West Papuan journalist Victor Mambor has vowed not to be silenced despite years of threats, harassment and even a bomb attack on his home.
The 51-year-old founder and editor-in-chief of Jubi, West Papua’s leading media outlet, was in Fiji this week, where he spoke exclusively to The Fiji Times about his fight to expose human rights abuses.
“Despite them bombing my home and office with molotov bombs, I am still doing journalism today because my people are hurting — and I won’t stop,” Mambor said.
The news industry has undergone a sea-change in the last two decades. Print readership of newspapers has declined sharply, while their digital readership has edged up slowly. Local newspapers have consolidated into ever larger chains controlled by private equity and vulture funds. Newer digital-only media sites have multiplied. Into this changing news landscape has come an influx of new…
Three media spokespeople addressed the 98th week of New Zealand solidarity rallies for Palestine in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland today, criticising the quality of news reporting about the world’s biggest genocide crisis this century.
Speakers at other locations around the country also condemned what they said was biased media coverage.
The critics said they were affirming their humanity in solidarity with the people of Palestine as the United Nations this week officially declared a man-made famine in Gaza because of Israel’s weaponisation of starvation against the besieged enclave with 2 million population.
More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed in the 22 months of conflict – mostly women and children.
One of the major criticisms was that the New Zealand media has consistently framed the series of massacres as a “war” between Israel and Hamas instead of a military land grab based on ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The first speaker, Mick Hall, a former news agency journalist who is currently an independent political columnist, said the way news media had covered these crimes had “undoubtedly affected public opinion”.
“As Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza devolved into a full-blown genocide, our media continued to frame Israel’s attack on Gaza as a war against Hamas, while they uncritically recorded Western leaders’ claims that Israel was exercising a ‘right of self-defence’,” he said.
NZ media lacking context
New Zealand news outlets continued to “present an ahistorical account of what has transpired since October 7, shorn of context, ignoring Israel’s history of occupation, of colonial violence against the Palestinian people”.
“An implicit understanding that violence and ethnic cleansing forms part of the organisational DNA of Zionism should have shaped how news stories were framed and presented over the past 22 months.
Independent journalist Mick Hall speaking at today’s rally . . . newsrooms “failed to robustly document the type of evidence of genocide now before the International Court of Justice.”
“Instead, newsroom leaders took their lead from our politicians, from the foreign policy positions from those in Washington and other aligned centres of power.”
Hall said newsrooms had not taken a “neutral position” — “nor are they attempting to keep us informed in any meaningful sense”.
“They failed to robustly document the type of evidence of genocide now before the International Court of Justice.
“By wilfully declining to adjudicate between contested claims of Israel and its victims, they failed to meet the informational needs of democratic citizenship in a most profound way.
“They lowered the standard of news, instead of upholding it, as they so sanctimoniously tell us.”
Evans slams media ‘apologists’
Award-winning New Zealand cartoonist Malcolm Evans congratulated the crowd of about 300 protesters for “being on the right side of history”.
“As we remember more than 240 journalists, camera and media people, murdered, assassinated, by Zionist Israel — who they were and the principles they stood for we should not forget our own media,” he said.
Cartoonist and commentator Malcolm Evans . . . “It wasn’t our reporters living in a tent in Gaza whose lives, hopes and dreams were blasted into oblivion because they exposed Zionist Israel’s evil intent.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
“The media which, contrary to the principles they claim to stand for, tried to tell us Zionist Israeli genocide was justified.”
“Whatever your understanding of the conflict in Palestine, which has brought you here today and for these past many months, it won’t have come first from the mainstream media.
“It wasn’t our reporters living in a tent in Gaza whose lives, hopes and dreams were blasted into oblivion because they exposed Zionist Israel’s evil intent.
“The reporters whose witness to Zionist Israel’s war crimes sparked your outrage were not from the ranks of Western media apologists.”
Describing the mainstream media as “pimps for propaganda”, Evans said that in any “decent world” he would not be standing there — instead the New Zealand journalists organisation would be, “expressing solidarity with their murdered Middle Eastern colleagues”.
Palestinian journalists owed debt
David Robie, author and editor of Asia Pacific Report, said the world owed a huge debt to the Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
“Although global media freedom groups have conflicting death toll numbers, it is generally accepted that more than 270 journalists and media workers have been killed — many of them deliberately targeted by the IDF [Israeli Defence Force], even killing their families as well.”
Journalist and author Dr David Robie . . . condemned New Zealand media for republishing some of the Israeli “counter-narratives” without question. Image: Del Abcede/APR
Dr Robie stressed that the Palestinian journalist death toll had eclipsed that of the combined media deaths of the American Civil War, First and Second World Wars, Korean War, Vietnam War, Cambodian War, Yugoslavia Wars, Afghan War, and the ongoing Ukraine War.
“The Palestinian death toll of journalists is greater than the combined death toll of all these other wars,” he said. “This is shocking and shameful.”
He pointed out that when Palestinian reporter Anas al-Sharif was assassinated on August 10, his entire television crew was also wiped out ahead of the Israeli invasion of Gaza City — “eliminating the witnesses, that’s what Israel does”.
Six journalists died that day in an air strike, four of them from Al Jazeera, which is banned in Israel.
Dr Robie also referred to “disturbing reports” about the existence of an IDF military unit — the so-called “legitimisation cell” — tasked with smearing and targeting journalists in Gaza with fake information.
He condemned the New Zealand media for republishing some of these “counter-narratives” without question.
“This is shameful because news editors know that they are dealing with an Israeli government with a history of lying and disinformation; a government that is on trial with the International Court of Justice for ‘plausible genocide’; and a prime minister wanted on an International Criminal Court arrest warrant to answer charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he said.
“Why would you treat this government as a credible source without scrutiny?”
Mock media cemetery
The protest included a mock pavement cemetery with about 20 “bodies” of murdered journalists and blue “press” protective vests, and placards declaring “Killing journalists is killing the truth”, “Genocide: Zionism’s final solution” and “Zionism shames Jewish tradition”.
The demonstrators marched around Te Komititanga Square, pausing at strategic moments as Palestinians read out the names of the hundreds of killed Gazan journalists to pay tribute to their courage and sacrifice.
Author and journalist Saige England . . . “The truth is of a genocide carried out by bombs and snipers, and now there is another weapon.” Image: Claire Coveney/APR
In Ōtautahi Christchurch today, one of the speakers at the Palestine solidarity rally there was author and journalist Saige England, who called on journalists to “speak the truth on Gaza”.
“The truth of a genocide carried out by bombs and snipers, and now there is another weapon — slow starvation, mutilation by hunger,” she said.
“The truth is a statement by Israel that journalists are ‘the enemy’. Israel says journalists are the enemy, what does that tell you?
“Why? Because it has carried out invasions, apartheid and genocide for decades.”
Some of the mock bodies today representing the slaughtered Gazan journalists with Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif in the forefront. Image: APR
The 1980s were a time of war in El Salvador. The government openly attacked its citizens. Repression. Murder. Massacres.
Radio Venceremos broadcasted twice a day. And it was a voice of truth. A voice of reason. A voice of resistance amid the violence and the government repression and the military bloodshed. They spoke truth to power. They offered hope to the masses—the people praying for change. Praying that El Salvador could be different. That one day they would not have to live in fear.
This is episode 63 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast produced by The Real News. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
You can check out exclusive pictures of the Radio Venceremos archive at the Museum of Word and Image in San Salvador here, on Michael Fox’s Patreon.
Please consider supporting this podcast and Michael Fox’s reporting on his Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also see exclusive pictures, video, and interviews.
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It was a time of war. A time of desperation. This was El Salvador—early 1980s. The government openly attacked its citizens. It hadbeen for years.
Repression. Murder. Torture. Massacres. Disappearances… hundreds a month.
And the United States fueled the fire. It trained the soldiers, gave the logistics, backed the death squads and the authoritarian governments.
But Salvadorans responded. After the killing of Archbishop Monsignor Romero, guerrilla forces united. They founded a movement to push back on the despotic regime. They sparked a civil war that would grip the country for more than a decade. And at the heart of it was one guerrilla radio.
Radio Venceremos.
They broadcast twice a day, and they were a voice of truth. A voice of reason. A voice of resistance amid the violence, and the government repression, and the military bloodshed.
And Radio Venceremos didn’t just broadcast news. They sang music. They acted out plays and skits. They made fun of government and military officials. They reported from the front lines. Spoke with everyday Salvadorans. And denounced the violence, repression, and the massacres.
They spoke truth to power. They offered hope to the masses—the people praying for change. Praying that El Salvador could be different. That one day they would not have to live in fear.
And for this, the radio was targeted, and attacked. For this, the Salvadoran government could not let them continue. And the military set out to destroy this tiny guerrilla radio.
They were often on the run, broadcasting while bombs fell, government forces only a few steps behind. But they responded with creativity. They ran their signal over the barbed wires that covered the countryside.
They broadcast their words and songs, stories and hope, from miles away from their location, and fooled military officers and bombing raids for months and years.
Radio Venceremos became so reputable, international mainstream media turned to it for news and reporting. News from the front lines. The news and stories the government would not tell, and which the government prohibited other news outlets from reporting. Investigative stories about government massacres. The truth from the battlefield, and from communities across El Salvador.
Radio Venceremos was a beacon of light in a sea of darkness. A glimmer of hope amid the despair. A reminder that the US-backed government and the repressive forces and the guns and violence could not silence the resistance.
People listened in far and wide. Even military officers, though it was prohibited.Humanity breathing, speaking truth into the airwaves. The airwaves that would not be silenced, despite every government attempt to stop them.
On January 16, 1992, the government finally signed a peace agreement with the guerrilla forces of the FMLN, or Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, ending the country’s 12-year-long civil war.
Radio Venceremos broadcast throughout the war.
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Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox.
This week, National Radio Day was held in the United States on August 20.
I thought it was a fitting moment to honor this tremendous guerrilla radio that was El Salvador’s Radio Venceremos.
If you would like to learn more, please check out episodes 4 and 5 of my podcast Under the Shadow. They both deal with the country’s civil war in the 1980s. In particular, episode 5 is entirely about Radio Venceremos. The radio’s archive today, is housed at the Museum of Word and Image in San Salvador. It’s a great episode. You can find links in the show notes.
You can check out exclusive pictures of the Radio Venceremos Archive in my Patreon account. It’s exclusively for my supports on Patreon. I’ll include the link in the show notes.
As always, if you like what you hear and enjoy this podcast, please consider becoming a subscriber on my Patreon. It’s only a few dollars a month. I have a ton of exclusive content there, only available to my supporters. And every supporter really makes a difference.
This is the latest episode of Stories of Resistance, a podcast series produced by The Real News. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
Protesters in their thousands have been taking to the streets in Aotearoa New Zealand demonstrating in solidarity with Palestine and against genocide for the past 97 weeks.
Yet rarely have the protests across the motu made headlines — or even the news for that matter — unlike the larger demonstrations in many countries around the world.
At times the New Zealand news media themselves have been the target over what is often claimed to be “biased reportage lacking context”. Yet even protests against media, especially public broadcasters, on their doorstep have been ignored.
Reporters have not even engaged, let alone reported the protests.
Last weekend, this abruptly changed with two television crews on hand in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland days after six Palestinian journalists — four Al Jazeera correspondents and cameramen, including the celebrated Anas al-Shifa, plus two other reporters were assassinated by the Israeli military in targeted killings.
With the Gaza Media Office confirming a death toll of almost 270 journalists since October 2023 — more than the combined killings of journalists in both World Wars, and the Korean, Vietnam, and Afghan wars — a growing awareness of the war was hitting home.
