But there is a method and mad dash of hope in this formula of once-a-month tributes to hard work, that is, highlighting the hard work of “heroes” in this hard land of penury and disaster and predatory (retaliatory) capitalism.

Today’s piece in my local rag (5/21) is emblematic of my own proof that we can fight the surge of shallow thinking and even shallower writing.

Here, just heading home from assisting at the 60+ Center (senior adult center), I caught this show, on the radio station where I broadcast my own Wednesday show, Finding Fringe. 6 PM, PST, streaming live on kyaq.org.

Hard work of reporting: Thirsting for Justice: East Orosi’s Struggle for Clean Drinking Water (Encore)

East Orosi hasn’t had safe drinking water in over 20 years. The water is full of nitrates, runoff from industrial agriculture, which is harmful to human health. The community has taken action to find a solution, from lobbying at the state capital to working with neighboring towns.

And they may finally have one. New California laws, passed  in the last five years, have opened up funding to build water infrastructure in small towns like East Orosi. But even as laws and funding develop, implementation has been challenging.

We visit East Orosi and talk to Berta Diaz Ochoa about what it’s like living without clean drinking water and the solutions on the horizon in part one of a two part series. — Listen.

Learn More:

• Community Water Center
• Self Help Enterprises
• State Water Resources Control Board

So, imagine, a sound bite around the issues of field workers pulling up crops that are destroying healthy water systems, forcing them to have to drink that toxic water or paying for bottled water to survive. Is water a human right? In California is it.

So, take ANY community, not just the fenceline ones, the communities that are in the sights of the perveyors of criminal capitalism because they are poor and probably BIPOC, and then find how infrastructure and services and even bloody retail enterprises like pharmacies or grocery stores are being gutted by Capitalism, pre-Trump/post-Trump.

You have any axes to grind? You live in a flyover state or rural community?

Here,

Stop trying to save Rural America.

Efforts to write it off as “disappearing” are complicated by the 60 million Americans who call a rural community home.

We must recognize that innovation, diversity of ideas and people, and new concepts don’t need to be imported to rural communities – they’re already there. Rural entrepreneurs and community leaders have always, by necessity, been innovative.

Rural communities have faced some harsh realities in the last generation: they’ve seen manufacturing move overseas, farming monopolized by big outfits with only 5% of rural residents working in agriculture, generational migration to bigger cities, school consolidation, and the absence of basic community resources such as health care and broadband, and, more recently, threats to the lifeline that is the U.S. Postal Service. This, and the pandemic.

Every brightly lit corporate store on the edge of town is a monument to a system that does not build community or advance a healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem.

And before the super out-of-touch elite from err, New York City call us bumkins, get over it: Don’t Blame Rural Residents for a Broken Political System

While noting the decades of gerrymandering to enhance the power of rural officials, New York magazine author Ed Kilgore concludes, “Underlying it all are real differences in outlook between different parts of the country, made more important by the distinct institutional features of a constitutional system designed to protect the interests of small, largely nonmetropolitan states.”

Sorry, Ed; the values of citizens of rural areas have as much to do with school violence and immigration resistance as do video games. In fact, Kilgore undermines his own argument by citing Ronald Brownstein’s analysis in the Atlantic of the red-blue divide. Alas, the same Ronald Brownstein reported on CNN just one week later that a prosperity gap was the source of the split between Democrats and Republicans. “Observers in both parties agree that the sense of economic displacement in recent years has intensified the long-standing movement toward the GOP among small-town and rural communities initially rooted in unease over cultural and demographic change.” It’s fair to observe that gun-loving nativists did not create the dismal economic prospects that drove them to vote for candidate Trump.

It is true that after years of civic disengagement, rural voters turned out in record numbers to elect the only coastal elitist who showed up in their communities and asked for their votes. So, Trump won and Clinton lost. Beyond that, any generalization about the impact of rural citizens on national politics is just horsepucky. Rural citizens didn’t create the electoral system that permits unlimited campaign donations to state officials who draw Congressional districts to favor entrenched wealth. In fact, rural citizens are the victims of gerrymandering as much as any disenfranchised cohort that ends up in a noncompetitive legislative district.

Alas, here’s the Google Gulag AI response to “all the problems in rural America”:

Rural communities face numerous interconnected challenges that can be described as “broken systems” due to a combination of historical disinvestment, geographic isolation, and economic shifts.

Here’s a breakdown of some key broken systems in rural communities:
1. Healthcare:

Limited Access: Rural areas often have a shortage of healthcare providers, specialists, and hospitals, forcing residents to travel long distances for care.

Hospital Closures: Rural hospitals are closing at an alarming rate due to financial difficulties and staffing shortages, further limiting access to care.

Lack of Services: Rural areas may lack crucial services like mental health care, substance abuse treatment, and specialized medical care.

2. Economic Systems:

Job Losses: Rural communities have experienced significant job losses due to the decline of manufacturing and agriculture, leading to higher unemployment and poverty rates.

Limited Opportunities: A lack of diverse industries and businesses can limit economic opportunities for residents, particularly young people.
Brain Drain: Young, educated individuals often leave rural areas for better opportunities in urban centers, further weakening the local economy.

3. Infrastructure:

Poor Broadband Access: Many rural areas lack access to reliable, high-speed internet, hindering economic development, education, and access to telehealth.

Inadequate Transportation: Limited public transportation options can isolate residents and make it difficult to access jobs, healthcare, and other essential services.

Aging Infrastructure: Rural areas may have aging infrastructure, including roads, bridges, and water systems, which require significant investment to repair and upgrade.

4. Education:

School Consolidation: Rural schools have been consolidated, leading to longer commutes for students and the loss of local schools as community anchors.

Funding Challenges: Rural schools often face funding challenges, which can impact the quality of education and available resources.

Teacher Shortages: Rural schools may have difficulty attracting and retaining qualified teachers, impacting student outcomes.

5. Social Systems:

Social Isolation: Geographic isolation and limited social opportunities can contribute to social isolation and mental health challenges for residents.

Lack of Community Resources: Rural areas may lack access to essential community resources such as libraries, childcare facilities, and recreational opportunities.

It’s important to note: These “broken systems” are interconnected and often exacerbate each other. The challenges faced by rural communities vary depending on location, demographics, and economic conditions.
Addressing these challenges requires a multi-faceted approach involving government, businesses, non-profit organizations, and community members.

+–+ Here is May 21st’s piece.

Identify, Diversify, and Harmonize How We Think this May

By Paul Haeder/Lincoln County (Oregon) Leader
One may wonder how the heck did we get all these national and international days of celebration. It is a feature of Homo sapiens to celebrate accomplishments and honor causes and individuals who make the world, well, theoretically a better place.

May is no exception, and of course, the International Workers’ Day is May 1. In this time of rampant hatred of so many professions by Trump and Company, it goes without saying that his shallow but deeply narcissistic persona just will never grasp the value of the worker.

His entire raison d’être is about tearing down and imploding institutions and attacking individuals for which he deems “the enemy.”

The billionaire classless cabal sees workers as the enemy. And the goals of the International Workingmen’s Association in 1864 were clear: Shorter work hours; safer work environment; fair wages; elimination of child labor; the ability for the state to regulate labor conditions.

Ironically, I was in Ashland on International Firefighters Day, talking to two captains in the city’s two fire stations. I was told that a few years ago firefighters responded to 1,600 calls annually. Last year, Ashland’s stations went out over six thousand times.

Aging in place and lack of family and support precipitates many of the EMT calls. And a fire engine they are waiting for is still four years out, to the tune of $2 million once it’s completely outfitted.

If you watch the milquetoast mainstream media, you will have recalled the Accused Sexual Predator Trump made a mockery of National Teacher Day by laughing at all the cuts to the hundreds of educational initiatives smart and reasoned individuals over decades had initiated for the betterment of society through the intellectual progress of our youth.

Another group of workers in the bulls eye of Musk, Thiel, Stephen Miller and Vance/Trump is nursing professionals. We see the almost total breakdown of nursing and doctoring in Lincoln County because of the hard reality of a for-profit health care system putting profits over patients. Add to that the lack of affordable housing, and rural counties throughout the land are suffering massive nursing and doctor shortages.

Which then brings us to National Day of Reason, where groups of people see the value in enlightened thinking. You know, valuing the separation of church and state, which for all intents and purposes under this fascist regime has been imploded into a crusade against reasoned thinkers who do not see prayer or faith as central to their lives.

Humanists and Secularists created this National Day in response to the national day of prayer.

Celebrations have taken the form of blood drives, secular events and activities, and in some cases, protests against the National Day of Prayer. Imagine Trump and Company having the wherewithal to wrap their heads around this celebration – the Secular Week of Action when people volunteer to make the world a better place.

Two not necessarily different international recognition days in May include World Day for Cultural Diversity and International Day for Biological Diversity. Did you get the memo yet that Trump-Vance are on the attack against affirmative action and ecological health.

In fact, on the biodiversity front, Trump and Company have “redefined” harm as it is applied to the Endangered Species Act. This pinhead thinking is just the tip of the iceberg of clownish but dangerous moves.

Defenders of Wildlife explains:

“Trump administration is hell-bent on destroying the ESA  to further line the pockets of industry. The vast majority of imperiled wildlife listed as endangered or threatened under the ESA are there because of loss of habitat. This latest salvo to redefine ‘harm’ to eliminate protection for wildlife from habitat destruction, if successful, will further imperil threatened and endangered species. We will fight this action and continue to protect the wildlife and wild places we hold dear as a nation.”

Are you seeing the pattern carried out by billionaires such as Miriam Adelson, Larry Fink and Larry Ellison? Given the fact half of American cities are under air advisories, we have International Asthma Day to lend pause to how destructive these executive actions have been and will continue to be decades from now.

‘Harm’ is what unchecked air pollution in many forms continues to do to young and old. Harmful air advisories come in daily, and the fear is that Trump will just ban the notifications as a way to say, “See, I have cleaned up the air since there are no more warnings.”

Maybe we can pray the polluted air away.

The backers of Trump’s ideal America will see our “secular humanist” society based on science and reason destroyed. The Ten Commandments will form the basis of the legal system.

Finally, we have World Press Freedom Day. If you have any deep regard for the so-called Fourth Estate, then shivers should be running up your spine under this anti-journalist regime.

Mickey Huff of Project Censored states press freedom succinctly:

“We have to remember that it’s the independent media that is often the grassroots voice of the people. It is often the independent press that is operating on ethical standards and principles, and it is the independent press that is reporting in the public interest, not the corporate media.”

Diversify your news media diets. Find independent outlets, and for journalists, we need to reform the media and create better avenues for news reporting, including better accuracy and what we call “solutions journalism,” which creates truly constructive dialogue in our communities.

*****

Footnote: And not one mention of the genocide in Gaza, the trillions stolen from Arab nations’ populations, the trillions stolen from citizens of Canada, EU, USA, for the starvation and immolation and rape of a people.

There are no other topics to write about with the same amount of importance that Palestine conveys, from every aspect of War Terror of the Capitalists of both Jewish and Goyim descent.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

The New Zealand Māori Council and Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa made a high profile appeal to Foreign Minister Winston Peters over Gaza today, calling for urgent action over humanitarian supplies for the besieged Palestinian enclave.

“Starving a civilian population is a clear breach of international humanitarian law and a war crime under the Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court,” said the open letter published by the two organisations as full page advertisements in three leading daily newspapers.

Noting that New Zealand has not joined the International Court of Justice for standing up to “condemn the use of starvation as a weapon of war”, the groups still called on the government to use its “internationally respected voice” to express solidarity for humanitarian aid.

• READ MORE: Israeli attacks kill more than 60 as Gaza blockade accelerates starvation
• Financial Times editorial: The West’s shameful silence on Gaza — do more to restrain Benjamin Netanyahu
• Gaza-bound aid ship attacked by ‘Israeli piracy’ in talks with Malta
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

The plea comes amid Israel’s increased attacks on Gaza which have killed at least 61 people since dawn, targeting civilians in crowded places and a Gaza City market.

The more than two-month blockade by the the enclave by Israel has caused acute food shortages, accelerating the starvation of the Palestinian population.

Israel has blocked all aid into Gaza — food, water, fuel and medical supplies — while more than 3000 trucks laden with supplies are stranded on the Egyptian border blocked from entry into Gaza.

At least 57 Palestinians have starved to death in Gaza as a result of Israel’s punishing blockade. The overall death toll, revised in view of bodies buried under the rubble, stands at 62,614 Palestinians and 1139 people killed in Israel.

The open letter, publlshed by three Stuff-owned titles — Waikato Times in Hamilton, The Post in the capital Wellington, and The Press in Christchurch, said:

Rt Hon Winston Peters
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Winston.Peters@parliament.govt.nz

Open letter requesting government action on the future of Gaza

Kia ora Mr Peters,

The situation in Occupied Gaza has reached another crisis point.

We urge our country to speak out and join other nations demanding humanitarian supplies into Gaza.

For more than two months, Israel has blocked all aid into Gaza — food, water, fuel and medical supplies. The World Food Programme says food stocks in Gaza are fully depleted. UNICEF says children face “growing risk of starvation, illness and death”. The International Committee of the Red Cross says “the humanitarian response in Gaza is on the verge of total collapse”.

Meanwhile, 3000 trucks laden with desperately needed aid are lined up at the Occupied Gaza border. Israeli occupation forces are refusing to allow them in.

Starving a civilian population is a clear breach of International Humanitarian Law and a War Crime under the Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court.

At the International Court of Justice many countries have stood up to condemn the use of starvation as a weapon of war and to demand accountability for Israel to end its industrial-scale killing of Palestinians in Gaza.

New Zealand has not joined that group. Our government has been silent to date.

After 18 months facing what the International Court of Justice has described as a “plausible genocide”, it is grievous that New Zealand does not speak out and act clearly against this ongoing humanitarian outrage.

Minister Peters, as Minister of Foreign Affairs you are in a position of leadership to carry New Zealand’s collective voice in support of humanitarian aid to Gaza to the world. We are asking you to speak on behalf of New Zealand to support the urgent international plea for humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza and to initiate calls for a no-fly zone to be established over the region to prevent further mass killing of civilians.

We believe the way forward for peace and security for everyone in the region is for all parties to follow international law and United Nations resolutions, going back to UNGA 194 in 1948, so that a lasting peace can be established based on justice and equal rights for everyone.

New Zealand has an internationally respected voice — please use it to express solidarity for humanitarian aid to Gaza, today.

Nā

Ann Kendall QSM, Co-chair
Tā Taihākurei Durie, Pou [cultural leader]
NZ Māori Council

Maher Nazzal and John Minto, National Co-chairs
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA)

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Dozens of newspapers owned by Iowa-based news media company Lee Enterprises were affected by a cyberattack starting on Feb. 3, 2025, disrupting the publication of print and e-editions.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch — one of Lee Enterprises’ more than 400 daily, weekly and specialty newspapers across 24 states — reported that the media conglomerate had experienced a “cybersecurity event.” The company alerted its newspapers that it had been working with third-party specialists to investigate the disruption and restore the systems.

“We are now focused on determining what information — if any — may have been affected by the situation,” Lee Enterprises CEO Kevin Mowbray wrote. “We are working to complete this investigation as quickly and thoroughly as possible, but these types of investigations are complex and time-consuming, with many taking several weeks or longer to complete.”

According to the Post-Dispatch, the targeting of the company’s computers prevented many newspapers from building pages and publishing print editions. The Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina reported that some subscribers could not access their accounts.

At least 76 newspapers reported disruptions to their operations. Many published delayed or smaller editions while others were unable to publish entirely.

The Sentinel in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, reported that the cyberattack affected phone lines and internet at its office, forcing staff to work remotely. Carrier Sidener, executive editor of The News & Advance in Lynchburg, Virginia, wrote on Feb. 9 that the attack also disabled her newsroom’s phone system.

As of Feb. 12, Lee newspapers continued to have banners on their websites that read: “We are currently undergoing maintenance on some services, which may temporarily affect access to subscription accounts and the e-edition. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we work to resolve the issues.”

According to the Winston-Salem Journal, CEO Mowbray told the newspapers that the company is working to find ways to prevent something similar from happening again but did not say when the issues would be resolved.

Mowbray also thanked employees “for your above-and-beyond efforts to continue reporting the news and maintaining our operations under challenging circumstances.”

The full list of outlets confirmed to have been affected, listed alphabetically by state:

• Arizona — The Arizona Daily Star
• Illinois — Herald & Review, Journal Gazette & Times-Courier, The Pantagraph, Woodford County Journal
• Iowa — Bulletin-Review, The Daily Nonpareil, The Dispatch & The Rock Island Argus, Globe Gazette, Quad-City Times, Sioux City Journal, Southwest Iowa Herald, The Courier
• Minnesota — Winona Daily News
• Missouri — The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
• Montana — Billings Gazette, Independent Record, Missoulian, Montana Standard, Ravalli Republic
• Nebraska — The Banner-Press, Beatrice Daily Sun, The Columbus Telegram, Fremont Tribune, The Grand Island Independent, Lexington Clipper-Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, The North Platte Telegraph, Omaha World-Herald, Schuyler Sun, Star-Herald
• Nevada — Elko Daily Free Press
• New Jersey — The Press of Atlantic City
• New York — The Buffalo News, The Citizen, The Post-Star
• North Carolina — Hickory Daily Record, The McDowell News, News & Record, The News Herald, Statesville Record and Landmark, Winston-Salem Journal
• North Dakota — The Bismarck Tribune, The Morton County and Mandan News
• Oklahoma — Tulsa World
• Pennsylvania — The Sentinel
• Oregon — Albany Democrat-Herald, Corvallis Gazette-Times
• South Carolina — The Morning News, The Times and Democrat
• South Dakota — The Chadron Record, Rapid City Journal
• Texas — The Eagle, Waco Tribune-Herald
• Virginia — Amherst New Era-Progress, Bristol Herald Courier, Culpeper Star-Exponent, The Daily Progress, Danville Register & Bee, The Free Lance-Star, Martinsville Bulletin, Nelson County Times, The News & Advance, The News Virginian, Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Roanoke Times
• Washington — The Daily News
• Wisconsin — Baraboo News Republic, The Chippewa Herald, Daily Citizen, The Journal Times, Juneau County Star-Times, Kenosha News, La Crosse Tribune, Wisconsin State Journal
• Wyoming — Casper Star-Tribune

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

A group representing local councils in Aotearoa New Zealand is calling for the Local Democracy Reporting programme to be expanded after the media company NZME announced a proposal to close 14 community newspapers.

The LDR programme funds local authority coverage at various publications and is managed and funded by RNZ with support from NZ On Air.

It covers most regions, apart from Waikato, Hawke’s Bay, the Kāpiti Coast, Otago, and parts of Manawatū-Whanganui and Canterbury.

• READ MORE: Local Democracy Reporting
• Other LDR reports at Asia Pacific Report

Local Government NZ, a body representing most councils, said the programme should be expanded to all communities.

“Community newspapers have long played a key role in councils sharing what’s happening locally — from roading, parks and emergency management to big decisions about the future of their region,” LGNZ president Sam Broughton said in a statement.

Broughton was concerned NZME’s plan to shut 14 papers would have a devastating impact on a combined 850,000 readers.

“We are concerned that a move like this could have a negative impact on turnout in next year’s local elections.”

Isolating rural communities
Central Hawke’s Bay mayor Alex Walker said the lack of news coverage would isolate rural communities.

“The axeing of the 14 newspapers would mean that communities like Hawke’s Bay are left with a single subscription-only news outlet, that’s focused more on urban areas,” she said.

“These newspapers are also an effective two-way communication tool between council and the people they serve; particularly our older or more remote population who do not always have access to electronic media.”

The group suggested that the LDR programme’s scope be expanded to cover the rest of the country.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

The Palau Media Council has condemned a political lawsuit against the publisher of the Island Times as an “assault on press freedom” with the Pacific country facing an election on Tuesday.

In a statement yesterday, the council added that the lawsuit, filed by Surangel and Sons Co. against Times publisher Leilani Reklai over her newspaper’s coverage of tax-related documents that surfaced on social media, was an attempt to undermine the accountability that was vital to democracy.

The statement also said the lawsuit raised “critical concerns about citizens’ access to information and freedom of the press.

• READ MORE: Palau newspaper sued by president’s family company ahead of general election
• Media freedom at stake? Palau newspaper faces defamation lawsuit
• Regional Asia Pacific media freedoms

Palau recently topped the inaugural Pacific Media Freedom Index for press freedom.

“This lawsuit, combined with government’s statements endorsing that Island Times reported mis-information on its coverage of the tax related document and the decision to ban Island Times from Surangel and Sons [distribution] outlets, raises critical concerns about citizens’ access to information and the freedom of the press — both of which are cornerstones of a democratic society,” the statement said.

“The council sees this legal action as an assault on press freedom and an attempt to undermine the accountability that is vital to democracy.”

The statement said that Reklai, one of Palau’s senior journalists, was being targeted simply for reporting on documents that were already in the public domain.

“She did not originate the information but responsibly conveyed what these documents suggested, raising questions about the current administration’s narrative on corporate tax contributions,” the council said.

‘Journalistic duty’
“Reporting on such information is a journalistic duty to ensure transparency in tax policies and government incentives impacting the private sector.

“The Island Times, by publishing these documents, has provided a platform for clarifying public understanding of the new PGST tax law’s impact on major corporations and the actual tax contributions of Surangel and Sons.

“These issues are clearly within the public’s right to know, and the council emphasises that media plays a crucial role in reporting such findings and promoting informed debate.

The council said it stood in solidarity with Reklai and all journalists who strived to find and uphold the truth.

“In a healthy democracy, a free and open press is essential for informed citizens and responsible governance.”

