At Papua New Guinea’s Post-Courier, our senior journalists often operate in the shadows, yet their courageous efforts are often overlooked — continuously pushing boundaries to bring us important stories that shape our lives and venturing outside their comfort zones to deliver top-notch content.
This is the tale of one of Post-Courier’s esteemed senior journalists, Gorethy Kenneth. From Tegese Village, Lontis on Buka Island in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, “GK” (Gee-Kay) as her colleagues fondly call her, has dedicated 23 years of her life to journalism at this newspaper.
When asked about who inspired her to pursue a career in media and journalism, she said, “My late father!” She mentions that she “always wanted to be an economist like her uncle Julius Longa”.
However, she states that “Maths was horrible . . . So, my late papa told me, I talk too much and should think about television — I ended up with newspaper reporting.”
Fast forward to 2024
Through her dedication and persistence, Kenneth is now a senior journalist within the company, specialising as a political editor. She commends the company for its commitment to well-researched investigative journalism, impartial reporting, comprehensive coverage, community involvement, thorough analysis, and informative content.
Starting off with Uni Tavur student journalist newspaper at the University of Papua New Guinea, Kenneth has amassed a wealth of experience as a profound writer and encountered different personalities over the years, noting numerous stories she covered during her tenure at the Post-Courier.
As a proud Bougainvillean, she highlights her interview with Francis Ona, the reclusive leader of her home province at the time. Reflecting on the experience, she remarks, “I was the first and last to interview him — the journey to get through to him was tough, despite my Bougainvillean heritage.”
Kenneth is known for her unique approach to investigative journalism. One memorable story she recalls, is about a scandalous love triangle between a former Secretary of Foreign Affairs and his secret lover, known as “Jolyne”.
Senior Post-Courier journalist Gorethy Kenneth . . . a distinguished career marked by championing significant projects and advocating for social change. Image: Post-Courier
Using a clever tactic, Kenneth assumed the identity of “Jolyne” and managed to reach the Secretary through a landline call, shedding light on the secretive affair. Amusingly, veteran journalists now refer to her as “Jolyne”, a nod to the character she ingeniously portrayed to deceive the unsuspecting Secretary.
In the early 2000s, she, alongside security reporter Robyn Sela, daringly stepped out of their comfort zone, orchestrating an audacious plan: deliberately getting themselves arrested and spending time in Boroko Jail.
Their goal? To delve into the conditions of a prison cell in Port Moresby and report on it firsthand. However, their scheme didn’t escape the notice of chief-of-staff Blaise Nangoi and editor Oseah Philemon, who, upon discovering their intentions, expressed concern.
“They almost sidelined us for getting bailed out with company money – BUT, we got our story,” she gladly remarked.
As one of Post-Courier’s prominent writers, Kenneth has faced numerous hurdles during her time as a journalist. She faced threats and legal disputes from unsatisfied readers and grappled with “ethical dilemmas” while covering sensitive topics — she has encountered her fair share of challenges.
Moreover, she has confronted issues surrounding gender and diversity during her career.
Senior Post-Courier journalist Gorethy Kenneth with her “big, big, big very big boss”, News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch. Image: Gorethy Kenneth/FB
In addition to these personal and professional obstacles, Kenneth highlights the impact of “digital disruption” on the newspaper industry. The transition from traditional print media to digital platforms, including the widespread use of social media and streaming services, has significantly challenged newspaper companies like the Post-Courier in recent years.
Fortunately, Kenneth managed to power through these challenges with the support of training and supervision provided by Post-Courier. She applauds the company for its unwavering support during trying times.
Additionally, she took proactive steps to enhance her understanding of journalistic issues, demonstrating her commitment to growth and professional development.
Gorethy Kenneth . . . proactive steps to enhance her understanding of journalistic issues, demonstrating her commitment to growth and professional development. Image: Post-Courier
Continuing to persevere, Gorethy forged a distinguished career marked by championing significant projects and advocating for social change. Armed with the ability to influence public opinion, she found her work as a journalist immensely rewarding.
Her career afforded her the opportunity to travel both locally and internationally, and she reported on stories rife with conflict and controversy. Furthermore, she finds fulfillment in the role of mentoring future journalists, cherishing the chance to impart her knowledge and experience onto the next generation.
When asked about what she is proud of, she says . . . “I am still 16 at heart – don’t tell me I’m old among my young journo colleagues.”
During her free time, she enjoys sipping on her whiskey and reading. She continues to support her family, friends, enemies and her community at a personal level and at a professional level as a senior journalist.
Republished from the Post-Courier with permission.
Reporting during the covid-19 pandemic in Papua New Guinea. Image: Post-Courier
Teals and Greens are under political attack from a new pro-fossil fuel, pro-Israel astroturfing group, adding to the onslaught by far-right lobbyists Advance Australia for Australian federal election tomorrow — World Press Freedom Day. Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon investigate.
SPECIAL REPORT: By Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon
On February 12 this year, former prime minister Scott Morrison’s principal private secretary Yaron Finkelstein, and former Labor NSW Treasurer Eric Roozendaal, met in the plush 50 Bridge St offices in the heart of Sydney’s CBD.
The powerbrokers were there to discuss election strategies for the astroturfing campaign group Better Australia 2025 Inc.
Finkelstein now runs his own discreet advisory firm Society Advisory, while also a director of the Liberal Party’s primary think-tank Menzies Research Centre. Previously, he worked as head of global campaigns for the conservative lobby firm Crosby Textor (CT), before working for Morrison and as Special Counsel to former NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet.
Roozendaal earned a reputation as a top fundraiser during his term as general secretary of NSW Labor and a later stint for the Yuhu property developer. He is now a co-convenor of Labor Friends of Israel.
The two strategists have previously served together on the executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, where Finkelstein was vice-president (2010-2019) and Roozendaal was later the chair of public affairs (2019-2020).
Better for whom? Better Australia chairperson Sophie Calland, a software engineer and active member of the Alexandria Branch of the Labor party attended the meeting. She is a director of Better Australia and carries formal responsibility for electoral campaigns (and partner of Israel agitator Ofir Birenbaum).
Also present at the meeting was Better Australia 2025 member Alex Polson, a former staffer to retiring Senator Simon Birmingham and CEO of firm DBK Advisory. Other members present included another director, Charline Samuell, and her husband, psychiatrist Dr Doron Samuell.
Last week, Dr Samuell attracted negative publicity when Liberal campaigners in the electorate of Reid leaked Whatsapp messages where he insisted on referring to Greens as Nazis. “Nazis at Chiswick wharf,” Samuell wrote, alongside a photograph of two Greens volunteers.
The Better Australia group already have experience as astroturfers. Their “Put The Greens Last” campaign was previously directed by Calland and Polson under the entity Better Council Inc. in the NSW Local government elections in September 2024.
The Greens lost three councillors in Sydney’s East but maintained five seats on the Inner West Council.
But the group had developed bigger electoral plans. They also registered the name Better NSW in mid-2024. By the time the group met for the first time this year on January 8, their plans to play a role in the Federal election were already well advanced.
They voted to change the name Better NSW Inc. to Better Australia 2025 Inc.
Calland and Birenbaum Group member Ofir Birenbaum joined the January meeting to discuss “potential campaign fundraising materials” and a “pool of national volunteers”. Birenbaum is Calland’s husband and member of the Rosebery Branch of the Labor Party.
But by the time the group met with Finkelstein and Roozendaal in February, Birenbaum was missing. The day before the meeting, Birenbaum’s role in the #UndercoverJew stunt at Cairo Takeaway cafe was sprung.
This incident focused attention on Birenbaum’s track record as an agitator at Pro-Palestine events and as a “close friend” of the extreme-right Australian Jewish Association. The former Instagram influencer has since closed his social media accounts and disappeared from public view.
The minutes of the February meeting lodged with NSW Fair Trading mention a “discussion of potential campaign management candidates; an in-depth presentation and discussion of strategy; a review and amendments of draft campaign fundraising materials”. All of this suggests that consultants had been hired and work was well underway.
The group also voted to change Better Council’s business address and register a national association with ASIC so they could legally campaign at a national level.
On March 4, Calland registered Better Australia as a “significant third party” with the Australian Electoral Commission. This is required for organisations that expect their campaign to cost more than $250,000.
Three weeks later, Prime Minister Albanese called the election, and Better Australia’s federal campaign was off to the races.
Labor or Liberal, it doesn’t matter… According to its website, Better Australia’s stated goals are non-partisan: they want a majority government, “regardless of which major party is in office”.
“In Australia, past minority governments have seen stalled reforms, frequent leadership changes, and uncertainty that paralysed effective governance.”
No evidence has been provided by either Better Australia’s website or campaigning materials for these statements. In fact, in its short lifetime, the Gillard Labor minority government passed legislation at a record pace.
Instead, it is all about creating fear. A stream of campaigning videos, posts, flyers and placards carrying simple messages tapping into fear, insecurity, distrust and disappointment have appeared on social media and the streets of Sydney in recent weeks.
Wentworth independent Allegra Spender wasted no time posting her own video telling voters she was unfazed, and for her electorate to make their own voting choices rather than fall for a crude scare campaign.
Spender is accused of supporting anti-Israel terrorism by voting to reinstate funding for the United Nations aid agency UNRWA. Better Australia warns that billionaires and dark money fund the Teal campaign, alleging average voters will lose their money if Teals are reelected.
It doesn’t matter that most Teal MPs have policies in favour of increasing accountability in government or that no information is provided about who is backing Better Australia.
Anti-Green, too The anti-Greens angle of Better Australia’s campaign sends a broad message to all electorates to “Put the Greens Last”. It aims to starve the Greens of preferences. The campaign message is simple: the Greens are “antisemitic, support terrorism, and have abandoned their environmental roots”.
It does not matter that calls unite the peaceful Palestine protests for a ceasefire, or that the Greens have never stopped campaigning for the environment and against new fossil fuel projects.
Better Australia promotes itself as a grassroots organisation. In February, Sophie Calland told The Guardian that “Better Australia is led by a broad coalition of Australians who believe that political representation should be based on integrity and action, not extremist or elite activism”.
It has very few members and its operations are marked by secrecy, and voters will have to wait a full year before the AEC registry of political donations reveals Better Australia’s backers.
It fits into a patchwork of organisations aiming to influence voters towards a framework of right-wing values, including
“support for the Israel Defence Force, fossil fuel industries, nationalism and anti-immigration and anti-transgender issues.”
Advance Australia (not so fair)
Advance is the lead organisation in this space. It campaigns in its own right and also supports other organisations, including Minority Impact Coalition, Queensland Jewish Collective and J-United.
Advance claims to have raised $5 million to smash the Greens and a supporter base of more than 245,000. It has received donations up to $500,000 from the Victorian Liberal Party’s holding company, Cormack Foundation.
In Melbourne, ex-Labor member for Macnamara, Michael Danby, directs and authorises “Macnamara Voters Against Extremism”, which pushes voters to preference either Liberals or Labor first, and the Greens last. Danby has spoken alongside Birenbaum at Together With Israel rallies.
Together With Israel: Michael Danby (from left), activist Ofir Birenbaum, unionist Michael Easson OAM, and Rabbi Ben Elton. Image: Together With Israel Facebook group/MWM
The message of Better Australia — and Better Council before it — mostly aligns with Advance. These campaigns target women aged 35 to 49, who Advance claims are twice as likely to vote for the Greens as men of the same age.
The scare campaign targets female voters with its fear-mongering and Greens MPS, including Australia’s first Muslim Senator Mehreen Faruqi, and independent female MPS with its loathing.
Meanwhile, Advance is funded by mining billionaires and advocates against renewable energy.
Labor standing by in silence Better Australia is different from Advance, which is targeting Labor because it is an alliance of Zionist Labor and LIberal interests. Calland’s campaign may be effectively contributing to the election of a Dutton government. In the face of what would appear to be betrayal, the NSW Labor Party simply stands by.
The NSW Labor Rules Book (Section A.7c) states that a member may be suspended for “disloyal or unworthy conduct [or] action or conduct contrary to the principles and solidarity of the Party.”
Following MWM’s February exposé of Birenbaum, we sent questions to NSW Labor Head Office, and MPs Tanya Plibersek and Ron Hoenig, without reply. Hoenig is a member of the Parliamentary Friends of Israel and has attended Alexandria Branch meetings with Calland.
MWM asked Plibersek to comment on Birenbaum’s membership of her own Rosebery Branch, and on Birenbaum’s covert filming of Luc Velez, the Greens candidate in Plibersek’s seat of Sydney. Birenbaum shared the video and generated homophobic commentary, but we received no answers to any of our questions.
According to MWM sources, Calland’s involvement in Better Australia and Better Council before that is well known in Inner Sydney Labor circles. Last Tuesday night, she attended an Alexandria Branch meeting that discussed the Federal election. She also attended a meeting of Plibersek’s campaign.
No one raised or asked questions about Calland’s activities. MWM is not aware if NSW Labor has received complaints from any of its members alleging that Calland or Birenbaum has breached the party’s rules.
After all, when top Liberal and Labor strategists walk into a corporate boardroom, there is much to agree on.
It begins with a national campaign to keep the major parties in and independents and Greens out.
MWM has sent questions to Calland, Finkelstein, and Roozendaal, regarding funding and the alliance between Liberal and Labor powerbrokers but we have yet to receive any replies.
Wendy Baconis an investigative journalist who was professor of journalism at UTS. She has worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism. She is not a member of any political party but is a Greens supporter and long-term supporter of peaceful BDS strategies.
Yaakov Aharon is a Jewish-Australian living in Wollongong. He enjoys long walks on Wollongong Beach, unimpeded by Port Kembla smoke fumes and AUKUS submarines. This article was first published by Michael West Media and is republished with permission of the authors.
“OCCRP is a deep state operation. “OCCRP is connected to the CIA. “OCCRP was tasked by USAID to overthrow President Donald Trump.”
How did we end up getting this kind of attention? Old fashioned investigative journalism.
We wrote a simple story in 2019 about how Rudy Giuliani went to Ukraine for some opposition research and ended up working with people connected to organised crime who misled him.
Unbeknown to us, a whistleblower found the story online and added it to a complaint that was the basis of President Trump’s first impeachment. We also wrote a story about Hunter Biden‘s business partners and their ties to organised crime but that hasn’t received the same attention.
Journalism has become a blood sport. It’s harder and harder to tell the truth without someone’s interests getting stepped on.
OCCRP prides itself on being independent and nonpartisan. No donor has any say in our reporting, but we often find ourselves under attack for our funding.