After silence about the killing of journalists for the past 22 months, New Zealand this week signed a joint statement by 27 nations for the Media Freedom Coalition belatedly calling on Israel to open up access to foreign media and to offer protection for journalists in Gaza “in light of the unfolding catastrophe”.
Sydney Harbour Bridge factor
Another factor in renewed media interest has probably been the massive March for Humanity on Sydney Harbour Bridge with about 300,000 people taking part on August 3.
One independent New Zealand journalist who has been based in the West Bank for two periods during the Israeli war on Gaza – last year for two months and again this year – is unimpressed with the reportage.
Why? Video and photojournalist Cole Martin from Ōtautahi Christchurch believes there is a serious lack of understanding in New Zealand media of the context of the structural and institutional violence towards the Palestinians.
“It is a media scene in Aotearoa that repeats very harmful and inaccurate narratives,” Martin says.
“Also, there is this idea to be unbiased and neutral in a conflict, both perspectives must have equal legitimacy.”
As a 26-year-old photojournalist, Cole has packed in a lot of experience in his early career, having worked two years for World Vision, meeting South Sudanese refugees in Uganda who had fled civil war. He shared their stories in Aotearoa.
“New Zealand must move beyond empty statements on Gaza” . . . says Cole Martin. Image: The Spinoff screenshot
‘Struggle of the oppressed’
This taught him to put “the struggle of the oppressed and marginalised” at the heart of his storytelling.
Cole studied for a screen and television degree at NZ Broadcasting School, which led to employment with the news team at Whakaata Māori, then a video journalist role with the Otago Daily Times.
He first visited Palestine in early 2019, “seeing the occupation and injustice with my own eyes”. After the struggle re-entered the news cycle in October 2023, he recognised that as a journalist with first-hand contextual knowledge and connections on the ground he was in a unique position to ensure Palestinian voices were heard.
Cole spent two months in the West Bank last year and then gained a grant to study Arabic “which allowed me to return longer-term as New Zealand’s only journalist on the ground”.
“Yes, there are competing narratives,’ he admits, “but the reality on the ground is that if you engage with this in good faith and truth, one of those narratives has a lot more legitimacy than the other.”
Martin says that New Zealand media have failed to recognise this reality through a “mix of ignorance and bias”.
“They haven’t been fair and honest, but they think they have,” he says.
Hesitancy to engage
He argues that the hesitancy to engage with the Palestinian media, Palestinian journalists and Palestinian sources on the ground “springs from the idea that to be Palestinian you are inherently biased”.
“In the same way that being Māori means you are biased,” he says.
“Your world view shapes your experiences. If you are living under a system of occupation and domination, or seeing that first hand, it would be wrong and immoral to talk about it in a way that is misleading, the same way that I cannot water down what I am reporting from here.
“It’s the reality of what I see here, I am not going to water it down with a sort of ‘bothsideism’.”
Martin says the media in New Zealand tend to cover the tragic war which has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians so far — most of them women and children — “like we would cover an everyday story of Miss Jones fetching a cat from the tree.”
“This war is treated as a one-off event without putting it in the context of 76 years of occupation and domination by Israel and without actually challenging some of these narratives, without providing the context of why, and centring it on the violations of international law.”
It is a very serious failure and not just in the way things have been reported, but in the way editors source stories given the heavy dependency in New Zealand media on international media that themselves have been persistently and strongly criticised for institutional bias — such as the BBC, CNN, The New York Times and the Associated Press news agency, which all operate from news bureaux inside Israel.
“Firsthand view of peacemaking challenge in the ‘Holy Land’.” Image: Asia Pacific Report screenshot
‘No independent journalism’
“I have heard from editors that I have reached out to who have basically said, ‘No, we’re not going to publish any independent or freelance work because we depend on syndicated sources like BBC, CNN and Associated Press’.
“Which means that they are publishing news that doesn’t have a relevant New Zealand connection. Usually this is what local media need, a NZ connection, yet they will publish work from the BBC, CNN and Associated Press that has no relevance to New Zealand, or doesn’t highlight what is relevant to NZ so far as our government in action.
“And I think that is our big failure, our media has not held our government to account by asking the questions that need to be asked, in spite of the fact that those questions are easily accessed.”
Expanding on this, Martin suggests talking to people in the community that are taking part in the large protests weekly, consistently.
“Why are they doing this? Why are they giving so much of their time to protest against what Israel is doing, highlighting these justices? And yet the media has failed to engage with them in good faith,” he says.
“The media has demonised them in many ways and they kind of create gestures like what Stuff have done, like asking them to write in their opinions.
“Maybe it is well intentioned, maybe it isn’t. It opens the space to kind of more ‘equal platforming’ of very unequal narratives.
“Like we give the same airtime to the spokespeople of an army that is carrying out genocide as we are giving to the people who are facing the genocide.”
Robert Fisk on media balance and the Middle East. Video: Pacific Media Centre
’50/50 journalism’
The late journalist Robert Fisk, the Beirut-based expert on the Middle East writing for The Independent and the prolific author of many books including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, described this phenomena as “50/50 journalism” and warned how damaging it could be.
Among many examples he gave in a 2008 visit to New Zealand, Fisk said journalists should not give “equal time” to the SS guards at the concentration camp, they should be talking to the survivors. Journalists ought to be objective and unbiased — “on the side of those who suffer”.
“They always publish Israel says, ‘dee-dah-de-dah’. That’s not reporting, reporting is finding out what is actually going on on the ground. That’s what BBC and CNN do. Report what they say, not what’s going on. I think they are very limited in terms of how they report the structural stuff,” says Martin.
“CNN, BBC and Associated Press have their place for getting immediate, urgent news out, but I am quite frustrated as the only New Zealand journalist based in the occupied West Bank or on the ground here.
“How little interest media have shown in pieces from here. Even with a full piece, free of charge, they will still find excuses not to publish, which is hard to push back on as a freelancer because ultimately it is their choice, they are the editors.
“I cannot demand that they publish my work, but it begs the question if I was a New Zealand journalist on the ground reporting from Ukraine, there would be a very different response in their eagerness to publish, or platform, what I am sharing.
“Particularly as a video and photojournalist, it is very frustrating because everything I write about is documented, I am showing it.
NZ journalist documents Palestinian life in the West Bank. Image: NZH screenshot
‘Showing with photos’
“It’s not stuff that is hearsay. I am showing them with all these photos and yet still they are reluctant to publish my work. And I think that translates into reluctance to publish anything with a Palestinian perspective. They think it is very complex and difficult to get in touch with Palestinians.
“They don’t know whether they can really trust their voices. The reality is, of course they can trust their voices. Palestinian journalists are the only journalists able to get into Gaza [and on the West Bank on the ground here].
“If people have a problem with that, if Israel has a problem with that, then they should let the international press in.”
Pointing the finger at the failure of Middle East coverage isn’t easy, Martin says. But one factor is that the generations who make the editorial decisions have a “biased view”.
“Journalists who have been here have not been independent, they have been taken here, accompanied by soldiers, on a tailored tour. This is instead of going off the tourist trail, off the media trail, seeing the realities that communities are facing here, engaging in good faith with Palestinian communities here, seeing the structural violence, drawing the connections between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in the West Bank — and not just the Israeli sources,” Martin says.
“And listening to the human rights organisations, the academics and the experts, and the humanitarian organisations who are all saying that this is a genocide, structural violence . . . the media still fails to frame it in that way.
‘Complete failure’
“It still fails to provide adequate context that this is very structural, very institutional — and it’s wrong.
“It’s a complete failure and it is very frustrating to be here as a journalist on the ground trying to do a good job, trying to redeem this failure in journalism.”
“Having the cover on the ground here and yet there is no interest. Editors have come back to me and said, ‘we can’t publish this piece because the subject matter is “too controversial”. It’s unbelievable that we are explicitly ignoring stories that are relevant because it is ‘controversial’. It’s just an utter failure of journalism.
“As the Fourth Estate, they have utterly failed to hold the government to account for inaction. They are not asking the right questions.
“I have had other editors who have said, ‘Oh, we’re relying on syndicated sources’. That’s our position. Or, we don’t have enough money.
That’s true, New Zealand media has a funding shortage, and journalists have been let go.
“But the truth is if they really want the story, they would find the funding.
Reach out to Palestinians
“If they actually cared, they would reach out to the journalists on the ground, reach out to the Palestinians. The reality is that they don’t care enough to be actually doing those things.
“I think that there is a shift, that they are beginning to respond more and more. But they are well behind the game, they have been complicit in anti-Arab narratives, and giving a platform to genocidal narratives from the Israeli government and government leaders without questioning, without challenging and without holding our government to account.
“The New Zealand government has been very pro-Israel, driven to side with America.
“They need to do better urgently, before somebody takes them to the International Criminal Court for complicity.”
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
Exiled West Papuan media are calling for Fiji — in a reflection of Melanesian solidarity — to hold the greater Pacific region to account and stand against Indonesia’s ongoing media blackout in addition to its human rights abuses.
The leaders in their field which include two Papuans from Indonesia’s occupied provinces have visited the Pacific country to forge media partnerships, university collaboration and joint advocacy for West Papua self-determination.
They were speaking after the screening of a new documentary film, Pepera 1969: A Democratic Integration, was screened at The University of the South Pacific in Fiji.
The documentary is based on the controversial plebiscite 56 years ago when 1025 handpicked Papuan electors, which were directly chosen by the Indonesian military out of its 800,000 citizens, were claimed to have voted unanimously in favour of Indonesian control of Western New Guinea.
Victor Mambor — a co-founder of Jubi Media Papua — in West Papua; Yuliana Lantipo, one of its senior journalists and editor; and Dandhy Laksono, a Jakarta-based investigative filmmaker; shared their personal experiences of reporting from inside arguably the most heavily militarised and censored region in the Pacific.
“We are here to build bridges with our brothers and sisters in the Pacific,” Mambor told the USP media audience.
Their story of the Papuan territory comes after Dutch colonialists who had seized Western New Guinea, handed control of the East Indies back to the Indonesians in 1949 before The Netherlands eventually withdrew from Papuan territory in 1963.
‘Fraudulent’ UN vote
The unrepresentative plebiscite which followed a fraudulent United Nations-supervised “Act of Free Choice” in 1969 allowed the Indonesian Parliament to grant its legitimacy to reign sovereignty over the West Papuans.
That Indonesian authority has been heavily questioned and criticised over extinguishing independence movements and possible negotiations between both sides.
Indonesia has silenced Papuan voices in the formerly-named Irian Jaya province through control and restrictions of the media.
Mambor described the continued targeting of his Jubi Media staff, including attacks on its office and vehicles, as part of an escalating crackdown under Indonesia’s current President Prabowo Subianto, who took office less than 12 months ago.
“If you report on deforestation [of West Papua] or our culture, maybe it’s allowed,” he said.
“But if you report on human rights or the [Indonesian] military, there is no tolerance.”
An Indonesian MP, Oleh Soleh, warned publicly this month that the state would push for a “new wave of repression” targeting West Papuan activists while also calling the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) – the West Papuan territory’s peak independence movement – as a “political criminal group”.
‘Don’t just listen to Jakarta’
“Don’t just listen to what Jakarta says,” Mambor said.
“Speak to Papuans, listen to our stories, raise our voices.
“We want to bring West Papua back to the Pacific — not just geographically, but politically, culturally, and emotionally.”
Press freedom in West Papua has become most dire more over the past 25 years, West Papuan journalists have said.
Foreign journalists are barred entry into the territory and internet access for locals is often restricted, especially during periods of civil unrest.
Indigenous reporters also risk arrest and/or violence for filing politically sensitive stories.
Most trusted media
Founded in 2001 by West Papuan civil society, Jubi Media Papua’s English-language publication, the West Papua Daily, has become arguably the most trusted, independent source of news in the territory that has survived over its fearless approach to journalism.