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

In February 2017, as Donald Trump took office, The Washington Post adopted the first slogan in its 140-year history: “Democracy Dies in Darkness”.

How ironic, then, that it should now be helping to extinguish the flame of American democracy by refusing to endorse a candidate for the forthcoming presidential election.

This decision, and a similar one by the second of America’s big three newspapers, the Los Angeles Times, disgraces journalism, disgraces the papers’ own heritage and represents an abandonment of civic responsibility at a moment when United States faces its most consequential presidential election since the Civil War.

• READ MORE: Furor over Washington Post’s decision to not endorse presidential candidate: ‘stab in the back’, ‘dying in darkness’
• LA Times owner’s decision not to endorse in presidential race sparks resignations, questions

At stake is whether the United States remains a functioning democracy or descends into a corrupt plutocracy led by a convicted criminal who has already incited violence to overturn a presidential election and has shown contempt for the conventions on which democracy rests.

Everyone should cancel their Washington Post subscription after Bezos copped out on a presidential endorsement. It is shameful how far a once great newspaper has fallen. I cancelled today.

— Allan Lichtman (@AllanLichtman) October 26, 2024

Why did they do it?
Why would two of the Western world’s finest newspapers take such a recklessly irresponsible decision?

It cannot be on the basis of any rational assessment of the respective fitness for office of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

It also cannot be on the basis of their own reporting and analysis of the candidates, where the lies and threats issued by Trump have been fearlessly recorded. In this context, the decision to not endorse a candidate is a betrayal of their own editorial staff. The Post’s editor-at-large, Robert Kagan, resigned in protest at the paper’s decision not to endorse Harris.

This leaves, in my view, a combination of cowardice and greed as the only feasible explanation. Both newspapers are owned by billionaire American businessmen: The Post by Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon, and the LA Times by Patrick Soon-Shiong, who made his billions through biotechnology.

Bezos bought The Post in 2013 through his private investment company Nash Holdings, and Soon-Shiong bought the LA Times in 2018 through his investment firm Nant Capital. Both run the personal risk of suffering financially should a Trump presidency turn out to be hostile towards them.

During the election campaign, Trump has made many threats of retaliation against those in the media who oppose him. He has indicated that if he regains the White House, he will exact vengeance on news outlets that anger him, toss reporters in jail and strip major television networks of their broadcast licenses as retribution for coverage he doesn’t like.

Trump threatens to jail political opponents.  Video: CBS News

Logic would suggest that in the face of these threats, the media would do all in their power to oppose a Trump presidency, if not out of respect for democracy and free speech then at least in the interests of self-preservation. But fear and greed are among the most powerful of human impulses.

The purchase of these two giants of the American press by wealthy businessmen is a consequence of the financial pressures exerted on the professional mass media by the internet and social media.

Bezos was welcomed with open arms by the Graham family, which had owned The Post for four generations. But the paper faced unsustainable financial losses arising from the loss of advertising to the internet.

At first he was seen not just by the Grahams but by the executive editor, Marty Baron, as a saviour. He injected large sums of money into the paper, enabling it to regain much of the prestige and journalistic capacity it had lost.

Baron, in his book Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and The Washington Post, was full of praise for Bezos’s financial commitment to the paper, and for his courage in the face of Trumpian hostility. During Trump’s presidency, the paper kept a log of his lies, tallying them up at 30,573 over the four years.

Against this history, the paper’s abdication of its responsibilities now is explicable only by reference to a loss of heart by Bezos.

At the LA Times, the ownership of the Otis-Chandler families also spanned four generations, but the impact of the internet took a savage toll there as well. Between 2000 and 2018 its ownership passed through three hands, ending up with Soon-Shiong.

Both newspapers reached the zenith of their journalistic accomplishments during the last three decades of the 20th century, winning Pulitzer Prices and, in the case of The Post, becoming globally famous for its coverage of the Watergate scandal.

This, in the days when American democracy was functioning according to convention, led to the resignation of Richard Nixon as president.

The two reporters responsible for this coverage, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, issued a statement about the decision to not endorse a candidate:

Statement on Washington Post’s refusal to endorse presidential candidate. pic.twitter.com/r8jrMPW5GR

— Carl Bernstein (@carlbernstein) October 26, 2024

Marty Baron, who was a ferociously tough editor, posted on X: “This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.”

Now, of the big three, only The New York Times is prepared to endorse a candidate for next month’s election. It has endorsed Harris, saying of Trump: “It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States.”

Why does it matter?
It matters because in democracies the media are the means by which voters learn not just about facts but about the informed opinion of those who, by virtue of access and close acquaintance, are well placed to make assessments of candidates between whom those voters are to choose. It is a core function of the media in democratic societies.

Their failure is symptomatic of the malaise into which American democracy has sunk.

In 2018, two professors of government at Harvard, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, published a book, How Democracies Die. It was both reflective and prophetic. Noting that the United States was now more polarised than at any time since the Civil War, they wrote:

America is no longer a democratic model. A country whose president attacks the press, threatens to lock up his rival, and declares he might not accept the election results cannot credibly defend democracy. Both potential and existing autocrats are likely to be emboldened with Trump in the White House.

Symbolically, that The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times should have gone dark at this moment is reminiscent of the remark made in 1914 by Britain’s foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey:

The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

Dr Denis Muller is senior research fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Armed police officers from Nigeria’s eastern Enugu and Ebonyi states arrested Onuorah, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Global Upfront Newspapers, at his home in the Lugbe district of Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on Wednesday evening, according to news reports, his outlet’s press release, and Onuorah, who spoke to CPJ by phone Thursday while in custody in Enugu city, the capital of Enugu state, more than 250 miles by road from Abuja.

Onuorah told CPJ that police tricked his 10-year-old daughter into opening the gate of his home, and then “came in with guns, threatening me.” The officers then took him to a local police station in Abuja until 5 a.m. on Thursday, when they drove him for nine hours south to Abakaliki, the Ebonyi state capital, and then to Enugu, Onuorah said.

Onuorah was arrested after Enugu police received a written petition alleging defamation in a report about a U.S.-based Catholic reverend sister, according to a police statement, Onuorah, and Onuorah’s lawyer, Ifeanyi Odo, who also spoke to CPJ by phone. Reached by phone on Thursday, the reverend sister referred CPJ to her lawyer. When CPJ contacted him by phone on Friday, he declined to comment on the record about the case.

After his release on bail late on Thursday evening, Onuorah told CPJ that no charges had been filed against him, but he had given a police statement and a police investigation into him was ongoing. Odo told CPJ that he and Onuorah had met with the police and a lawyer representing the reverend sister on Friday morning and that Onuorah was free to return to Abuja, but the journalist was expected to return to Enugu to meet with police in two weeks.

“Nigerian authorities should drop their investigation into journalist Madu Onuorah and reform the country’s laws to ensure journalists are not detained for their work,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program, in Maputo, Mozambique. “Nigerian security forces seem to be making a habit of arresting journalists without warning and then transporting them across the country. It’s an alarming trend that must be reversed.”

Ebonyi police spokesperson Joshua Ukandu confirmed to CPJ by phone that Ebonyi state officers assisted in the arrest, but directed questions to Enugu police.

Enugu police spokesperson Daniel Ndukwe told CPJ in a statement shared via messaging app that Onuorah was “arrested in Abuja with the assistance of police operatives from Ebonyi State Command and the aid of intelligence, after efforts made to formally invite him failed.”  

Onuorah told CPJ that he was unaware of any police efforts to summon him for questioning, adding that he had not been presented with a warrant for his arrest.

CPJ sent follow-up questions to Ndukwe but did not receive an immediate response. A follow-up call was answered but then disconnected. Another call on Friday rang unanswered.

Local media groups, including the Federal Capital Territory chapter of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Media Rights Agenda, and the Lagos state-based International Press Centre, have condemned Onuorah’s arrest.

Earlier this year, Nigerian security forces separately arrested journalists Segun Olatunji and Daniel Ojukwu in Lagos State without prior notice and then transported them to Abuja.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Galehban, the publisher and the editor-in-chief of Urmiye24 Kurdish News, was arrested by the Iran’s Cyber Police Unit in the city of Urmia, in West Azerbaijan province, on April 8, according to news reports.

According to CPJ research, the Urmiye24 website was suspended as soon as Galehban was arrested. According to news reports, Galehban was arrested after the office of Urmia’s Prosecutor General filed a lawsuit against him. CPJ was unable to determine where Galehban was being held or whether he had been formally charged.

Iranian cartoonist Atena Faraghdani was arrested violently again on April 14, according to a post by her lawyer, Mohammad Moghimi, on X, formerly known as Twitter.

According to a separate post by Moghimi, security forces arrested Faraghdani when she was trying to exhibit some of her critical cartoons publicly in the street. She was beaten in the head multiple times at the time of arrest, resulting in a nose bleed. She fainted, and later found herself in detention.

According to the report, Faraghdani is banned from publishing her cartoons or holding any exhibitions. According to her lawyer, the cartoonist was charged with “spreading propaganda against the system” and “blasphemy.”

“Iranian authorities are desperate to silence the truthful voices and now imprisoned journalist Rasoul Galehban and cartoonist Atena Faraghdani,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna in New York  “Authorities must realize that jailing journalists and critical voices won’t help them in hiding Iran’s difficult realities, and they must immediately release Galehban, Faraghdani, and all jailed journalists.”

On April 15, the office of Tehran’s Prosecutor General filed multiple lawsuits against several newspapers, including the economic daily Jahane Sanat, the moderate state-run Etemad, and journalists Abbas Abdi, the head of the Tehran Journalists Association, and Hossein Dehbashi, a media worker, charging them with “disturbing public opinion,” according to news reports.

Dina Ghalibaf was also arrested on April 15 after reporting on social media about the sexual abuse and violent treatment of herself and other women by morality police agents, amid increased presence of compulsory hijab police forces to enforce Islamic hijab in big cities such as the capital, Tehran.

Ghalibaf, a freelance journalist who has previously worked with the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), was scheduled to be temporarily released on bail from Evin prison on Monday. But authorities announced to her family that a new case has opened against her questioning her claims of sexual assault.

CPJ emailed Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York requesting comment on the above-mentioned cases but did not receive any response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

In late March, the courts dismissed both lawsuits, but the newspapers still face defamation cases in connection with their corruption coverage.

Mergence Investment Managers filed an urgent application at the High Court in Lesotho’s capital, Maseru, on February 9, for the Lesotho Tribune to delete published articles and block the publication of additional articles in a planned eight-part investigative series, according to court documents reviewed by CPJ and the publication’s owner, Phafane Nkotsi. The articles were about alleged corruption by Mergence in connection to Lesotho’s civil servants’ pension fund.

Mergence also asked the court to order the closure of Lesotho Tribune, arguing that the paper did not have the appropriate registration to operate. According to CPJ’s review of the certificate from Lesotho’s Office of the Registrar General, the newspaper’s registration is current and has been since August 10, 2021.

The court dismissed Mergence’s applications on March 22, Nkotsi said, adding that the outlet still faces a defamation lawsuit from the investment firm, filed on February 7, in which it is seeking 10 million loti (US$538,000) in relation to the investigative series, according to Nkotsi and a statement by the Lesotho chapter of the press freedom group the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA).

The suit is still pending, and a hearing has yet to be scheduled, he said.

Matshona Libalele Mlungwana, a communication officer with the Public Officers’ Defined Contribution Pension Fund, declined to comment, saying that the fund had no interest in the case against Lesotho Tribune.

CPJ could not identify contact information for Mergence’s Lesotho offices. CPJ’s phone calls to Mergence’s South African numbers to request comment went unanswered.

In a separate case, Lesotho’s former police commissioner, Holomo Molibeli, filed an urgent application on March 18 asking the High Court to shut down Lesotho Times on the grounds that the newspaper was operating without the appropriate registration license and to order the outlet to pay unstated damages for defamation, according to a report by the newspaper and court documents, reviewed by CPJ. 

Molibeli accused the newspaper of defaming him in a March 7 report about allegations that he covered up fraud at a local energy company while serving as a police commissioner. The allegations were part of filings in a separate criminal case in which two local businessmen are accused of defrauding the energy company, according to a report by Lesotho Times, which said Molibeli denied the accusations.

On March 27, the High Court dismissed the application, according to Lesotho Times owner Basildon Peta and a report by the state-owned Lesotho News Agency. The court said the defamation suit was not urgent and could be heard at an undetermined date in the future, according to Peta. 

Reached by phone, Molibeli declined to comment.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Alabira, a correspondent for privately owned broadcaster Citi FM, told CPJ he was covering the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) parliamentary primaries on January 27 in the northern town of Yendi when an unidentified man approached the counting area and accused an electoral official of destroying ballot papers. The man’s allegation resulted in an uproar among NPP party supporters, who began destroying ballot papers and electoral equipment, according to Alabira and a colleague, who witnessed the incident and spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal. 

When Alabira approached Farouk Aliu Mahama, an NPP member of parliament, for comment, the politician slapped the journalist’s face and kicked his leg, according to Alabira and his colleague. Mahama’s security guard then grabbed Alabira by the neck and seized his phone before several party supporters began hitting and punching the journalist on his head and back.

The attack on Alabira lasted about three minutes, during which an attacker smashed Alabira’s phone screen before police intervened and pulled Alabira to safety, according to those sources and video of the incident reviewed by CPJ.

CPJ recently documented the attack on another Ghanaian journalist, David Kobbena, a morning show host with the privately owned broadcaster Cape FM, at the office of the Central Regional Minister, who is a member of the NPP, in the central Cape Coast region on January 4. 

“Authorities in Ghana must ensure a comprehensive investigation into the January 27 attack on journalist Mohammed Aminu M. Alabira, hold those responsible to account, and guarantee that journalists feel safe to report on political activities ahead of national elections later this year,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program, from New York. “Repeated attacks against the press in Ghana by politically affiliated individuals are concerning and suggest an unacceptable disrespect for journalists’ crucial role in democracy.”  

Alabira and his colleague said police officers took Alabira in their van to a nearby police station, where officers took his statement and gave him a form for a medical professional to complete. Alabira was examined at the local hospital, where he was given medication for a headache and chest pains.

The journalist said that police had told him they were referring the case to the attorney general’s office.

Alabira told CPJ on February 1 that he still suffers from a headache and chest pain from the incident and could not use his phone until repairing the screen on January 30. On February 5, he told CPJ that he still experiences occasional pain, but it had become less frequent.

When contacted by phone, Mahama declined to speak to CPJ but shared a document prepared by his lawyers, which accused Alabira of falsely saying in an online publication by his outlet that Mahama had slapped the journalist from behind and threatened legal action if the article wasn’t retracted and Mahama didn’t receive an apology for defamation in seven days. 

Alabira told CPJ that he had never described Mahama as hitting him from behind, only from the front. CPJ’s review of the report on January 31 showed that it did not include Alabira saying Mahama slapped him from behind.

The Ghana Journalists Association called on police to arrest Mahama and his supporters and hold them accountable for the attack.

On February 6, four media rights groups—the Media Foundation for West Africa, the Ghana Journalists Association, the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association, and the Private Newspapers and Online News Publishers Association of Ghana—issued a statement calling on NPP leaders and police authorities to hold Mahama and his supporters accountable within 10 days or face further actions from the associations, according to CPJ’s review of the statement. The associations also called on media organizations to avoid covering Mahama. 

CPJ called and texted the Ghanaian Minister of Information Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, national police spokesperson Grace Ansah Akrofi, and NPP General Secretary Justin Kodua Frimpong for comment but received no response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times’s coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza showed a consistent bias against Palestinians, according to an Intercept analysis of major media coverage. 

The print media outlets, which play an influential role in shaping U.S. views of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, paid little attention to the unprecedented impact of Israel’s siege and bombing campaign on both children and journalists in the Gaza Strip. 

Major U.S. newspapers disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict; used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians; and offered lopsided coverage of antisemitic acts in the U.S., while largely ignoring anti-Muslim racism in the wake of October 7. Pro-Palestinian activists have accused major publications of pro-Israel bias, with the New York Times seeing protests at its headquarters in Manhattan for its coverage of Gaza –– an accusation supported by our analysis.

The open-source analysis focuses on the first six weeks of the conflict, from the October 7 Hamas-led attacks that killed 1,139 Israelis and foreign workers to November 24, the beginning of the weeklong “humanitarian truce” agreed to by both parties to facilitate hostage exchanges. During this period, 14,800 Palestinians, including more than 6,000 children, were killed by Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Today, the Palestinian death toll is over 22,000.

The Intercept collected more than 1,000 articles from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times about Israel’s war on Gaza and tallied up the usages of certain key terms and the context in which they were used. The tallies reveal a gross imbalance in the way Israelis and pro-Israel figures are covered versus Palestinians and pro-Palestinian voices — with usages that favor Israeli narratives over Palestinian ones.

This anti-Palestinian bias in print media tracks with a similar survey of U.S. cable news that the authors conducted last month for The Column that found an even wider disparity.

The stakes for this routine devaluing of Palestinian lives couldn’t be higher: As the death toll in Gaza mounts, entire cities are leveled and rendered uninhabitable for years, and whole family lines are wiped out, the U.S. government has enormous influence as Israel’s primary patron and weapons supplier. The media’s presentation of the conflict means there are fewer political downsides to lockstep support for Israel. 

Coverage from the first six weeks of the war paints a bleak picture of the Palestinian side, according to the analysis, one that stands to make humanizing Palestinians — and therefore arousing U.S. sympathies — more difficult. 

To obtain this data, we searched for all articles that contained relevant words (such as “Palestinian,” “Gaza,” “Israeli,” etc.) on all three news websites. We then parsed through every sentence in each article and tallied the count of certain terms. For this analysis, we omitted all editorial pieces and letters to the editor. The basic data set is available here, and a full data set can be obtained by emailing ottoali99@gmail.com.

Our survey of coverage has four key findings.

Disproportionate Coverage of Deaths

In the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, the words “Israeli” or “Israel” appear more than “Palestinian” or variations thereof, even as Palestinian deaths far outpaced Israeli deaths. For every two Palestinian deaths, Palestinians are mentioned once. For every Israeli death, Israelis are mentioned eight times — or a rate 16 times more per death that of Palestinians. 

“Slaughter” of Israelis, Not Palestinians

Highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like “slaughter,” “massacre,” and “horrific” were reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians, rather than the other way around. (When the terms appeared in quotes rather than the editorial voice of the publication, they were omitted from the analysis.)

The term “slaughter” was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and “massacre” was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. “Horrific” was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4. 

One typical headline from the New York Times, in a mid-November story about the October 7 attack, reads, “They Ran Into a Bomb Shelter for Safety. Instead, They Were Slaughtered.” Compare this with the Times’s most sympathetic profile of Palestinian deaths in Gaza from November 18: “The War Turns Gaza Into a ‘Graveyard’ for Children.” Here “graveyard” is a quote from the United Nations and the killing itself is in passive voice. In its own editorial voice, the Times story on deaths in Gaza uses no emotive terms comparable to the ones in its story about the October 7 attack. 

The Washington Post employed “massacre” several times in its reporting to describe October 7. “President Biden faces growing pressure from lawmakers in both parties to punish Iran after Hamas’s massacre,” one report from the Post says. A November 13 story from the paper about how Israel’s siege and bombing had killed 1 in 200 Palestinians does not use the word “massacre” or “slaughter” once. The Palestinian dead have simply been “killed” or “died” — often in the passive voice. 

Children and Journalists

Only two headlines out of over 1,100 news articles in the study mention the word “children” related to Gazan children. In a notable exception, the New York Times ran a late-November front-page story on the historic pace of killings of Palestinian women and children, though the headline featured neither group. 

Despite Israel’s war on Gaza being perhaps the deadliest war for children — almost entirely Palestinian — in modern history, there is scant mention of the word “children” and related terms in the headlines of articles surveyed by The Intercept. 

Meanwhile, more than 6,000 children were reported killed by authorities in Gaza at the time of the truce, with the number topping 10,000 today.

Despite Israel’s war on Gaza being perhaps the deadliest war for children in modern history, there is scant mention of the word “children” in headlines.

While the war on Gaza has been one of the deadliest in modern history for journalists — overwhelmingly Palestinians — the word “journalists” and its iterations such as “reporters” and “photojournalists” only appears in nine headlines out of over 1,100 articles studied. Roughly 48 Palestinian reporters had been killed by Israeli bombardment at the time of the truce; today, the death toll for Palestinian journalists has topped 100. Only 4 of the 9 articles that contained the words journalist/reporter were about Arab reporters.

The lack of coverage for the unprecedented killing of children and journalists, groups that typically elicit sympathy from Western media, is conspicuous. By way of comparison, more Palestinian children died in the first week of the Gaza bombing than during the first year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, yet the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times ran multiple personal, sympathetic stories highlighting the plight of children during the first six weeks of the Ukraine war. 

The aforementioned front-page New York Times report and a Washington Post column are rare exceptions to the dearth of coverage about Palestinian children.

As with children, the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times focused on the risks to journalists in the Ukraine war, running several articles detailing the hazards of reporting on the war in the first six weeks after Russia’s invasion. Six journalists were killed in the early days of the Ukraine war, compared to 48 killed in the first six weeks of Israel’s Gaza bombardment.   

Asymmetry in how children are covered is qualitative as well as quantitative. On October 13, the Los Angeles Times ran an Associated Press report that said, “The Gaza Health Ministry said Friday that 1,799 people have been killed in the territory, including more than 580 under the age of 18 and 351 women. Hamas’s assault last Saturday killed more than 1,300 people in Israel, including women, children and young music festivalgoers.” Notice that young Israelis are referred to as children while young Palestinians are described as people under 18. 

During discussions around the prisoner exchanges, this frequent refusal to refer to Palestinians as children was even more stark, with the New York Times referring in one case to “Israeli women and children” being exchanged for “Palestinian women and minors.” (Palestinian children are referred to as “children” later in the report, when summarizing a human rights groups’ findings.) 