It’s not just political interests but organised crime, businesses, enablers, and other journalists who regularly attack us. What’s common in all of these attacks is that the truth doesn’t matter and it will not protect you.
Few attack the facts in our reporting. Instead we’re left perplexed by how to respond to wild conspiracy theories, outright disinformation, and hyperbolic hatred.
At the same time, we’ve lost 29 percent of our funding because of the US foreign aid freeze. This includes 82 percent of the money we give to newsrooms in our network, many of which operate in places [Pacific Media Watch: Such as in the Pacific] where no one else will support them.
This money did not only fund groundbreaking, prize-winning collaborative journalism but it also trained young investigative reporters to expose wrongdoing. It’s money that kept journalists safe from physical and digital attacks and supported those in exile who continued to report on crooks and dictators back in their home countries.
OCCRP now has 43 less journalists and staff to do our work.
Next week, we’ll take on another set of powerful actors to defend the public interest. And another set the week after that.
We are determined to stay in the fight and keep reporting on organised crime and the corrupt who enable and benefit from it. But it’s getting harder and we need help.
For 30 years, Filipino journalist Manny “Bok” Mogato covered the police and defence rounds, and everything from politics to foreign relations, sports, and entertainment, eventually bagging one of journalism’s top prizes — the Pulitzer in 2018, for his reporting on Duterte’s drug war along with two other Reuters correspondents, Andrew Marshall and Clare Baldwin.
For Mogato it was time for him to “write it all down,” and so he did, launching the autobiography It’s Me, Bok! Journeys in Journalism in October 2024.
Mogato told Rappler, he wanted to “write it all down before I forget and impart my knowledge to the youth, young journalists, so they won’t make the same mistakes that I did”.
His career has spanned many organisations, including the Journal group, The Manila Chronicle, The Manila Times, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, and Rappler. Outside of journalism, he also serves as a consultant for Cignal TV.
Recently, we sat down with Mogato to talk about his career — a preview of what you might be able to read in his book — and pick out a few lessons for today’s journalists, as well as his views on the country today.
You’ve covered so many beats. Which beat did you enjoy covering most?
Manny Mogato: The military. Technically, I was assigned to the military defence beat for only a few years, from 1987 to 1992. In early 1990, FVR (Fidel V. Ramos) was running for president, and I was made to cover his campaign.
When he won, I was assigned to cover the military, and I went back to the defence beat because I had so many friends there.
‘We faced several coups’
I really enjoyed it and still enjoy it because you go to places, to military camps. And then I also covered the defence beat at the most crucial and turbulent period in our history — when we faced several coups.
Rappler: You have mellowed through the years as a reporter. You chronicled in your book that when you were younger, you were learning the first two years about the police beat and then transferred to another publication.
How did your reporting style mellow, or did it grow? Did you become more curious or did you become less curious? Over the years as a reporter, did you become more or less interested in what was happening around you?
MM: Curiosity is the word I would use. So, from the start until now, I am still curious about things happening around me. Exciting things, interesting things.
But if you read the book, you’ll see I’ve mellowed a lot because I was very reckless during my younger days.
I would go on assignments without asking permission from my office. For instance, there was this hostage-taking incident in Zamboanga, where a policeman held hostages of several officers, including a general and a colonel.
So when I learned that, I volunteered to go without asking permission from my office. I only had 100 pesos (NZ$3) in my pocket. And so what I did, I saw the soldiers loading bullets into the boxes and I picked up one box and carried it.
Hostage crisis with one tee
So when the aircraft was already airborne, they found out I was there, and so I just sat somewhere, and I covered the hostage crisis for three to four days with only one T-shirt.
Reporters in Zamboanga were kind enough to lend me T-shirts. They also bought me underpants. I slept in the headquarters crisis. And then later, restaurants. Alavar is a very popular seafood restaurant in Zamboanga. I slept there. So when the crisis was over, I came back. At that time, the Chronicle and ABS-CBN were sister companies.
When I returned to Manila, my editor gave me a commendation — but looking back . . . I just had to get a story.
Rappler: So that is what drives you?
MM: Yes, I have to get the story. I will do this on my own. I have to be ahead of the others. In 1987, when a PAL flight to Baguio City crashed, killing all 50 people on board, including the crew and the passengers, I was sent by my office to Baguio to cover the incident.
But the crash site was in Benguet, in the mountains. So I went there to the mountains. And then the Igorots were in that area, living in that area.
I was with other reporters and mountaineering clubs. We decided to go back because we were surrounded by the Igorots [who made it difficult for us to do our jobs]. Luckily, the Lopezes had a helicopter and [we] were the first to take photos.
‘I saw the bad side of police’
Rappler: Why are military and defense your favourite beats to cover?
MM: I started my career in 1983/1984, as a police reporter. So I know my way around the police. And I have many good friends in the police. I saw the bad side of the police, the dark side, corruption, and everything.
I also saw the military in the most turbulent period of our history when I was assigned to the military. So I saw good guys, I saw terrible guys. I saw everything in the military, and I made friends with them. It’s exciting to cover the military, the insurgency, the NPAs (New People’s Army rebels), and the secessionist movement.
You have to gain the trust of the soldiers of your sources. And if you don’t have trust, writing a story is impossible; it becomes a motherhood statement. But if you go deeper, dig deeper, you make friends, they trust you, you get more stories, you get the inside story, you get the background story, you get the top secret stories.
Because I made good friends with senior officers during my time, they can show me confidential memorandums and confidential reports, and I write about them.
I have made friends with so many of these police and military men. It started when they were lieutenants, then majors, and then generals. We’d go out together, have dinner or some drinks somewhere, and discuss everything, and they will tell you some secrets.
Before, you’d get paid 50 pesos (NZ$1.50) as a journalist every week by the police. Eventually, I had to say no and avoid groups of people engaging in this corruption. Reuters wouldn’t have hired me if I’d continued.
Rappler: With everything that you have seen in your career, what do you think is the actual state of humanity? Because you’ve seen hideous things, I’m sure. And very corrupt things. What do you think of people?
‘The Filipinos are selfish’
MM: Well, I can speak of the Filipino people. The Filipinos are selfish. They are only after their own welfare. There is no humanity in the Filipino mentality. They’re pulling each other down all the time.
I went on a trip with my family to Japan in 2018. My son left his sling bag on the Shinkansen. So we returned to the train station and said my son had left his bag there. The people at the train station told us that we could get the bag in Tokyo.
So we went to Tokyo and recovered the bag. Everything was intact, including my money, the password, everything.
So, there are crises, disasters, and ayuda (aid) in other places. And the people only get what they need, no? In the Philippines, that isn’t the case. So that’s humanity [here]. It isn’t very pleasant for us Filipinos.
Rappler: Is there anything good?
MM: Everyone was sharing during the EDSA Revolution, sharing stories, and sharing everything. They forgot themselves. And they acted as a community known against Marcos in 1986. That is very telling and redeeming. But after that… [I can’t think of anything else that is good.]
Rappler: What is the one story you are particularly fond of that you did or something you like or are proud of?
War on drugs, and typhoon Yolanda
MM: On drugs, my contribution to the Reuters series, and my police stories. Also, typhoon Yolanda in 2013. We left Manila on November 9, a day after the typhoon. We brought much equipment — generator sets, big cameras, food supply, everything.
But the thing is, you have to travel light. There are relief goods for the victims and other needs. When we arrived at the airport, we were shocked. Everything was destroyed. So we had to stay in the airport for the night and sleep.
We slept under the rain the entire time for the next three days. Upon arrival at the airport, we interviewed the police regional commander. Our report, I think, moved the international community to respond to the extended damage and casualties. My report that 10,000 people had died was nominated for the Society Publishers in Asia in Hong Kong.
Every day, we had to walk from the airport eight to 10 kilometers away, and along the way, we saw the people who were living outside their homes. And there was looting all over.
Rappler: There is a part in your book where you mentioned the corruption of journalists, right? And reporters. What do you mean by corruption?
MM: Simple tokens are okay to accept. When I was with Reuters, its gift policy was that you could only accept gifts as much as $50. Anything more than $50 is already a bribe. There are things that you can buy on your own, things you can afford. Other publications, like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Associated Press [nes agency], have a $0 gift policy. We have this gift-giving culture in our culture. It’s Oriental.
If you can pay your own way, you should do it.
Rappler: Tell us more about winning the Pulitzer Prize.
Most winners are American, American issues
MM: I did not expect to win this American-centric award. Most of the winners are Americans and American stories, American issues. But it so happened this was international reporting. There were so many other stories that were worth the win.
The story is about the Philippines and the drug war. And we didn’t expect a lot of interest in that kind of story. So perhaps we were just lucky that we were awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In the Society of Publishers in Asia, in Hong Kong, the same stories were also nominated for investigative journalism. So we were not expecting that Pulitzer would pay attention.
The idea of the drug war was not the work of only three people: Andrew Marshal, Clare Baldwin and me. No, it was a team effort.
Rappler: What was your specific contribution?
MM: Andrew and Clare were immersed in different communities in Manila, Tondo, and Navotas City, interviewing victims and families and everybody, everyone else. On the other hand, my role was on the police.
I got the police comments and official police comments and also talked to police sources who would give us the inside story — the inside story of the drug war. So I have a good friend, a retired police general who was from the intelligence service, and he knew all about this drug war — mechanics, plan, reward system, and everything that they were doing. So, he reported about the drug war.
The actual drug war was what the late General Rodolfo Mendoza said was a ruse because Duterte was protecting his own drug cartel.
Bishops wanted to find out
He had a report made for Catholic bishops. There was a plenary in January 2017, and the bishops wanted to find out. So he made the report. His report was based on 17 active police officers who are still in active service. So when he gave me this report, I showed it to my editors.
My editor said: “Oh, this is good. This is a good guide for our story.” He got this information from the police sources — subordinates, those who were formerly working for him, gave him the information.
So it was hearsay, you know. So my editor said: “Why can’t you convince him to introduce us to the real people involved in the drug war?”
So, the general and I had several interviews. Usually, our interviews lasted until early morning. Father [Romeo] Intengan facilitated the interview. He was there to help us. At the same time, he was the one serving us coffee and biscuits all throughout the night.
So finally, after, I think, two or three meetings, he agreed that he would introduce us to police officers. So we interviewed the police captain who was really involved in the killings, and in the operation, and in the drug war.
So we got a lot of information from him. The info went not only to one story but several other stories.
He was saying it was also the police who were doing it.
Rappler: Wrapping up — what do you think of the Philippines?
‘Duterte was the worst’
MM: The Philippines under former President Duterte was the worst I’ve seen. Worse than under former President Ferdinand Marcos. People were saying Marcos was the worst president because of martial law. He closed down the media, abolished Congress, and ruled by decree.
I think more than 3000 people died, and 10,000 were tortured and jailed.
But in three to six years under Duterte, more than 30,000 people died. No, he didn’t impose martial law, but there was a de facto martial law. The anti-terrorism law was very harsh, and he closed down ABS-CBN television.
It had a chilling effect on all media organisations. So, the effect was the same as what Marcos did in 1972.
We thought that Marcos Jr would become another Duterte because they were allies. And we felt that he would follow the policies of President Duterte, but it turned out he’s much better.
Well, everything after Duterte is good. Because he set the bar so low.
Everything is rosy — even if Marcos is not doing enough because the economy is terrible. Inflation is high, unemployment is high, foreign direct investments are down, and the peso is almost 60 to a dollar.
Praised over West Philippine Sea
However, the people still praise Marcos for his actions in the West Philippine Sea. I think the people love him for that. And the number of killings in the drug war has gone down.
There are still killings, but the number has really gone so low, I would say about 300 in the first two years.
Rappler: Why did you write your book, It’s Me, Bok! Journeys in Journalism?
MM: I have been writing snippets of my experiences on Facebook. Many friends were saying, ‘Why don’t you write a book?’ including Secretary [of National Defense] Gilberto Teodoro, who was fond of reading my snippets.
In my early days, I was reckless as a reporter. I don’t want the younger reporters to do that. And no story is worth writing if you are risking your life.
I want to leave behind a legacy, and I know that my memory will fail me sooner rather than later. It took me only three months to write the book.
It’s very raw. There will be a second printing. I want to polish the book and expand some of the events.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Syria, where tens of thousands of people gathered at the Great Mosque of Damascus for the first Friday prayers since longtime authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad was toppled by opposition fighters.
DAMASCUS RESIDENT: [translated] Hopefully this Friday is the Friday of the greatest joy, a Friday of victory for our Muslim brothers. This is a blessed Friday.
AMY GOODMAN: Syria’s new caretaker Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir was among those at the mosque. He’ll act as prime minister until March.
This comes as the World Food Programme is appealing to donors to help it scale up relief operations for the approximately 2.8 million displaced and food-insecure Syrians across the country. That includes more than 1.1 million people who were forcibly displaced by fighting since late November.
Israel’s Defence Minister has told his troops to prepare to spend the winter holding the demilitarized zone that separates Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Earlier today, Prime Minister Netanyahu toured the summit of Mount Haramun in the UN-designated buffer zone. Netanyahu said this week the Golan Heights would “forever be an inseparable part of the State of Israel”.
On Thursday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for an urgent deescalation of airstrikes on Syria by Israeli forces, and their withdrawal from the UN buffer zone.
In Ankara, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Turkey’s Foreign Minister and the President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Blinken said the US and Turkey would [work] to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State group in Syria. Meanwhile, Erdoğan told Blinken that Turkey reserves the right to strike the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, led by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Turkey considers “terrorist”.
For more, we go to Damascus for the first time since the fall of longtime authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad, where we’re joined by the Associated Press investigative reporter Sarah El Deeb, who is based in the Middle East, a region she has covered for two decades.
Sarah, welcome to Democracy Now! You are overlooking —
SARAH EL DEEB: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: — the square where tens of thousands of Syrians have gathered for the first Friday prayers since the fall of Assad. Describe the scene for us.
Report from Damascus: Searching for loved ones in prisons and morgues. Video: Democracy Now!
SARAH EL DEEB: There is a lot of firsts here. It’s the first time they gather on Friday after Bashar al-Assad fled the country. It’s the first time everyone seems to be very happy. I think that’s the dominant sentiment, especially people who are in the square. There is ecstasy, tens of thousands of people. They are still chanting, “Down with Bashar al-Assad.”
But what’s new is that it’s also visible that the sentiment is they’ve been, so far, happy with the new rulers, not outpour — there is no criticism, out — loud criticism of the new rulers yet. So, I’d say the dominant thing is that everyone is happy down there.