“Our journalists are constantly intimidated,” Mambor said, “yet we continue to report the truth”.
The word Jubi in one of the most popular Indigenous Papuan languages means to speak the truth.
Mambor explained that the West Papua Daily remained a pillar of a vocal media movement to represent the wishes of the West Papuan people.
The stories published are without journalists’ bylines (names on articles) out of fear against retribution from the Indonesian military.
“We created a special section just to tell Pacific stories — to remind our people that we are not alone, and to reconnect West Papua with our Pacific identity,” Mambor said.
Lantipo spoke about the daily trauma faced by the Papuan communities which are caught in between the Indonesian military and the West Papua national liberation army who act on behalf of the ULMWP to defend its ancestral homeland.
‘Reports of killings, displacement’
“Every day, we receive reports: killings, displacement, families fleeing villages, children out of school, no access to healthcare,” Lantipo said.
“Women and children are the most affected.”
The journalists attending the seminar urged the Fijian, Melanesian and Pacific people to push for a greater awareness of the West Papuan conflict and its current situation, and to challenge dominant narratives propagated by the Indonesian government.
Laksono, who is ethnically Indonesian but entrenched in ongoing Papuan independence struggles, has long worked to expose injustices in the region.
“There is no hope from the Asian side,” Laksono said.
“That’s why we are here, to reach out to the Pacific.
“We need new audiences, new support, and new understanding.”
Arrested over tweets
Laksono was once arrested in September 2019 for publishing tweets about the violence from government forces against West Papua pro-independence activists.
Despite the personal risks, the “enemy of the state” remains committed to highlighting the stories of the West Papuan people.
“Much of Indonesia has been indoctrinated through school textbooks and [its] media into believing a false history,” he said.
“Our film tries to change that by offering the truth, especially about the so-called Act of Free Choice in 1969, which was neither free nor a genuine act of self-determination.”
Andrew Mathieson writes for the National Indigenous Times.
Melanesian supporters for West Papuan self-determination at The University of the South Pacific. Image: USP/NIT
A joint statement by the Media Freedom Coalition — signed by 27 countries, including New Zealand — urged Israel to offer protection for journalists in Gaza “in light of the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe”.
“Journalists and media workers play an essential role in putting the spotlight on the devastating reality of war. Access to conflict zones is vital to carrying out this role effectively,” the statement said.
“We oppose all attempts to restrict press freedom and block entry to journalists during conflicts.
“We also strongly condemn all violence directed against journalists and media workers, especially the extremely high number of fatalities, arrests and detentions.
“We call on the Israeli authorities and all other parties to make every effort to ensure that media workers in Gaza, Israel, the West Bank and East Jerusalem — local and foreign alike — can conduct their work freely and safely.
“Deliberate targeting of journalists is unacceptable. International humanitarian law offers protection to civilian journalists during armed conflict. We call for all attacks against media workers to be investigated and for those responsible to be prosecuted in compliance with national and international law.”
It reiterated calls for an immediate ceasefire, and the unconditional release of remaining hostages, unhindered flow of humanitarian aid.
The statement also called for “a path towards a two-state solution, long-term peace and security”.
Other countries to sign the statement included: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Ukraine.
The Media Freedom Coalition is a partnership of countries that advocates for media freedom around the world. New Zealand joined the coalition in March 2021.
New Zealand was not among the signatories of this statement, which was signed by the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom and 22 of its international partners — including Australia and Canada.
The statement called on Israel to reverse its decision.
“The decision by the Israeli Higher Planning Committee to approve plans for settlement construction in the E1 area, East of Jerusalem, is unacceptable and a violation of international law,” it said.
“Minister [Bezalel] Smotrich says this plan will make a two-state solution impossible by dividing any Palestinian state and restricting Palestinian access to Jerusalem. This brings no benefits to the Israeli people.
“Instead, it risks undermining security and fuels further violence and instability, taking us further away from peace.
“The government of Israel still has an opportunity to stop the E1 plan going any further. We encourage them to urgently retract this plan.”
The statement said “unilateral action” by the Israeli government undermined collective desire for security and prosperity in the Middle East.
“The Israeli government must stop settlement construction in line with UNSC Resolution 2334 and remove their restrictions on the finances of the Palestinian Authority.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Allen Forrest is writer, painter, graphic artist and activist who produces many cartoons illustrating the regressivism of capitalist societies. One cartoon by Forrest depicted a man and woman swimming in a shark-patrolled sea of MSM (aka mainstream media) lies. But why call it MSM or mainstream media?
Of course, any media would love to be branded as “mainstream media.” After all, “mainstream” is defined as: “considered normal, and having or using ideas, beliefs, etc. that are accepted by most people.” Specifically, what is often called the mainstream media refers to news media: a source for people to find out the how, why, where, and when of events and what these events mean or portend.
This awareness of events, both domestic and international, is important insofar as an enlightened populace is desired by a society. One assumes that most people want to be up-to-date and informed; at the very least people do not want to be kept in the dark on important matters or be deceived by their governments and media.
But the news media of “mainstream” outlets does not appear to have the confidence of the news consuming public. Gallup gauged Americans’ views of of the news media and noted on 27 February 2025: “Americans are now divided into rough thirds, with 31% trusting the media a great deal or a fair amount, 33% saying they do “not [trust it] very much,” and 36%, up from 6% in 1972, saying they have no trust at all in it.” In other words, 31% of Americans trust, to some degree, their so-called mainstream media and the rest don’t have trust in the “mainstream” media.
It should be starkly apparent that 31% constitute a definitive minority of a trusting population. Ergo, it is not “mainstream.” Others will refer to it as monopoly media, as did Ben Bagdikian, in the title of his books on media consolidation that posits media is presenting the views desired by the media consolidators. Another term that came into vogue is legacy media, which refers to the old mass media that predate the internet; for example, newspapers, television, radio, and magazines. Legacy media does proliferate online, as well. Others might simply note that there is state media (media funded by government and hence influenced by views desired by a government) or corporate media (media that seek profits and, therefore, will not want to upset the bottom line by losing potential advertisers).
The poll reveals that 69% of people, far exceeding a 50% cutoff, thus constituting a mainstream, are distrusting of the media.
Many people distrust or have even turned away from legacy media. With the advent of the internet an alternative media has cropped up. To the extent that people have given up on legacy media, then the alternative media may well represent a mainstream media for sourcing news and information. But is this media best depicted as an “alternative”? A more preferable name might be “independent media.” In this case, independent means not dependent on seeking profit beyond breaking even. In fact, many of these independent media editors and writers donate their time and efforts to provide relevant background information and reveal propaganda and disinformation.
Disinformation, being an intentional attempt to deceive, is of particular importance. In the case of the United States-led coalition’s invasion of Iraq, the disinformation campaign helped generate support from many sectors of the public. The legacy media kept repeating the disinformation, and much of the public believed it, being unable to discern the verisimilitude. The legacy media had a hand in the slaughter through its complicity that led to a range of 392,979–942,636 excess mortalities in Iraq. This was based on the fallacious claim that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, although United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspector Scott Ritter had warned against such an attack claiming that Iraq was “fundamentally disarmed.” As such, following four days of detailed information on the method and operation of disinformation, as well as relevant international law and conventions on propaganda, the July 2004 Halifax Symposium on Media and Disinformation held that “disinformation—its creation and propagation—is a crime against humanity and a crime against peace.”
Conclusion
I do not suggest ditching the legacy media; there is value in being aware of the narrative the legacy media is pushing. Approach legacy media the same way one should approach independent media. Use open-minded skepticism. Demand evidence for information presented. Reserve extra skepticism for media sources known to have disinformed in the past.
Consider describing a media accurately by name. Legacy media is not my mainstream news source. Independent media, media dedicated to informing others with factual accuracy, coherent analysis, and a commitment to morality is my mainstream.
Like many others, I abandoned mainstream media long ago. The endless spin, shallow reporting, and predictable and propagandist narratives made it unbearable. Podcasts once seemed like the antidote: raw, unfiltered, and intellectually daring. But after countless hours of listening, I’ve begun to notice something unsettling: the global podcast universe is slowly morphing into the very thing it set out to replace.
It doesn’t matter which show you tune into—the same pundits, professors, and activists appear on rotation. The circle is closed. What once felt refreshing now feels predictable and self-referential. And part of the problem is the commercialization and ruthless competition for views and followers. Every podcaster wants traction, and the easiest shortcut is to invite a star guest. We, the audience, fall for it every time—believing that the bigger the name, the more profound the insights. The reality? Most celebrities are exhausted, endlessly repeating the same theses. Consistent, yes. But new? Rarely.
Despite the promise of broader horizons, most discussions follow the daily news cycle or focus on whichever conflict dominates headlines. Everything else disappears. The world is effectively shrinking—reduced to a handful of regions and a narrow set of concerns. Some hosts release multiple episodes in a single day. How deep can those conversations possibly be? Often, what masquerades as productivity is really just mass production. The speed comes at the expense of substance. Meanwhile, Western voices dominate. Women are often absent altogether. So we all end up in the world of westsplaining and mansplaining.
When podcasters endlessly guest on each other’s shows, swapping seats and recycling conversations, the result is not dialogue but repetition. An echo chamber with shinier packaging is still an echo chamber. The real challenge is not in lining up “big names” but in expanding the conversation: making it more polemical, more creative, more imaginative, more globally aware, more diverse.
Perhaps the true problem is our own laziness. We have grown accustomed to outsourcing our judgment, waiting for the “best” or most famous voices to tell us what to think. It is comfortable, quick, and flattering to believe we are following the wisdom of giants. But perhaps it is precisely this habit that leaves us intellectually dependent, recycling dominant (even though alternative, critical) insights instead of creating new ones.
Local and national podcasters are on the rise for quite some time, but their reach remains limited, often hindered by language barriers or uneven production quality. The same pattern repeats everywhere: chasing visibility, recycling familiar perspectives, and favoring recognizable names over truly fresh voices. The result is a public sphere that is narrower, less inventive, and less daring than it could be. But it remains a (relatively) profitable one…
If podcasts are to be more than mainstream media’s digital twin, we need to demand more—not only from hosts but from ourselves as listeners. We must cultivate curiosity beyond celebrity, seek voices we disagree with, challenge accepted wisdom, etc. Otherwise, the danger isn’t just boredom—it’s intellectual stagnation. If we do not break this cycle, we will soon discover that these “alternatives” were never really alternatives at all.
If we don’t insist on new voices (especially from the Global South/majority), bolder ideas, and sharper arguments, the “alternative” will soon be indistinguishable from the mainstream it once sought to escape.
Maybe I am wrong… I am just sharing my observations.
By the way, I still find Substack more inspirative than podcasts. It feels like a space where ideas can breathe, develop, and push us beyond the recycled talking points.
New Delhi, August 21, 2025—Maldives president Mohamed Muizzu should reject a bill that was recently introduced in the country’s parliament that would dismantle press freedom and place the media under government control, the second such bill in a year after earlier attempts failed, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday.
“President Mohamed Muizzu must uphold his pledge to support media freedom by ensuring this regressive bill is withdrawn,” said CPJ Asia-Pacific Regional Director Beh Lih Yi. “Creating a new commission, stacking it with presidential appointees, and then granting it sweeping powers to fine, suspend, and shutter news outlets as it sees fit would destroy independent journalism and erode the Maldives’ fragile democratic space.”
The bill would dissolve two existing regulatory bodies, the Maldives Media Council and the Maldives Broadcasting Commission, and replace them with a new entity — the Maldives Media and Broadcasting Commission.