A Washington Post report from November 21 announcing the truce deal erased Palestinian women and children altogether: “President Biden said in a statement Tuesday night that a deal to release 50 women and children held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel.” The brief did not mention Palestinian women and children at all.

Coverage of Hate in the U.S.

Similarly, when it comes to how the Gaza conflict translates to hate in the U.S., the major papers paid more attention to antisemitic attacks than to ones against Muslims. Overall, there was a disproportionate focus on racism toward Jewish people, versus racism targeting Muslims, Arabs, or those perceived as such. During the period of The Intercept’s study, The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times mentioned antisemitism more than Islamophobia (549 versus 79) — and this was before the “campus antisemitism” meta-controversy that was contrived by Republicans in Congress beginning the week of December 5.

Despite many high-profile instances of both antisemitism and anti-Muslim racism during the survey period, 87 percent of mentions of discrimination were about antisemitism, versus 13 percent mentions about Islamophobia, inclusive of related terms. 

A projection declares the Washington Post “complicit in genocide” during a march for Gaza on a worldwide day of action for Palestine, October 12, 2023.

When Major Newspapers Fail

Overall, Israel’s killings in Gaza are not given proportionate coverage in either scope or emotional weight as the deaths of Israelis on October 7. These killings are mostly presented as arbitrarily high, abstract figures. Nor are the killings described using emotive language like “massacre,” “slaughter,” or “horrific.” Hamas’s killings of Israeli civilians are consistently portrayed as part of the group’s strategy, whereas Palestinian civilian killings are covered almost as if they were a series of one-off mistakes, made thousands of times, despite numerous points of evidence indicating Israel’s intent to harm civilians and civilian infrastructure.

The result is that the three major papers rarely gave Palestinians humanizing coverage. Despite this asymmetry, polls show shifting sympathy toward Palestinians and away from Israel among Democrats, with massive generational splits driven, in part, by a stark difference in news sources. By and large, young people are being informed of the conflict from TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter, and older Americans are getting their news from print media and cable news. 

Biased coverage in major newspapers and mainstream television news is impacting general perceptions of the war and directing viewers toward a warped view of the conflict. This has led to pro-Israel pundits and politicians blaming pro-Palestinian views on social media “misinformation.” 

Analysis of both print media and cable news, however, make it clear that, if any cohort of media consumers is getting a slanted picture, it’s those who get their news from established mass media in the U.S.   

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Adam Johnson.

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A sign that reads “Somewhere Worth Seeing” welcomes travelers to Ware, a faded mill town surrounded by the hills and steeples of western Massachusetts. But these days, hardly any news outlets find Ware worth a visit, even as its leaders wrangle over issues vital to its future.

Inside the brick, fortress-like Town Hall on a humid summer evening, Town Manager Stuart Beckley informed the five members of the Selectboard, Ware’s council, of an important proposal. A company was offering to buy Ware’s water and sewer services, which need tens of millions of dollars in upgrades. That’s a consequential choice for a town of 10,000 with an annual budget of $36 million. A sale would provide an infusion of $9.7 million. But private utilities often increase rates, raising the prospect that Ware’s many poor and elderly residents might face onerous bills down the road.

The Selectboard didn’t reach a consensus that night. Instead, one of the members berated Beckley for moving ahead with privatizing even though the position of town planner had been vacant since March. “We’ve been through four of them ... in less than six years,” Keith Kruckas said. “So we’re not going to blame it on COVID. We’re not going to blame it on other towns paying more money. We’re going to blame it on poor management.”

From there, the discussion descended into bickering between Kruckas and Beckley. “You’ve been harping all night, point after point after point,” Beckley said. “So is there anything that I do that you like?”

I thought Ware residents should know about the challenges their town faces and its decision-makers’ squabbling. But I was the only journalist among the six onlookers in the room, and I wasn’t there to cover the board. There was nobody from a daily newspaper in the area or from a television or radio station.

Decades ago, at least three outlets sent reporters to every session of Ware’s governing board: a weekly community paper, a local radio station and my old employer, the Daily News in Springfield, the third biggest city in Massachusetts. Daily News reporters covered towns throughout western Massachusetts and into northern Connecticut. The paper had a correspondent who focused on Ware and a few nearby towns, and he attended meetings of town officials from the Board of Assessors to the Cemetery Commission.

Today, Ware is close to becoming a news desert. Townspeople complain that the media have forgotten them, Beckley told me. What remains, he said, is “a lot of Facebook speculation, where people are guessing at the news. It’s quite rampant here.”

One reporter from the weekly paper, the Ware River News (circulation: 4,200), did watch the Selectboard meeting. Paula Ouimette caught it on Zoom because she was too busy to show up in person. Ouimette is also the paper’s editor, copy editor, proofreader, photographer and office manager, and she writes the police log. She fills similar roles for another weekly: the Quaboag Current. The papers cover a total of nine towns, and Ouimette said she can barely keep up. “If I tell people the hours I work,” she told me, “no one would enter this field.”

Ouimette wrote a summary of the meeting but said she hasn’t had the time or resources to take a comprehensive look at the pros and cons of privatizing, and what the experience of other towns has been. “It would make for an excellent story,” she said.

It’s no secret that local news is in an advanced state of decline. Since 1990, the number of newspaper employees in the U.S. has plunged from 455,000 to fewer than 90,000, even as the population has increased by a third. Repeated humiliations — most recently, a police raid on a Kansas weekly and the home of its publisher — underscore the reduced clout of newspapers.

Springfield, Massachusetts, exemplifies this trend. When I worked there from 1978 to 1981, it had two newspapers, the Daily News and the Morning Union, with a combined circulation of 150,000. They have since merged into one paper, now called The Republican, which has an average daily print circulation of 14,560. The Daily News alone employed 85 reporters, editors and photographers, about four times as many journalists as The Republican has today.

“The industry has changed so much that 1980 might as well have been 1880,” Jack Flynn, a reporter for the Daily News and its successors for 42 years, told me.

Many observers have lamented the damage wrought to communities by the diminishing of newspapers, from reduced civic engagement to the failure to hold corrupt or incompetent officials accountable. Amid a constant assault of dubious information on social media, people often know less, and consequently care less, about their local government than they once did.

As they vanish, local newspapers are taking on a halo of everything that used to be good about America. They’ve come to symbolize not just halcyon days of neighborly virtues — imagine “It’s a Wonderful Life” if Jimmy Stewart played the editor of the Bedford Falls paper — but the very “bedrock of American democracy.”

If my own experience was any indication, the reality was considerably more complicated. The Springfield Daily News didn’t always fulfill its watchdog role. Like a doting parent, it lavished attention on its community, but sometimes with a paternalism that chose to conceal problems in the service of what it thought was a broader good. The same focus that inundated readers with information about every committee meeting, crime and high school football game fostered a certain coziness with the area’s power players. Boosterism and conflicts of interest occasionally interfered with telling the full story. It’s possible we would have done a searching examination of a plan to privatize Ware’s water system — unless we risked offending a powerful local figure or business interest.

Mark Marchand had his reality check in the summer of 1981. Marchand, who covered the middle-class suburb of Agawam for the Daily News, learned that some airplane hobbyists were upset that tiny Bowles Airport, where they flew their two- and four-seat propeller planes, was about to close to make room for an industrial park. Marchand talked to them and filed a story reflecting their concern that they wouldn’t be able to find hangar space nearby.

That afternoon, Marchand recalled, he was surprised to learn that Richard Garvey, the Daily News’ top editor, was looking at his draft. It wasn’t the kind of big scoop that Garvey normally reviewed before publication. But, without talking to Marchand, he rewrote it. “Developer Ready to Invest in Bowles Airport” ran the next day, under Marchand’s byline, touting the industrial park plan. It didn’t quote a single airplane owner.

Marchand inferred the reason for the revised framing of the story from Garvey’s final paragraph. (Garvey, like many people in this article, is deceased.) It noted that the site of the potentially lucrative development was owned by the company that published the Springfield newspapers. “I was inconsolable,” Marchand told me. “Very embarrassed. None of the plane owners called me after that.”

I belong to the Watergate generation. I was 15 when the White House Plumbers broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters, 17 when President Richard Nixon resigned and about to turn 19 when the film “All the President’s Men” dramatized the exploits of Washington Post investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

I yearned to emulate them and was the recipient of what today might be considered an unneeded leg up. Ben Bradlee, the Post’s illustrious executive editor of Watergate fame, was on a list of Harvard alumni offering career advice to aspiring journalists from his alma mater. After I graduated, in 1978, I went to see him in the Post newsroom, which looked a lot like it did in the movie. Bradlee glanced at my resume, which listed my experience as a reporter for two summers at my hometown semiweekly, and growled, “What the hell is the Amherst Record?” He briefly raised my hopes by saying he might “hide” me on some inconspicuous beat at the Post, but an assistant shook her head.

Bradlee urged me to find a reporting job in the grittiest, seamiest city I could find, so I could learn firsthand about power and corruption in America. He said his own son, Ben Bradlee Jr., had started his career in Riverside, California.

The newspaper where my former Amherst Record editor was working, and had offered me an internship, fit Bradlee’s specifications. “How about Springfield, Massachusetts?” I asked.

“Perfect,” Bradlee said.

In those days and for decades after, jobs at local newspapers were seen as an invaluable training ground, an irreplaceable mix of apprenticeship and hazing. They taught the kind of tradecraft that wasn’t part of any journalism school curriculum. Reporters fresh out of college learned to high-tail it to a fire or shooting; to buttonhole officials before and after public meetings; to take notes in pencil outdoors in winter, because ink congeals in the cold; and to meet deadlines and word limits. They learned, along with their readers, about the people and institutions they covered.

And so it would be for me — that is, if I could pass the typing test. The sole prerequisite to be hired as a reporter by the Springfield Daily News was the ability to type at least 50 words a minute on an electric typewriter. The test crushed the hopes of many promising candidates, including Larry Parnass, who interviewed for a job in 1977. He barely missed the cutoff, managing 47 words a minute. Parnass deferred his journalism dreams to work as a Midwest salesman for Oxford University Press. He later became a reporter and editor and finally got a job in Springfield this year, as The Republican’s executive editor. Nobody checked his typing this time around.

Fortunately, my fingers were up to the challenge and I passed the test. In August 1978, I joined the Daily News. An afternoon paper, it pumped out six editions a day for readers from Enfield, Connecticut, to Massachusetts suburbs like Westfield and Agawam. “Late City,” with a noon deadline for copy, was for Springfield itself. Each edition carried a “Hometown” section with news and advertising aimed at places like Ware and its surrounding communities.

Springfield, best known as the birthplace of basketball and of Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, was a city of 150,000 on the Connecticut River. Once a thriving manufacturing center, which produced the Springfield rifles used in the Civil War and both world wars as well as the Indian motorcycle, it had never recovered from the Great Depression. I rented an apartment on a street that was halfheartedly trying to gentrify and rolled out of bed at 6:30 every morning to get to the office by the 7 a.m. starting time.

The bustling newsroom, which Daily News and Union staff shared, was as big as a supermarket. The air was filled with cigarette smoke and the racket of clattering typewriters, editors yelling reminders of how many minutes to deadline, phones ringing, static from police scanners and the occasional thunk of a chair thrown in anger.

My 33 months there, first as an intern and then as a general assignment reporter, provided an intensive course in local coverage. I interviewed victims of welfare cuts, evictions and police brutality. I covered anti-nuclear protests, visiting celebrities (novelist Norman Mailer, activist Abbie Hoffman, baseball slugger Hank Aaron), a tornado and a plane crash where I saw a dead body for the first time. I profiled outstanding high school seniors, a centenarian, a whittler and a slippery real estate developer who I described as walking “a tightrope of debts and dreams.”

The first and most important principle: News events — even distant ones with no connection to the region we covered — had to be given a “Springfield angle.” So when the Mount St. Helens volcano erupted 3,000 miles away in Washington state, killing 57 people, I was assigned to write a feature about the prospects for a similar disaster in Massachusetts. A phone call to a geologist ascertained that since the state has no volcanoes, we had nothing to worry about. I thought I was off the hook, but editors wanted the story anyway. It ran with a huge photo of volcanic ash billowing from Mount St. Helens, under the headline, “It can’t happen here.”

The Daily News had a proud history. It was founded as The Penny News in 1880 by two brothers, Charles and Edward Bellamy. Edward would go on to write one of the biggest-selling American novels of the 19th century, “Looking Backward,” which envisioned a socialist utopia. From the 1920s, the same local company owned the News and the Union. But they competed for scoops and endorsed opposing candidates, enabling Springfield residents to buy a paper that agreed with their politics — or complain about one that didn’t.

Newhouse Newspapers acquired the Springfield papers in 1966. Back then, big chains competed to buy local papers because they were so profitable. In 1973, the Daily News broke one of its biggest stories: that the Pentagon planned to close Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee, where bombers were stationed during the Cold War and returning prisoners of war from Vietnam were reunited with their families.

“Newspapers had the resources for intensively local coverage,” recalled Steve Newhouse, who worked as a reporter and copy editor for the Union from 1979 to 1982. The grandson of S.I. Newhouse, founder of the newspaper group, he now chairs its digital arm. “You needed to do editions to serve local advertisers. It really worked out nicely.”

Despite its local focus, the Daily News staff didn’t reflect Springfield’s increasing diversity. The city was 26% Black and Hispanic in 1980, but the newspaper was overwhelmingly white. Dorothy Clark, who came in 1979, was the only Black reporter “for a few years at least,” she recalled recently. Journalism jobs were hard to come by for people of color, so, after graduating from the University of Massachusetts, Clark had resigned herself to a job as a hotel desk clerk. Then one of her journalism teachers, who was also a Daily News reporter, recommended her for a reporting position. Besides covering elder affairs, “I did dig into a lot of stories related to African American history,” she said. “That was a personal interest.”

About half of the news reporters were women, but the editors were almost all men. Generationally, the newsroom was divided between ambitious young reporters, who saw the Daily News as a stepping stone and were eager to make a splash, and lifers who at times seemed threatened or annoyed by the upstarts. “There was reverse prejudice toward me that I’d gone to Smith,” a prestigious women’s college near Springfield, recalled Kim Hessberg, who later became director of public relations at the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Sam Hoffman, movie critic and Chicopee bureau chief, was more welcoming to the younger crowd. But another side of Hoffman emerged when I filled in for him once in Chicopee, just north of Springfield. It was a slow day until someone showed up with a wedding or engagement announcement, and gave me the details along with a $5 bill.

Surprised, I waved off the money. “It’s free,” I said.

“That’s funny,” he said. “Sam charges five bucks.”

Much of the staff enjoyed another perk. The Eastern States Exposition, a 17-day annual fair in West Springfield, provided a hefty roll of free tickets to the Daily News, which covered the “Big E” as assiduously as London newspapers cover a coronation. The publicity included a daily listing of events, front-page articles touting record-breaking attendance and frequent features.

When fewer free tickets filtered down to the newsroom one year, city editor Jim Powers was livid. He assigned our premier investigative reporter, Ed Fogarty, to dig into the fair. “We were going to crack open the story,” Fogarty recalled recently. “Whatever it was.” But he couldn’t find any impropriety — unless you count the free tickets.

My former Amherst Record boss, John Bart, headed the Daily News copy desk. As he showed me around on my first day, he nodded toward Fogarty and said approvingly, “He’ll ask anybody anything.”

I hoped to be praised similarly someday. But my early assignments were light features: a horse-drawn covered wagon that passed through town, a couple who were married in a balloon. I snuck into fraternity parties to compare real-life drunken hijinks with those in a hit film, “Animal House.”

A white-haired copy editor named Austin Kenefick noticed my efforts and wrote a gracious note. Much as minor-league teammates revered catcher Crash Davis in “Bull Durham” because he had spent 21 days in the big leagues, Austin was respected by colleagues because he had worked as a reporter for The Washington Post — until, he recalled recently, he forgot to make a standard check for police news one night. The Post missed the capture of a notorious criminal. Kenefick was fired, and he ended up in Springfield.

“This is a very frustrating game,” Kenefick wrote. “You won’t be given enough time to go over a favorite piece ‘one more time.’ You will have to write with incomplete information. The printers, or layout man, or copy-cutter, or someone, will lose that critical, qualifying, third paragraph. Withal, there is nothing else quite like newspapering … and the strong ones, the resilient ones, the persevering ones, benefit and grow and prosper.”

I worried that the editors on the city desk didn’t trust me to cover news. I tried to impress them, and allay any resentment of my Ivy League degree, by working extra hard. My shift ended at 3 p.m., but I often hung around the newsroom afterward, looking for an opportunity. One came on election night in 1978. The editors had neglected to assign anyone to the local campaign of an underdog candidate for the U.S. Senate, Paul Tsongas. When early returns showed him winning, I rushed to his victory party, interviewed his campaign manager and others, hurried back to the newsroom and wrote my first lead front-page story.

That same fall, a seemingly trivial assignment would turn into another break — one that would help propel me from intern to staff reporter. The kindly assistant city editor, Ab Hachadourian, asked me one day to find out what home heating oil would cost that winter.

This was not a subject I was familiar with. But the Yellow Pages contained a sizable roster of home heating oil dealers, and I began calling them. They told me that they expected the price per gallon, then 50 cents, to skyrocket. I wrote a story reflecting their prediction. Hachadourian promptly stashed it in his desk. I didn’t ask why, but Daily News editors tended to err on the side of timidity. Hachadourian probably felt that if such important news was happening, a 21-year-old intern wouldn’t be among the first to find out.

I was disappointed. But the dealers were right; in fact, the price would climb to 84 cents the following fall. Soon major newspapers vindicated me by proffering similarly dire assessments. I freshened up my draft with a new angle — that the oil price hike would popularize wood-burning stoves — and Hachadourian ran it.

Suddenly I was the Daily News’ energy expert. Calling the U.S. Department of Energy, I was shuttled to an official who suggested chatting off the record. I was thrilled. Woodward and Bernstein had their Deep Throat, who had guided the Post’s Watergate investigation from the shadows of a parking garage (and decades later was revealed to be a top FBI official). Now I had my own!

Fed up with government policy, my source anticipated widespread gasoline shortages. I channeled his alarm in such articles as “‘Gas’ Demand Could Result in Major Shortage: Station Closings, Shorter Hours Loom.”

Some nerve-wracking moments ensued. A press official from the Department of Energy guessed my source’s identity and warned me not to trust him. But Deep Oil proved prescient. By the next spring, some states were rationing gasoline, service stations were reducing hours or closing, and cars were lining up around the block to refuel. I reported the story day after day, on an almost gas-station-by-gas-station basis. At the peak of the crisis, I called stations in northern Connecticut as soon as I got to work, asked how long the lines were, and filed a story for the Connecticut edition’s 8 a.m. deadline. Then I phoned stations in Palmer and Ware, and folded the new material into the existing story. I did the same for the other four editions, pushing Connecticut further down until it dwindled to a couple of paragraphs at the bottom of the Late City version. It was the ultimate realization of local coverage: the same news, rejiggered for each circulation zone.

I usually wrote fast, oblivious to distractions. But once I froze on deadline. As the minutes ticked by, assistant managing editor Wayne Phaneuf, a restless dynamo with a Mark Twain mustache, hovered, waiting for my copy. Finally he said to no one in particular, loud enough so I would overhear, “Wouldn’t you think a Harvard graduate would know how to tell time?”

Every morning, stringers — reporters who weren’t on staff — would call the city room from nearby towns, looking to dictate their stories to someone. And when the caller was Brad Smith from Ware, 25 miles northeast of Springfield, I often volunteered. Tapping out his prose on an IBM Selectric typewriter, and getting to know Ware’s personalities and problems through his eyes, it felt almost as if I were covering the town myself.

Bradley F. Smith was one of the Daily News’ most prolific bylines. He wrote mainly for the Metro edition, which covered Ware, Palmer and the nearby hill towns, though if the stories were important enough, they ran in every edition. He was well sourced in Ware, and he delivered plenty of scoops. After a fire destroyed two businesses in a former mill complex, putting 125 people out of work, he broke news on the arson investigation and insurance negotiations. Another child of Watergate, Smith enjoyed chiding town officials. If the town of Ware had considered selling its utilities on his watch, he told me recently, “I would have looked a lot deeper.”

But municipal meetings were his mainstay. Since he was paid by the number of meetings he covered and column inches he generated, he subjected readers to all of them: Selectboard, School Committee, Finance Committee, Board of Assessors, Conservation Commission, Cemetery Commission, Parks and Recreation, and more.

“I can remember driving to three towns in one night on a regular basis to get to three or four meetings,” recalled Smith, who’s now a drummer in Florida. “Then I’d write the stories until midnight.” By covering so many meetings, Smith became the first Daily News stringer to earn more than $1,000 a month, equivalent to about $3,500 today. Then, as now, local news was not known for lavish salaries.

We called it the “Springfield Journalism Revue.” Most Friday afternoons, Phaneuf and a group of reporters would unwind at the Hotel Charles on Main Street. The Charles, which burned down in 1988, was a rundown relic of Springfield’s glory years, with a grandiose lobby, mildewed burgundy carpeting, cheap food and flat beer.

We had a regular table and the waitress would ignore our sometimes unruly carousing. Everybody had to buy a round. I was a slow drinker, so four or five beers would soon be lined up next to the one I was nursing. Somebody always drank them.

Most Journalism Revue participants were young reporters, eager to soak up lore from Phaneuf and his pals. One veteran political reporter, Don Ebbeling, often regaled us with the latest sexual and financial shenanigans at City Hall or the Statehouse. But he rarely included such juicy fare in his column, “People and Politics,” As dry as a train schedule, it listed fundraisers, retirement parties and the like. A typical item: “State Sen. John P. Burke, D-Holyoke, chairman of the Senate Public Safety Committee, will be holding office hours in Holyoke and Westfield on April 11.”