HAYAT AL-TURKI: [translated] I will show you the photo of my missing brother. It’s been 14 years. This is his photo. I don’t know what he looks like, if I find him. I don’t know what he looks like, because I am seeing the photos of prisoners getting out. They are like skeletons.
But this is his photo, if anyone has seen him, can know anything about him or can help us. He is one of thousands of prisoners who are missing. I am asking for everyone, not only my brother, uncle, cousin and relatives.”
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about this mad search by Syrians across the country.
SARAH EL DEEB: This is the other thing that’s been dominating our coverage and our reporting since we arrived here, the contrast between the relief, the sense of relief over the departure of Bashar al-Assad but then the sadness and the concern and the no answers for where the loved ones have gone.
Thousands — also, tens of thousands of people have marched on Sednaya [prison]. It’s the counter to this scene, where people were looking for any sign of where their relatives have been. As you know really well, so many people have reported their relatives missing, tens of thousands, since the beginning of the revolt, but also before.
I mean, I think this is a part of the feature of this government, is that there has been a lot of security crackdown. People were scared to speak, but they were — because there was a good reason for it. They were picked up at any expression of discontent or expression of opinion.
So, where we were in Sednaya two, three days ago, it feels like one big day, I have to say. When we were in Sednaya, people were also describing what — anything, from the smallest expression of opinion, a violation of a traffic light. No answers.
And they still don’t know where their loved ones are. I mean, I think we know quite a lot from research before arriving here about the notorious prison system in Syria. There’s secret prisons. There are security branches where people were being held. I think this is the first time we have an opportunity to go look at those facilities.
What was surprising and shocking to the people, and also to a lot of us journalists, was that we couldn’t find any sign of these people. And the answers are — we’re still looking for them. But what was clear is that only a handful — I mean, not a handful — hundreds of people were found.
Many of them were also found in morgues. There were apparent killings in the last hours before the regime departed. One of them was the prominent activist Mazen al-Hamada. We were at his funeral yesterday. He was found, and his family believes that — he was found killed, and his family believes his body was fresh, that he was killed only a few days earlier. So, I think the killing continued up until the last hour.
AMY GOODMAN: I was wondering if you can tell us more about —
SARAH EL DEEB: What was also — what was also —
AMY GOODMAN: — more about Mazen. I mean, I wanted to play a clip of Mazen’s nephew, Yahya al-Hussein.
YAHYA AL-HUSSEIN: [translated] In 2020, he was taken from the Netherlands to Germany through the Syrian Embassy there. And from there, they brought him to Syria with a fake passport.
He arrived at the airport at around 2:30 a.m. and called my aunt to tell her that he arrived at the airport, and asked for money. When they reached out to him the next day, they were told that air intelligence had arrested him.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Mazen’s nephew, Yahya al-Hussein. Sarah, if you can explain? This was an activist who left Syria after he had been imprisoned and tortured — right? — more than a decade ago, but ultimately came back, apparently according to assurances that he would not be retaken. And now his body is found.
SARAH EL DEEB: I think it’s — like you were saying, it’s very hard to explain. This is someone who was very outspoken and was working on documenting the torture and the killing in the secret prisons in Syria. So he was very well aware of his role and his position vis-à-vis the government. Yet he felt — it was hard to explain what Mazen’s decision was based on, but his family believes he was lured into Syria by some false promises of security and safety.
His heart was in Syria. He left Syria, but he never — it never left him. He was working from wherever he was — he was in the Netherlands, he was in the US — I think, to expose these crimes. And I think this is — these are the words of his family: He was a witness on the crimes of the Assad government, and he was a martyr of the Assad government.
One of the people that were at the funeral yesterday was telling us Mazen was a lesson. The Assad government was teaching all detainees a lesson through Mazen to keep them silent. I think it was just a testimony to how cruel this ruling regime, ruling system has been for the past 50 years.
People would go back to his father’s rule also. But I think with the revolution, with the protests in 2011, all these crimes and all these detentions were just en masse. I think the estimates are anywhere between 150,000 and 80,000 detainees that no one can account for. That is on top of all the people that were killed in airstrikes and in opposition areas in crackdown on protest.
So, it was surprising that at the last minute — it was surprising and yet not very surprising. When I asked the family, “Why did they do that?” they would look at me and, like, “Why are you asking this question? They do that. That’s what they did.” It was just difficult to understand how even at the last minute, and even for someone that they promised security, this was — this would be the end, emaciated and tortured and killed, unfortunately.
AMY GOODMAN: Sarah, you spoke in Damascus to a US citizen, Travis Timmerman, who says he was imprisoned in Syria. This is a clip from an interview with Al Arabiya on Thursday in which he says he spent the last seven months in a prison cell in Damascus.
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: My name is Travis.
REPORTER: Travis.
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: Yes.
REPORTER: So, [speaking in Arabic]. Travis, Travis Timmerman.
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: That’s right.
REPORTER: That’s right.
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: But just Travis. Just call me Travis.
REPORTER: Call you Travis, OK. And where were you all this time?
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: I was imprisoned in Damascus for the last seven months. … I was imprisoned in a cell by myself. And in the early morning of this Monday, or the Monday of this week, they took a hammer, and they broke my door down. … Well, the armed men just wanted to get me out of my cell. And then, really, the man who I stuck with was a Syrian man named Ely. He was also a prisoner that was just freed. And he took me by the side, by the arm, really. And he and a young woman that lives in Damascus, us three, exited the prison together.
SARAH EL DEEB: I spent quite a bit of time with Travis last night. And I think his experience was very different from what I was just describing. He was taken, he was detained for crossing illegally into Syria. And I think his description of his experience was it was OK. He was not mistreated.
He was fed well, I mean, especially when I compare it to what I heard from the Syrian prisoners in the secret prisons or in detention facilities. He would receive rice, potatoes, tomatoes. None of this was available to the Syrian detainees. He would go to the bathroom three times a day, although this was uncomfortable for him, because, of course, it was not whenever he wanted. But it was not something that other Syrian detainees would experience.
His experience also was that he heard a lot of beating. I think that’s what he described it as: beating from nearby cells. They were mostly Syrian detainees. For him, that was an implicit threat of the use of violence against him, but he did not get any — he was not beaten or tortured.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Sarah, if you could also —
SARAH EL DEEB: He also said his release was a “blessing.” Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: If you could also talk about Austin Tice, the American freelance journalist? His family, his mother and father and brothers and sisters, seem to be repeatedly saying now that they believe he’s alive, held by the Syrian government, and they’re desperately looking for him or reaching out to people in Syria. What do you know?
SARAH EL DEEB: What we know is that people thought Travis was Tice when they first saw him. They found him in a house in a village outside of Damascus. And I think that’s what triggered — we didn’t know that Travis was in a Syrian prison, so I think that’s what everyone was going to check. They thought that this was Tice.
I think the search, the US administration, the family, they are looking and determined to look for Tice. The family believes that he was in Syrian government prison. He entered Syria in 2012. He is a journalist. But I think we have — his family seems to think that there were — he’s still in a Syrian government prison.
But I think, so far, we have not had any sign of Tice from all those released. But, mind you, the scenes of release from prisons were chaotic, from multiple prisons at the same time. And we’re still, day by day, finding out about new releases and people who were set free on that Sunday morning.
U.N. Calls on Israel to Stop Bombing Syria and Occupying Demilitarized Zone https://t.co/iHNIkKKOrs
I want to turn to Gaza. Tell us about the Palestinians searching for their family members who went missing during raids and arrests by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip. And talk about the lack of accountability for these appearances. You begin your piece with Reem Ajour’s quest to find her missing husband and daughter.
SARAH EL DEEB: I talked to Reem Ajour for a long time. I mean, I think, like you said, this was a pivot, but the themes have been common across the Middle East, sadly. Reem Ajour last saw her family in March of 2024. Both her husband and her 5-year-old daughter were injured after an Israeli raid on their house during the chaotic scenes of the Israeli raids on the Shifa Hospital.
They lived in the neighborhood. So, it was chaotic. They [Israeli military] entered their home, and they were shooting in the air, or they were shooting — they were shooting, and the family ended up wounded.
But what was striking was that the Israeli soldiers made the mother leave the kid wounded in her house and forced her to leave to the south. I think this is not only Reem Ajour’s case. I think this is something we’ve seen quite a bit in Gaza. But the fact that this was a 5-year-old and the mom couldn’t take her with her was quite moving.
And I think what her case kind of symbolises is that during these raids and during these detentions at checkpoints, families are separated, and we don’t have any way of knowing how the Israeli military is actually documenting these detentions, these raids.
Where do they — how do they account for people who they detain and then they release briefly? The homes that they enter, can we find out what happened in these homes? We have no idea of holding — I think the Israeli court has also tried to get some information from the military, but so far very few cases have been resolved.
And we’re talking about not only 500 or 600 people; we’re talking about tens of thousands who have been separated, their homes raided, during what is now 15 months of war in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: Sarah El Deeb, we want to thank you for being with us, Associated Press investigative reporter based in the Middle East for two decades, now reporting from Damascus.
Next up, today is the 75th day of a hunger strike by Laila Soueif. She’s the mother of prominent British Egyptian political prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fattah. She’s calling on British officials to pressure Egypt for the release of her son. We’ll speak to the Cairo University mathematics professor in London, where she’s been standing outside the Foreign Office. Back in 20 seconds.
The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders has condemned the assassination of Cambodian investigative environmental journalist Chhoeung Chheng who has died from his wounds.
He was shot by an illegal logger last week while investigating unlawful deforestation in the country’s northwest.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has urged the Cambodian government make sure this crime does not go unpunished, and to take concrete measures to protect journalists.
On 7 December 2024, journalist Chhoeung Chheng died in a hospital in Siem Reap, a city in northeastern Cambodia, from wounds suffered during an attack two days prior, RSF said in a statement.
The 63-year-old reporter, who worked for the online media Kampuchea Aphivath, had been shot in the abdomen while reporting on illegal logging in the Boeung Per nature reserve.
Local media report that the suspect admitted to shooting the journalist after being photographed twice while transporting illegally logged timber.
“This murder is appalling and demands a strong response. We call on Cambodian authorities to ensure that all parties responsible for the attack are severely punished,” Cédric Alviani, RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director in Taipei.
“We also urge the Cambodian government to take concrete actions to end violence against journalists.”
Journalists face violence
Journalists covering illegal deforestation in Cambodia face frequent violence. In 2014, reporter Taing Try was shot dead while investigating links between security forces and the timber trade in the country’s south, reports RSF.
Press freedom in Cambodia has been steadily deteriorating since 2017, when former Prime Minister Hun Sen cracked down on independent media, forcing prominent outlets such as Voice of Democracy to shut down. The government revoked the outlet’s licence in February 2023.
One year into his rule, Prime Minister Hun Manet appears to be perpetuating the media crackdown started by his father, Hun Sen, reports RSF.
Having fallen nine places in two years, Cambodia is now ranked 151st out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2024 World Press Freedom Index, placing it in the category of nations where threats to press freedom are deemed “very serious”.
Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.
The incoming Trump administration will bring a dangerous brew of Christian nationalism and anti-Palestinian racism
Things can always get worse. Much worse.
The Biden/Harris administration has bank-rolled and funded Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza, the sight of the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world.
Israeli soldiers wilfully post their crimes online for all the globe to see. Palestinian journalists are being deliberately targeted by Israel in an unprecedented way.
Every day brings new horrors in Gaza, Lebanon and beyond. And that’s not ignoring the catastrophes in Syria, Sudan and Myanmar.
But we can’t despair or disengage. It can be hard with an incoming Trump White House stuffed with radicals, evangelicals and bigots but now is not the time to do so.
We must keep on reporting, investigating, sharing, talking and raising public awareness of the real threats that surround us every day (from the climate crisis to nuclear war) and finding ways to solve them.
Always find hope.
New global project
Here’s some breaking news. I’ve said nothing about this publicly. Until now.
I’ve spent much of the year working on a documentary film series inspired by my best-selling book, The Palestine Laboratory. I’ve travelled to seven countries over many months, filming under the radar due to the sensitivity of the material.
I can’t say much more at this stage except that it’s nearly completed and will be released soon on a major global broadcaster.
The photo at the top of the page is me in a clip from the series in an undisclosed location (after I’d completed a voice-over recording session.)
Stay tuned for more. This work will be ground-breaking.
My recent work has largely focused on the worsening disaster in the Middle East and I’ve spoken to media outlets including CNN, Al Jazeera English, Sky News and others.
You can see these on my website and YouTube channel.
I’m an independent journalist without any institutional backing. If you’re able to support me financially, by donating money to continue this work, I’d hugely appreciate it.
A small church in a small town in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, has been flexing its political muscle and building an outsized reputation for blurring the line between church and state. Pastor Don Lamb wants his congregants to be engaged in spiritual warfare and not be “head-in-the-sand, Jesus-loves-you kind of Christians,” especially when it comes to the local school board.
To Lamb, this is not a Christian takeover. Yet his church is influenced by an elusive, hard-to-pin-down movement whose followers believe that Christians are called to control the government and that former President Donald Trump was chosen by God. It’s called the New Apostolic Reformation, and it’s nothing like the culture war–fueled Moral Majority of yesteryear. There are prophets and apostles, and a spiritual war is underway, not just in Pennsylvania. To win, the church has to do more than just preach the gospel; it has to get political.
This week, Reveal’s Najib Aminy and Mother Jones reporter Kiera Butler explain what the New Apostolic Reformation is and what happens when it seeps into small-town churches like Lamb’s.
By Dominique Meehan, Queensland University of Technology
In the expansive landscape of Pacific journalism, one magazine stands for unwavering command and unfiltered truth. Islands Business, with its roots deep beneath Fijian soil, is unafraid to be a voice for the Pacific in delivering forward-thinking analysis of current issues.
Established in Fiji’s capital, Suva, Islands Business has carved out a niche position since the 1970s and is now the longest surviving monthly magazine for the region.
With Fiji’s restrictive Media Industry Development Act (MIDA) only repealed in April 2023 following a change in government, the magazine can now publish analytical reporting without the risks it previously faced.
With a greater chance for these stories to shine, communities have a greater chance that their voices will be heard and shared.
Islands Business general manager Samantha Magick notes the importance of digging below the surface of issues and uncovering injustices with her work.
“I feel like that time where you have to be objective and somehow live above the reality of the world is gone,” Samantha says.