The proposed commission would have seven members, with the president empowered to appoint three of them. The president would also select the chairperson. The four remaining members, elected by the media, could be removed by a parliamentary vote. The bill would give the commission the power to:
Fine journalists between US$325 and US$650 and media outlets up to US$6,500 for code of conduct violations, failing to comply with the commission’s orders and legal violations.
Temporarily suspend registrations of outlets during commission probe
Pursue judicial order to cancel registrations of media outlets
Block websites and halt broadcasts during commission probe
Investigate cases retroactively (up to a year before the creation of the new commission)
The Maldives Journalists Association (MJA), a local press freedom organization, warned that the bill would dismantle press freedom and place the media under government control. MJA called the bill a “grave threat” that criminalizes reporting and said journalists and media outlets were not consulted during its drafting.
Independent parliamentarian Abdul Hannan Aboobakuru introduced the bill in the People’s Majlis, the country’s legislative body, on August 18, after similar attempts last year. That bill was rejected after President Muizzu said he opposed controlling the press and wanted greater media freedom. He asked his party, the People’s National Congress, which controls parliament, to vote against that bill.
Muizzu and Hannan did not immediately respond to CPJ’s email requesting comment.
“Speak Up Kōrerotia” — a radio show centred on human rights issues — has featured a nuclear-free Pacific and other issues in this week’s show.
Encouraging discussion on human rights issues in both Canterbury and New Zealand, Speak Up Kōrerotia offers a forum to provide a voice for affected communities.
Engaging in conversations around human rights issues in the country, each show covers a different human rights issue with guests from or working with the communities.
Analysing and asking questions of the realities of life allows Speak Up Kōrerotia to cover the issues that often go untouched.
Discussing the hard-hitting topics, Speak Up Kōrerotia encourages listeners to reflect on the issues covered.
Hosted by Dr Sally Carlton, the show brings key issues to the fore and provides space for guests to “Speak Up” and share their thoughts and experiences.
The latest episode today highlights the July/August 2025 marking of two major anniversaries — 80 years since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, and 40 years since the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior here in Aotearoa.
What do these anniversaries mean in the context of 2025, with the ever-greater escalation of global tension and a new nuclear arms race occurring alongside the seeming impotence of the UN and other international bodies?
Anti-nuclear advocacy in 2025 Video/audio podcast: Speak Up Kōrerotia
Speak Up Kōrerotia . . . human rights at Plains FM Image: Screenshot
Guests: Disarmament advocate Dr Kate Dewes, journalist and author Dr David Robie, critical nuclear studies academic Dr Karly Burch and Japanese gender literature professor Dr Susan Bouterey bring passion, a wealth of knowledge and decades of anti-nuclear advocacy to this discussion.
Dr Robie’s new book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warriorwas launched on the anniversary of the ship’s bombing. This revised edition has extensive new and updated material, images, and a prologue by former NZ prime minister Helen Clark.
The Speak Up Kōrerotia panel in today’s show, “Anti-Nuclear Advocacy in 2025”, Dr Kate Dewes (from left), Sally Carlton, Dr David Robie, Dr Karly Burch and Susan Bouterey. Image: Screenshot
To get to the venue involves a calming, if early, ritual. Uneasy sleep beforehand, given the morning slot. Eagerness to prepare for the topic to be discussed in the global affairs segment, accompanied by that childish sense of worry that approval means something. Then, getting on a tram to the venue, which, as luck would have it, is positioned just at the end of the tramline in East Brunswick. This is Melbourne, and the destination is one of the city’s most heart-throbbing venues of community radio, Triple R.
The trio of radio hosts on the program Breakfasters has already grown callouses of experience, managing multiple tasks as they go through the music listings and guests with placid ease. Before heading to the green room, the scene is welcoming. Wooden floors, slightly worn, charmingly tatty, with brochures prominently displayed as you enter the building, a solid, expansive structure that accommodates generous space for live music and studios.
Triple R or 3RRR, depending on preference, is one of those community radio stations that sports an influence far beyond the plutocrats of the traditional or commercial radio scene. There are no demagogues to be found, no celebrity functionaries to be lauded. You are not handed a list of forbidden topics or words, much as you would be if running a program for the national broadcaster. The programming is also distinctly free of the venom and spite trafficked on the airwaves of the shock jock stations. While the arterial flow of the station is music, the mix of news and discussions on international and local affairs adds a rich sauce. Those with omnivorous tastes will be hard to disappoint.
Across the vast expanse of Australia, some 450 community radio stations hum away, hoping to offer their listeners alternative platforms with varied content. That very fact is almost singular. The development of such radio, observes David Melzer, himself having had lengthy experience at the helm of Melbourne’s polyglot 3ZZZ, had its roots in a number of factors: those dealing in education, activists inspired by anti-Vietnam War protests, increasing numbers of migrants, and enthusiasts of classical music. “Each of these four groups had one thing in common. They challenged how broadcasting operated in Australia. They wanted control of the airwaves, and they lobbied for it, leading to the establishment of the third tier of broadcasting in Australia.” With the advent of community broadcasting came the increasing role of Indigenous communities and those reluctant to use print media.
Globally, such stations face the corrosive effects of not so much digital disruption as digital appropriation, a process that is also shaping listening habits. Be it such internet-based giants as YouTube and Spotify, and the personalised, podcasting format, where tastes become bespoke affairs, the very idea of the radio as an important part of a day’s routine is being challenged. Not only does this alter the nature of what content is being offered, but it has had behavioural effects. As a co-authored article in the Electronic Journal of Education, Social Economics and Technology published this year contends, “Today’s listeners, especially younger generations, prefer interactive, mobile-accessible content and often participate in content production themselves via social media”.
That said, there is room for some sunny optimism. Community radio in the United Kingdom, for instance, is burgeoning. In September 2024, the country had over 350 licensed community radio stations, a marked increase from the 200 stations broadcasting in 2014. Data from Radio Joint Audience Research published in July this year also finds that over 50 million adults (86% of the UK population) tune in to radio every week, which augurs well for the more specific programming offered by community radio outlets. The streaming behemoths have created an odd sense of detachment, even estrangement, and certain listeners are seeking grassroots comforts. The significance of this is hard to exaggerate, given the nourishment such radio outlets provide in terms of language, cultural pursuits, and the arts.
During those necessary radiothons, when money is sought from the subscribers, the staff place themselves into the hands, ears, and pockets of the listeners, trying to sweetly convince them that another year of financial loyalty is needed. The theme this year for Triple R is “Digging Deeper”, described by the radio station as representing the labours of volunteer presenters who “work hard to dig deeper every single day, uncovering musical gems and unearthing important issues that often do not find airtime anywhere else.” The names of subscribers are read out with hearty enthusiasm and a tease. Renewals are emphasised with pride.
It is almost impossible to believe that an institution such as Triple R has been around for some three decades. The brooding fear is that such a scene will cease before the thieving systems of artificial intelligence or be chewed up by the ghastly listening habits of “influencers” and curated streaming services. Let us hope there is still ample time before that ghastly universe triumphs. Till then, best appreciate the admirable exploits of digging deeper by those able staff in community radio.
On May 1, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” instructing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to cease nearly all federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The order prohibited local public radio and television stations, and any other recipient of CPB funds, from using federal grants to purchase programming from these public media organizations and mandated a review of existing grants for compliance with the administration’s ideological priorities. The Trump administration’s attempt to cut public media funding is part of their “rescission” strategy—a process to roll back previously appropriated budgets.
The House gave final approval on July 18, 2025, to the Trump administration’s plan to rescind approximately $9 billion in previously allocated funds. This measure included a $1.1 billion cut to the CPB, effectively eliminating all federal support for NPR, PBS, and their member stations. Following this, the CPB announced on August 1, 2025, that it would begin an orderly shutdown of its operations after the Senate-Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill excluded its funding for the first time in nearly sixty years. These actions are part of a broader initiative spearheaded by the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which aims to streamline the federal government, eliminate programs deemed unnecessary by the administration, and reduce bureaucratic inefficiency.
While the administration claims its efforts are motivated by fiscal responsibility and safeguarding taxpayer dollars, critics argue that these moves are politically motivated attempts to silence dissent and reshape the media landscape to favor partisan narratives. Clayton Weimers, Executive Director of Reporters Without Borders USA, told Project Censored, “The administration frames the cuts as ‘efficiency cuts,’ but that is not necessarily the case. They frame it that way because they decided that’s a more palatable way to sell it to the American people. But at the end of the day, public media broadcasting costs the American taxpayer, on average, $1.60 per year, and the level of value that Americans get out of that $1.60 per year is tremendous.”
The CPB, established in 1967 as a private nonprofit corporation, was specifically designed to insulate public broadcasting from political interference, with its charter expressly forbidding government control over broadcasting content while ensuring that over 70 percent of federal appropriations flow directly to more than 1,500 local affiliate stations rather than centralized bureaucracies.
“It’s really important that people understand how public media is funded in this country,” Weimers shared with Project Censored. Local affiliates have the freedom to purchase programming from NPR and PBS that caters to their audiences’ preferences. He explained how Trump’s executive order essentially bans affiliate stations from buying this programming, thereby infringing on their First Amendment rights. Weimers emphasized that “it is up to the individual local independent stations what they want to show their audience on air, and they should make that decision based on what their audiences want to see and what their audience wants to hear, not based on what politicians in Washington think they ought to hear.” He challenged the Trump administration’s claim that public media is a biased tool of his political opponents, “Some of the editorial coverage might lean left and the audience might lean left, but it’s a complete mischaracterization. Public media in this country has over a thousand different broadcast, television, and radio stations. It’s not just any one thing. There isn’t one political line across all of public media.”
Other voices in the media industry echo Weimers’s statements regarding the motivations behind the Trump administration’s CPB rescissions. Victor Pickard, Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, explained to Project Censored that public media was created to address gaps in commercial broadcasting and to ensure that all audiences, especially low-income communities and communities of color, would have access to high-quality, trusted content. Pickard warned that defunding public media will force communities to “learn that lesson once again” about the limitations of commercial broadcasting, which “will never provide all of the information and communication needs of a democratic society.”
Lisa Graves, founder and Executive Director of True North Research, told Project Censored that the Trump administration’s cuts to the CPB are a systematic effort to undermine independent journalism, not address legitimate concerns about bias or fiscal policy. Graves explained that the targeting of NPR and PBS stems from coordinated and widespread disinformation and propaganda being perpetuated by the Trump administration. “These entities are important public investments that help bring national, international, as well as local news into our communities,” Graves told Project Censored. “The administration claims that there is political bias or partisan bias at these outlets, when in fact they are just covering the news. … The attack on public broadcasting is an attack on facts, truth, and journalistic independence. It has to be seen as such.”
This strategy poses an Achilles’ heel: While the rhetoric employed by the Trump administration targets elite, national outlets, the most damaging impact will fall on the hyperlocal media infrastructure already struggling to survive. Many small-town, rural, and tribal affiliates rely on CPB funding and syndicated content from NPR and PBS to fill gaps in local coverage, provide educational programming, and serve communities with little to no other media access, otherwise known as news deserts. Eliminating this support could crater regional journalism ecosystems—leading to programming losses, station closures, and widespread layoffs that ripple down the media supply chain. In many conservative and underserved communities, where public broadcasting often remains the only consistent source of local and noncommercial news, the cuts could unintentionally harm the very constituencies that the defunding narrative claims to serve.
Noting that public media receive only paltry funding from federal sources, Pickard called the defunding of the CPB a “tragic irony,” because it will “hurt individual stations, especially in rural and conservative areas in states such as Alaska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Texas.” He explained to Project Censored that some stations depend on CPB funding for 25–50 percent of their budgets and “will likely go under if federal subsidies are entirely cut, leaving news deserts in their wake.”