At first I wondered if Ebbeling was too old school to divulge secrets, or couldn’t nail them down, or feared losing access. Then a simpler explanation occurred to me: perhaps that the paper’s bigwigs liked his column the way it was. They tolerated Smith’s assaults on officials in an outlying small town, but they didn’t want such scathing scrutiny of Springfield’s politicians and businesses.

David Starr, a Newhouse executive and publisher of the Springfield papers, didn’t subscribe to the post-Watergate ethos of adversarial journalism. He believed the papers’ primary purpose was to guide and collaborate with city leaders. The bow-tied Starr was president of a downtown redevelopment organization and a political kingmaker. “He felt that if the papers were going to be a success, Springfield had to be a success,” Phaneuf told me.

Starr once wrote that urban revitalization depended on a “true working partnership” between elected officials, businesspeople and media. But less advantaged groups often felt left out of the partnership. “We still deal with the impression that this newspaper is in bed with the power structure in Springfield,” Parnass, The Republican’s executive editor, told me. “I don’t want to be chums with anybody.”

After two Hispanic residents complained within a week in March 1980 that police had bashed their heads in, a colleague and I began exploring police brutality in Springfield. During our reporting, I learned that Springfield received 102 brutality complaints in 1979, far more than comparable cities, and hadn’t disciplined a single officer. Those findings became the core of a four-part series, sealed by a powerful quotation supplied by Hampden County’s crusty district attorney, Matthew Ryan Jr.: “It irks me when a man of average size or smaller with his head bandaged like a swami is brought in by a six-foot, 200 pound policeman with a gun who doesn’t have a mark on him and says he was assaulted.” The editors let the series run largely as written, albeit with a weak title: “Police Brutality: Fact or Fiction?”

Ryan had his own dark side, though you wouldn’t read much about it in the Daily News. Soon after I left the paper to work at The Boston Globe, a political foe accused Ryan of protecting a mobbed-up friend, John Francis McCarthy, who allegedly shot at two police officers. I decided to poke around. I drove to Springfield and examined documents in the county courthouse — Ryan’s domain — before heading to McCarthy’s bar, The Keg Room. When I introduced myself, McCarthy said, “I heard you were looking up my file.” He then walked away, communicating that the conversation was over. I ignored the hint and followed him to the basement of the bar. McCarthy turned to face me. He was known as “Ox,” and from his massive dimensions and menacing air, the nickname appeared apt. As I gamely tried to question him, he hoisted a large bag of ice and began pouring a cascade of cubes closer and closer to my feet. Belatedly realizing that our dialogue was unlikely to be productive, I retreated up the stairs and returned to Boston.

In 1990, the Globe reported that Ryan had “intervened repeatedly” in cases “in ways that benefited Mafia figures and their associates.” Editors at the Union-News — the Daily News and the Union had merged in 1987 — conceded that they had been aware of Ryan’s Mafia associations but didn’t run the damaging material because it couldn’t be substantiated. Ebbeling told the Globe that the Daily News had killed negative stories he had written about Ryan dating back to the late 1960s.

I hadn’t known about the history between the Daily News and Ryan, and wondered if I had benefited from it. If the paper hadn’t been so kind to Ryan, perhaps the DA would’ve been less inclined to help a young reporter — me — by denouncing police abuse.

The newspaper still occupies the same building, on Main Street in Springfield, that it did when I worked there. But part of the first floor, where the business offices used to be, is now a marijuana dispensary.

The odor of cannabis wafted up the back stairs toward the cavernous, second-floor newsroom. There I saw the ghosts of editors past: Garvey humming happily as he strode past my desk; Carroll Robbins, the dour managing editor, scolding me for misusing a semicolon; Powers, long-faced and grumpy, handing me an obituary that a reporter had written for herself before she died of cancer, and ordering me to pare it down.

Parnass showed me his “time capsule”: ancient newspapers retrieved from unoccupied desks that he cleaned out when he arrived in February. The Springfield newspapers used to be “the primary generator of news for the four western Massachusetts counties,” he told me. “It is not that organization any longer. … At some point in the future, this newspaper can’t defy what’s happening everywhere: the diminution of print.”

The picture is not entirely grim. Several sources supplement The Republican’s revenue and readership. Its presses print 141 other publications from Maine to Pennsylvania. The company owns a chain of 12 free community weeklies that mostly sell ads to “tiny guys that never would advertise in The Republican,” publisher and CEO George Arwady told me. MassLive, an online outlet of Newhouse’s Advance Local, is growing statewide, he said. Articles by The Republican’s staff appear first on MassLive. Both the weeklies and MassLive also have their own reporters. “We’re doing just fine,” Arwady said. “More people read our journalism today than ever, even when you were here.”

The Republican still produces significant work, especially about my old preoccupation, police brutality. Its reporting helped spur a 2020 U.S. Department of Justice investigation that found that the Springfield Police Narcotics Bureau engaged “in a practice or pattern of using excessive force.” Two years later, under a consent decree with the Justice Department, the city agreed to improve training and supervision.

Stephanie Barry, an investigative reporter who leads the police brutality coverage, said she appreciates Arwady’s exertions to keep The Republican afloat. “I would hate to see the paper fold,” she said. “It would break my heart. But if I’m still doing journalism, whether digital or in print, it’s all about the work for me.” For now, at least, she can still do that at a daily paper.

Lynn Dombek contributed research.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Daniel Golden.

A major daily newspaper in Solomon Islands received nearly US$140,000 in funding from the Chinese government in return for pledges to “promote the truth about China’s generosity and its true intentions to help develop” the Pacific Islands country, according to a leaked document and interviews.

The revelation comes amid Western alarm over growing Chinese influence over the strategically located country, which switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 2019 and then signed a surprise security agreement with Beijing last year.

Solomon Islands journalists have complained of a worsening media environment, as well as what is perceived to be a growing pro-China slant from local outlets that have accepted funding from the People’s Republic.

• READ MORE: How China’s creeping influence undermines Pacific media freedom — Shailendra Singh
• Other Pacific media and China reports
• The OCCRP website

A document obtained by OCCRP shows how one of these outlets, the Solomon Star newspaper, received Chinese assistance after providing repeated and explicit assurances that it would push messages favorable to Beijing.

Reporters obtained a July 2022 draft funding proposal from the Solomon Star to China’s embassy in Honiara in which the paper requested SBD 1,150,000 (about $137,000) for equipment, including a replacement for its aging newspaper printer and a broadcast tower for its radio station, PAOA FM.

The Solomon Star said in the proposal that decrepit equipment was causing editions to come out late and “curtailing news flow about China’s generous and lightning economic and infrastructure development in Solomon Islands.”

The document shows the Chinese embassy had initially offered SBD 350,000 in 2021, but revised this number upward in recognition of the newspaper’s needs.

A dozen pledges
In total, the proposal contains roughly a dozen separate pledges to use the Chinese-funded equipment to promote China’s “goodwill” and role as “the most generous and trusted development partner” in Solomon Islands.

In interviews, both the Solomon Star’s then-publisher, Catherine Lamani, and its chief of staff, Alfred Sasako, confirmed the paper had made the proposal, but declined to speak in detail about it.

Sasako said the newspaper maintained its independence. He said any suggestion it had a pro-Beijing bias was “a figment of the imagination of anyone who is trying to demonise China.”

Sasako said the paper had tried unsuccessfully for more than a decade to get assistance from Australia’s embassy in the country. Other Western countries, such as the United States, had neglected Solomon Islands for decades and were only now showing interest because of anxiety over Chinese influence, he added.

“My summary on the whole thing is China is a doer, others are talkers. They spend too much time talking, nothing gets done,” he said.

Press delivered
OCCRP was able to confirm that the printing equipment the Solomon Star had requested was indeed purchased and delivered earlier this year.

“I can confirm what was quoted was delivered in February and the payments came from the Solomon Star,” said Terry Mays, business development manager of G2 Systems Print Supply Division, the Brisbane, Australia, based supplier named in the proposal.

The Solomon Star funding is just one part of a regional push to get China’s message out in the Pacific Islands, as well as build relationships with the region’s elites, reporters have found.

Earlier this month, OCCRP reported on an aborted deal in the northern Pacific nation of Palau involving the publisher of the country’s oldest newspaper and a Chinese business group with links to national security institutions.

Bernadette Carreon and Aubrey Belford report for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). OCCRP is funded worldwide by a variety of government and non-government donors. OCCRP’s work in the Pacific Islands is currently funded by a US-government grant that gives the donor zero say in editorial decisions.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Eight decades later the Cardinals are still my favorite team, but my heart has moved on. These days I’m clinging to a deeper love: print newspapers.

We’ve lost more than 2,500 since 2005. They’re currently dying at the rate of over 100 a year. My heartthrob The New York Times has metamorphosed into a print/digital hybrid, testing my loyalty to print like never before.

Back to the early days. My family moved to Erie, Pa. For years the Erie Daily Times tutored me in how the world turns—including the world of the Cardinals and their superstar, Stan (The Man) Musial. The Times also gave me my first real job, tossing newspapers onto lawns and front steps, knocking on doors once a month to collect from subscribers.

Another move, to Jamestown, N.Y., put the bloom on my newsprint romance. I became a sports writer at the Jamestown Post-Journal. It was intoxicating: phones forever ringing, heads bent over typewriters, magic moments when each day’s paper was raced upstairs from the press room. I wrote articles, headlines, a column that included my picture. It couldn’t possibly get any better.

And then it did. I took a new job writing for a bigger paper, the Syracuse, N.Y. Herald-Journal. I covered the Cornell-Syracuse football game. The star that day would be a star forever: the late Jim Brown, possibly the greatest football player of all time. I covered the Hall of Fame baseball game in Cooperstown, N.Y. My first-person story ran under the headline “Writer in love with slowed-up copy of ‘The Man’”.

The draft intervened. The Army took me away for two years. It taught me, among other things, that sports weren’t the most important thing in the world.

Home again in Jamestown, I switched from sports writing to cityside reporting. It pumped me up even more than before. I wrote about City Council meetings and the police department, crafted offbeat pieces for a feature called Talk of the Town. I loved print newspapers from two sides now, and I’ve never really stopped.

I came to New York City with dreams of writing for a big-city daily. I remember seeing the city’s skyline for the first time, feeling the city’s energy for the first time.

So much for my dreams. In December of 1962, a 114-day strike by the printers’ union shut down all seven of the city’s dailies and ultimately killed four of them. They were icons and then they were gone: the Herald Tribune, the World-Telegram & Sun, the Journal-American, the Mirror.

Vanity Fair wrote this epitaph 50 years later: “As a newspaper town, New York was never the same again.”

The union struck because the new technologies of offset printing and cold type were beginning to replace linotype presses and “hot” type. Today the new technology of digital printing is replacing type itself: instead of words on paper, we’re getting images on a screen.

In my dinosaur world, digital newspapers are imitations of the real thing.

The real thing is what my wife and I sit down to at the dining room table every morning. The New York Times comes in sections, which we swap back and forth until we’ve gone over all of them. We tell each other what looks most interesting or enlightening, what makes us laugh or touches our hearts. In other words, we communicate with each other while being communicated to; it gets our days off to a super-sweet start.

Maybe not for much longer, though. The reasons just keep piling up, pushing a newsprint lover in the digital direction.

The Times long ago stopped printing stock market tables, box scores, anything and everything with lots of numbers. TV watchers have been shorted as well: no more daily listing of the programs that are airing, on what channels, at what times.

IMHO, I’m also seeing overlong stories over-illustrated with over-large photos. The baseball coverage comes up short in the opposite direction: there are days when The Times doesn’t print a word about the Yankees or the Mets or anybody else, throwing a shutout at all fans. (Note: In early 2022 the corporate New York Times went sports-digital as well as news-digital, buying out the online The Athletic for $550 million cash.)

Lastly, the print Times is regularly being scooped by its digital offspring. Print subscribers get access to the digital version too, so of course I log in now and then. Time and again, I’ll read stories online that won’t appear in the paper for days. (Recent example: A June 8 piece about the author Joan Didion didn’t show up in print until June 17.)

I cherish the old Times. We’ve had it home-delivered to our apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side for decades. Inflation has seriously upped the price, pushing it into four figures for the year—and it’ll likely go even higher.

My head and my heart are locked in a one-on-one. My head is urging me to live in the 21^st century. My heart, long in love with print, wants to keep having those sweet Times mornings.

In the end my heart and my head will probably keep playing one-on-one. They’re torn by two very different newspaper worlds. Very torn.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Gerald E. Scorse.

The University of the South Pacific’s regional journalism programme has penned three milestone Memorandums of Understanding that will usher in greater collaboration with media industry partners over student upskilling and training, joint workshops and seminars, and publication of the award-winning training newspaper Wansolwara.

Papua New Guinea’s National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) have formalised three-year MOU partnerships with the region’s longest running journalism programme at Laucala campus.

They were signed by NBC managing director Kora Nou and PINA managing editor Makereta Komai respectively.

• READ MORE: Other USP journalism education reports

The signing ceremony was witnessed by PNG’s Minister for Communication and Information Technology Timothy Masiu — a former journalist — and USP’s deputy vice-chancellor (regional campuses and global engagement) Dr Giulio Paunga.

“It is indeed history because we have never had such an MOU between this prestigious university and our National Broadcasting Corporation, which is a flagship of PNG,” said  Masiu.

“The intention of this MOU is basically threefold — student training, staff exchanges and joint workshops, seminars, research activities. We are really looking forward to this; very interesting times ahead for NBC and your university.”

To further strengthen the MOU, Masiu announced a F$10,000 funding support for the journalism programme through the PINA office. NBC’s managing director is also current chair of PINA.

Masiu as a journalist
Masiu also shared his excitement and delight at being part of the signing ceremony and reminisced about his time as a broadcaster for NBC, and later a journalist for The National daily newspaper in Port Moresby.

Dr Paunga said the university was also currently working closely with the PNG government and the progress of this collaboration demonstrated great things to come between the two countries, its people and future students.

USP Journalism programme coordinator Associate Professor Shailendra Singh said the programme was doing some good work in journalism in Fiji and the region. He commended Komai and Nou for their cooperation and vision over the MOU.

“The MOU we have signed is going to take the training and development of our journalists to another level,” he said.

“We have been training journalists for a long time. Under this MOU, we will be able to decide our own agenda when it comes to training and research, instead of everything being designed from someplace else and us merely implementing it.

“We know PNG will be sending students to study at USP. Talks are underway and if that happens then there will be greater collaboration and interaction between students coming from PNG.”

Dr Singh said USP had 12-member countries and PNG was set to become the 13th member if talks went according to plan.

Fiji Times partnership

Earlier, on May 3 — World Press Freedom Day — USP Journalism signed the first MOU with Fiji Times Limited. The partnership includes, among other supportive initiatives, the publication of Wansolwara, twice a year.

The first Wansolwara edition for 2023 was published in The Sunday Times last week and featured 32 pages of news, sports and special reports written and produced by USP journalism students across Fiji and the region.

Dr Singh said the partnership with Fiji Times Ltd was also a boost for the programme.

“This is a historic moment, not just for us but also for our students, as this will give them the exposure they need to contribute and improve the standard of journalism in our region,” he said.

“Fiji Times Ltd has been supportive of the USP Journalism Programme for many years, and this partnership will strengthen their commitment to promote a free and fair environment for journalists.”

Fiji Times Pte Ltd general manager Christine Lyons said the company would cover the printing of Wansolwara twice in the academic year. This amounted to one publication per semester.

“It will be circulated as an insert in The Fiji Times as part of its corporate social responsibility,” she said.

Fiji Times Ltd was represented by editor-in-chief Fred Wesley at the May MOU signing.

Viliame Tawanakoro is a final-year student journalist at USP’s Laucala Campus. He is also the 2023 student editor for Wansolwara, USP Journalism’s student training newspaper and online publication.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Wansolwara.

The man in charge of Fiji’s oldest newspaper has high hopes for press freedom in the country following the tabling of a bill in Parliament this week to get rid of a controversial media law.

Fiji’s three-party coalition government introduced a bill on Monday to repeal the 2010 Media Industry Development Authority (MIDA) Act.

The MIDA Act — a legacy of the former Bainimarama administration — has long been criticised for being “draconian” and decimating journalism standards in the country.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji media freedom reports

The law regulates the ownership, registration and content of the media in Fiji.

Under the act, the media content regulation framework includes the creation of MIDA, the media tribunal and other elements.

“It is these provisions that have been considered controversial,” Fiji’s Attorney-General Siromi Turaga said when tabling the bill.

“These elements are widely considered as undemocratic and in breach of the constitutional right of freedom of expression as outlined in section 17 of the constitution.”

Not a ‘free pass’
Turaga said repealing the act does not provide a free pass to media organisations and journalists to “report anything and everything without authentic sources and facts”.

“But it does provides a start to ensuring that what reaches the ordinary people of Fiji is not limited by overbearing regulation of government.”

The Fiji Times editor-in-chief Fred Wesley said he had a sense of “great optimism” that the Media Act would be repealed.

Wesley and the newspaper — founded in 1869 — were caught in a long legal battle for publishing an article in their vernacular language newspaper Nai Lalakai which the former FijiFirst government claimed was seditious.

But in 2018, the High Court found them not guilty and cleared them of all charges.

“After the change in government, there has been a change in the way the press has been disseminating information,” Wesley said.

“We have had a massive turnover [of] journalists in our country. A lot of young people have come in. At the The Fiji Times, for instance, we have an average age of around 22, which is very, very young,” he said.

Handful of seniors
“We have just a handful of senior journalists who have stayed on who are very passionate about the role the media must pay in our country.

“We are looking forward to Thursday and looking forward to the act being repealed and the draconian legislation kicked out.”

He said two thirds of the journalists in the national newspaper’s newsroom have less than 16 years experience and have never experienced press freedom.

He said The Fiji Times would then need to implement “mass desensitisation” of its reporters as they had been working under a draconian law for more than a decade.

He added retraining journalists would be the main focus of the organisation after the law is repealed.

‘Things will get better’
Long-serving journalist at the newspaper Rakesh Kumar told RNZ Pacific that reporting on national interest issues had been a “big challenge” under the act.

Kumar recalled early when the media law was enacted and army officers would come into newsrooms to “create fear” which he said would “kill the motivation” of reporters.

“We know things will get better now [after the repeal of the act],” Kumar said.

But he said it was “important that we have to report accurately”.

“We have to be balanced,” he added.

The bill to repeal the MIDA Act will be debated tomorrow.

While the opposition has already opposed the move, it is expected that the government will use its majority in Parliament to pass it.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

New Caledonia’s only daily newspaper, Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes, has folded after the commercial court accepted the publishing company’s request for its liquidation.

The court had deferred its decision by a day after an injunction by the public prosecutor who wanted to see if there was still a possibility to rescue Les Nouvelles.

The prosecutor had argued that it was worth preserving Les Nouvelles as a tool of pluralism and freedom of expression.

However, there has been no interest in taking over the loss making enterprise.

The paper was launched in 1971 and owned by the French Hersant group until 2013 when it was sold to New Caledonia’s Melchior Group.

Faced with losses, the newspaper became an online only publication at the end of last year but has now closed, with more than 100 people losing their jobs.

The last edition of Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes appeared last Thursday.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

RNZ Mediawatch

New Zealand’s media were in emergency mode yet again this week, offering hours of extra coverage on air, online and in print.

Outlets in the hardest-hit places reported the basics — even without access to basics like power, communications and even premises.

What will Gabrielle’s legacy be for media’s role in reporting disasters and national resilience?

• LISTEN TO RNZ MEDIAWATCH: Before and after Gabrielle
• Cyclone Gabrielle: Death toll rises to 11, Civil Defence targets isolated communities
• Cyclone Gabrielle: Pasifika songs of gratitude ring out across Hawke’s Bay
• LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES: Susana Suisuiki reports
  
• Cyclone Gabrielle death toll rises to 9, thousands uncontactable and landslide risk in Auckland
• Cyclone Gabrielle: Where to donate
• Follow RNZ live updates

“Keep listening to the radio. You guys have done a great job updating people and it’s very much appreciated,” the Civil Defence Minister Keiran McAnulty told Newstalk ZB’s last Sunday afternoon as Gabrielle was just beginning to wreak havoc.

Barely two weeks earlier, sudden and catastrophic flooding in and near Auckland caught the media off-guard, but some commentators claimed the heavy warnings about Gabrielle were oppressively ominous — and risked “crying wolf”.

Gabrielle ended up as a national emergency and sparked non-stop rolling news coverage. There were few flat spots on TV and radio, and live online reporting around the clock also give a comprehensive picture — and pictures — of what was going on.

It stretched newsrooms to their limits, but news reporters’ work was skillfully and selectively supplemented with a steady stream of vivid eyewitness accounts.

Forestry slash flood
Tolaga Bay farmer Bridget Parker’s description on RNZ Nine to Noon of yet another inundation at her place with added forestry slash was among the most confronting (and sweary).

Checkpoint’s emotional interview on Wednesday with a couple that owned a house in which a friend “disappeared under water” was compelling — but also chilling.

RNZ’s Kate Green arrived in Gisborne on Monday with the only means of communicating that worked — a satellite phone.

“You can’t even dial 111. Everything that can break is broken,” she told RNZ Morning Report listeners, quoting the local mayor.

RNZ’s Māni Dunlop, who managed to fly in on Tuesday, told listeners that from the air the East Coast looked “buggered”.

Gisborne is a city and Tairawhiti a region not well covered at the best of times by New Zealand’s national media, which have no bureaux there. It is a bit of an irony that in the worst of times, it was so hard to get the word out.