“Quite often I can go into a story thinking one thing and come out saying, ‘I was completely wrong about that.’
‘Objective openness’
“Maybe it’s about going in with an objective openness to hear things, but then saying at some point ‘we as a publication, platform or nation should take a position on this.’”
Magick provides the example of the climate change issue.
“Our position from the start was that climate change is real. We need to be talking about this, we need to be holding these discussions in our space,” she says.
“As long as you declare that this is our position and where we stand on it, why would I give a climate denier space? Because it’s going to sell more magazines or create more of a stir online? That’s not something that we believe in.”
Islands Business magazine frequently highlights social justice issues, including coverage of meetings between Solove’s cane farmers and the Ministry of Sugar Industry to address land lease expirations, the effects of drought on crop production and other concerns. Image: Islands Business/Facebook
Despite the magazine’s dedication to probing coverage of business and social issues, new waves of digital journalism continue to affect its reach.
With an abundance of free news readily available online, media outlets around the world have seen a significant reduction in demand for paid content, recent research shows.
Despite this being a global phenomenon, the impact appears to be harsher on smaller outlets such as Islands Business compared to large media corporations.
‘Younger people expect to not pay’
“Younger people expect to not pay for their media content, due to having so much access to online content,” Magick says.
“We need to be able to demonstrate the value of investigative reporting, big picture sort of reporting, not the day-to-day stuff, and to be able to do that, we need to be able to pay high quality reporters and train them up in future writing.”
Islands Business’s newest recruit, Prerna Priyanka, agrees that this very style of reporting attracted her to work for the publication.
“Their in-depth writing style was something new for me compared to other media outlets, so learning and adapting as a rookie journalist was something that drew me to work with them,” Prerna says.
Prerna notes she has some say over the topics she can cover and strives to incorporate important issues in her work.
“I believe it’s essential to shed light on pressing issues like gender equality and environmental sustainability, and I actively seek out opportunities to do so in my work,” she says.
As Islands Business looks forward, Samantha Magick aims to ensure the diverse Pacific voices remain centred in every discourse and are an active part of the magazine’s raw, unfiltered storytelling.
Dominique Meehan is a student journalist from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT who travelled to Fiji with the support of the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan Mobility Programme. This article is republished by Asia Pacific Report in collaboration with the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), QUT and The University of the South Pacific.
INVESTIGATIVE REPORT:By Aubrey Belford of the OCCRP
High in the forested mountains of Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville Island lies an abandoned, kilometer-wide crater cut deep into the earth.
Formerly one of the world’s largest gold and copper mines, the open pit now serves as an unsightly monument to the environmental and social chaos that underground riches can create.
Run for years by a subsidiary of Anglo-Australian giant Rio Tinto, the Panguna mine earned millions for Papua New Guinea (PNG) and helped bankroll its newfound independence. But it also poured waste into local waterways and fuelled anger among locals who felt robbed of the profits.
When an armed uprising ultimately shuttered the mine in 1989, the impoverished island was left reeling.
Nearly three decades later, in late 2022, human rights activists, the local government, and the mine’s former operators joined forces to produce a definitive assessment of the mine’s toxic legacy.
Their report, due to be released later this month, will become the basis for negotiations aimed at getting the mining companies to finally clean up the mess and compensate affected communities.
But its supporters now worry their efforts will be undermined by a class-action lawsuit launched in May against the mine’s erstwhile operators. The legal effort is being championed by former rebel leaders — and backed by anonymous offshore investors who stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars if it succeeds.
Worldwide litigation boom
The lawsuit is part of a worldwide boom in litigation financing that seeks to take multinational companies to task for ecological or social damage while potentially reaping a fortune for lawyers and funders.
Critics in Bougainville worry the lawsuit will reopen old wounds at a time when the island is making a push to break free of Papua New Guinea and become the world’s newest sovereign nation. Many Bougainvilleans are hoping to reopen the mine, using its wealth to fund their own independence this time around.
The region’s government and many local leaders believe the class action could put the mine’s revival at risk. There are also concerns the lawsuit would leave many Bougainvilleans empty handed, while the anonymous foreign investors would walk away with a significant share of the payout.
Unlike the official assessment, which seeks to identify everyone who needs to be compensated, the class action will only share its winnings — which could potentially be in the billions of dollars — with the locals who have signed on. Others will get nothing.
“There’s already fragmentation in the community and families are already divided,” said Theonila Roka Matbob, who represents the area around Panguna in the local Parliament and has helped lead the government-backed assessment process as a minister in the Autonomous Bougainville government.
She speaks from personal experience. The chief litigant in the class-action lawsuit, Martin Miriori, is her uncle. The two are no longer on speaking terms.
A losing deal Gouged from Bougainville’s lush volcanic heart, the Panguna mine in its heyday supplied as much as 45 percent of PNG’s export revenue, providing it with the financial means to achieve independence from Australia in 1975.
The windfall, however, did not extend to Bougainvilleans themselves. Ethnically and culturally distinct from the rest of PNG’s population, they saw Panguna as a symbol of external domination.
The mine delivered only a miserly 2-percent share of its profits to their island — along with years of environmental havoc.
Locals walk by buildings left abandoned by a subsidiary of Rio Tinto at the Panguna mine site. Image: OCCRP/Aubrey Belford
During the 17 years of Panguna’s operation — from 1972 to 1989 — over a billion metric tons of toxic mine waste and electric blue copper runoff flooded rivers that flowed downstream towards communities of subsistence farmers. The result was poisoned drinking water, infertile land, and children who were drowned or injured trying to cross engorged waterways.
In 1989, enraged Bougainville locals launched an armed rebellion against the PNG government. The mine was shut down, closing off a vital source of revenue for the national government in Port Moresby.
A brutal civil war raged on for nearly a decade, leaving more than 15,000 people dead, while a naval blockade by PNG’s military obliterated the island’s economy.
A peace deal in 2000 granted Bougainville substantial autonomy. But nearly a quarter-century later, the legacy of Panguna and the war it provoked is still deeply felt.
Few paved roads, bridges
There are few paved roads and bridges in the island’s interior. Residents earn a modest living through cocoa and coconut farming, or by unregulated artisanal mining in and around the abandoned Panguna crater.
Rivers polluted by years of runoff are still an otherworldly shade of milky blue.
At least 300,000 people are estimated to live on Bougainville, including as many as 15,000 who live downstream of the mine. Of those, some 4500 have joined Miriori — Roka’s estranged uncle and a tribal leader whose brother, Joseph Kabui, served as the first president of autonomous Bougainville — in seeking restitution through the class-action suit.
“We’ve got to make people happy,” Miriori said. “They’ve lost their land forever, environment forever. Their hunting grounds. Their spiritual, sacred grounds.”
Martin Miriori, the primary litigant in the class action lawsuit. Image: OCCRP/Aubrey Belford
‘Alert to opportunities’ Miriori took many by surprise when he became the public face of the suit filed in PNG’s National Court in May against Rio Tinto and its former local subsidiary, Bougainville Copper Limited.
While the tribal leader and former rebel is a well-known figure in Bougainville, the funders of the lawsuit are not. They have managed to keep their identities secret in part because the company behind the suit, Panguna Mine Action LLC, is registered on Nevis, a small Caribbean island that does not require companies to publicly disclose their shareholders and directors.
Miriori declined to comment on who was behind the company, saying, “I will not tell you where the funding is based … you can source that from our people down there [in Australia].”
James Sing, an Australian based in New York, is Panguna Mine Action’s chief public representative. He initially agreed to an interview, but later referred reporters back to a London-based public relations agency, Sans Frontières Associates.
The agency declined to reveal Panguna Mine Action’s investors.
Litigation funding documents obtained by OCCRP, however, shed some light on the history of the case. The documents show that Panguna Mine Action began to investigate the possibility of a class-action suit as early as July 2021.
The Bougainvillean claimants, led by Miriori, were formally brought into an agreement with the company and its Australian and PNG lawyers in November 2022. The suit was publicly announced this May.
Handsome profit
The lawsuit’s investors stand to profit handsomely from any eventual settlement: Panguna Mine Action is poised to receive a cut of 20 to 40 percent of any payout resulting from the suit, with the percentage increasing the longer the process takes, the funding documents show.
In interviews and statements, both Miriori and Panguna Mine Action have put the potential value of any award in the billions of dollars.
The lawsuit’s financiers defend their substantial share of the potential benefits as standard practice.
“The costs of launching and running the class action against a global miner are significant, and almost certainly could not be met from within Bougainville without funding from an external party,” the company said in its statement.
Panguna Mine Action added it would bear sole responsibility for costs if the lawsuit is unsuccessful.
According to Michael Russell, a Sydney-based class action defence lawyer, such funding arrangements are typical in the burgeoning world of litigation finance, where investors seek out cases that promote virtuous social causes while offering huge potential payoffs.
A similar case is unfolding in Latin America, where more than 720,000 Brazilians are seeking $46.5 billion as part of a gargantuan class action against mining giant BHP and its local subsidiary for their role in a 2015 dam collapse.
In such cases, funders can justify walking away with significant cuts of any winnings because of the substantial risk they face of losing their investment if a case fails, Russell said.
Such cases were rarely initiated at the grassroots level by the victims themselves, he added.
“Most of the time, either the plaintiff firms or the funders will be the catalyst for a claim,” he said. “They are very alert to opportunities.”
Rival restitution plans
Government officials including Miriori’s niece, Roka, say the class-action case, which is due to hold opening arguments in October, threatens to derail the ongoing impact assessment aimed at calculating the full cost of the mine’s environmental impact and developing recommendations for addressing the damage.
The assessment, which counts community members among its stakeholders and bills itself as an independent review, is supported by Australia’s Human Rights Law Centre, which has hailed the project as “an important step” towards rectifying the mine’s devastating impact on thousands of Bougainvilleans.
However, while Rio Tinto and Bougainville Copper are both funding the project, they have not yet committed to paying for any compensation or cleanup. Roka said she was concerned the lawsuit could reduce the company’s willingness to engage with the process, since it could view the assessment as a tool that could be used against them in the courtroom.
Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama backs the impact assessment and has lambasted the class action suit as the work of “faceless investors . . . taking advantage of vulnerable groups.” (His office did not respond to an interview request.)
He also expressed concern that the court proceedings threaten to “disrupt” his government’s efforts to reopen the mine, which still holds an estimated $60 billion in untapped deposits.
Bougainville’s leaders see the mine as key to securing the island’s economic future as it sets out to form an independent state — a dream that drew overwhelming public support in a 2019 referendum.
Exploration licence
Earlier this year Toroama’s government granted Bougainville Copper a five-year exploration licence for the Panguna site.
The lack of media and polling in Bougainville make it hard to measure public opinion on plans to reactivate the mine, but many locals appear to support reopening it under local control as an essential tool for achieving independence.
Bougainville Copper’s brand is still toxically associated with Rio Tinto and its past abuses, despite the fact that the international mining giant gave away its majority stake for no money in 2016.
The publicly traded company is now majority co-owned by the governments of PNG and Bougainville, and Port Moresby has pledged to hand over all its shares to the autonomous region in the near future.
Panguna Mine Action acknowledges that its effort could stand in the way of the mine’s reopening — but the company says that is a good thing.
“It is our understanding that the people of Bougainville do not wish mining to be recommenced under any circumstances or, alternatively, unless Rio Tinto and Bougainville Copper acknowledge the past, pay compensation and remediate the rivers and surrounding valley,” the company said in a statement.
Rio Tinto declined to comment. Mel Togolo, the chairman of Bougainville Copper, told OCCRP that the lawsuit was the work of “a foreign funder who no doubt is seeking a return on an investment.”
View of the tailings located downstream of the Panguna mine. Image: OCCRP/Aubrey Belford
View of the tailings located downstream of the Panguna mine. Photo: OCCRP / Aubrey Belford
‘Only those who have signed will benefit’ The fight over Panguna adds even more uncertainty to long-running anxiety over Bougainville’s future.
With global copper prices soaring on high demand for renewable energy and electric vehicles, the Panguna mine would be an attractive prize for both Western mining companies and firms from China, which is dramatically expanding its influence in the South Pacific.
Since a future Bougainvillean state would be economically dependent on the mine’s revenue, some have raised concerns that control of the mine could become a proxy battle for geopolitical influence in the broader region.
For his part, Miriori expressed little concern that a multibillion-dollar payout might stir resentment by reaching only a fraction of the people affected by the mine’s environmental destruction.
“Only those who signed will benefit,” he said, adding that the opportunity was made “very clear to people” through awareness campaigns.
“Those who have not signed, it’s their freedom of choice.”
An aerial view of the abandoned Panguna mine pit. Image: OCCRP/Aubrey Belford
Among those who did not sign is Wendy Bowara, 48, who lives in Dapera, a bleak settlement built on a hill of mine waste. Bowara said she is looking to the government-backed assessment, not the lawsuit, to deliver compensation and clean up Panguna’s toxic legacy.
“We are living on top of chemicals,” she said. “Copper concentration is high. I don’t know if the food is good to eat or if it’s healthy to drink the water.”
But while it may seem odd given her grim surroundings, Borawa says she strongly supports reopening the mine.
“It funded the independence of Papua New Guinea,” Bowara said. “Why can’t we use it to fund our own independence?”
Allan Gioni contributed reporting.
Aubrey Belford is the Pacific editor for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting project (OCCRP). Republished with permission.
Papua New Guinean journalist Sincha Dimara, news editor at the online publication InsidePNG, is one of seven recipients of this year’s East-West Center Journalists of Courage Impact Award.
Pakistani journalist Kamal Siddiqi, former news director at Aaj TV, also received the award last night at the EWC’s International Media Conference in Manila, the organisation announced.
He was also the first Pakistani to win the biennial award, which honours journalists who have “displayed exceptional commitment to quality reporting and freedom of the press, often under harrowing circumstances”.
The five other recipients are Tom Grundym, editor-in-chief and founder of Hong Kong Free Press, Alan Miller, founder of the News Literacy Project in Washington DC, Soe Myint, editor-in-chief and managing director at Mizzima Media Group in Yangon, Myanmar, John Nery, columnist and editorial consultant at Rappler in Manila and Ana Marie Pamintuan, editor-in-chief of The Philippine Star.
Six InsidePNG staff are in Manila at the conference. They were invited to engage in discussions on several different panels relating to the work of InsidePNG in investigative journalism.
InsidePNG is part of the Pacific Island contingent, supported by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
Global media event
The global event brings media professionals from around the world to discuss current trends and challenges faced by the media industry.