The Trump administration frames these funding cuts as fiscal responsibility, but smaller local news outlets view them as politically motivated attacks and part of a campaign to delegitimize public media and the services they provide. NPR and three Colorado public radio stations filed a lawsuit alleging that the May executive order is “textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination” in violation of the First Amendment. PBS, along with Lakeland PBS in rural Minnesota, also filed a similar lawsuit, disputing claims of bias and asserting that the Constitution forbids the President from arbitrating content. These lawsuits suggest Trump has far exceeded the expansive powers of the presidency, usurping congressional prerogatives and eroding free speech rights.
Seth Stern, Director of Advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, told Project Censored that the Trump administration has adopted what he calls a “throw-it-at-the-wall approach,” where they challenge the Constitution despite knowing most cases will fail on constitutional grounds. However, Stern explained that the strategy behind this approach is to find any legal opening the administration can exploit. “They are looking for the case they win, looking for the one instance where the courts give them an opening, and once they have that opening, they are going to barge through it.”
The Trump administration has adopted a multifaceted strategy to politicize public media by portraying these institutions as adversaries rather than recognizing them as informational resources or allies. Through rhetorical attacks, the administration frames public media and their content as ideologically biased, financially irresponsible, and increasingly unnecessary. This approach is implemented through executive orders and policies that employ loaded language such as “woke propaganda,” citing questionable fiscal justifications like “cost efficiency,” downplaying societal value, and implementing disruptive measures that create instability for essential broadcasting programs, ultimately exploiting public media rather than leveraging its potential for effective public communication.
Experts like Reporters Without Borders’ Weimers contend that the Trump administration has “shown a very strong disposition towards using whatever levers of power they have to punish those who oppose their agenda in any way.” Weimers emphasized to Project Censored that this targeting can affect public media outlets simply for “accurately reporting on what they’re doing.” The implications of these executive actions extend far beyond public media, he cautioned. “There is no reason that that would not also impact nonprofit media that publish content that the Trump administration does not like, even for-profit media.”
Weimers warned of a troubling escalation, characterizing the Trump administration’s campaign against public media as “a slippery slope.” Once the government gains control over public media and broadcast licensees, he argued, “they are one step closer to getting their hands on the rest of the media as well.”
Pickard told Project Censored that while the federal funding cuts will have a “chilling effect” on an already compromised media system, they also open the possibility of “building something entirely new out of the wreckage.” That wreckage is not merely financial—it is the collapse of a decades-old compact between government, media, and the public.
But from that imminent destruction comes a rare opportunity to reimagine public media not as a government-funded institution vulnerable to political whims, but as a truly community-owned resource, insulated from both partisan interference and commercial pressures. Rebuilding cannot depend on Washington reversing course or a future administration restoring support. Instead, citizens must take action: establishing community-supported journalism cooperatives, developing hyperlocal news networks sustained by their audiences, and building media infrastructures accountable to neighbors rather than distant politicians or corporate shareholders. The Trump administration may have dismantled decades of public media investment, but it cannot destroy the fundamental human need for trustworthy, bipartisan information and community connection.
Originally published on https://www.projectcensored.org/trump-admin-hijacked-public-broadcasting/
On May 1, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” instructing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to cease nearly all federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The order prohibited local public radio and television stations, and any other recipient of CPB funds, from using federal grants to purchase programming from these public media organizations and mandated a review of existing grants for compliance with the administration’s ideological priorities. The Trump administration’s attempt to cut public media funding is part of their “rescission” strategy—a process to roll back previously appropriated budgets.
The House gave final approval on July 18, 2025, to the Trump administration’s plan to rescind approximately $9 billion in previously allocated funds. This measure included a $1.1 billion cut to the CPB, effectively eliminating all federal support for NPR, PBS, and their member stations. Following this, the CPB announced on August 1, 2025, that it would begin an orderly shutdown of its operations after the Senate-Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill excluded its funding for the first time in nearly sixty years. These actions are part of a broader initiative spearheaded by the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which aims to streamline the federal government, eliminate programs deemed unnecessary by the administration, and reduce bureaucratic inefficiency.
While the administration claims its efforts are motivated by fiscal responsibility and safeguarding taxpayer dollars, critics argue that these moves are politically motivated attempts to silence dissent and reshape the media landscape to favor partisan narratives. Clayton Weimers, Executive Director of Reporters Without Borders USA, told Project Censored, “The administration frames the cuts as ‘efficiency cuts,’ but that is not necessarily the case. They frame it that way because they decided that’s a more palatable way to sell it to the American people. But at the end of the day, public media broadcasting costs the American taxpayer, on average, $1.60 per year, and the level of value that Americans get out of that $1.60 per year is tremendous.”
The CPB, established in 1967 as a private nonprofit corporation, was specifically designed to insulate public broadcasting from political interference, with its charter expressly forbidding government control over broadcasting content while ensuring that over 70 percent of federal appropriations flow directly to more than 1,500 local affiliate stations rather than centralized bureaucracies.
“It’s really important that people understand how public media is funded in this country,” Weimers shared with Project Censored. Local affiliates have the freedom to purchase programming from NPR and PBS that caters to their audiences’ preferences. He explained how Trump’s executive order essentially bans affiliate stations from buying this programming, thereby infringing on their First Amendment rights. Weimers emphasized that “it is up to the individual local independent stations what they want to show their audience on air, and they should make that decision based on what their audiences want to see and what their audience wants to hear, not based on what politicians in Washington think they ought to hear.” He challenged the Trump administration’s claim that public media is a biased tool of his political opponents, “Some of the editorial coverage might lean left and the audience might lean left, but it’s a complete mischaracterization. Public media in this country has over a thousand different broadcast, television, and radio stations. It’s not just any one thing. There isn’t one political line across all of public media.”
Other voices in the media industry echo Weimers’s statements regarding the motivations behind the Trump administration’s CPB rescissions. Victor Pickard, Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, explained to Project Censored that public media was created to address gaps in commercial broadcasting and to ensure that all audiences, especially low-income communities and communities of color, would have access to high-quality, trusted content. Pickard warned that defunding public media will force communities to “learn that lesson once again” about the limitations of commercial broadcasting, which “will never provide all of the information and communication needs of a democratic society.”
Lisa Graves, founder and Executive Director of True North Research, told Project Censored that the Trump administration’s cuts to the CPB are a systematic effort to undermine independent journalism, not address legitimate concerns about bias or fiscal policy. Graves explained that the targeting of NPR and PBS stems from coordinated and widespread disinformation and propaganda being perpetuated by the Trump administration. “These entities are important public investments that help bring national, international, as well as local news into our communities,” Graves told Project Censored. “The administration claims that there is political bias or partisan bias at these outlets, when in fact they are just covering the news. … The attack on public broadcasting is an attack on facts, truth, and journalistic independence. It has to be seen as such.”
This strategy poses an Achilles’ heel: While the rhetoric employed by the Trump administration targets elite, national outlets, the most damaging impact will fall on the hyperlocal media infrastructure already struggling to survive. Many small-town, rural, and tribal affiliates rely on CPB funding and syndicated content from NPR and PBS to fill gaps in local coverage, provide educational programming, and serve communities with little to no other media access, otherwise known as news deserts. Eliminating this support could crater regional journalism ecosystems—leading to programming losses, station closures, and widespread layoffs that ripple down the media supply chain. In many conservative and underserved communities, where public broadcasting often remains the only consistent source of local and noncommercial news, the cuts could unintentionally harm the very constituencies that the defunding narrative claims to serve.
Noting that public media receive only paltry funding from federal sources, Pickard called the defunding of the CPB a “tragic irony,” because it will “hurt individual stations, especially in rural and conservative areas in states such as Alaska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Texas.” He explained to Project Censored that some stations depend on CPB funding for 25–50 percent of their budgets and “will likely go under if federal subsidies are entirely cut, leaving news deserts in their wake.”
The Trump administration frames these funding cuts as fiscal responsibility, but smaller local news outlets view them as politically motivated attacks and part of a campaign to delegitimize public media and the services they provide. NPR and three Colorado public radio stations filed a lawsuit alleging that the May executive order is “textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination” in violation of the First Amendment. PBS, along with Lakeland PBS in rural Minnesota, also filed a similar lawsuit, disputing claims of bias and asserting that the Constitution forbids the President from arbitrating content. These lawsuits suggest Trump has far exceeded the expansive powers of the presidency, usurping congressional prerogatives and eroding free speech rights.
Seth Stern, Director of Advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, told Project Censored that the Trump administration has adopted what he calls a “throw-it-at-the-wall approach,” where they challenge the Constitution despite knowing most cases will fail on constitutional grounds. However, Stern explained that the strategy behind this approach is to find any legal opening the administration can exploit. “They are looking for the case they win, looking for the one instance where the courts give them an opening, and once they have that opening, they are going to barge through it.”
The Trump administration has adopted a multifaceted strategy to politicize public media by portraying these institutions as adversaries rather than recognizing them as informational resources or allies. Through rhetorical attacks, the administration frames public media and their content as ideologically biased, financially irresponsible, and increasingly unnecessary. This approach is implemented through executive orders and policies that employ loaded language such as “woke propaganda,” citing questionable fiscal justifications like “cost efficiency,” downplaying societal value, and implementing disruptive measures that create instability for essential broadcasting programs, ultimately exploiting public media rather than leveraging its potential for effective public communication.
Experts like Reporters Without Borders’ Weimers contend that the Trump administration has “shown a very strong disposition towards using whatever levers of power they have to punish those who oppose their agenda in any way.” Weimers emphasized to Project Censored that this targeting can affect public media outlets simply for “accurately reporting on what they’re doing.” The implications of these executive actions extend far beyond public media, he cautioned. “There is no reason that that would not also impact nonprofit media that publish content that the Trump administration does not like, even for-profit media.”
Weimers warned of a troubling escalation, characterizing the Trump administration’s campaign against public media as “a slippery slope.” Once the government gains control over public media and broadcast licensees, he argued, “they are one step closer to getting their hands on the rest of the media as well.”
Pickard told Project Censored that while the federal funding cuts will have a “chilling effect” on an already compromised media system, they also open the possibility of “building something entirely new out of the wreckage.” That wreckage is not merely financial—it is the collapse of a decades-old compact between government, media, and the public.
But from that imminent destruction comes a rare opportunity to reimagine public media not as a government-funded institution vulnerable to political whims, but as a truly community-owned resource, insulated from both partisan interference and commercial pressures. Rebuilding cannot depend on Washington reversing course or a future administration restoring support. Instead, citizens must take action: establishing community-supported journalism cooperatives, developing hyperlocal news networks sustained by their audiences, and building media infrastructures accountable to neighbors rather than distant politicians or corporate shareholders. The Trump administration may have dismantled decades of public media investment, but it cannot destroy the fundamental human need for trustworthy, bipartisan information and community connection.
Originally published on https://www.projectcensored.org/trump-admin-hijacked-public-broadcasting/
The news industry has undergone a sea-change in the last two decades. Print readership of newspapers has declined sharply, while their digital readership has edged up slowly. Local newspapers have consolidated into ever larger chains controlled by private equity and vulture funds. Newer digital-only media sites have multiplied.
Into this changing news landscape has come an influx of new journalists who bridle at the poor working conditions and low pay inflicted by media moguls building their empires on the cheap. Thousands of these media workers are finding a home in the NewsGuild.
The Guild has transformed itself in recent years, thanks to rising rank-and-file militancy and innovative organizing tactics. Since 2020, the Guild has organized 210 workplaces, including some of the largest media organizations in the U.S.
New York, August 19, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on authorities in Guinea-Bissau to rescind an August 15, 2025, order effectively suspending the work of the Portuguese state-owned news outlets LUSA and RTP and expelling Portuguese journalists working with them.