But the locally-owned Gisborne Herald stepped up, somehow printing editions every day distributed free to 22,000 homes — with the help of NZDF boots n the ground on some days.

Proud news day
“I’m proud to be working on this paper today,” reported Murray Robertson said, signing off an eye-opening video of scenes of the stricken city posted online once power came back and a fresh Starlink unit kicked in.

On Wednesday, ZB’s Mike Hosking pleaded on air for diesel to keep their signal up in Hawke’s Bay, while the editor of Hawke’s Bay Today Chris Hyde — only months into his job — found himself literally powerless to publish when the rivers rose, cutting the electricity and cutting him off from many of his staff.

“The first day I was in a black hole. In a big news event, the phones ring hot. This was the biggest news event in Hawke’s Bay since the Napier earthquake  . . . and my phone wasn’t ringing at all,” he told Mediawatch.

Hyde, just 32 years old, was a student in Christchurch when The Press stunned citizens by publishing a paper the morning after the deadly 2011 quake.

Hyde said NZME chief editor Shayne Currie and The New Zealand Herald’s Murray Kirkness were instrumental in putting the Auckland HQs resources into getting NZME’s upper North Island dailies promptly back in print and available for free.

“Just keep supporting local news, because in moments like this, it really does matter,” Chris Hyde told Mediawatch.

On Wednesday, Hyde had the odd experience of seeing Tuesday’s edition of the paper on the AM show on TV before he had even seen it himself.

Cut-off news focus
On Wednesday, RNZ switched to focus on news for areas cut off or without power — or both — where people were depending on the radio. RNZ’s live online updates went “text-only” because those who could get online might only have the bandwidth for the basics.

Day of ‘danger’

This is the first copy of Tuesday’s @hawkesbaytoday that I’ve seen. It never made it to my home, to our offices, to our subscribers. When I wrote that headline had some idea of what was coming, and yet we had no idea. pic.twitter.com/57PmhoeyYr

— Chris Hyde (@chrishydejourno) February 16, 2023

“Thank God for news media in a storm,” was former Herald editor Gavin Ellis in his column The Knightly Views.

He was among the critics of media coverage of Auckland’s floods a fortnight earlier.

Back then he said social media and online outlets had trumped traditional news media in quickly conveying the scale and the scope of the flooding.

This time social media also hosted startling scenes and sounds reporters couldn’t capture — like rural road bridges bending then buckling.

But Gavin Ellis said earlier this week he couldn’t get a clearer picture of Gabrielle’s impact without mainstream media.

“Those two episodes where chalk and cheese. Coverage of Cyclone Gabrielle by all media was excellent, both in warning people about what was to come – although that wasn’t universal – and then talking people through it and into the aftermath, And what an aftermath it’s been,” he told Mediawatch.

“This is precisely why we need news media. They draw together an overwhelming range of sources and condense information into a readily absorbed format. Then they keep updating and adding to the picture.” he wrote.

Retro but robust radio

“It’s even more pressing if you haven’t got electricity, and you haven’t got those online links. That was when radio really came into its own,” said Ellis.

“Organisations like the BBC,and the ABC (Australia) are talking about a fully-digital future and moving away from linear broadcasting. What happens to radio in those circumstances if you haven’t got power? If you’re sitting on your rooftop surrounded by water, you can still have a radio on, he said.

“We need to have a conversation about the future of media in this country and the requirements in times of urgency need to be looked at,” Ellis told Mediawatch.

RNZ’s head of news Richard Sutherland’s had the same thoughts.

“It has certainly been a reminder to generations who have not been brought up with transistor radios they are important to have in a disaster. This will also sharpen the minds of people on just how important ‘legacy’ platforms like AM transmission are in civil defence emergencies like the one we’ve had,” he said.

“With the Tonga volcano, Tonga was cut off from the internet. and the only thing getting through was shortwave radio. In the 2020s, we are talking about something that’s been around since the early 1900s still doing the mahi. In this country, we are going to need to think very carefully about how we provide the belt and braces of broadcasting infrastructure,” he told Mediawatch.

“Everyone was super-aware of the way that the Auckland flooding late last month played out — and no one wanted to repeat that,” said Sutherland, formerly a TV news executive at Newshub, TV3, TVNZ and Sky News.

“Initially the view was this is going to be bad news for Auckland because Auckland, already very badly damaged and waterlogged. But as it turned out, of course, it ended up being Northland, Coromandel, Hawke’s Bay have been those areas that caught the worst of it,” Sutherland told Mediawatch.

News contraction
“Over the years, and for a number of reasons, a lot of them financial, all news organisations have contracted. And you contract to your home city or a big metropolitan area, because that’s where the population is, and that’s where the bulk of your audience is,” he said.

“But this cyclone has reminded us all as a nation, that it’s really important to have reporters in the regions, to have strong infrastructure in the regions. I would argue that RNZ is a key piece of infrastructure,” he said.

“This incident has shown us that with the increasing impact of climate change, news organisations, particularly public service lifeline utility organisations like RNZ, are going to have to have a look at our geographic coverage, as well as our general coverage based on population,” he said

“We are already drawing up plans for have extra boots on the ground permanently  . . but also we need to think where are the regions that we need to have more people in so that we can respond faster to these sorts of things,” he said.

“We are at a moment where we could do something a bit more formal around building a more robust media infrastructure . . . for the whole country. I would be very, very keen for the industry to get together to make sure that the whole country can benefit from the combined resources that we have.

“Again, everything comes down to money. But if the need is there, the money will be found,” he said.

Now that the government’s planned new public media entity is off the table, it will be interesting to see if those holding the public purse strings see the need for news in the same way.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Veteran Fijian journalist Netani Rika and his wife were resting in their living room when he was suddenly woken, startled by the sound of smashed glass. “I got up, I slipped on the wet surface,” he recalls.

He turned on the lights and a bottle and wick were spread across the floor. It was one of the many acts of violence and intimidation he endured after the 2006 military coup.

Back then, Rika was the manager of news and current affairs at Fiji Television.

• LISTEN TO ABC PACIFIC BEAT: Media freedom under the new Fiji government
• READ MORE: Former Fiji Times editor has no regrets about resisting censorship
• Fiji’s media veterans recount intimidation under FijiFirst government – eye on reforms

No news at 6pm, no news at 10pm
Back then, Rika was the manager of news and current affairs at Fiji Television.

He vividly remembers the time his car was smashed with golf clubs by two unknown men — one he would later identify as a member of the military — and the day he was locked up at a military camp.

“We were monitoring the situation . . .  once the takeover happened, there was a knock at the door and we had some soldiers present themselves,” he said.

“We were told they were there for our protection but our CEO at the time, Ken Clark, said ‘well if you’re here to protect us, then you can stand at the gate’.

“They said, ‘no, we are here to be in the newsroom, and we want to see what goes to air. We also have a list of people you cannot speak to … ministers, detectives’.”

Rika remembered denying their request and publishing a notice on behalf of Fiji TV News that said it would “not broadcast tonight due to censorship”, promising to return to air when they were able to “broadcast the news in a manner which is free and fair”.

“There was no news at six, there was no news at 10, it was a decision made by the newsroom.”

Organisations like Human Rights Watch have repeatedly criticised Voreqe Bainimarama, who installed himself as prime minister during the 2006 coup, for his attacks on government critics, the press and the freedom of its citizens.

Fear and intimidation
Rika reported incidents of violence to Fiji police, but he said detectives told him his complaints would not go far.

“There was a series of letters to the editor which I suppose you could say were anti-government. Shortly after … the now-honourable leader of the opposition (Voreqe Bainimarama) called, he swore at me in the Fijian iTaukei language … a short time later I saw a vehicle come into our street,” he said.

“The next time (the attackers) came over the fence, broke a wooden louvre and threw one (explosive) inside the house.”

The ABC contacted Bainimarama’s Fiji First party and Fiji police for comment, but has not received a response.

The following year, Rika left his job to become the editor-in-chief at The Fiji Times, the country’s leading independent newspaper. With the publication relying on the government’s advertising to remain viable, Rika said the government put pressure on the paper’s owners.

“The government took away Fiji Times’ advertising, did all sorts of things in order to bring it into line with its propaganda that Fiji was OK, there was no more corruption.”

Rika said the government also sought to remove the employment rights of News Limited, which owned The Fiji Times.

“The media laws were changed so that you could not have more than 5 percent overseas ownership,” Rika said.

Rika, and his deputy Sophie Foster — now an Australian national — lost their jobs after the Media Act 2011 was passed, banning foreign ownership of Fijian media organisations.

‘A chilling law’
The new law put in place several regulations over journalists’ work, including restrictions on reporting of government activities.

In May last year, Fijian Media Association secretary Stanley Simpson called for a review of the “harsh penalties” that can be imposed by the authority that enforces the act.

Penalties include up to F$100,000 (NZ$75,00) in fines or two years’ imprisonment for news organisations for publishing content that is considered a breach of public or national interest. Simpson said some sections were “too excessive and designed to be vindictive and punish the media rather that encourage better reporting standards and be corrective”.

Media veterans hope the controversial act will be changed, or removed entirely, to protect press freedom.

Retired journalism professor Dr David Robie, now editor of Asia Pacific Report, taught many of the Pacific journalists who head up Fijian newsrooms today, but some of his earlier research focused on the impact of the Media Act.

Dr Robie said from the outset, the legislation was widely condemned by media freedom organisations around the world for being “very punitive and draconian”.

“It is a chilling law, making restrictions to media and making it extremely difficult for journalists to act because … the journalists in Fiji constantly have that shadow hanging over them.”

In the years after Fijian independence in 1970, Dr Robie said Fiji’s “vigorous” media sector “was a shining light in the whole of the Pacific and in developing countries”.

“That was lost … under that particular law and many of the younger journalists have never known what it is to be in a country with a truly free media.”

‘We’re so rich in stories’
Last month, the newly-elected government said work was underway to change media laws.

“We’re going to ensure (journalists) have freedom to broadcast and to impart knowledge and information to members of the public,” Fiji’s new Attorney-General Siromi Turaga said.

“The coalition government is going to provide a different approach, a truly democratic way of dealing with media freedom.” But Dr Robie said he believed the only way forward was to remove the Media Act altogether.

“I’m a bit sceptical about this notion that we can replace it with friendly legislation. That’s sounds like a slippery slope to me,” he said.

“I’d have to say that self-regulation is pretty much the best way to go.”

Reporters Without Borders ranked Fiji at 102 out of 180 countries in terms of press freedom, falling by 47 places compared to its 2021 rankings.

Samantha Magick was the news director at Fiji radio station FM96, but left after the 2000 coup and returned three years ago to edit Islands Business International, a regional news magazine.

“When I came back, there wasn’t the same robustness of discussion and debate, we (previously) had powerful panel programs and talkback and there wasn’t a lot of that happening,” she said.

“Part of that was a reflection of the legislation and its impact on the way people worked but it was often very difficult to get both sides of a story because of the way newsmakers tried to control their messaging … which I thought was really unfortunate.”

Magick said less restrictive media laws might encourage journalists to push the boundaries, while mid-career reporters would be more creative and more courageous.

“I also hope it will mean more people stay in the profession because we have this enormous problem with people coming, doing a couple of years and then going … for mainly financial reasons.”

She lamented the fact that “resource intensive” investigative journalism had fallen by the wayside but hoped to see “a sort of reinvigoration of the profession in general.”

“We’re so rich in stories … I’d love to see more collaboration across news organisations or among journalists and freelancers,” she said.

Lice Movono is a Fijian reporter for the ABC based in Suva. An earlier audio report from her on the Fiji media is here. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

It is unlikely that the Mayor of Auckland, Wayne Brown, took any lessons from the city’s devastating floods but the rest of us — and journalists in particular — could learn a thing or two.

Brown’s demeanour will not be improved by a petition calling for his resignation or media columnists effectively seeking the same. He will certainly not be moved by New Zealand Herald columnist Simon Wilson, now a predictable and trenchant critic of the mayor, who correctly observed in the Herald on Sunday: “In a crisis, political leaders are supposed to soak up people’s fears…to help us believe that empathy and compassion and hope will continue to bind us together.”

Wilson’s lofty words may be wasted on the mayor, but they point to another factor that binds us together in times of crisis. It is communication, and it was as wanting as civic leadership on Friday night and into the weekend.

• READ MORE: Auckland deputy mayor talks up media role in disasters in wake of mayor Brown ‘drongos’ text
• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘I’m talking to you now, I’ll talk to you at any time’ – Auckland deputy mayor Desley Simpson
• Other Asia Pacific Reports on the North Island floods

Media coverage on Friday night was limited to local evacuation events, grabs from smartphone videos and interviews with officials that were light on detail. The on-the-scene news crews performed well in worsening conditions, particularly in West Auckland.

However, there was a dearth of official information and, crucially, no report that drew together the disparate parts to give us an over-arching picture of what was happening across the city.

I waited for someone to appear, pointing to a map of greater Auckland and saying: “These areas are experiencing heavy flooding . . . State Highway 1 is closed here, here and here as are these arterial routes here, here, and here across the city . . . cliff faces have collapsed in these suburbs . . . power is out in these suburbs . . . evacuation centres have been set up here, here, and here . . . :

That way I would have been in a better position to understand my situation compared to other Aucklanders, and to assess how my family and friends would be faring. I wanted to know how badly my city as a whole was affected.

I didn’t get it from television on Friday night nor did I see it in my newspaper on Saturday. My edition of the Weekend Herald, devoting only its picture-dominated front page and some of page 2 to the flooding, was clearly hampered by early deadlines. The Dominion Post devoted half its front page to the storm and, with a later deadline, scooped Auckland’s hometown paper by announcing Brown had declared a state of emergency.

So, too, did the Otago Daily Times on an inside page. The page 2 story in The Press confirmed the first death in the floods.

I turned to television on Saturday morning expecting special news programmes from both free-to-air networks. Zilch . . . nothing. Later in the day TV1 and Newshub did rise to the occasion with specials on the prime minister’s press conference, but it seems a small concession for such a major event.

Radio fared better but only because regular hosts such as NewstalkZB’s All Sport Breakfast host D’Arcy Waldegrave and Today FM sports journalist Nigel Yalden rejigged their Saturday morning shows to also cover the floods.

RNZ National’s Kim Hill was on familiar ground and her interview with Wayne Brown was more than a little challenging for the mayor. RNZ mounted a “Midday Report Special” with Corin Dann that also tried to break through the murk, but I was left wondering why it had not been a Morning Report Special starting at 6 am.

Over the course of the weekend the amount of information provided by news media slowly built up. Both Sundays devoted six or seven pages to the floods but it was remiss of the Herald on Sunday not to carry an editorial, as did the Sunday Star Times.

It was also good to see Newsroom and The Spinoff — digital services not usually tied to breaking news of this kind — providing coverage.

“Live” updates on websites and news apps added local detail but there was no coherence, just a string of isolated events stretching back in time.

Overall, the amount of information I received as a citizen of the City of Sails was inadequate. Why?

Herein lie the lessons.

News media under-estimated the impact of the event. Although there were fewer deaths than in the Christchurch earthquake or the Whakaari White Island eruption, the scale of damage in economic and social terms will be considerable. The natural disaster warranted news media pulling out all the stops and, as they did on those occasions, move into schedule-changing mode (and that includes newspaper press deadlines).

Lesson #1: Do not allow natural disasters to occur on the eve of a long holiday weekend.

Media were, however, hampered by a lack of coherent information from official sources and emergency services. Brown’s visceral dislike of journalists was part of the problem but that was not the root cause. That fell into two parts.

The first was institutional disconnects in an overly complex emergency response structure which is undertaken locally, coordinated regionally and supported from the national level. This complexity was highlighted after another Auckland weather event in 2018 that saw widespread power outages.

The report on the response was resurrected in front page leads in the Dominion Post and The Press yesterday. It found uncoordinated efforts that did not use the models that had been developed for such eventualities, disagreements over what information should be included in situation reports, and under-estimation of effects.

Massey University director of disaster management Professor David Johnston told Stuff he believed the report would be exactly the same if it was recommissioned now because Auckland’s emergency management system was not fit for purpose — rather it was proving to be a good example of what not to do

Lesson #2: Learn the lessons of the past.

The 2018 report did, however, give a pass mark to the communication effort and noted that those involved thought they worked well with media and in communicating with the public through social media.

Can the same be said of the current disaster response when there “wasn’t time” to inform a number of news organisations (including Stuff) about Wayne Brown’s late Friday media conference, and when Whaka Kotahi staff responsible for providing updates clocked-off at 7.30 pm on Friday?

Is it timely for Auckland Transport to still display an 11.45 am Sunday “latest update” on its website 24 hours later? Is it relevant for a list of road closures accessed at noon yesterday to have actually been compiled at 7.35 pm the previous night? Why should a decision to keep Auckland schools closed until February 7 cause confusion in the sector simply because it was “last minute”?

Lesson #3: Ensure communications staff know the definition of emergency: A serious, unexpected, and potentially dangerous situation requiring immediate action.

There certainly was confusion over the failure to transmit a flood warning to all mobile phones in the city on Friday. The system worked perfectly on Sunday when MetService issued an orange Heavy Rain Warning.

It appears that emergency personnel believed posts on Facebook on Friday afternoon and evening were an effective way of communicating directly with the public. That is alarming because social media use is so fragmented that it is dangerous to make assumptions on how many people are being reached.

A study in 2020 of United States local authority communication about the covid pandemic showed a wide range of platforms being used and the recipients were far from attentive. The author of the study, Eric Zeemering, found not only were city communications fragmented across departments, but the public audience selectively fragmented itself through individual choices to follow some city social media accounts but not others.

In fact, more people were passing information about the flood to each other via Twitter than on Facebook and young people in particular were using TikTok for that purpose. Media organisations were reusing these posts almost as much as the official information that from some quarters was in short supply.

Lesson #4: When you need to communicate with the masses, use mass communication (otherwise known as news media).

Mistakes will always be made in fast changing emergencies but, having made a mistake, it is usual to go the extra yards to make amends. It beggars belief that Whaka Kotahi staff would fail to keep their website up to date on the Auckland situation when it is quite clear they received an enormous kick up the rear end from Transport Minister Michael Wood for clocking off when the heavens opened.

Or that Auckland Transport could be far behind the eight ball after turning travel arrangements for the (cancelled) Elton John concert into a fiasco.

After spending Friday evening holed up in his high-rise office away from nuisances like reporters attempting to inform the public, Mayor Brown justified his position with a strange definition of leadership then blamed others.

Sideswipe’s Anna Samways collected a number of tweets for her Monday Herald column. Among them was this: “Just saw one of the Wayne Brown press conferences. He sounded like a man coming home 4 hours late from the pub and trying to bull**** his Mrs about where he’d been.”

Lesson #5: When you’re in a hole, stop digging.

Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications — covering both editorial and management roles — that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes the website knightlyviews.com where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Note: This is from the Newport News Times Friday 1/27. I’ll leave it as a stand alone. There will be a note at the end.

My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see.

— Joseph Conrad, The Task of the Artist

I’ve been a wordsmith since my late teens: sports reporting intern in Tucson for the evening daily newspaper.

My first magazine gig was with Skin Diver magazine, and that was an interesting journey into 25 cents per word, but $50 for each photo. I was diving in Baja; I waited out a hurricane that wiped out a small village where I had spent time before and after the storm. Two shots of mountains of hammerhead jaws drying in the sun and sharks underwater; two photos of the village (before and after); shots of some of the villagers digging out; and a photo of me hanging onto a humpback whale landed me more cashola than the 1,000-word article.

I ended up in Bisbee, Tombstone, Nogales, Cochise’s Stronghold and all along the U.S.-Mexico border (La Frontera) as a reporter filing stories on all manner of cool, odd, and sometimes boring stories around planning and zoning, city council and school board meetings.

Words, accuracy, research and inventiveness were everything to me, even before the newspaper gigs in Southern Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and elsewhere. The Daily Wildcat was my home at the University of Arizona. Words and deploying more than just an inverted news triangle were powerful, and accuracy was a must since everyone on and off campus was reading my work.

I took this gig seriously enough to end up at the University of Texas teaching college composition while finishing a master’s degree. My entire career around words has been anchored to the power of the word to not only transform a community, but oneself.

This isn’t an arcane belief. To be, say a marine biology student (I was one of those), doing some deep reef work AND then writing a report on the findings, but also on the reason for the experiment in the first place, that is the power of the word. We had to write about the cultural history, too — the people and the sea.

Literacy is somewhat new in the USA, that is, reading and writing. Unfortunately, functional illiteracy is high. I ended up teaching U.S. military members at Fort Bliss a week-long writing class with the goal of getting some of the less literate students to at least a seventh grade reading level.

Nationwide, on average, 79 percent of U.S. adults were literate in 2022. Conversely, 21 percent of adults in the U.S. are illiterate. However, more telling, 54 percent of adults have literacy below sixth grade level. Worse still is that up to 80 percent of Americans in all demographic categories can’t follow eighth grade instructions on correctly installing a child car seat.

As a college instructor, I taught Jonathan Kozol’s work, including his book, Illiterate America. One of the passages is telling about the foundation of America: “One hundred years before the present government existed, a powerful leader, Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia, stated his views in clear, unflinching terms: ‘I thank God,’ he said, that ‘there are no free schools nor printing [in this land]. For learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing hath divulged them … God save us from both!’”

After decades teaching/mentoring students in the art of writing — composition, business writing, technical writing, fiction, poetry, news writing — I have arrived at a new baseline of absurdity and danger:

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a program that generates sophisticated text in response to any prompt a person can imagine. This artificial intelligent application signals the end of writing assignments altogether.