“We are excited to represent InsidePNG at this prestigious international media conference in Manila,” said Charmaine Yanam, chief editor and co-founder of InsidePNG.
“We are grateful to OCCRP for recognising the importance of an independent newsroom that transmits through it’s continued support in pursuing investigative reporting.”
This is the second time for InsidePNG to attend this event, the first was in 2022 where only two representatives attended.
Journalists, publishers, academics, diplomats and NGO representatives from throughout the Asia-Pacific region will gather for the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference hosted by The University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, next month.
A notable part of the conference on July 4-6 will be the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the journal Pacific Journalism Review — founded by the energetic pioneer of journalism studies in the Pacific, Professor David Robie, who was recently honoured in the NZ King’s Birthday Honours list as a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
I have been on the editorial board of PJR for two of its three decades.
As well as delivering a keynote address titled “Frontline Media Faultlines: How Critical Journalism can Survive Against the Odds”, Dr Robie will join me and the current editor of PJR, Dr Philip Cass, on a panel examining the challenges faced by journalism journals in the Global South/Asia Pacific.
We will be moderated by Professor Vijay Naidu, former professor and director of development studies and now an adjunct in the School of Law and Social Sciences at the university. He is also speaking at the PJR birthday event.
In addition, I will be delivering a conference paper titled “Intersections between media law and ethics — a new pedagogy and curriculum”.
Media law and ethics have often been taught as separate courses in the journalism and communication curriculum or have been structured as two distinct halves of a hybrid course.
Integrated ethics and law approach
My paper explains an integrated approach expounded in my new textbook, The Communicator’s Guide to Media Law and Ethics, where each key media law topic is introduced via a thorough exploration of its moral, ethical, religious, philosophical and human rights underpinnings.
The argument is exemplified via an approach to the ethical and legal topic of confidentiality, central to the relationship between journalists and their sources.
After defining the term and distinguishing it from the related topic of privacy, the paper explains the approach in the textbook and curriculum which traces the religious and philosophical origins of confidentiality sourced to Hippocrates (460-370BC), via confidentiality in the priesthood (from Saint Aphrahat to the modern Catholic Code of Canon Law), and through the writings of Kant, Bentham, Stuart Mill, Sidgwick and Rawls until we reach the modern philosopher Sissela Bok’s examination of investigative journalism and claims of a public’s “right to know”.
This leads naturally into an examination of the handling of confidentiality in both public relations and journalism ethical codes internationally and their distinctive approaches, opening the way to the examination of law, cases and examples internationally in confidentiality and disclosure and, ultimately, to a closer examination in the author’s own jurisdiction of Australia.
Specific laws covered include breach of confidence, disobedience contempt, shield laws, whistleblower laws and freedom of information laws — with the latter having a strong foundation in international human rights instruments.
The approach gives ethical studies a practical legal dimension, while enriching students’ legal knowledge with a backbone of its philosophical, religious and human rights origins.
Details about the conference can be found on its USP website.
Professor Mark Pearson (Griffith University) is a journalist, author, academic researcher and teacher with more than 45 years’ experience in journalism and journalism education. He is a former editor of Australian Journalism Review, a columnist for 15 years on research journal findings for the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association Bulletin, and author of 13 books, including The Communicator’s Guide to Media Law and Ethics — A Handbook for Australian Professionals (Routledge, 2024). He blogs at JournLaw.
New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) awardee Professor David Robie has called on young journalists to see journalism as a calling and not just a job.
Dr Robie, who is also the editor of Asia Pacific Report and deputy chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network, was named in the King’s Birthday Honours list for “services to journalism and Asia Pacific media education”.
He was named last Monday and the investiture ceremony is later this year.
The University of the South Pacific’s head of journalism Associate Professor Shailendra Singh told Wansolwara News: “David’s mountain of work in media research and development, and his dedication to media freedom, speak for themselves.
“I am one of the many Pacific journalists and researchers that he has mentored and inspired over the decades”.
Dr Singh said this recognition was richly deserved.
Dr Robie was head of journalism at USP from 1998 to 2002 before he resigned to join the Auckland University of Technology ane became an associate professor in the School of Communication Studies in 2005 and full professor in 2011.
Close links with USP
Since resigning from the Pacific university he has maintained close links with USP Journalism. He was the chief guest at the 18th USP Journalism awards in 2018.
Retired AUT professor of journalism and communication studies and founder of the Pacific Media Centre Dr David Robie. Image: Alyson Young/APMN
He has also praised USP Journalism and said it was “bounding ahead” when compared with the journalism programme at the University of Papua New Guinea, where he was the head of journalism from 1993 to 1997.
He is a keynote speaker at the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference which is being hosted by USP’s School of Pacific Arts, Communications and Education (Journalism), in collaboration with the Pacific Island News Association (PINA) and the Asia-Pacific Media Network (APMN).
The editors will be inviting a selection of the best conference papers to be considered for publication in a special edition of the PJR or its companion publication Pacific Media.
Professor David Robie and associate professor and head of USP Journalism Shailendra Singh at the 18th USP Journalism Awards. Image: Wnsolwara/File
Referring to his recognition for his contribution to journalism, Dr Robie told RNZ Pacific he was astonished and quite delighted but at the same time he felt quite humbled by it all.
‘Enormous support’
“However, I feel that it’s not just me, I owe an enormous amount to my wife, Del, who is a teacher and designer by profession, and a community activist, but she has given journalism and me enormous support over many years and kept me going through difficult times.
“There’s a whole range of people who have contributed over the years so it’s sort of like a recognition of all of us, especially all those who worked so hard for 13 years on the Pacific Media Centre when it was going. So, yes, it is a delight and I feel quite privileged.”
Reflecting on his 50 years in journalism, Dr Robie believes that the level of respect for mainstream news media has declined.
“This situation is partly through the mischievous actions of disinformation peddlers and manipulators, but it is partly our fault in media for allowing the lines between fact-based news and opinion/commentary to be severely compromised, particularly on television,” he told Wansolwara News.
He said the recognition helped to provide another level of “mana” at a time when public trust in journalism had dropped markedly, especially since the covid-19 pandemic and the emergence of a “global cesspit of disinformation”.
Dr Robie said journalists were fighting for the relevance of media today.
“The Fourth Estate, as I knew it in the 1960s, has eroded over the last few decades. It is far more complex today with constant challenges from the social media behemoths and algorithm-driven disinformation and hate speech.”
He urged journalists to believe in the importance of journalism in their communities and societies.
‘Believe in truth to power’
“Believe in the contribution that we can make to understanding and progress. Believe in truth to power. Have courage, determination and go out and save the world with facts, compassion and rationality.”
Despite the challenges, he believes that journalism is just as vital today, even more vital perhaps, than the past.
“It is critical for our communities to know that they have information that is accurate and that they can trust. Good journalism and investigative journalism are the bulwark for an effective defence of democracy against the anarchy of digital disinformation.
“Our existential struggle is the preservation of Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa — protecting our Pacific Ocean legacy for us all.”
Dr Robie began his career with The Dominion in 1965, after part-time reporting while a trainee forester and university science student with the NZ Forest Service, and worked as an international journalist and correspondent for agencies from Johannesburg to Paris.
In addition to winning several journalism awards, he received the 1985 Media Peace Prize for his coverage of the Rainbow Warrior bombing. He was on a 11-week voyage with the bombed ship and wrote the book Eyes of Fire about French and American nuclear testing.
Professor David Robie (second from right), and USP head of journalism Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, (left) with the winners of the 18th USP Journalism Awards in 2018. Image: Wansolwara/File
Geopolitics, climate crisis and decolonisation
Dr Robie mentions geopolitics and climate crisis as two of the biggest issues for the Pacific, with the former being largely brought upon by major global players, mainly the US, Australia and China.
He said it was important for the Pacific to create its own path and not become pawns or hostages to this geopolitical rivalry, adding that it was critically important for news media to retain its independence and a critical distance.
“The latter issue, climate crisis, is one that the Pacific is facing because of its unique geography, remoteness and weather patterns. It is essential to be acting as one ‘Pacific voice’ to keep the globe on track over the urgent solutions needed for the world. The fossil fuel advocates are passé and endangering us all.
“Journalists really need to step up to the plate on seeking climate solutions.”
“In addition to many economic issues for small and remote Pacific nations, are the issues of decolonisation. The events over the past three weeks in Kanaky New Caledonia have reminded us that unresolved decolonisation issues need to be centre stage for the Pacific, not marginalised.”
According to Dr Robie concerted Pacific political pressure, and media exposure, needs to be brought to bear on both France over Kanaky New Caledonia and “French” Polynesia, or Māohi Nui, and Indonesia with West Papua.
He called on the Pacific media to step up their scrutiny and truth to power role to hold countries and governments accountable for their actions.
Monika Singhis editor-in-chief of Wansolwara, the online and print publication of the USP Journalism Programme. Published in partnership with Wansolwara.
Television New Zealand Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to investigative journalism and Pacific communities in a ceremony at Government House, reports 1News.
She has been the Pacific correspondent for 1News since 2002, breaking many stories uncovering social and economic issues affecting Pacific people living in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.
Her investigative journalism has exposed major fraud, drug smuggling, corruption and human trafficking that has led to multiple arrests and government action.
Dreaver said it was “quite emotional” to receive the honour.
“I didn’t realise how special it was going to be until it actually happened. I’m so honoured, it’s hard to put it into words which is unlike me.”
Dreaver received the honour for services to investigative journalism and Pacific communities in a ceremony at Government House today.
‘Incredible’ family
Receiving the honour in front of her family “meant everything”, she said.
“You don’t get what you get without friends and family. My family are just incredible and my parents right from the beginning have been there for me, and I think that’s a big part of it.”
When asked what was next, Dreaver told 1News it was “back to work”.
“Keep doing what we do, telling New Zealand stories, telling Pacific stories is something we have to keep doing, and I will.”
A New Zealand investigative journalist and author says the US spy system hosted by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) appears to be a controversial intelligence system used in global capture-kill operations.
“The IGIS report said the GCSB decision to host a foreign system from 2012-2020 was ‘improper’ and that the GCSB ‘could not be sure the tasking of the capability was always in accordance with… New Zealand law’,” he wrote.
“The Inspector-General said: ‘I have found some of the GCSB’s explanations about how the capability operated and was tasked to be incongruous with information in GCSB records at the time’,” Hager wrote.
But the Inspector-General could not reveal details of the system to the public because they were “highly classified”.
“The name and function of the foreign spy spying equipment, the identity of the ‘foreign partner agency’ and the location of the ‘GCSB facility’ where foreign equipment was hosted all remained secret,” Hager wrote.
Hager argued that the mystery spy equipment appeared strongly to be a top secret US surveillance system that had been installed at the GCSB’s Waihopai base at the same time as the equipment in the IGIS investigation was installed at a “GCSB facility”.
25 years of investigations
Hager has worked as an investigative journalist for the past 25 years, and has been a New Zealand member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists for 20 of those years.
In 2018, he was part of a reference group established by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.
Hager wrote that the top secret NSA spy equipment had the ghostly codename “APPARITION” and fitted with all the details presented in the IGIS report.
“APPARITION was owned by and controlled by the US National Security Agency — the world’s largest intelligence gathering agency and head of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance that includes the GCSB,” he wrote.
According to Hager, the NSA internal report, written after the launch of the APPARITION system in 2008, said that it “builds on the success of the GHOSTHUNTER prototype . . . a tool that enabled a significant number of capture-kill operations against terrorists”.
“Capture-kill operations involve lethal attacks on targeted people using drones, bombs and special forces raids,” wrote Hager.
“Human rights organisations have documented numerous deaths of civilians during capture-kill operations — many of them ‘algorithmically targeted’ by electronic surveillance systems such as APPARITION.
‘Extra-judicial killings’
“They are also criticised as being ‘extra-judicial killings’.”
For decades, protesters had been calling for the GCSB’s iconic radomes at Waihopai Valley spy base in rural Marlborough to be dismantled, saying that when that intelligence was shared with Five Eyes partners — the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia — it made New Zealand complicit in the military campaigns of those countries, among other criticisms.
However, Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) organiser Murray Horton said at the time of news of the domes’ redundancy in 2021 was nothing to celebrate, since the base itself would continue to operate at the site, “albeit without its most conspicuous physical features that stick out like dogs’ balls”.
The War on Gaza will be etched in the memories of generations to come — the brutality of Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack, and the ferocity of Israel’s retaliation.
In this Four Corners investigative report, The Forever War, broadcast in Australia last night, ABC’s global affairs editor John Lyons asks the tough questions — challenging some of Israel’s most powerful political and military voices about the country’s strategy and intentions.
The result is a compelling interview-led piece of public interest journalism about one of the most controversial wars of modern times.
Former prime minister Ehud Barak says Benjamin Netanyahu can’t be trusted, former Shin Bet internal security director Ami Ayalon describes two key far-right Israeli ministers as “terrorists”, and cabinet minister Avi Dichter makes a grave prediction about the conflict’s future.
Is there any way out of what’s beginning to look like the forever war? Lyons gives his perspective on the tough decisions for the future of both Palestinians and Israelis.
‘The Forever War’ – ABC Four Corners. ABC Trailer on YouTube
Television New Zealand is proposing to axe its long-running and award-winning current affairs programme Sunday, hosted by veteran broadcaster Miriama Kamo.
TVNZ said a proposal had been presented to Sunday staff which could result in cancellation of the programme.
The show was named Best Current Affairs Programme at the Voyager Media Awards and the New Zealand Television Awards last year.
It first aired in 2002 and has run for more than two decades, showcasing a mix of New Zealand stories and reports from overseas.
One award-winning investigation looked into the 2008 Chinese poisoned milk scandal, and how patients were treated at Porirua Hospital.
Veteran journalists like John Hudson, Janet McIntyre and Ian Sinclair have contributed to the show.
News bulletins may be canned
RNZ understands the 1News Midday and Tonight bulletins may also be canned, and consumer affairs programme Fair Go could to be cut too.
Its understood four out of 10 roles at youth platform Re: News are set to go — head of Re: News, head of content, production manager, and a journalist.
TVNZ’s Sunday show . . . named Best Current Affairs Programme at the Voyager Media Awards and the New Zealand Television Awards last year. Image: TVNZ screenshot APR
Its understood four out of 10 roles at youth platform Re: News are set to go — head of Re: News, head of content, production manager, and a journalist.
The remaining five staff will have a change in reporting line, reporting to TVNZ digital news and content general manager Veronica Schmidt.