Authoritiesordered the immediate and indefinite closure of the LUSA and RTP offices and the discontinuation of local broadcasts of RTP, andsaid that Portuguese journalists with the two outlets should leave the country by August 19, according to ajoint statement by LUSA and RTP and astatement by the local journalists’ union, SINJOTECS.
“Guinea-Bissau’s closure of LUSA and RTP is the latest sign of the government’s hostility to the media and raises significant concerns about the public’s access to independent journalism ahead of the country’s general elections in November,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Muthoki Mumo. “Guinea-Bissau should allow LUSA and RTP to continue operating freely and ensure that journalists can work in the country without undue interference.”
Authorities did not provide an explanation for their actions, according to LUSA director, Luísa Meirelles, and RTP Chair Nicolau Santos, both of whom spoke to CPJ. Prime Minister Braima Camará and President Sissoco Embaló declinedto answer questions from journalists on the subject at an August 15 press conference, but promised a forthcoming statement, which has yet to be issued.
During a state visit to Cape Verde on August 17, Embaló told journalists that the closure of the outlets is “a problem between Guinea-Bissau and Portugal.”
Santos told CPJ that although he still hopes the decision will be reversed soon, he fears it might remain in place until the November elections because “authorities are not interested in having independent news coverage.”
Embalódissolved the country’s parliament in December 2023 and has ruled by decree since.
On July 27, RTP’s Guinea-Bissau bureau chief, Waldir Araújo, wasrobbed and beaten by three men who told him that his reporting“gave a bad image of the country,” the journalist told CPJ. Santos said that in March, the RTP transmission equipment in the town of Nhacra wasdamaged in a suspicious fire.
Last year, CPJdocumented a number of assaults and cases of harassment of journalists, as well as verbal attacks on the press by Embaló.
Presidential spokesperson Ndira Baldé Tavares did not respond to phone calls or text messages from CPJ.
Journalists like Anas al-Sharif who report the truth in Gaza to the world and are targeted by Israel deserve protection, not just sympathy.
COMMENTARY:By Sara Qudah
During the past 22 months in Gaza, the pattern has become unbearable yet tragically predictable: A journalist reports about civilians; killed or starved, shares footage of a hospital corridor, shelters bombed out, schools and homes destroyed, and then they are silenced.
Killed.
At the Committee to Protect Journalists we documented that 2024 was the deadliest year for journalists, with an unprecedented number of those killed by Israel reporting from Gaza while covering Israel’s military operations.
That trend did not end; it continued instead in 2025, making this war by far the deadliest for the press in history.
When a journalist is killed in a besieged war city, the loss is no longer personal. It is institutional, it is the loss of eyes and ears on the ground: a loss of verification, context, and witness.
Journalists are the ones who turn statistics into stories. They give names to numbers and faces to headlines. They make distant realities real for the rest of the world, and provide windows into the truth and doors into other worlds.
That is why the killing of Anas al-Sharif last week reverberates so loudly, not just as a tragic loss of one life, but as a silencing of many stories that will now never be told.
Not just reporting Anas al-Sharif was not just reporting from Gaza, he was filling a vital void. When international journalists couldn’t access the Strip, his work for Al Jazeera helped the world understand what was happening.
On August 10, 2025, an airstrike hit a tent near al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City where journalists had gathered. Al-Sharif and several of his colleagues were killed.
The strike — its method, its targets, and its aftermath – wasn’t isolated. It fits a pattern CPJ and other press freedom organisations have tracked for months: in Gaza, journalists are facing not just the incidental risks of war, but repeated, targeted threats.
And so far, there has been no accountability.
The Israeli military framed its action differently: officials alleged that al-Sharif was affiliated with Hamas and that the attack was aimed at a legitimate threat. But so far, the evidence presented publicly failed to meet the test of independent witnesses; no public evidence has met the basic standard of independent verification.
UN experts and press freedom groups have called for transparent investigations, warning of the danger in labelling journalists as combatants without clear, verifiable proof.
In the turmoil of war, there’s a dangerous tendency to accept official narratives too quickly, too uncritically. That’s exactly how truth gets lost.
Immediate chilling effect
The repercussions of silencing reporters in a besieged territory are far-reaching. There is the immediate chilling effect: journalists who stay risk death; those who leave — if they even can — leave behind untold stories.
Second, when local journalists are killed, international media have no choice but to rely increasingly on official statements or third-party briefings for coverage, many with obvious biases and blind spots.
And third, the families of victims and the communities they represented are denied both justice and memory.
Al-Sharif’s camera recorded funerals and destroyed homes, bore witness to lives cut short. His death leaves those images without a voice, pointing now only into silence.
We also need to name the power dynamics at play. When an enormously powerful state with overwhelming military capability acts inside a densely populated area, the vast majority of casualties will be civilians — those who cannot leave — and local reporters, who cannot shelter.
This is not a neutral law of physics; it is the to-be-anticipated result of how this war waged in a space where journalists will not be able to go into shelter.
We have repeatedly documented that journalists killed in this war are Palestinian — not international correspondents. The most vulnerable witnesses, those most essential to documenting it, are also the most vulnerable to being killed.
So what should the international community and the world leaders do beyond offering condolences?
Demand independent investigation
For starters, they must demand an immediate, independent investigation. Not just routine military reviews, but real accountability — gathering evidence, preserving witness testimony, and treating each death with the seriousness it deserves.
Accountability cannot be a diplomatic nicety; it must be a forensic process with witnesses and evidence.
Additionally, journalists must be protected as civilians. That’s not optional. Under international law, reporters who aren’t taking part in the fighting are civilians — period.
That is an obligation not a choice. And when safety isn’t possible, we must get them out. Evacuate them. Save their lives. And in doing so, allow others in — international reporters who can continue telling the story.
We are past the time for neutrality. The use of language like “conflict”, “collateral damage”, or “civilian casualties” cannot be used to deflect responsibility, especially when the victims are people whose only “crime” was documenting human suffering.
When the world loses journalists like Anas al-Sharif, it loses more than just one voice. We lose a crucial balance of power and access to truth; it fails to maintain the ability to understand what’s happening on the ground. And future generations lose the memory — the record — of what took place here.
Stand up for facts
The international press community, human rights organisations, and diplomatic actors need to stand up. Not just for investigations, but for facts. Families in Gaza deserve more than empty statements. They deserve the truth about who was killed, and why. So does every person reading this from afar.
And the journalists still risking everything to report from inside Gaza deserve more than sympathy. They deserve protection.
The killing of journalists — like those from Al Jazeera — isn’t just devastating on a human level. It’s a direct attack on journalism itself. When a state can murder reporters without consequence, it sends a message to the entire world: telling the truth might cost you your life.
I write this as someone who believes that journalism is, above all, a moral act. It’s about bearing witness. It’s about insisting that lives under siege are still lives that matter, still worth seeing.
Silencing a journalist doesn’t just stop a story — it erases a lifetime of effort to bring others into view.
The murder of al-Sharif isn’t just another tragedy. It’s an assault on truth itself, in a place where truth is desperately needed. If we let this keep happening, we’re not just losing lives — we’re losing the last honest witnesses in a world ruled by force.
And that’s something we can’t afford to give up.
Sara Qudah is the regional director for Middle East and North Africa of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Sara on LinkedIn: Sara Qudah
Twenty-four-hour news networks have demonstrated that surfeit kills discretion. The search for fillers, distractions, and items that will titillate, enrage, or simply sedate is an ongoing process. Gone are the days when discerning choices were made about what constituted worthy news, an admittedly difficult problem that would always lead to priorities, rankings, and judgments that might well be challenged. At the very least, news could be kept to specific time slots during the day, meaning that audiences could be given some form of rationing. Such an approach culminated in that most famous of occasions on April 18, 1933, when the BBC’s news announcer declared with a minimum of fuss that “There is no news.” This was followed by piano music playing out the rest of the segment.
On the pretext of coming across as informed and enlightened, such networks have also bought into astrology masquerading as sound comment. The commentators are intended to lend an air of respectability to something that either has not happened or something they have little idea about. Their credentials, however, are advertised like glitzy baubles, intended to arrest the intelligence of the viewing audience long enough to realise they have been had.
Sky News Australia is one such cringing example. The premise of The War Cabinet, which aired on August 11, was clear: those attending it were simply dying for greater militarism and war preparedness on the part of the Australian government, while those preferring diplomacy would be treated like verminous denialists yearning for some sand to bury their heads in. The point was less a matter of news than prediction and speculation, an exercise of mass bloviation. To lend a wartime flavour to proceedings, the event was staged in the Cabinet Room of Old Parliament House, which host Chris Uhlmann celebrated as the place Australia’s Prime Minister, John Curtin, and his ministers steered the nation through World War II.” Former ministers, defence leaders, and national security experts were gathered “around the Cabinet table to answer a single question: is Australia ready for war?”
The stale view from Alexander Downer, Australia’s longest and, in many ways, most inconspicuous foreign minister, did little to rustle or stir. Liberal democracy, to be preserved in sacred glory, needed Australia to be linked to a “strong global alliance led by the United States”. That such an alliance might itself be the catalyst for war, notably given expectations from Washington about what Australia would do in a conflict with China, was ignored with an almost studious ignorance. Instead, Downer saw quite the opposite. “If this alliance holds, if it’s properly cemented, if it is well-led by the Americans… and if we, as members of the alliance, are serious about making a practical contribution to defence through our spending and our equipment, then we will maintain a balance of power in the world.”
His assessment of the current Albanese government was somewhat dotty. “I think the government here in Australia has made a major mistake by playing, if you like, politics with this issue of the dangers of the region and losing the balance of power because they don’t want to be seen as too close to President Trump.” Any press briefing from Defence Minister Richard Marles regarding the anti-China AUKUS pact would ease any anxiety on Downer’s part. Under the Albanese government, sovereignty has been surrendered to Washington in a way so remarkable it could be regarded as treasonous. While the Royal Australian Navy may never see a single US nuclear-powered submarine, let alone a jointly constructed one, US naval shipyards are rolling in the cash of the Australian taxpayer.
Former Labor Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, lamented that Australia’s strategic outlook in the Indo-Pacific was “deteriorating rather markedly,” a formulation utterly vague and a mere parroting of just about every other hawkish analyst that sees deterioration everywhere. Thankfully, we had Strategic Forum CEO Ross Babbage to give some shape to it, which turned out to be that ragged motif of the Yellow Horde to the North, readying to strike southwards. The Oriental Barbarians, with a tinge of Communist Red, were the primary reasons for a worsening strategic environment, aided by their generous military expenditure. With almost a note of admiration, Babbage felt that China was readying for war by adjusting its economy and readying its people “for tough times that may come”.
The venal, ever-noisy former Home Affairs Department Secretary Mike Pezzullo, who has an unhealthy appetite for warring matters, drew upon figures he could not possibly know, along with everybody else who has tried to read the inscrutable entrails of international relations. Chances of conflict in the Indo-Pacific by 2027, for instance, were a “10 to 20 per cent” likelihood. Sky News, living down to its subterranean standards, failed to mention that Pezzullo had misused his position as one of Canberra’s most powerful bureaucrats to opine on ministerial appointments via hundreds of private text messages to Liberal Party powerbroker Scott Briggs. The Australian Public Service Commission found that Pezzullo had, among other things, used his “duty, power, status or authority to seek to gain a benefit or advantage for himself” and “failed to maintain confidentiality of sensitive government information” and “failed to act apolitically in his employment”. His employment was subsequently terminated, and his Order of Australia stripped in September last year—fine credentials for balanced commentary on the strategic outlook of a state.