Again, writing is a way of gauging skills and understanding the fine art of whichever field one may end up in. If a student or specialist can explain the process of ocean acidification for both post-doctoral students and laypersons, then the author is ahead of the game. Literacy is key for cultures to both thrive and move ahead.

A deeply researched book on China, say Jeff J. Brown’s 44 Days Backpacking in China: The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass (2013), is worth more than 44 days of watching mainstream news reporting on China.

Additionally, some of the best writing comes from scientists like Peter Ward, Under a Green Sky, or a seasoned journalist like Elizabeth Kolbert, who wrote The Sixth Extinction.

There is this belief in elite circles humanity in the future will be split into two major camps — those with power, money and connections, and then the rest of us, who will be dubbed as useless workers-eaters-humans. Yuval Noah Harari believes AI and robotics will render workers in the main unnecessary, useless. This is the philosophy of the World Economic Forum, Aspen Institute and others throughout industry and government.

We are now reading machine-generated (AI) “news” stories. We are in a great reset where data of every sort is collected and then sold to the digital gods who feed that information into computers to learn what it is to be, think, dream, hope, do as humans. And how to write!

We can feed ChatGPT software a writing prompt close to my heart — What does Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” mean to a young person in the 21st century? The program will produce a competent essay, even replicating the student’s level of articulation.

This is Cliff Notes and plagiarism on steroids. It is a slippery slope, one of a thousand deaths by ten million digital cuts. Nothing good comes from this smoke and mirrors and scamming technology. Having every nanosecond of our lives monitored, every survey we answer and bit of data we send out captured by big business will move us closer to that critical point of big brother everywhere pulling us farther away from what it is to be a thinker, doer, debater, creator and writer.

First Note: The Medford Mail Tribune has closed its door after 113 years in business. I will be writing about the death of newspapers and concomitant death of critical thinking/debate in America in another column.

Second Note: I did not know this piece was running today, “The Power of the Written Word.” I am not in the newsroom, as I am just the guy who pens these longish (for a small newspaper) columns discussing the issues of the day and the things on my mind. Again, I have many hats as a writer, and much on DV that is original to DV is all rant, polemics, humor, and flipping the scripts (more on that in another piece).

But the front page news for this rag is terrible:

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

On January 4, Argentina’s Federal Intelligence Agency, known as the AFI, filed a criminal lawsuit against the independent Buenos Aires newspapers La Nación and Clarín, as well as Morales, a columnist at La Nación, and Santoro, the judicial editor of Clarín, according to news reports and the journalists, who spoke with CPJ via messaging app.

The intelligence agency accused the journalists of illegally revealing the names of AFI agents, according to those sources. The journalists each covered the AFI for their respective publications, disclosing the names of military officers working for AFI despite Argentina’s legal ban on armed forces personnel conducting domestic spy operations. Morales and Santoro told CPJ that they denied any wrongdoing and had based their reporting off of documents the AFI had provided to a congressional oversight committee.

“Argentine authorities should drop their lawsuit against journalists Joaquín Morales Solá and Daniel Santoro, and the Clarín and La Nación newspapers,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “This effort to intimidate journalists is not acceptable, and authorities should refrain from prosecuting reporters in retaliation for their work.”

If charged and convicted, the journalists could face prison sentences of one to six years, according to Argentina’s penal code. In early February, when Argentine judicial authorities return from vacation, a federal prosecutor will examine the evidence and decide whether to proceed with the criminal case, the two journalists said.

“They revealed the names of intelligence agents that clearly must be kept secret,” Agustín Rossi, AFI interim director, said in a January 4 interview. “We filed the lawsuit so that people comply with the intelligence law.”

An AFI spokesperson, who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, told CPJ that the lawsuit aims to protect intelligence agents from having their names revealed to the public, which could put them in danger.

Santoro, who has worked at Clarín for 30 years, told CPJ that the lawsuit could lead to self-censorship, calling it “an effort to intimidate journalists so we don’t ask questions and stop investigating the intelligence agency.”

Morales told CPJ that the AFI “is accusing us of breaking the law because we denounced them for breaking the law.”

In a January 4 statement, the Association of Argentine Journalistic Entities said that because Morales and Santoro were investigating possible crimes by a government agency, their work was in the public interest and therefore protected under Argentina’s constitution, which guarantees free expression.

Martín Etchevers, a Clarín spokesperson, told CPJ that it was “disgusting that the AFI is going after journalists for publishing information in the public interest.” In a January 11 editorial, La Nación described the lawsuit as a “ridiculous” attack on press freedom.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The five major media outlets that collaborated with WikiLeaks in 2010 to publish explosive stories based on confidential diplomatic cables from the U.S. State Department sent a letter Monday calling on the Biden administration to drop all charges against Julian Assange, who has been languishing in a high-security London prison for more than three years in connection with his publication of classified documents.

"Twelve years after the publication of 'Cablegate,' it is time for the U.S. government to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets," reads the letter signed by the editors and publishers of The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and El País. "Publishing is not a crime."

The letter comes as Assange, the founder and publisher of WikiLeaks, is fighting the U.S. government's attempt to extradite him to face charges of violating the draconian Espionage Act of 1917. If found guilty on all counts, Assange would face a prison sentence of up to 175 years for publishing classified information—a common journalistic practice.

Press freedom organizations have vocally warned that Assange's prosecution would pose a threat to journalists the world over, a message that the five newspapers echoed in their letter Monday.

"This indictment sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America's First Amendment and the freedom of the press," the letter reads. "Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists. If that work is criminalized, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker."

The "Cablegate" leak consisted of more than 250,000 confidential U.S. diplomatic cables that offered what the Times characterized as "an unprecedented look at back-room bargaining by embassies around the world."

Among other revelations, the documents confirmed that the U.S. carried out a 2009 airstrike in Yemen that killed dozens of civilians. Cables released by WikiLeaks showed that then-Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh assured U.S. Central Command Gen. David Petraeus that the Yemeni government would "continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours."

The media outlets' letter notes that "the Obama-Biden administration, in office during the WikiLeaks publication in 2010, refrained from indicting Assange, explaining that they would have had to indict journalists from major news outlets too."

"Their position placed a premium on press freedom, despite its uncomfortable consequences," the letter continues. "Under Donald Trump, however, the position changed. The [Department of Justice] relied on an old law, the Espionage Act of 1917 (designed to prosecute potential spies during World War One), which has never been used to prosecute a publisher or broadcaster."

Despite dire warnings from rights groups, the Biden administration has decided to continue pursuing Assange's extradition and prosecution.

In June, the United Kingdom formally approved the U.S. extradition request even after a judge warned extradition would threaten Assange's life.

Assange's legal team filed an appeal in August, alleging that the WikiLeaks founder is "being prosecuted and punished for his political opinions."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

The post Why Do Billionaires Love Owning Newspapers? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Bob Lord.

Miriam Zarriga, one of Papua New Guinea’s top experienced journalists, has been appointed as the PNG Post-Courier’s new chief-of-staff.

With more than 10 years working with the Post-Courier, Zarriga has extensive experience in political, security and general news reporting.

She replaces Lawrence Fong, a fellow stalwart of the Post-Courier who has held the position of chief-of-staff for the last three years.

• READ MORE: Stories by Miriam Zarriga on Asia Pacific Report

Fong welcomed Zarriga’s appointment and issued his unwavering support on behalf of the newsroom as she moves into her new role. He now shifts to become online content editor of the masthead.

Prior to her appointment, Zarriga played a key role in Post-Courier’s 2022 National General Election coverage alongside senior political journalist Gorethy Kenneth.

Her involvement provided extensive election coverage on election-related violence around the country, and in some cases facing the brunt of tribal warfare in daring situations.

‘No walk in the park’
Post-Courier’s editor Matthew Vari congratulated Zarriga on her appointment, saying the role embodied the challenges of running a modern newsroom.

“The chief-of-staff position is no walk in the park,” Vari said. “But I have every confidence in Ms Zarriga’s capabilities in ensuring we produce the best content for our readers.

“Her experience over the many years on the frontline of mainstream media provides Ms Zarriga with a wealth of understanding of what’s needed to be produced for our readers.”

The chief-of-staff role handles the content of the newspaper, and the day-to-day operations of the newsroom and its reporters.

Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The Post-Courier daily newspaper is one of 15 companies in Papua New Guinea that have pledged to fight against gender-based violence (GBV) while promoting gender equality within and outside of the workplace.

Signing the National Capital District Commission’s “Zero Tolerance to GBV Pledge” under its GBV Strategy 2020–2022, means that as organisations, the 15 companies will partner with the NCDC to eradicate all forms of violence within the city through their employees.

City manager Ravu Frank congratulated the organisations for taking the bold step at the signing up yesterday, noting that addressing GBV-related issues in the city required a collective effort from the municipal authority in partnership with all stakeholders.

• READ MORE: Parkop calls for full probe into brutal murders of two Moresby women
• Other PNG crime reports

“We came up with the NCDC GBV Strategy to raise awareness of the acts of violence against women with the view to end violent behavior against women and to regard them as equal partners in development,” he said.

“I am glad that a good number of our contractors have shown commitment to this cause.

“By signing the pledge all NCDC contractors agree to avoid any form of violence against women at their workplace, at home and in public.

“All NCDC contractors will be accountable for their violent actions against women and will seriously impact their engagement with NCDC leading to the termination of their contracts.”

Second batch of companies
This is the second batch of companies that have contracts with the city authority to sign the GBV pledge.

NCDC commenced implementation of the three-pillar Zero Tolerance to GBV Strategy 2020–2022 last year. The first was Walk the Talk with a compulsory signing of a pledge by NCDC staff to abstain from any form of violence.

The engagement of contractors is part of the second pillar to involve stakeholders and partners and the third is the demand for a community free from gender-based violence.

Hebou Construction Limited was one of the first companies to sign up.

According to health and safety manager Larry Watson, the pledge has helped the company give back to its employees and community through promoting gender equality and ensuring that female employees get proper assistance when needed.

In an editorial on Tuesday, the Post-Courier quoted from the first African-American President Barack Obama:

“You can judge a nation and how successful it will be based on how it treats women and girls.”

“And his observation, we say, is an expression of wisdom and truth,” said the newspaper.

“No country in the world will improve itself where the culture of violence against women exists, that is what he meant in his statement.

‘A lot of talk’
“In PNG there’s being a lot of talk and even action on violence against women and girls, but the message and progress has been unsatisfactory.

“Just last week bodies of two women were discovered in the nation’s capital with preliminary examination showing that they were raped and murdered.”

The Post-Courier said that while some might say that the two incidents were isolated, “we say its not and that despite numerous efforts by NGOs, churches and even parliamentarians on this issue, the incidences of women and girls being mistreated and murdered is slowly on the rise again.”

The newspaper said there were three major factors in the violence and the community’s response:

• It is a cultural issue and it is huge;
• It is not recognised as a development issue; and
• We’re just talking; no money and no real action

The Post-Courier said it was time to recognise that mistreatment of women was the biggest drawback in the country’s national development.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Two Utah newspapers — the Standard-Examiner and its sister paper, the Provo Daily Herald — were forced to delay the delivery of daily print newspapers after a ransomware attack targeted the Standard-Examiner’s computer network on Sept. 5, 2022.

The Standard-Examiner reported that the attack, which caused an outage at the newspapers’ shared plant in Ogden, was believed to have come from an infected email sent by unknown intruders.

In ransomware attacks, hackers use malicious software, or “malware,” to seize control of a company’s IT and digital assets and demand the company pay a ransom for their return.

The Standard-Examiner reported that its IT staff initially detected the intrusion on Sept. 5, after the system had already been compromised, delaying the newspapers’ Sept. 6 print edition until the following day.

The Standard-Examiner’s website and digital newspaper, standard.net, were not affected by the attack, according to the outlet. Tim Swietek, information technology director for Ogden Newspapers of Utah, told the Standard-Examiner that the intruders did not gain access to the cloud computers containing most of the newspaper’s data.

The compromised computer network was repaired the next day, Swietek told the Standard-Examiner, and normal printing resumed.

Neither the Standard-Examiner nor the Daily Herald responded to requests for comment.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Politico (5/2/22) broke the news that five Supreme Court justice—including three nominated by Donald Trump—planned to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that could destroy Roe v. Wade (Politico, 5/2/22) reportedly has the support of three justices appointed by Donald Trump. That’s important for a number of reasons.

Neil Gorsuch was appointed after the Republican Senate blocked Barack Obama’s nominee to replace Antonin Scalia until after the election, in hopes of retaining a 5–4 conservative balance. Brett Kavanaugh replaced Anthony Kennedy, who stepped down specifically so his seat could continue to be held by a Republican appointee. And the last appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, replaced liberal stalwart Ruth Bader Ginsburg, solidifying a 6–3 conservative advantage a week before the 2020 presidential election. Barrett’s confirmation also exposed the cynicism of Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had blocked Obama’s pick for Scalia’s seat on grounds that it was an election year, but hurried Barrett’s confirmation.

All three were nominated by a president who did not win the popular vote, further undermining the bench’s credibility as a democratic institution. (The author of the leaked opinion, Samuel Alito, was also named by a popular vote loser, George W. Bush—as was Chief Justice John Roberts, considered a possible sixth vote, along with Clarence Thomas, for overturning Roe.)

And in all three of Trump’s nominees, major liberal-leaning outlets offered pieces reassuring readers that fears that these justices would undo Warren Court decisions upholding civil rights were overblown.

Important studiousness

Law professor Akhil Reed Amar (New York Times, 7/9/18) endorsed Donald Trump’s view of Brett Kavanaugh as “someone with impeccable credentials, great intellect, unbiased judgment, and deep reverence for the laws and Constitution of the United States.” 

Kavanaugh had two prominent liberal defenses in the media after Trump offered him to the public. In the New York Times (7/9/18), Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar rested his defense on Kavanaugh’s scholarship, saying that he “has taught courses at leading law schools and published notable law review articles,” and is “an avid consumer of legal scholarship.” Amar added, “This studiousness is especially important for a jurist like Judge Kavanaugh, who prioritizes the Constitution’s original meaning.”

Even before sexual allegations against Kavanaugh emerged, liberals worried about his partisan record, namely his role in the special prosecution of Bill Clinton (NPR, 8/17/18) and his opinions on abortion rights (New York Times, 7/18/18). But the Amar defense—coming from not just a liberal but a renowned constitutional scholar—was joined by another Yale scholar (9/6/18), emeritus law professor Peter Schuck, offering the argument that “justices often do not perform the way partisans and the news media expect them to.”

In particular, Schuck suggested, “even some conservative justices may resist overturning Roe v. Wade,” because “it is hard to predict how courts will apply the multiple criteria…for deciding when precedents may be overturned.” While supporters and opponents both saw Kavanaugh as “a guaranteed vote to overrule Roe…hard cases often cause justices to confound ideological expectations.” Rather than seeing Supreme Court nominations as “a Manichaean liberal/conservative battle for legal supremacy,” the professor urged senators and journalists to focus on “the fascinating interplay among legal doctrine, textual interpretation and the factual record in determining outcomes.”

Conservative Times columnist Bret Stephens (7/12/18) insisted that “liberals always cry wolf” about threats to reproductive rights. (The Times editorial board—9/26/18—did c0me out against Kavanaugh, saying the allegations against him were grave and put the integrity of the court at risk.)

Lisa Blatt, a constitutional lawyer and self-described liberal feminist, deferred to Kavanaugh’s warm personality (Politico, 8/2/18), saying he “is a great listener, and one of the warmest, friendliest and kindest individuals I know.” She also said “other than my former boss, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I know of no other judge who stands out for hiring female law clerks,” a line that that makes one wince when put next to the sexual allegations against him (PBS,  9/16/19).

‘A sense of fairness and decency’

“Gorsuch will be a hard man to depict as a ferocious partisan or an ideological judge,” law professor Robert George wrote in the Washington Post (2/1/17). “As Gorsuch himself has frequently observed…good judges sometimes have to vote or rule in ways they do not like.”

On Gorsuch, the New York Times (1/31/17) had Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general under President Obama, saying liberals should support Gorsuch because the conservative jurist “brings a sense of fairness and decency to the job, and a temperament that suits the nation’s highest court.” He “would help to restore confidence in the rule of law,” Katyal assured, because he has defended “the paramount duty of the courts to say what the law is, without deferring to the executive branch’s interpretations of federal statutes.”

The Washington Post seemed to make getting Gorsuch confirmed a crusade. As Extra! (3/17) noted:

In the first 48 hours after Neil Gorsuch was nominated to the Supreme Court by Donald Trump (1/31/17–2/2/17), the Washington Post published 30 articles, op-eds, blog posts and editorials on the nomination. Thirteen were explicitly positive, while 17 could be construed as neutral—but not a single one was overtly critical or in opposition to Gorsuch (FAIR.org, 2/2/17). Apparently editors thought columns like “Ignore the Attacks on Neil Gorsuch. He’s an Intellectual Giant—and a Good Man” (2/1/17) required no balance.

As for Amy Coney Barrett, O. Carter Snead, a Notre Dame law professor, wrote in the Washington Post (9/26/20) that “liberals have nothing to fear” from her: “She genuinely seeks to understand others’ arguments and does not regard them as mere obstacles to be overcome on the way to reaching a preferred conclusion.” It was Barrett’s religion, Snead said, that led to “her commitment to treating others with respect.” But put this in context: Snead is vocally against Roe (National Affairs, 11/7/21; Washington Post, 5/5/22).

All of these pieces exhibit a kind of naivete about the right’s vision of the court. They share the assumption that while all the nominees were conservative, as jurists they were also “above politics,” because their scholarship and congeniality made them different from partisans in the executive and legislative branches. But it has been very clear since the civil rights era that part of the conservative movement’s long game has been to appoint justices to federal courts who would undo gains made under the Warren Court, and to advance the interests of conservatives (Time, 6/22/21).

It’s easy to scoff at these articles as “pieces that didn’t age well.” But the polite “above the fray” attitude toward the Court that they embody hasn’t been the governing norm for decades. The 5–4 majority in favor of handing the 2000 election to the Republicans without counting the votes made it clear, if it hadn’t been already, that the Court is utterly politicized. And the move by Mitch McConnell’s Senate to deny Obama the right to appoint a justice who could have tipped the political balance of the Court proved that the Republican approach to top judge nominations is simply not in good faith. But even during the Trump administration, it seems that a lot of what are called “liberal” media could not fully come to terms with that fact.

Featured image: Detail from an NPR graphic (5/3/22) of Supreme Court justices who supported a draft opinion that would overturn Roe.

The post ‘Liberal’ Newspapers Liked the Justices Who Will Kill Roe appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Ari Paul.

Fiji has been ranked as the worst place in the Pacific region for journalists in the latest assessment by the global press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

In RSF’s 2022 World Press Freedom Index released last week, Fiji was placed 102nd out of 180 countries — receiving an overall score of 56.91 out of 100.

The country slipped by 47 places compared to its 2021 rankings when it was placed 55 out of 180 nations.

• READ MORE:  Media freedom slide in Australia ‘undermining’ ability to project democratic values in Pacific
• Fiji criticised for legal ‘criminalisation’ of journalism in big drop in press freedom ranking
• Other reports on the RSF World Press Freedom Index

RSF changed its system of analysis this year to include a breakdown on specific categories such as legal framework and justice system, technological censorship and surveillance, disinformation and propaganda, arbitrary detention and proceedings, independence and pluralism, models and good practices, media sustainability, and violence against journalists, which partially explains Fiji’s sudden fall on the Index.

The Paris-based media watchdog said “journalists critical of the government are regularly intimidated and even imprisoned by the indestructible Prime Minister, Frank Bainimarama, in power since the military coup of 2006.”

Other countries from the region surveyed by the Index included Aotearoa New Zealand, which was ranked 11th, Australia (39th), Samoa (45th), Tonga (49th), and Papua New Guinea (62nd).

Neighbouring Timor-Leste improved 54 places to 17th.

RSF said Aotearoa New Zealand, which received an overall score of 83.54, was a “regional model” for press freedom “by having developed safeguards against political and economic influences” for journalists to conduct their work.

The yearly report was released to coincide with last week’s World Press Freedom Day on May 3.

Media decree, sedition laws
It said Fiji operated under the 2010 Media Industry Development Decree, which became law in 2018.

RSF said in an earlier report that the sedition laws in Fiji, with penalties of up to seven years in prison, were also used to foster a climate of fear and self-censorship.

“Sedition charges put the lives of three journalists with The Fiji Times, the leading daily, on hold until they were finally acquitted in 2018,” the report stated.

“Many observers believed it was the price the newspaper paid for its independence.”

Fiji was ranked 52nd in both 2020 and 2019 but was 57th in 2018.

The Fiji Media Industry Development Authority did not respond to a request for comment.

#RSFIndex: RSF unveils its 2022 World #PressFreedom Index

1: Norway
2: Denmark
3: Sweden

16: Germany
24: UK
26: France
42: USA
58: Italy
71: Japan
110: Brazil
134: Algeria
150: India

178: Iran
179: Eritrea
180: North Koreahttps://t.co/fdZ3RWSFjN pic.twitter.com/rV2i3sPmwW

— RSF (@RSF_inter) May 3, 2022

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

A group of climate campaigners on Friday blockaded the entrance of a printing plant in New York City in an effort to hamper the distribution of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other corporate-owned newspapers to protest their failure to cover the planetary emergency with "the frequency it deserves."

The activists, operating under the banner of Extinction Rebellion, stressed in a statement that the blockade was targeted not at individual journalists, but "at the board of directors and senior management at these institutions that determine what to include and exclude in each publication."

"Extinction Rebellion stands behind the right to free speech and a free press, and views the breaking of certain concrete mundane laws as a public plea for societal change," the statement reads. "The climate and ecological crisis is already here—destroying people's homes and livelihoods with extreme weather, droughts, and fire—yet governments and corporations, influenced by mass media corporations, are complacent by continuing to ignore the root causes of the crisis and the dire situation humanity is facing."