RNZ has been told there will be a shift away from social media in a bid to drive more traffic to the Re: News website. Its documentary series funded by NZ On Air is also set to be canned.
The digital media platform was launched in 2017 as a current affairs platform aimed at audiences under-served by mainstream news.
It produces documentary videos, articles and podcasts particularly relevant to youth, Māori, Pasifika, rainbow communities, and migrant and regional audiences.
The platform won four awards at last year’s Voyager Media Awards, including best news, current affairs or specialist publication; video journalist of the year; best video documentary series; and best original podcast — seasonal/serial.
On average, Re: News receives more than a million video views each month.
Difficult choices
TVNZ chief executive Jodi O’Donnell said in a statement that difficult choices had to be made to ensure the broadcaster remained sustainable.
A hui for all news and current affairs staff is due to be held at 1pm, following the individual programme meetings.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, speaking at a press conference in Whangārei, said he was concerned about reports of job cuts and that it was a “pretty tough time if you’re a TVNZ employee”.
Luxon said consumers are consuming news in different ways and advertising and revenue models are changing.
He said it was a pretty tough time for people working in the media but he had travelled the country and many other sectors were doing it tough.
Media companies needed to evolve and innovate in order to adapt, he said.
Fair Go Fair Go is one of New Zealand’s longest running and most popular television series.
The consumer affairs show, which investigates complaints from viewers, first aired in April 1977 and is just shy of its 47th birthday.
During a 2021 interview with RNZ’s Afternoons programme, original host and creator Brian Edwards said he was inspired by a BBC programme called That’s Life.
“One particular segment was on consumers and I think that was the germ of the idea, that we could do a programme in New Zealand where we could look at protecting people right there in their normal daily lives from rip offs and scams by various people and it it just soared from the beginning. I mean, it was tremendous,” Edwards said.
“I suppose my main function was to grill the villains, and because I’m a really quite unpleasant person, this fit in my my personality very well.”
Well-known presenter Kevin Milne hosted the show for almost three decades, from 1983 to 2010.
“It was beautifully set up, really, and it didn’t require any change as much and still hasn’t, you know, 44 years later,” he told Afternoons during the same interview.
‘Good deal of cynicism’
“I remember that there was a good deal of cynicism in the early days from the newsroom journalists who thought that because there was an element of entertainment on the show that you couldn’t call it real journalism, which was nonsense because it ended up leading the way in terms of investigative journalism.”
The show broke new ground, Milne said.
“It’s hard to believe now that back then, at the time when Brian set up those programmes, most broadcasters never named names. I can remember now hearing news stories which could say a well-known department store in Lambton Quay appeared in court this morning. No mention [of name], and when Fair Go started up, it was decided it would name names.”
Edwards said that was an “absolutely critical” aspect of the show.
“The thing would have been pointless I think, if you couldn’t name names. The thing was to expose the wrong doers if you like . . . what was the point in in doing that if you couldn’t name names?
“And I think we probably, together, our team, won some battles there and being able to do that. It took a while and I think there was a degree of nervousness by the broadcaster and eventually it turned out all right.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
OBITUARY:By Peter Boyle and Pip Hinman of Green Left
Sydney-born investigative journalist, author and filmmaker John Pilger died on December 31, 2023.
He should be remembered and honoured not just for his impressive body of work, but for being a brave — and at times near-lone — voice for truth against power.
In early 2002, the “war on terror”, launched by then United States President George W Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attack, was in full swing.
After two decades, more than 4 million would be killed in Iraq, Libya, Philippines, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere under this bloody banner, and 10 times more displaced.
The propaganda campaign to justify this ferocious, US-led, global punitive expedition cowed many voices, not least in the settler colonial state of Australia.
But there was one prominent Australian voice that was not silenced — and it was John Pilger’s.
‘Breaking the silence’
On March 10 that year, Sydney Town Hall was packed out with people to hear John speak in a Green Left public meeting titled “Breaking the silence: war, propaganda and the new empire”.
Outside the Town Hall, about 100 more people, who could not squeeze in, stayed to show their solidarity.
Pilger described the war on terror as “a war on world-wide popular resistance to an economic system that determines who will live well and who will be expendable”.
He called for “opposition to a so-called war on terrorism, that is really a war of terrorism”.
The meeting played an important role in helping build resistance in this country to the many US-led imperial wars that followed the US’ bloody retribution exacted on millions of Afghans who had never even heard of the 9/11 attacks, let alone bore any responsibility for them.
That 2002 Sydney Town Hall meeting cemented a strong bond between GL and John.
GL is proud to have been the Australian newspaper and media platform that has published the most articles by John Pilger over the years.
Shared values
For much of the last two decades, the so-called mainstream media were always reluctant to run his pieces because he refused to obediently follow the unspoken war-on-terror line.
He refused to go along with the argument that every military expedition that the US launched (and which Australia and other loyal allies promptly followed) to protect privilege and empire were in defence of “shared democratic values”.
The collaboration between GL and John was based on real shared values, which he summed up succinctly in his introduction to his 1992 book Distant Voices:
“I have tried to rescue from media oblivion uncomfortable facts which may serve as antidotes to the official truth; and in doing so, I hope to have given support to those ‘distant voices’ who understand how vital, yet fragile, is the link between the right of people to know and to be heard, and the exercise of liberty and political democracy …”
GL editors have had many exchanges with John over the years. At times, there were political differences. But each such exchange only built up a mutual respect, based on a shared commitment to truth and justice.
The last two decades of John’s moral leadership against Empire were inadvertently confirmed a few weeks before his passing when US President Joe Biden warned Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu not to repeat the US’ mistakes after 9/11.
“There’s no reason we did so many of the things we did,” Biden told Netanyahu.
Focus on Palestine struggle
John had long focused on Palestine’s struggle for self-determination from the Israeli colonial settler state. He condemned Israel’s most recent genocidal campaign of Gaza and, on X, praised those marching for “peaceful decency”.
He urged people to (re)watch his 2002 documentary film Palestine is Still The Issue, in which he returned to film in Gaza and the West Bank, after having first done so in 1977.
John was outspoken about Australia’s treatment of its First Peoples; he didn’t agree with Labor’s Voice to Parliament plan, saying it offered “no real democracy, no sovereignty, no treaty between equals”.
He criticised Labor’s embrace of AUKUS, saying it was about a new war with China, a campaign he took up in his documentary The Coming War on China. While recognising China’s abuse of human and democratic rights, he said the US views China’s embrace of capitalist growth as the key threat.
John campaigned hard for WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange’s release; he visited him several times in Belmarsh Prison and condemned a gutless Labor Prime Minister for refusing to meet with Stella Assange when she was in Australia.
He spoke out for other whistleblowers, including David McBride who exposed Australian war crimes in Afghanistan.
Did not mince words
John did not mince words which is why, especially during the war on terror, most mainstream media refused to publish him — unless a counterposed article was run side-by-side. He never agreed to this pretence of “balance”.
John wrote about his own, early, conscientisation.
“I was very young when I arrived in Saigon and I learned a great deal,” he said on the anniversary of the last day of the longest war of the 20th century — Vietnam.
“I learned to recognise the distinctive drone of the engines of giant B-52s, which dropped their carnage from above the clouds and spared nothing and no one; I learned not to turn away when faced with a charred tree festooned with human parts; I learned to value kindness as never before; I learned that Joseph Heller was right in his masterly Catch-22: that war was not suited to sane people; and I learned about ‘our’ propaganda.”
John Pilger will be remembered by all those who know that facts and history matter, and that only through struggle will people’s movements ever have a chance of winning justice.
Investigative journalist John Pilger was a journalistic legend . . . the Daily Mirror’s tribute to his “decades of brilliance”. Image: Daily Mirror
In the mid-’90s, two high-end New York art galleries began selling one fake painting after another – works in the style of Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko and others. It was the largest art fraud in modern U.S. history, totaling more than $80 million. Our first story looks at how it happened and why almost no one ever was punished by authorities.
Our second story revisits an investigation into a painting looted by the Nazis during World War II. More than half a century later, a journalist helped track it down through the Panama Papers.
By Aubrey Belford, Stevan Dojcinovic, Jared Savage and Kelvin Anthony in an OCCRP investigation
The operator of a Pacific-wide network of pharmacy companies, Aiyaz Mohammed Musa Umarji, was sentenced to four years prison in New Zealand in August for illegally importing millions of dollars worth of pseudoephedrine, a precursor chemical of methamphetamine.
Umarji, a Fijian national, had long been a target of police in his home country but had for years escaped justice thanks to what Fijian and international law enforcement say was an unwillingness by the previous authoritarian government of Voreqe Bainimarama to seriously tackle meth and cocaine trafficking.
Fiji’s new government, which was elected last December, is now investigating donations that Umarji and his family made to the previous ruling party, as well as “potential connections” to top law enforcement officials.
Until recently, Aiyaz Mohammed Musa Umarji was — in public at least — a pillar of Fiji’s business community.
With ownership of a Pacific-wide pharmacy network, Umarji and his family were significant donors to the party that repressively ruled the country until it lost power in elections last December. He was also a major figure in sports, serving as a vice president of the Fiji Football Association and as a committee member in soccer’s global governing body, FIFA.
And he did it all as an internationally wanted drug trafficker.
Umarji’s fall finally came in August this year, after he ended a period of self-imposed exile in India and surrendered himself to authorities in New Zealand to face years-old charges. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years in prison for importing at least NZ$5-$6 million (US$2.9-3.5 million) worth of pseudoephedrine — a precursor for methamphetamine – into the country.
But behind the conviction of Umarji, 47, lies a far murkier story of impunity, a joint investigation by an Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), The Fiji Times, The New Zealand Herald and Radio New Zealand has found.
Aiyaz Mohammed Musa Umarji (right) shakes hands with Fiji Football Association President Rajesh Patel. Image: Baljeet Singh/The Fiji Times
Umarji was able to thrive for years amid a failure by senior officials of Fiji’s previous authoritarian government to confront a rise in meth and cocaine trafficking through the Pacific Island country.
And when New Zealand authorities finally issued an international warrant for his arrest, Umarji was able to flee Fiji under suspicious circumstances.
Reporters found that Umarji and his family donated at least F$70,000 (US$31,000) to the country’s former ruling party, FijiFirst, in the years after he was first put under investigation. This included F$20,000 (US$8,700) given to the party ahead of last December’s election — roughly three years after he was first charged.
The party’s general secretary, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, was Fiji’s long-serving attorney-general and justice minister at the time.
Reporters also found that the Umarji family’s business network has continued to expand despite his legal troubles, and currently operates in three Pacific countries. The newest of these pharmacy companies, in Vanuatu, was founded just last year.
Fiji’s Minister for Immigration and Home Affairs, Pio Tikoduadua, told OCCRP an investigation has been opened into how Umarji was able to flee the country.
Ships at anchor in the harbour of Fiji’s capital, Suva. Image: Aubrey Belford/OCCRP/RNZ Pacific
He said authorities are also investigating donations Umarji and his family made to FijiFirst, and any “potential connections” he may have had to top officials in the former government, including Sayed-Khaiyum and the now-suspended Police Commissioner, Sitiveni Qiliho.
“Certainly, I am deeply concerned about the potential influence of drug traffickers in Fiji, especially over officials and law enforcement,” Tikoduadua said.
“The infiltration of these criminal elements poses a significant risk to our society and institutions.”
Umarji declined a request for an interview and did not respond to follow-up questions. His Auckland lawyer, David PH Jones, said a request from reporters contained “numerous loaded questions which contain unsubstantiated assertions, a number of which have little or nothing to do with Mr Umarji’s prosecution”.
Sayed-Khaiyum and Qiliho did not respond to written questions.
‘A hub of the Pacific’ The rise in drug trafficking through Fiji is just one part of a booming trans-Pacific trade that experts and law enforcement say has become one of the world’s most profitable.
In Australia, the most recent data shows that drug seizures have more than quadrupled over the last decade, and Australians now consume 4.7 tonnes of cocaine and 8.8 tonnes of meth a year. In much smaller New Zealand, drug users strongly prefer meth to cocaine, consuming roughly 720 kilograms a year.
Consumers in both countries pay some of the highest prices on earth for cocaine and meth, much of it exported from the Americas. Lying in the vast blue expanse between the two points are the Pacific Islands.
The Pacific meth cocaine route map. Map: Edin Pasovic/OCCRP/RNZ Pacific
“Fiji is a hub of the Pacific. You’ve got the ports, you’ve got the infrastructure, and you’ve got the ability to come in and out either by [water] craft or by airplane,” said Glyn Rowland, the New Zealand Police senior liaison officer for the Pacific.
“So that really leaves Fiji quite vulnerable to be in that transit route off to New Zealand and off to Australia.”
Fiji has long been eyed by international organised crime for its strategic location close to Australia and New Zealand’s multi-billion dollar drug markets.
In the early 2000s, for example, an international police operation took apart a “super lab” in Fiji’s capital, Suva, run by Chinese gangsters with enough precursor chemicals to produce a tonne of meth.
But after early successes, Fiji in recent years went cold on the fight against hard drugs.
The previous government of Voreqe Bainimarama, who first took power in a 2006 coup, showed little interest in tackling meth and cocaine trafficking, according to current and former law enforcement officers from Fiji and the US. Despite recent signs that trafficking was increasing, the police force under Bainimarama’s hand-picked commissioner, Qiliho, seemed to overlook the problem, the officers told OCCRP.
Bainimarama did not respond to questions.
Ernie Verina, the Oceania attaché for US Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), said his agency had become worried about trafficking through Fiji.
In mid-2022, HSI assigned an agent to be based in the country. But when the agent raised the issue of meth with top officials from Bainimarama’s government, he was met with total pushback, Verina said.
“Categorically, like, ‘There is no meth’,” Verina said of the Fijian response.
“That’s what they told the agent.”
A lot of influence Despite high-level denials, Fiji’s narcotics police were very much aware of the country’s drug trafficking crisis. In fact, they had long had Umarji in their sights. But he was a difficult target.
As far back as 2017, Umarji was identified as “one of the tier one” suspected traffickers in the country, said Serupepeli Neiko, the head of the Fiji Police’s Narcotics Bureau.
Umarji’s hometown of Lautoka, Fiji. Image: Aubrey Belford/OCCRP/RNZ Pacific
While the drug trade through Fiji is also the domain of transnational organised crime groups, Umarji was suspected of having carved out a niche for himself by using his network of pharmacies, Hyperchem, to legally import pseudoephedrine and divert it onto the black market, Neiko said.