Other talking heads were keen to push spine-tingling prospects of wicked regimes forming alliances and making mischief. Oleksandra Molloy, billed as an aviation expert, thought the “emerging axis” between Russia, North Korea, and Iran was “quite concerning”. Former naval officer and defence pundit Jennifer Parker urged the fattening of the defence budget to “develop a degree of autonomy”.
Retired Australian Army major general Mick Ryan was most unimpressed by the “zero risk” mentality that seemed to pervade “pretty much every bit of Australian society”. The Department of Defence needed to take greater risks in terms of procurement, innovation, and reducing “the amount of time it takes to develop capability”. His fantasy was positively Spartan in its military totalitarianism: an Australian state nurturing “a spirit of innovation that connects military, industry and society”. The cry for conscription must be just around the corner.
Chief war monger and think tanker Peter Jennings aired his all too familiar views on China, which have become pathological. “It is utterly false for our government to say that somehow they have stabilised the relationship with China. Things may have improved on the trade front, but that is at the expense of ignoring the strategic developments which all of our colleagues around the table have spoken about, which is that China is positioning for war.” And there you had it: an hour of furious fretting and wailing anxiety with all figures in furious agreement, with a resounding boo to diplomacy and a hurrah for astrology.
Author David Robie left his cabin on the Rainbow Warrior three days before it was blown up by the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE), France’s foreign intelligence agency
The ship was destroyed at Marsden Wharf on 10 July 1985 by two limpet mines attached
below the waterline.
As New Zealand soon learned to its shock, the second explosion killed crew member and photographer Fernando Pereira as he tried to retrieve his cameras.
“I had planned to spend the night of the bombing onboard with my two young sons, to give them a brief taste of shipboard life,” Dr Robie writes. “At the last moment I decided to leave it to another night.”
He left the ship after 11 weeks documenting what turned out to be the last of her humanitarian missions — a voyage which highlighted the exploitation of Pacific nations
by countries who used them to test nuclear weapons.
Dr Robie was the only journalist on board to cover both the evacuation of the people
of Rongelap Atoll after their land, fishing grounds and bodies were ravaged by US nuclear fallout, and the continued voyage to nuclear-free Vanuatu and New Zealand.
Eyes of Fire is not only the authoritative biography of the Rainbow Warrior and her
missions, but a gripping account of the infiltration of Greenpeace by a French spy, the bombing, its planning, the capture of the French agents, the political fallout, and ongoing
challenges for Pacific nations.
Dr Robie corrects the widely held belief that the first explosion on the Rainbow Warrior
was intended as a warning, to avoid loss of life. No, it turns out, the French state really
did mean to kill people.
“It was remarkable,” he writes, “that Fernando Pereira was the only person who
died.”
The explosives were set to detonate shortly before midnight, when members of the
crew would be asleep. (One of them was the ship’s relief cook, Waihekean Margaret Mills. She awoke in the nick of time. The next explosion blew in the wall of her cabin).
“Two cabins on the main deck had their floors ruptured by pieces of steel flying from
the [first] engine room blast,” writes Dr Robie.
“By chance, the four crew who slept in those rooms were not on board. If they had been,
they almost certainly would have been killed.”
Eyes of Fire author David Robie with Rainbow Warrior III . . . not only an account of the Rongelap humanitarian voyage, but also a gripping account of the infiltration of Greenpeace and the bombing. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Eyes of Fire was first published in 1986 — and also in the UK and USA, and has been reissued in 2005, 2015 and again this year to coincide with the 40th anniversary
of the bombing.
If you are lucky enough to own the first edition, you will find plenty that is new here; updated text, an index, new photographs, a prologue by former NZ prime minister Helen Clark and a searing preface by Waihekean Bunny McDiarmid, former executive director
of Greenpeace International.
As you would expect from the former head of journalism schools at the University
of Papua New Guinea and University of the South Pacific, and founder of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre, Eyes of Fire is not only a brilliant piece of research, it is an absolutely
fascinating read, filled with human detail.
The bombing and its aftermath make up a couple of chapters in a book which covers an enormous amount of ground.
Professor David Robie is a photographer, journalist and teacher who was awarded an MNZM in 2024 for his services to journalism and Asia-Pacific media education. He is founding editor of the Pacific Journalism Review, also well worth seeking out.
Eyes of Fire is an updated classic and required reading for anyone interested in activism
or the contemporary history of the Pacific.
Palestinian journalists have long known Gaza to be the most dangerous place on earth for media workers, but Israel’s attack on a tent housing journalists in Gaza City last Sunday has left many reeling from shock and fear, reports Al Jazeera.
Four Al Jazeera staff members were among the seven people killed in an Israeli drone strike outside al-Shifa Hospital.
The Israeli military admitted to deliberately targeting the tent after making unsubstantiated accusations that one of those killed, Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif, was a member of Hamas.
Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed at least 238 media workers since October 2023, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office. This toll is higher than that of World Wars I and II, the Vietnam War, the war in Afghanistan and the Yugoslavia wars combined.
Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud said in a video report about the plight of journalists this week that “press vests and helmets, once considered a shield, now feel like a target.”
“The fear is constant — and justified,” Mahmoud said. “Every assignment is accompanied by the same unspoken question: Will [I] make it back alive?”
Smears no coincidence
“It is no coincidence that the smears against al-Sharif — who has reported night and day for Al Jazeera since the start of the war — surfaced every time he reported on a major development in the war, most recently the starvation brought about by Israel’s refusal to allow sufficient aid into the territory,” CPJ regional director Sara Qudah said in the aftermath of Israel’s attack.
In light of Israel’s systematic targeting of journalists, media workers in Gaza are forced to make difficult choices.
Palestinian reporter Sally Thabet told Al Jazeera: “As a mother and a journalist, I go through this mental dissonance almost daily, whether to go to work or stay with my daughters and being afraid of the random shelling of the Israeli occupation army.”
“Journalism is not a crime . . . oppressing it is” placards at the Auckland free Palestine rally in Te Komititanga Square last weekend. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Across the street from the ruins of the School of Media Studies at al-Quds Open University in Gaza City, where he used to teach, Hussein Saad has been recovering from an injury he sustained while running to safety.
“The deliberate targeting of Palestinian journalists has a strong effect on the disappearance of the Palestinian story and the disappearance of the media narrative,” he said.
Saad argued the Gaza Strip was witnessing “the disappearance of the truth”.
While journalists report on mass killings, human suffering and starvation, they also cope with their own losses and deprivation. Photographer and correspondent Amer al-Sultan said hunger was a major challenge.
“I used to go to work, and when I didn’t find anything to eat, I would just drink water,” he said.
Palestinian journalists under fire. Video: Al Jazeera
‘We are all . . . confused’
“I did this for two days. I had to live for two or three days on water. This is one of the most difficult challenges we face amid this war against our people — starvation.”
Journalist and film director Hassan Abu Dan said reporters “live in conditions that are more difficult than the mind can imagine.”
“You live in a tent. You drink water that is not good for drinking. You eat unhealthy food …
“We are all, as journalists, confused. There is a part of our lives that has been ruined and gone far away,” he said.
Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud said that despite the psychological trauma and the personal risks, Palestinian journalists continue to do their jobs, “driven by a belief that documenting the truth is not just a profession, but a duty to their people and history”.
Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud . . . the fear in Gaza is constant – and justified – after Israel’s targeted attack killed four colleagues. Image: Al Jazeera
Protesters staged pro-Palestinian demonstrations across Aotearoa New Zealand at the weekend, calling on the government to place sanctions on Israel for its war on Gaza.
The government announced last week it was considering whether to join other countries like France, Canada and Australia in recognising Palestinian statehood at a United Nations leader’s meeting next month.
Demonstrators took to the streets in about 20 cities and towns on Saturday in a “National Day of Protest”, waving Palestinian and other flags, holding vigils, and banging pots and pans to represent what a UN-backed food security agency has called “the worst case scenario of famine”.
They also condemned Israel’s targeted killing of journalists.
In Wellington, about 2000 protesters gathered at Te Aro Park, and formed a crowd almost a kilometre long during the march, an RNZ journalist estimated.
One demonstrator, who carried a sign which read “Palestine is in our hearts”, said the government had been “woefully silent” on what was happening in Gaza.
The Wellington Gaza protest on Saturday. Video: RNZ
It was her first protest, she said, and she intended to go to others in order to “agitate for our politicians to listen and take a stand”.
“I hope the country comes out in force today right across all of our regions, to give Palestine a voice, to show that we care, and to inspire action from our politicians — who have been woefully silent and as a result compliant in the genocide in Palestine.”
A protester’s “Palestine is in our hearts” placard at the Wellington protest. Image: Mark Papalii/RNZ News
She said she wanted to see the New Zealand government sanction Israel and take a global stand against the war in Gaza.
Another protester said the killings of four Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza this week was what had spurred him to join the crowd.
A “grow a spine Luxon!” placard at the Wellington protest in reference to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s “woeful” stance on the Israeli war on Gaza. Photo: Mark Papalii/RNZ
“You know hearing about the attack on the journalists, the way they were targeting just one purportedly but were willing to kill [others] just to get their man.
“It’s not right.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters condemn the killing of journalists by Israel and call for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador as part of nationwide demonstrations. Image: Mark Papalii/RNZ
Others in the capital carried signs showing Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif and his three Al Jazeera colleagues who were killed by an Israeli strike on a tent of reporters in Gaza.
The IDF claimed that al-Sharif was working for the Hamas resistance — something Al Jazeera has strongly denied.
Some of the demonstrators at the Wellington protest against Israel. Image: Mark Papalii/RNZ
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
This morning there is no article on the political page of The New Zealand Herald about the plight of people in Gaza, the same is the case at The Post and at RNZ. Even the 1News political page is Gaza free but what may stun you over a Sunday morning coffee is the fact that there is also no mention of Gaza on the “World Pages” of any of these so-called news organisations.
It’s not news in the world of our mainstream media journalists.
Instead, there is articles about “no deal” between Trump and Putin, 300 dead in Pakistan, Trump will meet Zelenskyy, Stone Age Humans were picky about what stones they used . . . and other things — in fact the only article in the “big ” New Zealand mainstream media “World” pages about Gaza is at Stuff and it’s a link to a three minute news video item from yesterday’s Auckland protest about Neil Finn supporting Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick.
Chlöe said the evidence is pretty clear and you don’t kill journalists for no reason when Israel laughed off claims that people in Gaza were starving.
Last night, TVNZ 1News broadcast a news item that led with Neil Finn singing “Don’t Dream it’s Over” and Simon Mercep interviewing Chlöe about her stance on an apology.
The news Chlöe would be back next week at Parliament probably shocked Duncan Garner but there was precious little coverage of what was said in protest speeches because the limitations of broadcasting news concision (a sequence of soundbites) prevent the New Zealand public from hearing too much about Gaza from our own mainstream news services.
Gordon’s action list
Over on social media many people are sharing Gordon Campbell’s article around — where he details the actions you could take and points out how the people of Gaza don’t have time for symbolic stances and the kinds of actions that might help — like sanctions and UN peacekeeping intervention on the ground.
Gordon Campbell has “a go at” the stance taken by the NZ government that “it’s not a matter of if, but when” by adding “but not now” and why not now?
One reason for “but not now” pitched by Campbell is that with Todd McClay now heading over to the US to beg for a return to 10 percent tariffs, New Zealand is stalling and playing a wait and see game — watching whether Australia will be punished for backing a Palestinian state and whether tariffs will be part of the game.
G News on yesterday’s Palestine solidarity rally in Te Komititanga Square, Auckland.
A map of the nations in the world who support a Palestinian state shows most of it in green — and the holdouts in white — with New Zealand holding out in white as we recite “Not if, but when, but not now”.
