Two staff members from the School of Journalism and Communication recently spent a week in Samoa discussing the media freedom issues plaguing Fiji and elsewhere in the Pacific.
Lecturer Dr Mark Hayes and Centre for Communication and Social Change Project Support Officer Marsali Mackinnon, were invited to attend the Pacific Freedom Forum Project XIX Courage Under Fire workshop in Suva in late April, and had to change their travel plans at short notice.
“The deportation of the ABC’s Pacific Correspondent, Sean Dorney, and two New Zealand television journalists over Easter, the imposition of severe media censorship in all Fiji newsrooms, and continuing harassment and detention of journalists in Suva led to our Head of School, Professor Michael Bromley, banning all staff travel to and even through Fiji,” Dr Hayes said.
Mr Dorney spoke to a first-year UQ journalism class the week after his deportation, and received an extremely supportive response from almost 300 students.
The Pacific Freedom Forum is a Regional e-mail and blog-based group of Pacific journalists, academics, and media freedom advocates formed last year to monitor and respond to attacks on Pacific journalists and media freedom.
The Apia workshop was attended by more than 40 delegates from 12 Pacific nations, including journalism lecturers from the National University of Samoa.
Ms Deborah Muir, Project Manager of the Asia – Pacific office of the International Federation of Journalists also conducted a training session on media freedom and advocacy.
“Ms Mackinnon and I participated in many group sessions, shared our experience and expertise where it was useful, and renewed or made many new contacts with our Pacific media and journalism colleagues,” Dr Hayes said.
“The high points for me were just welcoming three Fijian journalists to the workshop: Netani Rika, Editor in Chief of The Fiji Times, one of his reporters, Verenaisi Raicola, and News Director at Fiji TV, Merana Kitione,” Dr Hayes said.
“We were very worried the Fiji authorities would not even allow them out of the country to come to the workshop, so I was very pleased to see my friends, Netani and Merana, and then hear their first-hand stories of navigating, coping with, and resisting the rigorous censorship,” he said.
The host media organisation, the Journalist’s Association of (Western) Samoa (JAWS) postponed its celebration of World Press Freedom Day, usually held on the third of May, to coincide with the Pacific Freedom Forum workshop.
UQ and the School of Journalism and Communication are hosting World Press Freedom Day in May 2010, and Ms Mackinnon discussed the developing plans for this important global event with workshop participants.
“On behalf of UQ, I took the opportunity to invite South Pacific journalists to take a starring role in next year’s global World Press Freedom Day event at our St Lucia campus, and to use it as a platform to draw the world’s attention to major Pacific media freedom issues,” Ms Mackinnon said.
Media: Mark Hayes (07 3346 8255, mahayes@uqconnect.net)