In early 2017, Umarji and one of his colleagues were charged with weapons possession after scores of rifle bullets were found on his yacht, moored in his hometown of Lautoka. But the charges were “squashed in court,” Neiko said.
“So that gave a red flag to us that a [drug trafficking] case against Umarji would have been challenging as well.”
A former senior Fijian officer, who declined to be identified because he is not authorised to speak to the media, put it more bluntly: “Umarji had a lot of influence with the previous government.”
Reporters found no evidence that any senior Fijian officials intervened against investigations into Umarji. But the perception that he had influence was powerful, current and former police officers said.
Indeed, since the fall of Bainimarama’s government last year, multiple senior officials have faced charges that they abused their positions, but none have been convicted.
The suspended police commissioner, Qiliho, and the former prime minister, Bainimarama, were both acquitted by a court on October 12 of charges that they had illegally interfered in a separate police investigation.
Former Attorney-General Sayed-Khaiyum is also currently facing prosecution in another unrelated abuse of office case.
Despite becoming a top-level police target, Umarji continued to expand his influence in Fiji.
Company records show that, in 2015, he and his wife, Zaheera Cassim, opened Hyperchem companies in Fiji, Solomon Islands, and a now-defunct branch in Samoa.
In May 2017, Umarji opened a new company, Bio Pharma, in New Zealand.
Ahead of elections the following year, Umarji and his relatives donated a total of at least F$50,000 to the FijiFirst party, declarations from the Fiji Elections Office show.
Umarji also made a name for himself in soccer, getting elected a vice-president of the Fiji Football Association in December 2019.
Pills and cash By 2019, it was clear that avenues for a Fijian investigation were closed. So police in New Zealand stepped in instead. Reporters were able to reconstruct what happened next via court records and interviews.
While seconded that year to Fiji’s Transnational Crime Unit, New Zealand detective Peter Reynolds heard whispers about Umarji’s alleged criminal activity from his local colleagues. On returning to New Zealand, he decided to take things into his own hands.
Digging through police files, Reynolds found a lucky break in a case from nearly two years prior.
In late 2017, an anonymous member of the public had reached out to an anti-crime hotline with a tip that a businessman, Firdos “Freddie” Dalal, had a suspicious amount of money in his home in suburban Auckland.
Acting on a warrant, police made their way inside and found NZ$726,190 in cash and 4000 boxes of Actifed, a cold and flu medicine that contains pseudoephedrine.
Umarji NZ route map. Image: Edin Pasovic, James O’Brien/OCCRP/RNZ Pacific
Known as Operation Duet, the investigation that led to Dalal’s conviction provided the information that Reynolds needed to go after Umarji. It turned out that Dalal, who owned an Auckland-based freight forwarding company, was also listed as the director of Umarji’s New Zealand company, Bio Pharma.
Reynolds soon figured out how it all worked. Using his Pacific-wide Hyperchem network, Umarji ordered Actifed pills to be delivered from abroad to his pharmacies in Fiji and Solomon Islands. The shipments were set to transit through New Zealand, where Dalal’s forwarding company was responsible for the cargo.
While the drugs sat in a restricted customs holding area, Dalal simply went inside and swapped them out for other other medicine, such as anti-fungal cream, which was then sent on to their island destinations. The purloined pseudoephedrine was sold on New Zealand’s black market.
Dalal did not respond to questions.
In just three shipments between January and October 2017, Umarji’s operation brought in an estimated 678,000 Actifed pills containing about 40.7 kilograms of pseudoephedrine, Auckland District Court would later find.
But if deciphering Umarji’s operation was straightforward, arresting him would prove anything but.
New Zealand Police filed charges against Umarji in December 2019, but Reynolds told the Auckland court that he believed they faced little chance of getting Umarji to voluntarily fly to Auckland and show up in court.
“If the summons were to be served it would likely result in Umarji fleeing [Fiji] to a country that has no extradition arrangements with New Zealand,” the detective said in an affidavit.
So New Zealand authorities decided to go through the arduous process of requesting extradition. In November 2021, a Fijian court agreed to the request, and New Zealand Police issued an Interpol red notice.
Despite all the effort, within days Fiji Police had to contact their New Zealand counterparts with an embarrassing admission: Umarji had fled the country, and was in India.
New Zealand Police’s Pacific liaison, Rowland, declined to comment on how Umarji was able to flee Fiji, but added: “The reality is, sometimes corruption isn’t about what you do. Sometimes corruption is about what you don’t do, or turn a blind eye to.”
Despite his legal troubles, Umarji remained a respectable public figure in Fiji, thanks in part to a restrictive media environment that made it difficult for reporters to look into him in detail.
In May 2021, while Umarji was still in Fiji and his extradition case was pending, he was elected to FIFA’s governance, audit and compliance committee. He kept the position even after his flight abroad later that year, and was re-elected unopposed as Fiji Football Association vice president this June. He only resigned both positions on August 7, two days before his sentencing.
FIFA and the Fiji Football Association did not respond to questions.
Umarji also made little effort to hide during his exile in India. At one stage last year, he recorded an online video testimonial for a stem cell clinic outside of Delhi where he said he was getting treatment for diabetes.
His family’s second round of donations to FijiFirst, F$20,000 ahead of last December’s elections, were similarly made while Umarji was on the run.
But the drug trafficker eventually tired of exile.
In early 2022, he first contacted his high-powered Auckland lawyer, Jones, to arrange his surrender to New Zealand Police. He pleaded guilty to the Auckland court earlier this year and was allowed to return to Fiji to sort his affairs before handing himself in for sentencing.
Hyperchem’s warehouse and office in Lautoka. Image Aubrey Belford/OCCRP/RNZ Pacific
New focus With Umarji now in prison, Fijian authorities say they are continuing to investigate his operations.
Umarji’s pharmaceutical business continues to run with his wife, Cassim, at its head. Cassim has for years been a significant public face for the businesses, including publicising its charitable work. She declined to respond to reporters’ questions.
OCCRP visited Umarji’s companies in Lautoka in late June, during the period in which he was allowed by the New Zealand court to briefly return to Fiji. Reporters found a bustling network of businesses, including a well-staffed warehouse and office on the edge of town for Hyperchem.
Reporters contacted Umarji by phone from the warehouse’s reception area, but he declined to come out for an interview and referred reporters to his lawyer.
Homeland Security Investigations’ Verina said the new government of Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has since removed roadblocks to investigating these sort of trafficking operations.
“We have started to see enforcement operations and arrests and holding individuals accountable for the methamphetamine smuggling,” Verina said.
An Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) investigation. Additional reporting by Lydia Lewis (RNZ) and George Block (New Zealand Herald). This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) says it is “deeply concerned” at reports that Western Australian police are demanding the ABC hand over footage about climate protesters filmed as part of a Four Corners investigation.
“As researchers and teachers of journalism, we uphold the ethical obligation of journalists to honour any assurances given to protect sources,” said JERAA president Associate Professor Alexandra Wake in a statement.
“This obligation is imperative in supporting the Western democratic tradition of journalism and to investigative journalism in particular.”
“I’m going to remember this for the rest of my life.” Video: ABC Four Corners
WA police are reported to have demanded footage via “Order to Produce” provisions of the WA Criminal Investigations Act. The law compels organisations to comply.
One of JERAA’s core aims was to promote freedom of expression and communication, said the statement.
“The association is concerned that the WA police action represents a direct threat to media freedom and the practice of ethical investigative journalism,” Dr Wake said.
“We join the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) in urging the ABC to stand firm and not hand over footage which could potentially undermine assurances by the Four Corners team to their sources.”
The union for Australian journalists said it was alarmed at the reports that WA police were demanding the ABC hand over footage featuring climate activists filmed as part of the television investigation before it had even aired.
“Escalation” reported by Hagar Cohen goes to air tonight, Monday, 9 October 2023, at 8.30pm AEST on ABC TV and ABC iview.
Barely a day passes without a story in the British or Australian media that ramps up fear about the rulers in Beijing, reports the investigative website Declassified Australia.
According to an analysis by co-editors Antony Loewenstein and Peter Cronau, the Australian and British media are ramping up public fear, aiding a major military build-up — and perhaps conflict — by the United States and its allies.
The article is a warning to New Zealand and Pacific media too.
Citing a recent article in the Telegraph newspaper in Britain headlined, “A war-winning missile will knock China out of Taiwan – fast”, says the introduction.
“Written by David Axe, who contributes regularly to the outlet, he detailed a war game last year that was organised by the US think-tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
“It examined a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and concluded that the US Navy would be nearly entirely obliterated. However, Axe wrote, the US Air Force ‘could almost single-handedly destroy the Chinese invasion force’.
“‘How? With the use of a Lockheed Martin-made Joint Air-to-Surface Strike Missile (JASSM).
“‘It’s a stealthy and highly accurate cruise missile that can range hundreds of miles from its launching warplane,’ Axe explained.
“‘There are long-range versions of the JASSM and a specialised anti-ship version, too — and the USAF [US Air Force] and its sister services are buying thousands of the missiles for billions of dollars.’
“Missing from this analysis was the fact that Lockheed Martin is a major sponsor of the CSIS. The editors of The Telegraph either didn’t know or care about this crucial detail.
“One week after this story, Axe wrote another one for the paper, titled, ‘The US Navy should build a robot armada to fight the battle of Taiwan.’
“‘The US Navy is shrinking,’ the story begins. ‘The Chinese navy is growing. The implications, for a free and prosperous Pacific region, are enormous.’”
Branding the situation as “propaganda by think tank”, the authors argue that some sections of the news media are framing a massive military build-up by the US and its allies as necessary in the face of Chinese aggression.
“These repetitive media reports condition the public and so allow, or force, the political class to up the ante on China,” Loewenstein and Cronau write.
Research on climate crisis as the new target for disinformation peddlers, governance and the media, China’s growing communication influence, and journalism training strategies feature strongly in the latest Pacific Journalism Review.
Byron C. Clark, author of the recent controversial book Fear: New Zealand’s Hostile Underworld of Extremists, and Canterbury University postgraduate researcher Emanuel Stokes, have produced a case study about climate crisis as the new pandemic disinformation arena with the warning that “climate change or public health emergencies can be seized upon by alternative media and conspiracist influencers” to “elicit outrage and protest”.
The authors argue that journalists need a “high degree of journalistic ethics and professionalism to avoid amplifying hateful, dehumanising narratives”.
The latest Pacific Journalism Review . . . July 2023.
PJR editor Dr Philip Cass adds an article unpacking the role of Pacific churches, both positive and negative, in public information activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several articles deal with media freedom in the Pacific in the wake of the pandemic, including a four-country examination by some of the region’s leading journalists and facilitated by Dr Amanda Watson of Australian National University and associate professor Shailendra Singh of the University of the South Pacific.
They conclude that the pandemic “has been a stark reminder about the link between media freedom and the financial viability of media of organisations, especially in the Pacific”.
Dr Ann Auman, a specialist in crosscultural and global media ethics from the University of Hawai’i, analyses challenges facing the region through a workshop at the newly established Pacific Media Institute in Majuro, Marshall Islands.
Repeal of draconian Fiji law
The ousting of the Voreqe Bainimarama establishment that had been in power in Fiji in both military and “democratic” forms since the 2006 coup opened the door to greater media freedom and the repeal of the draconian Fiji Media Law. Two articles examine the implications of this change for the region.
An Indonesian researcher, Justito Adiprasetio of Universitas Padjadjaran, dissects the impact of Jakarta’s 2021 “terrorist” branding of the Free West Papua movement on six national online news media groups.
In Aotearoa New Zealand, media analyst Dr Gavin Ellis discusses “denying oxygen” to those who create propaganda for terrorists in the light of his recent research with Dr Denis Muller of Melbourne University and how Australia might benefit from New Zealand media initiatives, while RNZ executive editor Jeremy Rees reflects on a historical media industry view of training, drawing from Commonwealth Press Union reviews of the period 1979-2002.
Across the Tasman, Griffith University communication and journalism programme director Dr Kasun Ubayasiri presents a powerful human rights Photoessay documenting how the Meanjin (Brisbane) local community rallied around to secure the release of 120 medevaced refugee men locked up in an urban motel.
Monash University associate professor Johan Lidberg led a team partnering in International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) studies about “the world according to China”, the global media influence strategies of a superpower.
The Frontline section features founding editor Dr David Robie’s case study about the Pacific Media Centre which was originally published by Japan’s Okinawan Journal of Island Studies.
A strong Obituary section featuring two personalities involved in investigating the 1975 Balibo Five journalist assassination by Indonesian special forces in East Timor and a founder of the Pacific Media Centre plus nine Reviews round off the edition.
Pacific Journalism Review, founded at the University of Papua New Guinea, is now in its 29th year and is New Zealand’s oldest journalism research publication and the highest ranked communication journal in the country.
Reveal revisits a story produced in collaboration with a Guatemalan journalist who is now in prison. José Rubén Zamora was jailed last summer after his newspaper, elPeriódico, published more than 100 stories about corruption within Guatemala’s government.
Corruption is a longstanding problem in Guatemala, and it’s intertwined with U.S. policy in Central America. At times, the U.S. has had a corrupting influence on Guatemalan politics; at others, it has supported transparency. This week’s show looks at the root causes of corruption and impunity in Guatemala and how they have prompted generations of Guatemalans to flee their country and migrate north.
Veteran radio journalist Maria Martin takes us to Huehuetenango, a province near Guatemala’s border with Mexico. For decades, residents have been migrating to the U.S. to help support families struggling with poverty. We then connect the migration outflow to U.S. policy during the Cold War and its support of brutal dictatorships in Guatemala that were plagued by corruption.
Then Reveal’s Anayansi Diaz-Cortes introduces us to a crusading prosecutor named Iván Velásquez. In the early 2000s, Velásquez was tasked with running an international anti-corruption commission in Guatemala, known by its Spanish acronym, CICIG. Its mandate was to root out corruption and improve the lives of Guatemalans so they wouldn’t feel compelled to leave their homes. Velásquez had a reputation for jailing presidents and paramilitaries, but met his match when he went after Jimmy Morales, a television comedian who was elected president in 2015. Morales found an ally in then-U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration helped Morales dismantle CICIG.
With CICIG gone, journalists were left to expose government corruption – journalists like Zamora, who was arrested last summer on trumped-up charges. Diaz-Cortes speaks with Zamora’s son about his father’s arrest and the state of journalism in Guatemala.
This is an update of an episode that originally aired in September 2020.
Investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein . . . author of The Palestine Laboratory. Image: AL website
Asia Pacific Report: Locations Monday, July 17: Christchurch
Public meeting, 7pm
Knox Centre, Cnr Bealey Avenue & Victoria street, Christchurch (books available) https://www.facebook.com/events/813719740268177/
Thursday, July 20: Auckland
Public Meeting, 7pm
The Fickling Centre, 546 Mt Albert Road (The Women’s Bookshop will be at the meeting to sell books) https://www.facebook.com/events/285795137317711/
One inmate became the voice of the men locked up on Manus. Behrouz Boochani and Ben Doherty look back at the risks he took to get this story to the world
The launch of a New Zealand project to produce more Pacific news and provide a “voice for the voiceless” on the islands has highlighted the neglect of that field by Australia and New Zealand — and also problems in universities.
The new development is the non-government, non-university Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), a research base and publishing platform.
Its opening followed the cleaning-out of a centre within the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) — in an exercise exemplifying the kind of micro infighting that goes on hardly glimpsed from outside the academic world.
Cleaning out media centre The story features an unannounced move by university staff to vacate the offices of an active journalism teaching and publishing base, the Pacific Media Centre, in early February 2021.
Seven weeks after the retirement of that centre’s foundation director, Professor David Robie, staff of AUT’s School of Communication Studies turned up and stripped it, taking out the archives and Pacific taonga — valued artifacts from across the region.
Staff still based there did not know of this move until later.
The centre had been in operation for 13 years — it was popular with Pasifika students, especially postgrads who would go on reporting ventures for practice-led research around the Pacific; it was a base for online news, for example prolific outlets including a regular Pacific Media Watch; it had international standing especially through the well-rated (“SCOPUS-listed”) academic journal Pacific Journalism Review; and it was a cultural hub, where guests might receive a sung greeting from the staff, Pacific-style, or see fascinating art works and craft.
Its uptake across the “Blue Continent” showed up gaps in mainstream media services and in Australia’s case famously the backlog in promoting economic and cultural ties.
The PMC Project — a short documentary about the centre by Alistar Kata in 2016. Video: Pacific Media Centre
Human rights and media freedom The centre was founded in 2007, in a troubled era following a rogue military coup d’etat in Fiji, civil disturbances in Papua New Guinea, violent attacks on journalists in several parts, and endemic gender violence listed as a priority problem for the Pacific Islands Forum.
Through its publishing and conference activity it would take a stand on human rights and media freedom issues, social justice, economic and media domination from outside.
The actual physical evacuation was on the orders of the communications head of school at AUT, Dr Rosser Johnson, a recently appointed associate professor with a history of management service in several acting roles since 2005. He told the Australia Asia Pacific Media Initiative (AAPMI) in response to its formal complaint to AUT that it was “gutting” the centre that the university planned to keep a centre called the PMC and co-locate its offices with other centres — but that never happened.
His intervention caused predictable critical responses, as with this comment by a former New Zealand Heraldeditor-in-chief, Dr Gavin Ellis, on dealing with corporatised universities, in “neo-liberal” times:
“For many years I thought universities were the ideal place to establish centres of investigative journalism excellence … My views have been shaken to the core by the Auckland University of Technology gutting the Pacific Media Centre.”
Conflicts over truth-telling The “PMC affair” has stirred conflicts that should worry observers who place value on truth-finding and truth-telling in university research, preparation for the professions, and academic freedom.
The Independent Australia report on the fate of the PMC last weekend. Image: Asia Pacific Report
The centre along with its counterpart at the University of Technology Sydney, called the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ), worked in the area of journalism as research, applying journalistic skills and methods, especially exercises in investigative journalism.
The ACIJ produced among many investigations, work on the reporting of climate policy and climate science, and the News of the World phone hacking scandal. It also was peremptorily shut-down, three years ahead of the PMC.
Both centres were placed in the journalism academic discipline, a “professional” and “teaching” discipline that traditionally draws in high achieving students interested in its practice-led approach.
All of which is decried by line academics in disciplines without professional linkages but a professional interest in the hierarchical arrangements and power relations within the confined space of their universities.
There the interest is in theoretical teaching and research outputs, often-enough called “Marxist”, “postmodern”, “communications” or “cultural studies”, angled at a de-legitimisation of “Western-liberal” mass media. Not that journalism education itself shies away from media criticism, as Dr Robie told Independent Australia:
“The Pacific Media Centre frequently challenged ‘ethnocentric journalistic practice’ and placed Māori, Pacific and indigenous and cultural diversity at the heart of the centre’s experiential knowledge and critical-thinking news narratives.”
Yet it can be seen how conflict may arise, especially where smaller journalism departments come under “takeover” pressure. It is a handy option for academic managers to subsume “journalism”, and get the staff positions that can be filled with non-journalists; the contribution the journalists may make to research earnings (through the Australian Excellence in Research process, or NZ Performance Based Research Fund), and especially government funding for student places.
There, better students likely to excel and complete their programmes can be induced to do more generalised courses with a specialist “journalism” label.
Any such conflict in the AUT case cannot be measured but must be at least lurking in the background.
What is ‘ideology’? Another problem exists, where a centre like the former PMC will commit to defined values, even officially sanctioned ones like inclusivity and rejection of discrimination.
Undertakings like the PMC’s “Bearing Witness” projects, where students would deploy classic journalism techniques for investigations on a nuclear-free Pacific or climate change, can irritate conservative interests.
The derogatory expression for any connection with social movements is “ideological”. This time it is an unknown, but a School moving against an “ideological” unit, might get at least tacit support from higher-ups supposing that eviscerating it might help the institution’s “good name”.
What implications for future journalism, freedom and quality of media? Hostility towards specific professional education for journalism exists fairly widely. The rough-housing of the journalism centre at AUT is indicative, where efforts by the out-going director to organise succession after his retirement, five years in advance, received no response.
The position statement was changed to take away a requirement for actual Pacific media identity or expertise, and the job left vacant, in part a covid effect. The centre performed well on its key performance indicators, if small in size, which brought in limited research grants but good returns for academic publications:
“On 18 December 2020 – the day I officially retired – I wrote to the [then] Vice-Chancellor, Derek McCormack … expressing my concern about the future of the centre, saying the situation was “unconscionable and inexplicable”. I never received an acknowledgement or reply.”
Pacific futures Journalism education has persisted through an adverse climate, where the number of journalists in mainstream media has declined, in New Zealand almost halved to 2061, (2006 – 2018). AUT celebrated 50 years of journalism teaching this week.
The latest Pacific Journalism Review . . . published for 28 years. Image: PJR
However new media are expanding, new demands exist for media competency across the exploding world “mediascape”, schools cultivating conscionable practices are providing an antidote to floods of bigotry and lies in social media.
The new NGO in Auckland, the APMN, has found a good base of support across the Pacific communities, limbering up for a future free of interference, outside of the former university base.
It will be bidding for a share of NZ government grants intended to assist public journalism, ethnic broadcasting and outreach to the region. While several products of the former centre have closed, the successful 28-year-old research journal Pacific Journalism Review has continued, producing two editions under its new management.
The operation is also keeping its production-side media strengths, such as with the online title Asia Pacific Report.
Independent Australia media editor Dr Lee Duffield is a former ABC correspondent and academic. He is a member of the editorial advisory board of Pacific Journalism Review. This article is republished with the author’s permission.
A recent revival of local prime-time TV documentaries has highlighted some thorny social issues and raised awkward questions about justice and equality.
Among them was a revealing investigation this week showing the cost of white-collar crime dwarfs that of welfare fraud, but draws lighter punishments and gets a lot less scrutiny in the media than the kind of crimes that play out in public.
For years, the heyday of New Zealand TV documentary and current affairs seemed to be in the past.
Gone are the days of Mike McRoberts’ mellifluous voice introducing local investigative stories on 60 Minutes after a few seconds of distinctive clock-ticking. The popular franchise stopped producing local content some years ago.
20/20, while still on air, mainly releases repackaged content from the US these days and in spite of the continuing long-form journalism of TVNZ’s Sunday, documentaries have been fading from New Zealand screens for some time.
Lately though, TVNZ has revived the strand Documentary New Zealand with a series of eight new NZ On Air-funded films for TVNZ1 on Tuesday nights between Eat Well For Less and Coronation Street, and on the on-demand service TVNZ+.
Among the most engaging and often moving ones was No Māori Allowed, which aired last week.
Pukekohe discrimination
The documentary delves into the history of Pukekohe, where for decades Māori were subject to discrimination and sometimes, violence.
It deftly navigates several tensions — first between local Pākehā and Māori who lived though an era of segregated movie theatres, but also between the people trying to bring the area’s past to light and the kuia and kaumatua who lived through it, and still bear the scars.
While No Māori Allowed highlighted historic racism and the legacy it has left, this week’s documentary Crime: Need vs Greed trains its eye on a more modern form of racial and economic injustice.
Host Tim McKinnel argues we’ve “sleepwalked” into a $5 billion white collar crime wave of costly fraud and deception offences while the attention of our justice system and media is turned toward often low level street crime.
“While society and the media fixate on gang crimes, ram raids, and other forms of street crime, white collar criminals have been robbing us blind. We’ve sleepwalked into a $5 billion crime wave that no-one wants to talk about. Instead we’re tough on crime and spend billions locking up the poor,” he says in Need vs Greed.
Not only have white collar criminals been robbing us blind — the documentary presents evidence they’ve been getting away with it.
Tax law specialist Lisa Marriot delivers some staggering statistics on the double standard. Her research found people convicted of tax fraud crimes averaging $287,000 have a 22 percent chance of receiving a prison sentence — while those convicted of welfare fraud worth an average of $67,000 are imprisoned 60 percent of the time.
The lack of consequences for white collar crime belies its scale and impact.
$1.7 billion fraud prosecution
A 2014 investigation by New Zealand Herald journalist Matt Nippert helped trigger a $1.7 billion fraud prosecution against the company South Canterbury Finance.
In Crime: Need vs Greed, he says it’s “more than every Treaty settlement combined in New Zealand’s history” or “a hundred years of benefit fraud in one go”.
Given the relative figures involved, it’s worth asking why benefit fraud or street crime like ram raids get so much more attention.
Nippert says part of the reason is obvious: street crime is visceral and a lot more understandable to audiences.
“It’s the comparison between a Jerry Bruckheimer action flick and something much more slow and sedate like a documentary spread across, say, six episodes.
“I think ram raids are quite a violent, shocking act and should be covered. But they are also effectively a pre-scripted sort of action heist movie — with car crashes and getaways and splitting the loot — all condensed down to this one moment of action.
“But the white collar financial crimes often occur very subtly, very carefully, very deceptively over years, sometimes decades,” he says.
Fraud story legal threats
Fraud stories also pose legal difficulties, partly because the perpetrators can afford to hire lawyers and threaten defamation action.
Nippert is routinely threatened with legal action over his investigations. The Herald‘s lawyers have to check almost everything that he writes.
One of many recent headlines citing a “crime wave”. Image: RNZ Mediawatch
Meanwhile, street crime is more likely to come before the courts, and reporting on it is less likely to be subject to suppression orders and legal challenges from defendants.
“A lot of reporting comes from courts are a reflection of wider problem,” Nippert says.
“You will tend to get far more disadvantaged people in the District Court facing charges. On the other side of it, when you’re looking at sort of white collar crimes . . . I’ve run into suppression orders many, many times. So that not only maybe dampens down the reporting, but also slows it down enormously.”
Human brain ‘and zeros’
Another issue contributing to the comparative dearth of fraud reporting is that the “human brain does funny things when it sees zeroes,” Nippert says.
“The difference between $10 million and $100 million becomes quite ethereal. But everyone can understand what $1000 in the hand looks like.”
Despite the inherent disadvantages fraud stories have in a click-based media economy, Nippert says more reporters should cover them because of the huge costs these crimes impose on victims and society.
That might mean doing a basic accountancy paper at university or downloading Google Sheets onto their phone, but the barriers to entry aren’t as high as some reporters might think, he says.
“I used to think I didn’t have that sort of brain [for numbers]. But then I was made redundant and the only job I could get was a business reporter in the NBR and you know, if you give it a go, I think you’ll find it’s a lot more straightforward than you’ve conditioned yourself to fear,” he says.
“It’s important to point out for readers that some of these cases are alarming and we should be paying close attention because that $100 million isn’t just $100 million from some insurance company — that’s likely to be a thousand families who have lost their nest egg, and whose financial future is extraordinarily precarious, probably for the rest of their lives.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
When the Supreme Court’s decision undoing Roe v. Wade came down in June, anti-abortion groups were jubilant – but far from satisfied. Many in the movement have a new target: hormonal birth control. It seems contradictory; doesn’t preventing unwanted pregnancies also prevent abortions? But anti-abortion groups don’t see it that way. They claim that hormonal contraceptives like IUDs and the pill can actually cause abortions.
One prominent group making this claim is Students for Life of America, whose president has said she wants contraceptives like IUDs and birth control pills to be illegal. The fast-growing group has built a social media campaign spreading the false idea that hormonal birth control is an abortifacient. Reveal’s Amy Mostafa teams up with UC Berkeley journalism and law students to dig into the world of young anti-abortion influencers and how medical misinformation gains traction on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, with far-reaching consequences.
Tens of millions of Americans use hormonal contraceptives to prevent pregnancy and regulate their health. And many have well-founded complaints about side effects, from nausea to depression – not to mention well-justified anger about how the medical establishment often pooh-poohs those concerns. Anti-abortion and religious activists have jumped into the fray, urging people to reject hormonal birth control as “toxic” and promoting non-hormonal “fertility awareness” methods – a movement they’re trying to rebrand as “green sex.” Mother Jones Senior Editor Kiera Butler explains how secular wellness influencers such as Jolene Brighten, who sells a $300 birth control “hormone reset,” are having their messages adopted by anti-abortion influencers, many of them with deep ties to Catholic institutions.
The end of Roe triggered a Missouri law that immediately banned almost all abortions. Many were shocked when a major health care provider in the state announced it would also no longer offer emergency contraception pills – Plan B – because of a false belief that it could cause an abortion. While the health system soon reversed its policy, it wasn’t the first time Missouri policymakers have been roiled by the myth that emergency contraception can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting and cause an abortion. Reveal senior reporter and producer Katharine Mieszkowski tracks how lawmakers in the state have been confronting this misinformation campaign and looks to the future of how conservatives are aiming to use birth control as their new wedge issue.