The demonstration singled out News Corp, The New York Times Company, and Gannett—which respectively own the Journal, the Times, and USA Today—for "enabling the government's gaslighting of the public" by burying critical climate stories below the fold or in later pages. The outlets have also come under fire for plastering fossil fuel company ads alongside their coverage and actively perpetuating climate disinformation.

Such failures, the campaigners argued, make it "easy for government to act like the climate and ecological crisis is years away, ignore scientists' urgent calls to action, and refuse to take the steps we need to start transforming our systems from finite and fragile to strong and resilient."

"They must be clear about the extreme cascading risks humanity now faces, the injustice this represents, its historic roots, and the urgent need for rapid political, social, and economic change," the activists continued. "This includes more front-page coverage of the climate emergency."

The demonstration came as scientists and youth climate activists around the world, marking Earth Day, engaged in rallies and non-violent civil disobedience to condemn their governments' continued support for fossil fuel production as accelerating warming wreaks havoc across the globe.

"This is not a 'happy Earth Day,'" Swedish activist Greta Thunberg tweeted Friday. "It never has been. Earth Day has turned into an opportunity for people in power to post their 'love' for the planet, while at the same time destroying it at maximum speed."

U.S. climate scientist Peter Kalmus, an expert who has taken direct action in recent days as part of a growing worldwide mobilization, tweeted Thursday that "the more we threaten the fossil fuel status quo, the less the media covers it."

"Our experience with the global Scientist Rebellion was almost no media coverage, and then only a little after it had already gone viral," Kalmus added. "The revolution will not be televised."

An online database unveiled earlier this week shows that financial institutions in G20 countries—many of which have pledged meaningful action to combat runaway warming—provided 2.5 times more financing for oil, gas, and coal projects than clean energy between 2018 and 2020, yet another example of governments' refusal to heed the increasingly dire warnings of climate scientists.

"The truth is, we have been poor custodians of our fragile home," United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement Friday. "Today, the Earth is facing a triple planetary crisis. Climate disruption. Nature and biodiversity loss. Pollution and waste."

"This triple crisis is threatening the wellbeing and survival of millions of people around the world," Guterres continued. "We need to do much more. And much faster. Especially to avert climate catastrophe."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

A group of climate campaigners on Friday blockaded the entrance of a printing plant in New York City in an effort to hamper the distribution of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other corporate-owned newspapers to protest their failure to cover the planetary emergency with "the frequency it deserves."

The activists, operating under the banner of Extinction Rebellion, stressed in a statement that the blockade was targeted not at individual journalists, but "at the board of directors and senior management at these institutions that determine what to include and exclude in each publication."

"Extinction Rebellion stands behind the right to free speech and a free press, and views the breaking of certain concrete mundane laws as a public plea for societal change," the statement reads. "The climate and ecological crisis is already here—destroying people's homes and livelihoods with extreme weather, droughts, and fire—yet governments and corporations, influenced by mass media corporations, are complacent by continuing to ignore the root causes of the crisis and the dire situation humanity is facing."

The demonstration singled out News Corp, The New York Times Company, and Gannett—which respectively own the Journal, the Times, and USA Today—for "enabling the government's gaslighting of the public" by burying critical climate stories below the fold or in later pages. The outlets have also come under fire for plastering fossil fuel company ads alongside their coverage and actively perpetuating climate disinformation.

Such failures, the campaigners argued, make it "easy for government to act like the climate and ecological crisis is years away, ignore scientists' urgent calls to action, and refuse to take the steps we need to start transforming our systems from finite and fragile to strong and resilient."

"They must be clear about the extreme cascading risks humanity now faces, the injustice this represents, its historic roots, and the urgent need for rapid political, social, and economic change," the activists continued. "This includes more front-page coverage of the climate emergency."

The demonstration came as scientists and youth climate activists around the world, marking Earth Day, engaged in rallies and non-violent civil disobedience to condemn their governments' continued support for fossil fuel production as accelerating warming wreaks havoc across the globe.

"This is not a 'happy Earth Day,'" Swedish activist Greta Thunberg tweeted Friday. "It never has been. Earth Day has turned into an opportunity for people in power to post their 'love' for the planet, while at the same time destroying it at maximum speed."

U.S. climate scientist Peter Kalmus, an expert who has taken direct action in recent days as part of a growing worldwide mobilization, tweeted Thursday that "the more we threaten the fossil fuel status quo, the less the media covers it."

"Our experience with the global Scientist Rebellion was almost no media coverage, and then only a little after it had already gone viral," Kalmus added. "The revolution will not be televised."

An online database unveiled earlier this week shows that financial institutions in G20 countries—many of which have pledged meaningful action to combat runaway warming—provided 2.5 times more financing for oil, gas, and coal projects than clean energy between 2018 and 2020, yet another example of governments' refusal to heed the increasingly dire warnings of climate scientists.

"The truth is, we have been poor custodians of our fragile home," United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement Friday. "Today, the Earth is facing a triple planetary crisis. Climate disruption. Nature and biodiversity loss. Pollution and waste."

"This triple crisis is threatening the wellbeing and survival of millions of people around the world," Guterres continued. "We need to do much more. And much faster. Especially to avert climate catastrophe."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

The Post-Courier newspaper today compared Papua New Guinean Prime Minister James Marape to the infamous emperor Nero who fiddled while Rome burned over his controversial one-day Indonesian visit while facing an election in June.

“And [he] was clearly despised by his people,” the paper said in a scathing editorial headlined “Tari burns while Marape fiddles”.

“The frivolities of life abounded in his rule and perhaps, in his greatest haste, when his Rome roared into flames, the adage, ‘Nero fiddles while Rome burns’ has stuck to this day to depict his indifference to the suffering of his people.”

• READ MORE: K5m for PM Marape’s one-day state visit to Jakarta
• Police ambushed in Tari – one reservist dead, barracks burned

Often used in a critical way, the paper said, the phrase had been applied colloquially to a leader who was “simply irresponsible in the face of responsibility”.

The Post-Courier said there were many examples of this in Papua New Guinea, “none more morbid and clarified as the disappearing act of our Prime Minister James Marape yesterday”.

The newspaper was criticising Marape for taking an entourage of 71 musicians on a sightseeing tour of Jakarta across the border while his “restive electorate of Tari, significant to Papua New Guinea for its oil and gas fields, sparked and is still burning today”.

Pai police barracks torched, 1 dead
One police reservist was reported dead and three houses were torched in an attack by gunmen on the Pai Police Barracks in Tari.

“How irresponsible is that? How can a Prime Minister ignore his own scorching electorate and simply fiddle his way on an overseas trip in the face of a tough upcoming national election?” the Post-Courier asked.

“His political opponents must be fiddling in glee at the very thought of political suicide.

“But the notion of our PM ignoring a serious matter such as Tuesday’s killings and injuring of policemen in his home town of Tari by angry armed locals, and the torching of a police barracks and a settlement, is tantamount to sacrilege of the code of leadership.

“Electing instead to go on a trip is akin to the ancient testament of Nero.

“Simply foolish pride and deserting one’s responsibilities in a time of grave danger is unforgivable.”

The problem with PNG leaders was that only a handful knew and practised their responsibilities with “faithful commitment”.

Marape criticises Post-Courier
Marape retorted with a statement carried by the Sunday Bulletin Facebook page denying that he had “run away from electoral duties”. He criticised the paper for stooping “low” and comparing the “once respected” Post-Courier unflatteringly with past versions.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

A media bribe? More like the deal of the century.

Fifty-five million dollars does sound like a lot of money. It could buy you a fantastic jet-setting lifestyle, homes around the world and certainly the freedom to never work again.

But what it won’t buy you is influence over a near 200-year-old industry that costs billions to run every year.

• READ MORE: Local Democracy Reporting reports on Asia Pacific Report

Yet, as the government’s Public Interest Journalism Fund turns towards its home straight, there is the baffling suggestion that somehow editors around New Zealand have all been “bought” by the Labour government.

It is a false, dangerous and frankly lazy assumption.

One of the bigger recipients of the fund is the Local Democracy Reporting scheme. It takes about $1.5 million a year. It will likely always need public money because it was set up to fix a problem.

Regional news is struggling. Advertising revenue has been hoovered by tech giants.

Facebook versus the Akaroa Mail… who would you bet on?

Slashed to survive
So, local radio stations, community papers and even regional titles in place for more than a century have had to slash to survive.

Reporters could no more sit in council meetings, chase up the activities of ports or dig into what district health boards are up to. There wasn’t the time. There wasn’t the money.

Journalists, already earning scandalously small wages, got sacked and local news got smaller.

Private media did not step in to fill the gap as there was no profit to be had.

So local lawmakers were quietly left alone to manage ratepayer money. Some did better than others.

Addressing this information vacuum, RNZ and the News Publishers’ Association got creative.

In 2019, they set up a project known as Local Democracy Reporting. Based on similar schemes in Canada and the UK, it now manages 15 reporters around the country.

Seeking the truth
The journalists, funded by taxpayer money, are employed to go and seek truth from publicly elected people and organisations.

Stories they write can be accessed by rival media outlets at the same time as they go to print by the host newsroom. It is, at its core, a domestic wire service.

Last year, LDR reporters wrote more than 3000 local stories from around the country generating more than 9 million page views.

Stories from the top to bottom of New Zealand were shared for free to the 30 media partners who sign up to the scheme.

And since the project’s inception in 2019, how many stories have been questioned by the purse holders at NZ On Air? Not one. Not a single email, telephone call or meeting has questioned the editorial output of any one of the reporters.

Neither has there been a single suggestion of a news line that reporters might consider. And if there had been, you can take it as gospel that these reporters would chuck the suggestions straight in the bin.

Journalists value their independence.

LDR reporters not ‘newbies’
LDR reporters are not “newbies” to the game either. They are at least mid-career and know their patches well. Most are part of a newsroom they worked in before LDR existed and are well in tune with their audience.

They are Māori, Pākehā, female, male, old and young. But most importantly they are skilled reporters who spend their time searching for fact, inconsistency, lies and truth.

The idea that they and their editors are now craven to government paymasters that they have never met is both preposterous and insulting.

And the best way to see this is to look at the stories. They hardly paint the government of the day in a flattering light.

Covid-19 rules, new laws for farmers, racial inequity and management of water are just some of the topics given regional voice. In these stories, government ministers don’t get a look in.

Some who decry public funding of news are also quick to complain that the ‘metropolitan elite’ don’t pay enough attention to the smaller towns and communities.

They say the mainstream media has no clue about ‘real New Zealand, doing it tough’.

Stitching it all together
LDR is in place to address that very concern.

Up and down the country, the reporters go out and talk to iwi, business owners, parents, councillors and mayors. They stitch it all together and get it in the news.

If you want to judge the success and worth of a local democracy reporter, go talk to your local councillors. Ask if they enjoy having reporters present at meetings. If they are honest, they will tell you that they don’t.

They know public discussion of any rate increase, speed limit change or building project could be online to a big audience within minutes.

The LDR project constantly keeps its eye on the use of public cash all around the country. It costs every New Zealander about 30 cents a year. What a bargain.

David Reid is the Local Democracy Reporting manager. Asia Pacific Report is an LDR partner.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Micronitor News and Printing Company founder Joe Murphy moved the goal posts of freedom of press and freedom of expression in the Marshall Islands, a country that had virtually no tradition of either, by establishing an independent newspaper that today is the longest running weekly in the Micronesia region.

Murphy’s sharp intellect, fierce independence, vision for creating a community newspaper, bilingual language ability, and resilience in the face of adversity saw him navigate hurdles — including high tide waves that in 1979 washed printing presses out of the Micronitor building and into the street — to successfully establish a printing company and newspaper in the challenging business environment of 1970s Majuro.

Murphy, who died at age 79 in the United States last week, was the original sceptic, who revelled in the politically incorrect.

• READ MORE: The Marshall Islands Journal

At 25, he arrived in the Marshall Islands capital Majuro in the mid-1960s and was dispatched by the Peace Corps to Ujelang, the atoll of the nuclear exiles from Enewetak bomb tests that was a textbook definition of the term “in the back of beyond.” A ship once a year, and no radio, TV, telephones or mail.

Still, Joe thrived as an elementary teacher, survived food shortages and hordes of rats, endearing him to a generation of Ujelang people as an honorary member of the exiled community.

After Ujelang, he wrapped up his two-year Peace Corps stint by taking over teaching an unruly urban centre public school class after the previous teacher walked out. He rewrote what he deemed boring curriculum and taught in military style, replete with chants in English.

These experiences in pre-1970s Marshall Islands fuelled his desire to return. After his Peace Corps tour, some time to travel the world, and a brief return to the US, Murphy headed back to Majuro.

No money, but a vision
He had no money to speak of, but he had a vision and he set out to make it happen.

“He was determined to start a newspaper written in both the English and Marshallese languages,” recalls fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Mike Malone, the co-founder with Murphy of what was initially known as Micronitor.

In late 1969, they began constructing a small newspaper building, mixing concrete and laying the foundation block-by-block with the help of a few friends.

Before the building was completed, however, they launched the Micronitor in 1970, printing from Malone’s house.

The Micronitor would be renamed later to the Micronesian Independent for a bit before finding its identity as the Marshall Islands Journal.

Writing in the Journal in 1999, Murphy commented: “The 30th anniversary of this publication is an event most of us who remember the humble beginnings of the Journal are surprised to see.

“February 13, 1970 was a Friday, an unlucky day to begin an enterprise by most reckonings, and the two guys who were spearheading the operation were Irish-extract alcohol aficionados with very little or no newspaper experience.

A worthy undertaking
“They also, between the two of them, had practically no money, and of course should never, had they any commonsense, even attempted such a worthy undertaking.

“But circumstances and time were on their side, and with all potential serious investors steering clear of such a dubious exercise they had the opportunity to make a great number of mistakes without an eager competitor ready and willing to capitalise on them.”

With Murphy at the helm, it wasn’t long before the Journal earned a reputation far beyond the shores of the tiny Pacific outpost of Majuro. Murphy encouraged local writers, and spiced the newspaper with pithy comment and attacks on US Trust Territory authorities and the Congress of Micronesia.

In the late 1980s and 1990s Murphy built two bars and restaurants, local-style places that appealed to Majuro residents as well as visitors. He also built the Backpacker Hotel, a modest cost accommodation that turned into a popular outpost for fisheries observers awaiting their next assignment at sea, low-budget journalists, environmentalists and assorted consultants.

“The first thing that people think about when it comes to my father is that he is a very successful businessman here in the Marshall Islands,” said his eldest daughter Rose Murphy, who manages the company today.

“But we need to remember him as someone who wanted to give the Republic of the Marshall Islands a voice.”

“To say Joe was a unique person is a large understatement,” said Health Secretary and former Peace Corps Volunteer Jack Niedenthal.

An icon with impact
“He was an icon and had a profound impact on our country because he fostered free speech and demanded that those in our government always be held publicly accountable for their actions.”

A plaque in his office defined his independent personality and his appreciation of the power of the press. It quoted the famous American journalist AJ Liebling: “Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.” This was followed by a three-word comment: “I own one.” – Joe Murphy.

“He fought for freedom of speech and fought against discrimination,” said Rose Murphy. “Regardless of race, religion, and even status, he befriended people from all parts of the world and from all walks of life.”

In the mid-1990s, Joe Murphy created what became the justly famous motto of the Journal, the “world’s worst newspaper.” It was a reaction to the more politically correct mottos of other newspapers.

Those three words led to wide international media exposure. In 1994, the Boston Globe conducted a survey of the world’s worst newspapers, reviewing a batch of Journals Murphy mailed.

When the Globe reporter concluded that despite its claim, the Journal not only didn’t rank as the world’s worst newspaper it was “a first-class newspaper,” Murphy’s reaction was to say, “We must have sent you the wrong issues.”

Murphy knew the key to successful newspaper publishing was not how nicely or otherwise the newspaper was packaged, or if a photograph was in colour. The most important ingredient in any successful local newspaper is original content, intelligently and interestingly written.

‘Livened up’ the Journal
He did more than his fair share to liven up the Journal, from the time of its launch until poor health after 2019 prevented his engagement in the newspaper.

“My father experienced extreme hardships on Ujelang along with his adopted Marshallese family, the exiled people of Enewetak Atoll, who were moved to Ujelang to make way for US nuclear tests in the late 1940s,” said daughter Rose.

“He shared these hardships with his children to give them the perspective of being grateful for any little thing we had. If we had a broken shoe or little food, he shared with us this story.

“Our father, to us, is a symbol of resilience and gratitude. Be resilient in tough situations.”

From growing up among eight children of Irish immigrant parents in the United States to the austerity of Ujelang Atoll to the early days of establishing what would become the longest publishing weekly newspaper in the Micronesia region, Murphy was indeed a symbol of resilience and independence, able to navigate tough situations with alacrity.

“Democracy was able to establish a toehold, and then a firm grip, in the Western Pacific in part because of a handful of journalism pioneers who believed in the power of truth, particularly Joe Murphy on Majuro,” said veteran Pacific island journalist Floyd K Takeuchi.

“He had the courage to challenge the powers that be, including those of the chiefly kind, to be better, and to do better.

“People forget that for many years, the long-term future of the Marshall Islands Journal wasn’t a sure thing. With every issue of the weekly newspaper, Joe’s legacy is made firmer in the islands he so loved.”

Murphy is survived by his wife Thelma, by children Rose, Catherine “Katty,” John, Suzanne, Margaret “Peggy,” Molly, Fintan, Sam, Charles “Kainoa,” Colleen “Naki,” Patrick “Jojo”, Sean, Sylvia Zedkaia and Deardre Korean, and by 32 grandchildren.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

New Zealand’s leading daily newspaper today published an editorial exposing the “unfairness” of global media criticism of Australasian responses to covid-19, showing statistics that demonstrate how well the two countries have done.

While Australia has lost 4243 people to covid-19 out of a population of 26 million, New Zealand has lost just 53 people out of a population of 5 million.

The omicron variant outbreak that has devastated many other countries is only just taking a hold in New Zealand with a record 306 community cases reprted today — 216 of them in Auckland.

• READ MORE: Live RNZ News updates on the protest at Parliament
• Protest on Parliament grounds has risk of becoming superspreader event, says Professor Baker

“Australia’s announced reopening of its borders to vaccinated tourists and other visa holders from February 21 drew the expected foreign media reaction,” said the New Zealand Herald in an editorial headlined “How hard has NZ really gone on covid-19?”

But the newspaper contrasted the saving of lives in Australasia with the global devastation caused by the covid-19 pandemic worldwide with 403 million cases and 5.79 million deaths.

“The BBC noted that ‘Australia has had some of the world’s strictest border controls throughout the coronavirus pandemic’ with the country ‘even banning its own people from leaving the country last year’.

“Reuters said the move ended ‘two years of misery for the tourism sector’ and AFP summarised it as “the rules have stranded nationals overseas, split families, hammered the country’s multibillion-dollar tourist industry, and prompted often bitter debates about Australia’s status as a modern, open and outward-looking nation’.”

Financial costs, not lives saved
The Herald said that coverage had focused far more on financial costs and Australians stranded overseas than lives saved.

The newspaper cited head of Tourism Australia Phillipa Harrison as saying that Australia had been “a little bit ridiculed” for its border closures and other rules and warning that it could have an impact on its tourism recovery.

“Australia, like New Zealand, has become synonymous with strictness in dealing with the coronavirus. It is a narrative that has taken hold, but is this image fair?” asked the Herald.

Both countries had certainly made the most of their island borders and geographical isolation.

“Australia has a death rate of 163 per million people from covid-19 and New Zealand’s is 11, according to the Worldometer website, The Herald reminded its readers.

“Japan (154), South Korea (134), and Singapore (147) have also done well. Major countries with death rates over 2000 include the US, Brazil, France, the UK, Russia, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Greece.”

Australia’s closures of state borders and Auckland’s lockdown fence had all drawn attention to covid measures in this part of the world, sid the newspaper.

Australasia ‘sticks out’ in pandemic
“It has made Australasia stick out in a pandemic that has been politicised around the world, even though other countries have also used tough requirements.”

The Herald said a time lag between when pandemic events such as variant surged and vaccine rollouts occurred overseas could give the impression other countries had not also been stringent.

“For instance, when New Zealand initially delayed reopening borders, omicron was setting record case numbers overseas and vanquishing delta. France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark are just now starting to ease restrictions but their omicron waves began towards the end of last year.”

On the Oxford Stringency Index, which tracked governments’ coronavirus responses, neither Australia nor New Zealand’s ratings — 55.56 and 62.04 — were out of the ordinary.

“For instance, Canada, Italy, Greece, Germany and France are rated more stringent,” said The Herald.

New Zealand had had vaccination mandates in sectors such as health, education, emergency services, police, and defence.

“In Europe a variety of mandates target specific groups. Germany requires vaccination for the military, in Britain it is compulsory for nursing-home staff. Greece has ordered people aged 60-plus to have it and in Italy people over 50 can be fined if they aren’t vaccinated.

Extensive European border controls
“Austria requires most aged 18 and over to get vaccinated against covid-19.

“European countries have had extensive border and travel requirements. In December, France temporarily banned travellers from Britain and Germany imposed quarantine on them.

“There has also been extensive use of vaccine passports. Ireland had a night-time curfew in December.

“Several European countries have used outdoor mask mandates and required the wearing of specific types of high-quality masks. America’s most populous county of Los Angeles has had a mask mandate for large outdoor events as well as for outdoor spaces at schools and childcare places — on top of indoor mask requirements,” said the newspaper.

“Citizens in other countries have been confronted with huge death counts, infections and long covid. That’s family members and friends lost.

