min. I-Kiribati
with English subtitles. thehungrytide.
com.au
ON THE night the The Hungry
Tide was screened on Māori
Television in New Zealand, our family
was having a farewell party for
our relatives returning to Kiribati
the next day. We sat cross-legged on
a mat in a circle while women prepared
meals for everyone.
Words circulated through text
messages and social media about The
Hungry Tide. As time approached the
broadcast, the TV was turned on and
children were told not to make a noise.
There was excitement and anxiety on
the faces of just ten Kiribati people in
the house.
I remember one of the elders’
famous phrases during movie sessions,
‘ataei tai karongoa bwa e nang
oti te tamnei’—children don’t make
a noise because the movie is now
showing. Documentary and movies
are different, but in Kiribati everything
on DVD is a movie, tamnei or
birim. There is no Kiribati word for
documentaries.
Of course, our family members
were going to watch the ‘movie’
rather than a documentary. They were
going to re-connect with their country
and to re-construct their memories of
Kiribati through this film. Not surprisingly,
climate change and sea level
rise are already a disaster on the minds
of these people.
306 PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 19 (1) 2013

Though none of them have studied
climate science before, the power
of the media and the word of mouth
has played its strong advocacy here.
Kiribati is ‘disappearing’. The family
members in that sitting room have
identified some of the places and
characters in that documentary.
The protagonist, Maria Timon, an
I-Kiribati woman living and working
in Australia, took the audience to an
outer island in Kiribati, Beru—where
her entire family live. The island of
Beru has some interesting legends
and myths that could have made
The Hungry Tide a well-informed
and researched documentary had the
producers explored them.
For instance, there is a lake on
that island containing ‘mud’. The
lake produces a source of food for
the people on this island during a long
and prolonged drought that struck the
island many decades ago.
Today, visitors are taken to see
the lake and villagers can make food
out of this mud for their guests. The
mud of te bokaboka story is important
history of Beru island.
The Hungry Tide was the title of a
novel by Amitav Ghosh. It tells a very
contemporary story of adventure and
unlikely love, identity and history. It
takes place off the easternmost coast
of India, in the Bay of Bengal.
Amitav Ghosh is one of India’s
MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC
best-known writers. His books include
The Circle of Reason, The
Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land,
Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta
Chromosome, The Glass Palace,
Incendiary Circumstances and The
Hungry Tide. Maria was part of the
Kiribati delegation to Copenhagen
15 in Demark, 2009 and also accompanied
the Kiribati team to another
climate conference the following year.
There Was Once An Island also
applies the same technique; the protagonist
was a woman and she works
and lives in Port Moresby. She advocated
for her people in Takuu Island;
she returned to meet her parents there.
Her loved one passed away and she
had to convince the rest of her family
and the community to leave the island.
The Hungry Tide and There Was
Once An Island have both raised the
profile of climate change to an outside
world but they have done little to
raise the awareness of the media in
the Pacific. A new study on why the
media feel reluctant to cover news
on documentaries and movies on the
islands may assist future investigations.
In Kiribati, video clippings,
DVD, documentaries are called movies
and they are for entertainment
only.
PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 19 (1) 2013 307