“Kiwi expats have drawn attention to the shortcomings of MIQ, but a new poll shows most voters steady in their views on how the government is performing.

“Once most countries are reconnecting and the pandemic eases, the figures remaining for posterity will show how countries fared in health and overall economic terms.”

Proud of Ardern’s leadership
Among letters to the editor supporting NZ’s MIQ border policies published by the newspaper today, one New Zealander living in Mansfield, Pennsylvania, wrote: “I am proud of the intelligent way [Prime Minister] Jacinda Ardern has dealt with border control during covid-19”.

She added: “Here in the US, the death toll has reached nearly a million. We have been in self-imposed lockdown for nearly two years …

“New Zealanders have never had to live under Trumpism, Hitlerism, PolPotism, or other despotic regimes. Please be worthy of the soldiers, such as the Anzacs, who fought to keep the world safe for democracy. Did they die in vain?

“Please give Jacinda Ardern the respect she deserves.”

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

I have been reading the tea leaves in the bottom of the online subscription cup.

My fortune-telling has been assisted by some very interesting international statistics.

The pattern in the bottom of the cup is telling me that the winner-takes-most paywall phenomenon that has characterised the US market may not be repeated in the New Zealand market in the longer term.

• READ MORE: Other Gavin Ellis commentaries

If we follow the American example of great success by the New York Times and Washington Post, The New Zealand Herald (which is the subscription leader in New Zealand with more than 110,000 online premium subscribers) will soak up the majority of those willing to pay for their news.

In the United States, where 21 percent have paid for online news in the past 12 months, more than half subscribe to either the New York Times or Washington Post and less than a quarter to local or regional sites.

In Britain, the heavyweight nationals – Telegraph, Times, and Guardian – command 55 percent of the paid online market and the very small percentage of Brits who are prepared to pay (only 8 percent) won’t look at paying for papers further down the food chain.

However, the latest Reuters Institute Digital News Report contains statistics that suggest winner-takes-most may not be a foregone conclusion. We could follow the Scandinavian experience.

Norwegian model
In Norway, where close to half the population pay for online news, the three biggest national titles do command a significant subscriber audience between them but so, too, do regional and local news sites. Almost half of the subscribers take either VG, Aftenposten or Dagbladet but almost 60 percent subscribe closer to home.

In Norway, according to the Reuters survey, local newspapers are seen as the “go-to” source for politics (71 percent), crime (73 percent), coronavirus news (53 percent), and things to do (46 percent).

“Our research this year also shows a link between how attached people are to their local community and levels of local news consumption,” the report states. “Respondents in both Austria and Switzerland are amongst those countries that feel most strongly attached and – like Norway – these are also countries where local news consumption tends to be higher and the value of local newspapers is more keenly felt…

“None of this is to suggest that publishers in countries with more attachment are not also suffering from the impact of digital disruption. We see blind spots and decline in most markets, but the fact that local newspapers in Norway are still valued for a local newspaper bundle of different information services gives them a stronger chance of persuading people to pay for online news.”

New Zealand is a country that traditionally has had a regional and local focus in paid-for news. There are historical reasons for that. Transport in the newspaper industry’s formative period was difficult and the country’s topography means it remains expensive.

Newspapers developed around regional and local population centres. Even if they don’t buy it each day, most people will be able to tell you the name of their local newspaper. It is a different story with free-to-air broadcasting.

After short private enterprise experiments, broadcasting became government-owned and news management centralised. Network technology solidified the national focus of television in particular.

Closest to national daily
We have never had a national daily general newspaper. The closest we came was National Business Review’s five-year stint as a daily from the late 1980s. Efforts a decade later to fly The New Zealand Herald into Wellington and the South Island (The Dominion was briefly flown into Auckland) were expensive exercises that could not be sustained as revenue declined and internet use grew.

And, in any event, the Herald was an additional purchase for the majority of buyers in those centres, not an alternative.

Like most countries, New Zealand is still feeling its way through the conundrum of payment for news in the digital age. There are various forms of subscription in the online news market but the most obvious (and numerically superior) is the paywall.

The New Zealand Herald had first mover advantage on paywalls in the daily general news market (National Business Review had long ago introduced an expensive and impenetrable paywall on anything worth reading on its site). It also has far and away the largest regional population base.

So, although it has done remarkably well with its premium subscriptions, it is premature to put the title up there with the winner-take-most titles The New York Times, Washington Post and Britain’s Daily Telegraph.

Stuff has yet to take the subscription plunge but it will come in one shape or another. The donation strategy it currently pursues is drawing support but it is too haphazard in terms of contributions to cashflow. It relies on goodwill and there is no real downside to not donating. How it characterises its subscription strategy will be the key to success or failure.

If it sells itself as a national news source serving all of the country it may come second. NZME is already pursuing that strategy with the Herald brand. It is banking on New Zealand following the US/UK model and last November unveiled plans to make the Herald “New Zealand’s Herald” by, among other things, rebranding its regional titles – Bay of Plenty Herald, Rotorua Herald, Hawkes Bay Herald and so on.

NZME has first-mover advantage
If the US/UK model is working here, NZME has a clear first-mover advantage. If, however, the New Zealand market does not perform to that model, Stuff may capture the same sentiment that is manifesting itself in Norway. If it capitalises on the legacy value of its regional titles as subscriber brands, that could be more successful than the perception of a bunch of JAFAs playing fast and loose with a local masthead that has been around for more than a century.

This does not necessarily mean a host of separate news sites that could be a nightmare to administer. Technology is now clever enough to construct individual and group offerings that are tailored to need. What appears to be a separate site may, in fact, be a subset of Stuff determined by algorithms.

Stuff might like to look to Canada’s Globe and Mail (whose publisher is one-time New Zealand Herald chief executive Phillip Crawley). It has developed artificial learning technology, which it calls Sophi, to automate and optimise a host of publishing decisions around its paywall.

It can, for example, determine what covid-19 information to put behind the paywall and what to provide free for everyone to access. It is a powerful engine that is now used by 11 different publishers across 50 outlets.

The leaves at the bottom of my cup tell me that regional and local brand identity will play a crucial role when the major paid-for news outlets go head-to-head in a subscription contest.

Time will tell whether the dregs of my cup are better at foretelling the future than the cup of someone’s desk at NZME. If I have any advantage it may be that I make a very nice cup of Taylors of Harrogate Yorkshire Tea.

Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications – covering both editorial and management roles – that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes a blog called Knightly Views where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

• Read the full Gavin Ellis column here

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called for the restoration of media pluralism and unrestricted internet access in Myanmar, where the military, in the weeks since staging a coup d’état on February 1, has reasserted full control over news and information.

The military has “engineering the disappearance of the last independent newspapers” and imposed tight curbs on online access, RSF says in a statement.

Many newspapers betrayed their readers during the Great Depression and now some are doing so again during the coronavirus pandemic.

During the Depression, Australia’s major daily newspapers loudly resisted calls for economic stimulus to revive the economy. Even the tabloids – whose working class audiences were feeling the full brunt of unemployment – campaigned instead for government spending cuts that hit their readers hard.

Self-interest was behind this. The companies and individuals behind Australia’s most popular daily newspapers in the early 1930s were bondholders who had lent enormous sums of money to Australian governments before the Depression.

READ MORE: A matter of trust: coronavirus shows again why we value expertise when it comes to our health

So had banks, trustee and life insurance companies that were allied with newspaper owners, and also major newspaper advertisers.

If Australian governments had not made severe cuts to spending and instead injected money into the economy through welfare and job creation projects, they would not have been able to pay back their debts. Domestic bondholders would have lost millions in interest payments.

– Partner –

Now, we see some news outlets again betraying their readers by prioritising business over public health.

In the Murdoch News Corp/Fox Corporation stable in the US, Fox News downplayed the spread of the virus for as long as it could.

Its presenters ridiculed predictions about its impact as coming from “panic pushers” and liberals out to damage Trump, while the Wall Street Journal editorialised that shutdowns might be safeguarding public health but “at the cost of its economic health”.

Trump jumped on cue and began spouting the same shameful rhetoric that the cure might be worse than the disease because of its economic impact. He wanted Americans back to work by Easter.

Murdoch’s Sun in the UK represented shutdowns there with a bleak front page calling them “HOUSE ARREST” and showing a padlock over the Union Jack.

In the Murdoch outlets in Australia, these views are being faithfully reproduced by Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun and Sky News. Bolt’s column on March 30 was headed “Aussies should be back at work in two weeks”.

During the Great Depression, the mainstream press strongly reflected the economic conservatism of bankers, economists and business leaders. The most vehement outlets were the Argus and the Herald in Melbourne, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph in Sydney, the Mercury in Hobart, and the Brisbane Telegraph and Brisbane Courier. They attacked the Scullin Labor government’s plan to reflate the economy through government stimulus as “economic insanity”, “a dangerous experiment”, “grotesque and menacing”.

But in a turn of phrase that even those papers might have found too hysterical, Bolt recently described economic stimulus packages during coronavirus as “Marxism”. This is despite the fact that economic stimulus is now so widely accepted as part of a mainstream economic toolkit that conservative politicians are using it in Australia, the UK and the US.

Sky News host Alan Jones has also downplayed the virus, saying “we are living in the age of hysteria” and that he wants to see the emphasis placed on protecting people “in nursing homes and hospitals instead of schools and football stadiums”.

Sky News video: ‘We are living in the age of hysteria.’

Right-wing commentators – presumably working from home themselves – are keen to get everyone back to work in the midst of a pandemic, even though the medical advice says otherwise.

The usual pretence that they are on the side of their audience falls away at a time of crisis. They are representing the interests of business – particularly their own.

Media companies that were already financially fragile are extremely worried about coronavirus. The sudden halt to business has meant the loss of advertising revenue, possibly for a long period, but also the loss of reader income. This means people have less to spend on media and on buying advertisers’ products.

Combined with this is the dramatic loss of sport (of vital importance to the struggling Foxtel, Kayo Sports and tabloid newspapers) and also the end of house auctions when real estate sections and real estate websites were one of the few remaining bright spots for the newspaper groups. The bread-and-butter events that newspapers cover, from entertainment and leisure to restaurant and movies, have stopped, and nobody knows for how long.

These are unprecedented and menacing threats to commercial media groups. At News Corp, there is the added pressure of a transition in leadership from the 89-year-old Rupert Murdoch to his son, Lachlan Murdoch, a less tested – and less trusted – leader who is unlikely to have the business nous of his father or even his grandfather, Keith Murdoch.

As a journalist and editor, Keith Murdoch was one of those who promoted business interests during the Depression. Rupert’s father was also a vehement conscriptionist during the first and second world wars. Although Keith never signed up for military service himself, he propagandised, almost obsessively, for conscription and called on other men to make a sacrifice for a greater cause.

We need to beware the media commentators of today, anti-science and anti-expertise armchair generals, who likewise call on their fellow citizens to do things they won’t do themselves.

By Sally Young, professor of the University of Melbourne. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Media on both sides on the Tasman face apocalyptic times as the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic decimates the industry with Bauer Media NZ closing its doors and host of regional – 23 at the moment – Australian papers being shut down.

Add to that, the imminent closure of the Australian Associated Press on June 26 – although that had nothing to do with the virus – and there is not much to be optimistic about in the industry.

READ MORE: Bauer Media closures – so many livelihoods, so much destruction

“NZ journalism must not be left to languish. The sudden closure of Bauer Media NZ is devastating for New Zealand journalism and for the publics which depend on it in this time of national crisis,” said Greg Treadwell, president of the Journalism Education Association New Zealand (JEANZ) in a statement issued yesterday, which was co-signed by Dr Tara Ross, head of journalism at the University of Canterbury and Charles Riddle, principal academic staff member, journalism, at Wintec.

“Iconic magazine titles that have been household names, some for generations, were today shut down, with the Covid-19 crisis blamed for the closures.

“Among the pages consigned to history today was the work of some of the country’s pre-eminent journalists. The implications for New Zealand democracy are serious.”

– Partner –

He described it as numerous blows to the media industry.

Essential industry reeling
“These closures have impacted an essential industry already reeling with multiple structural and commercial failures.

“Redundancies are under way or reportedly mooted for other major media companies in New Zealand.

“The Journalism Education Association of New Zealand urges the New Zealand government to keep public-affairs journalism at the forefront of its thinking as it moves to support New Zealanders during the Covid-19 crisis,” Dr Treadwell said.

Meanwhile, in Australia the Journalism, Education and Research Association (JERAA) has joined the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) in calling on the government to provide $40 million emergency funding from the Regional and Small Publishers Jobs and Innovation Package as a survival fund to keep regional and rural newspapers alive during the coronavirus crisis.

“I think that is a really important thing in Australia right now, New Zealand suffers from this as well,” Dr Treadwell said.

“But I completely understand our Australian colleagues calling on the government to support their community newspapers because they suffer from news deserts there, not just physical ones, but news deserts where whole communities have no local papers.

“This is happening in New Zealand as well, our community newspapers that are around here need to operate during the lockdown.

‘Dreadful state’
“I do think the New Zealand community newspaper scene is in a dreadful state.”

As, for Australia, in a statement JERAA said Saffron Howden’s evolving map of Australia showed 23 closed newspapers including the Sunraysia Daily, The Guardian – Swan Hill, Gannawarra Times, Loddon Times, Barrier Daily Truth, Yarram Standard, Great Southern Star, Latrobe Valley Express, Star News Group, Maryborough District Advertiser, Gulf Chronicle, North Central News, Shepparton News, New South Western Standard, Cape and Torres News, The Bunyip, Bairnsdale Advertiser, Warragul and Drouin Gazette.

In addition, JERAA also noted News Corp Australia’s decision to suspend the printing of 60 community titles in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia from April 9.

While these publications will continue to publish digital news, the loss of print products will be an accessibility issue in regions with aging populations or limited internet access, the JERAA statement said.

Dr Treadwell called on the government to support New Zealand’s community newspapers.
He expressed sympathy for the Kaiatia-based Northland Age and its editor Peter Jackson, which has closed after 116-years.

“The idea of the Northland Age no longer publishing is heart-breaking, the government needs to act, it’s not as if you can off a newspaper and turn it back on again,” he said.

In the JEANZ statement, he said: “While we commend the change that will allow community papers to publish during the national lockdown, the government should also make plans to ensure all New Zealanders continue to get high-quality information in the coming months.

“Not only will we need strong science and environment reporting, we will need in-depth, long-form and even creative journalism to tell the complex stories that will arise from this pandemic.

“A well-informed public will be essential. An adequately resourced news media, across both public and private sectors, is also critical in the current state of emergency, given the dramatically increased powers the state has at its disposal.”

Pacific facing crisis too
The Pacific Media Centre’s director Professor David Robie, who is also deeply concerned about the impending crisis for many Pacific Islands media groups, said his response to the closures in Australia and New Zealand was “in a word – devastated”.

“The media in many respects has been dying a slow death, certainly in print. And although we have a number of small yet successful start-up digital media ventures, we have witnessed the gradual decline of quality media overall in New Zealand,” he said.

“In one foul swoop, a foreign-owned corporate, Bauer Media, has been allowed to destroy the heart of New Zealand’s magazine industry. And there has been barely a whimper.

“We no longer even have a strong media union – such as Australia has with the MEAA to stage at least some semblance of a defence. I find it quite outrageous that a German company can do this, one that has just reported group profits back home – just dump a cluster of NZ cultural icons in publishing with such titles as Metro, the Listener and NZ Women’s Weekly with their long and proud histories.

“Especially when we are led to believe that the government tried to intervene and offered substantial financial support to keep the company going. One suspects that Bauer were planning to scuttle the magazines anyway and the pandemic simply provided the pretext.”

Dr Robie said he believed all media in New Zealand should have been treated as “essential services” – especially in this “so-called post-truth era when we are faced with an avalanche on lies, disinformation and fake news”.

“Many among the general public don’t know what to believe any more. We need more quality media with a trusted pedigree, not less.

“And community publications identified closely with their neighbourhoods and ethnic and diasporic media are also vitally important in our democracy. Closing or silencing of media inevitably weakens the robustness of our democracy.”

Apart from Bauer Media, the Northland Age and Radio Sport, Mediaworks has asked staff to take a 15 percent pay cut, Television New Zealand has frozen payrates, NZME is calling redundancies and Stuff staff have been warned to expect a cull.

The Timor-Leste Press Council directors have called a media conference to announce that one of the country’s five newspapers, Jornal Independente, is distributing free copies of its daily editions to residents subject to quarantine lockdowns after the country confirmed its first positive Covid-19 case.

The newspaper publishes news in Tetum, Portuguese and English.

The unmasked director, Francisco Belo da Costa, read a statement expressing appreciation for this move which included devoting a whole section on the virus.

READ MORE: Timor-Leste health ministry urges calm over first positive Covid-19 case

The gesture by the Jornal’s newspaper director, Jose Sarito Amaral, is designed to keep its isolated citizens up-to-date.

The small nation’s leaders were quick to respond to the arrival of the pandemic this week.

– Partner –

Bob Howarth is a media consultant and correspondent of Pacific Media Watch.

Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Dr Sa’ilele Malielegaoi’s insistence on telling the media how to do its job is unnecessary. Coming at a time when there are so many pressing issues he should be dealing with as the leader of this nation, we humbly suggest he should focus all his energy there.

The simple truth is that Tuilaepa has a job to do, and that is to run the country, and we, in the media, have ours. He should concentrate on his job and allow us in the media to do the same.

People who know and follow the political discourse in this country would understand that it is not unusual for Prime Minister Tuilaepa to get involved in all spheres of life in Samoa.

READ MORE: Media should play down sex crimes: PM

From sports, religion, villages, families to government affairs, he comes across as a one-man authority who perhaps feels it is his divine purpose to say whatever and expect people to swallow it without question.

On the pages of the Weekend Observer yesterday, a story with the headline “Media should play down sex crimes: P.M.” was a typical example. It immediately drew attention especially during a week when Samoa has hosted the 84th Extraordinary Session of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, where Tuilaepa himself had repeatedly called on the public to “break the culture of silence” about sex crimes and violence against women and children.

– Partner –

Away from the international audiences where he had been saying all the right things to keep them happy, when Tuilaepa fronted up to the local media, he was singing a different tune. He turned on the local media for reporting sexual crimes, saying they depict Samoa in a negative light.

“It doesn’t happen often but the problem is the media enjoys publicising these cases involving an elderly man doing filthy things to his daughter,” Tuilaepa said.

Reports read overseas
“The cases are probably nowhere near 10 in a year but it’s being reported week in and week out. These reports are being read by those overseas and it sounds like this is all that men in Samoa do from Monday to Sunday.”

Tuilaepa continued that when he sees reports being televised about sexual crimes he switches off his TV set.

But he didn’t stop there. ilaepaHe also criticised comments made by a student during the 84th Extraordinary Session of the Committee on the Rights of the Child that his peers were being beaten up on a regular basis.  He said the student’s comments sounded like something that was rehearsed.

“This is what the people in the media are doing and it includes those that are in the programme [CRC] who are badmouthing the country,” he said. While he did not name anyone in particular, he said such people have no pride in their country.

Well that’s tough, isn’t it? How does a person speaking their mind about what is happening to them come across as someone who has no pride in his/her country?

Besides, what about this nagging thing called the “truth”? When it comes to sexual crimes, the truth is staring at us unblinkingly everyday. Down at Mulinu’u at the halls of justice, judges of the courts have been telling us for years that sexual crimes against women and young girls have been rising dramatically.

What’s more, the details of these crimes have become more disturbing by the day since they involve the violation of the sanctity of the homes, where women, girls and young boys should be protected from harm.

Bigger threat a concern
If there is a bigger threat that we should be concerned about as a nation, it is an attack on the value of families, including sexual crimes. Charity begins at home and if our homes are dysfunctional as a result of these attacks, this will obviously have a flow on effect on the nation as a whole.

Which is why we should be talking about this stuff. It is why we should bring it out in the open and come together to find solutions so we could strategically deal with them.

Does that mean we have no pride in our country? Absolutely not.

If anything, it shows how much we care. And when it comes to the protection of our most vulnerable citizens, women and children, we should not let pride get in the way. We should swallow that silly pride and humble ourselves to do what needs to be done.

Who cares about what the world thinks? We say this knowing that these problems are not confined to Samoa. They are happening all over the world, in some places much, much worse.

What’s important is that we are being proactive and instead of trying to bury it under the mat, Prime Minister Tuilaepa and his government should take the lead to address them. How? By being transparent and accountable about it. That’s all it will take.

This is also why Tuilaepa’s suggestion that the media should turn a blind eye to the reporting of sex crimes is absurd. That stuff only happens in countries where censorship dictates what the media can and cannot do. As far as we are concerned, Samoa is a democracy, not a dictatorship.

Talk to JAWS
Perhaps Prime Minister Tuilaepa should spend some time with the president of the Journalists Association of [Western] Samoa (JAWS), Rudy Bartley and listen to what he has to say. In response to the Prime Minister’s comments about the work of the media, Bartley makes a lot more sense.

“Some issues may not be favorable to some but reporting on it highlights the need for such issues to be addressed by government and responsible authorities,” Bartley said.

“In exposing such issues, this opens up discussion and possible solutions to these problems. The people’s right to know is the driving force in finding solutions to many of the challenges that Samoa is facing. Exposing issues which may be unpopular is one way of making the government act in finding solutions.”

Precisely. We couldn’t agree more.

What this country should insist on is the truth.

Pride comes before the fall and if we look at all the problems Samoa is having to deal with today, they all point to a misguided sense of pride which masks the truth so that all appears well when things are really rotting beneath the surface.

What do you think?

Have a peaceful Sunday Samoa, God bless!

This editorial was published by the Sunday Samoan newspaper today.