The editorial at The New Zealand Herald this morning is about how Labour MPs should have shown up and performed publicly at the Covid Circus Phase 2 Royal Commission of Inquiry in the opinion of the Herald (run by Steven Joyce and cookers from The Centrist) — because an urgent Taxpayers’ Union Poll claims 53 percent say so with a giant margin for error not even mentioned — nor how the Royal Commission has all the information it needs from the previous government but it needs the same questions answered in public.
The priorities and partisanship of The NZ Herald are on show as it campaigns hard against Labour and the left bloc even while there’s an unfolding genocide taking place in the world and it’s “World” pages are empty about this — while decent people cancel their subscriptions.
Many of us are still aghast at the way senior political correspondent Audrey Young wished Chlöe would go away when all she was doing was asking National MPs to act with their conscience and Speaker Gerry Brownlee had taken offence and dished out injustice — which now has backfired at grassroots level across the nation and media starve us all of the real content in those speeches.
Chlöe has said from the start this is not about her and she was telling people this again yesterday as folks thanked her for taking an unapologetic stand.
Green Party’s Chlöe Swarbrick has said from the start this is not about her and she was telling people this again yesterday as folks thanked her for taking an unapologetic stand. Image: Stuff screenshot APR
Who controls the spotlight? Media!
We wanted to hear from Chlöe and we wanted to hear those speeches.
I personally felt I had let down the show yesterday because my cell and sound gear seized up in the bitter cold wind and rain so I missed Chlöe’s speech and some of the other messages — Hey Now Don’t Dream it’s Over — but with no umbrella, no raincoat and standing in the rain my frozen fingers took some time to come right and I sat on a ferry in cold wet clothes like a failure afterwards but it is what it is.
My apologies for not being better prepared.
It was pointed out in speeches at the rally (there has almost been 100 of them now) how NZ journalists do not support their colleagues who are being murdered for doing their jobs in Gaza and when I got home and warmed up we discussed the way Al Jazeera is a good news channel and how crap things are in New Zealand media.
Gordon Campbell and a few other notable exceptions keep the faith and his observation “but not now” has done the thinking for many of us about the spineless government who are stalling and pretending this is complex and needs to take weeks while every day more people starve to death, get shot going for food. And it all just happens as if — it’s “a mystery” – while our government names Hamas strongly but nobody else.
Criticism of State Terror is more toned down and we care more about our US relationship than anything much else it seems — putting our own interests first and not reporting much about the facts.
RNZ has finally published “Spine and Punishment: A review of Swarbrick v Brownlee” because the media spotlight was on this local issue and the history of Speakers’ rulings versus “a new decency” because Gerry was offended and overreached.
Gerry must withdraw In my opinion, Gerry has got to withdraw and apologise or step down and any more stick about this towards Chlöe is going to further the focus on National MPs who are silent and hiding behind “But not now”.
If only six of 68 National MPs voted with their conscience and not their party “but not now” instructions then we’d be actively progressing a new law to sanction Israel — and our actions would speak louder than merely words and symbolic gestures.
The unfolding genocide in Gaza seems to be going to plan as NZ news media also lack a spine and any kind of support for their dead colleagues while this one term government clings to “Not if, but when — but not now”.
Might as well carry on starving until September.
“He’s lost the plot” – “but not now”.
Because this government and its sycophantic media need more time to argue about this very “complex” issue.
Gerard Otto is a digital creator and independent commentator on politics and the media through his G News column and video reports. Republished with permission.
A New Zealand policeman pushed over an elderly man who was doing nothing but waving a Palestinian flag at a solidarity rally in Ōtautahi yesterday.
Yes the man employed to protect the public committed a violent assault. Not a wee shove, a great big push that caused the man to fall the ground – onto hard tarmac.
It comes on top of a woman being fatally shot this week by police and her partner being shot and injured. In that case a knife was involved but it’s kind of like paper-scissors-rock, is it not?
I have experienced their brutality directly while filming their brutality. Like the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) they see journalists who film their offensive actions as the enemy.They used pepper spray against me illegally to stop me filming their perversity.
But look, it’s a hard job so they need how-not-to-be-thugs training.
Pre-trained as thugs
Some young men are already pre-trained to be thugs and they seem to be out at the front. They feel great in this mostly white gang.
I have witnessed police haul people off the pavement, beat them up, and then arrest the victims of their assaults “for assault”.
False accusations to protect themselves? Twisting the narrative completely to hide their own violence?
False arrests when they themselves should face arrest.
I think we’ve had enough.
Some of the boys in blue really really need to grow up.
They need training that teaches them that manning or womaning up (some women cops play the thug game too) doesn’t mean training to be a wanker white supremacist.
Self awareness
Good training means teaching police to be self aware, aware of thoughts and feelings, not just learning cognitive behavioural tools but applying them.
They are in the community to protect the community. They should not see people who are supporting human rights or kids attending a party as their opposition, their enemy.
These thug police need to unlearn their thuggery and learn instead, how to relate to the people. They are not defending themselves against the public. They must not view people — real human beings — as their enemy.
The thug cops are adept at dehumanising others. They need to learn to see people as individuals and this includes people attending group functions like parties or protests or club activities. People have human rights.
This includes the right to be respected and treated with dignity.
The perpetrators of violent crime are — far too often — the police. I’ve seen it happen with no provocation time and again. Too many times to count.
They don the black gloves and black sunnies and wear bullet proof vests and feel what?How do they feel when they gear up? Threatened or threatening?
Public protection
Questions need to be asked.
The public needs protection from some — not all — of our police.
And the legal system, the justice system — (I’m trying not use an ironic tone here) needs to be applied to violent crimes, including the police crims who assault members of the public.
I worry for unseen victims too. I worry for their wives and children because if they assault with no provocation on the street what do they do at home?
Do people who behave like street devils turn into angels at home?
Investigations must be held about why our police are assaulting bystanders and peaceful protesters.
Tragedy investigation
I guess there wll be an investigation into the bullets against knife tragedy. But we need other investigations too.
I know the footage of what happened to our innocent elderly protester will be posted on social media.
New footage emerges of policeman pushing partygoer (2021 1News video)
In the meantime, here’s other footage above of Christchurch police doing what they are in danger of doing best.
This footage is four years ago but this alarming, aggressive behaviour continues as demonstrated yesterday by a cop shoving to the ground an unarmed, unprotected, elderly man waving a Palestinian flag whom they then — so wrongly — charged with assault!
Saige England is an Aotearoa New Zealand journalist, author, and poet, member of the Palestinian Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA), and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This commentary was first published on her social media.
President Donald Trump has now put troops on the District of Columbia’s streets in both of his terms. This time around, the Washington Post is less alarmed.
In addition to calling up 800 DC National Guard troops—which Trump can do because DC isn’t a state—he also seized control of DC’s police force in the name of a “crime emergency,” despite the city experiencing its lowest violent crime rate in 30 years.
With DC’s self-governance under threat, the city’s paper of record is positioned to play a critical role. Right off the bat, Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher sounded the alarm about Trump’s actions, telling the New Yorker (8/11/25), “This is troops-in-the-streets, shades-of-authoritarian-rule bad.”
“Grow a spine for Palestine!” was a frequent theme among about 5000 people protesting in the heart of New Zealand’s largest city today as the protesters demanded that the coalition government should recognise the state of Palestine and stop supporting impunity for Israel.
More than 62,000 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza in the past 22 months and the country’s military have doubled down on their attacks on residential areas in the besieged enclave.
Several speakers, including opposition parliamentarians, spoke at the rally, strongly condemning Israel for its genocidal policies and crimes against humanity.
Many children took part in the rally at Te Komititanga Square and the return march up Queen Street in spite of the bitterly wet and cold weather. Many of them carried placards and Palestinian flags like their parents.
One young boy carried a placard declaring “Just a kid standing in front of his PM asking him to grow a heart and a spine”. The heart was illustrated as a Palestinian flag.
Other placards included slogans such as “Wanted MPs with a spine” and “Grow a spine for Palestine”, and “They try to bury us forgetting we are seeds” with the resistance watermelon symbol.
Many placards demanded sanctions and condemned Israel, saying “Gaza is starving. Words won’t feed them — sanction Israel now”, “NZ government: Your silence is complicity with Israeli genocide” and “Free Palestine now”.
Disillusionment with leaders
One poster expressed disillusionment with both the coalition government and opposition Labour Party leaders, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins, denouncing “apologists for genocide”.
Another poster challenged both Hipkins and Luxon over “what values” they stood for. It said:
“Our ‘leaders’ have refused to call for a ceasefire even after 10,000+ innocent civilians have been brutally murdered in their own homes, including 4000+ CHILDREN all under the name of “Kiwi values”.
“They, like a lot of other world politicians, are apologists for genocide.”
A “Palestine forever” banner at the head of the Auckland march today as it prepares to walk up Queen Street. Image: APR
Frustration has been growing among the public with the government’s reluctance to declare support for Palestinian statehood after 96 consecutive weeks of protests organised by the Palestinian Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) and other groups, not just in the largest city of Auckland and the capital Wellington, but also in Christchurch and in at least 20 other towns and communities across the motu.
The “spine” theme in chants and posters followed just days after Parliament suspended Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick following a fiery speech about Gaza when she said government MPs should grow a spine and sanction Israel for its atrocities.
She had refused to apologise to the House and supporters at the rally today gave her rousing cheers in support of her defiance.
‘We need your help’
Te Pati Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told the crowd: “We need you to help her put the pressure on so that we can fight together in that place [Parliament] for our people to free, free Palestine; from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
“Return our dignity Aotearoa. Stand up for what is right. There is only one side to support in genocide, only one side. And Te Pati Māori will only work with those.”
When Swarbrick spoke to the crowd, she repeated her goal to find six government MPs “with a spine” to support her bill to “sanction Israel for its war crimes”.
She also said the Palestinian people were being “starved and slaughtered by Israel” in Gaza, adding that their breath was being “stolen from them” by the IDF (Israeli “Defence” Force).
“It is our duty, all human beings with breath left in our lungs, with the freedom to chant and to move and to demand action from our politicians, to do all that we can to fight for liberation for all peoples,” she said.
Other politicians speaking were Orini Kaipara, the Te Pati Māori candidate for the Tāmaki Mākaurau byelection, and Kerrin Leoni, mayoral candidate for Tamaki.
Targeted assassinations
Earlier, the targeted assassinations of six journalists by the Israeli military last Sunday — taking the toll to 272 — was condemned by independent journalist and Asia Pacific Report editor Dr David Robie. He also criticised the NZ media silence.
Noting that New Zealand journalists had not condemned the killings or held a vigil as the Media Alliance (MEAA) had done in Australia, he cited an Al Jazeera journalist, Hind Khoudary, whose message to the world was:
“We are being hunted and killed in Gaza while you watch in silence. For two years, your fellow journalists here have been slaughtered.
What did you do? Nothing.”
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick (left) and Te Pati Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer at today’s rally in Te Komitanga Square, Auckland. Image: APR
A recent poll on whether New Zealanders want sanctions to be imposed on Israel, showed that of those who gave an opinion, 60 percent favoured sanctions.
The PSNA commissioned survey by Talbot Mills in July with 1216 respondents gave a similar result to one commissioned by Justice for Palestine a year ago.
Popular support for sanctions
PSNA co-chair John Minto said the numbers showed strong popular support for sanctions. The 60 percent overall rose to 68 percent for the 18–29 year category.
“The government is well out of step with public opinion and ignores this message at its peril. There is popular support for sanctions against Israel,” he said.
“People see that Israel is committing the worst atrocities of the 21st century with impunity. It is starving a whole population.
“It has destroyed just about every building in Gaza. It is assassinating journalists. It holds 7000 Palestinian hostages in its jails without charge. Its goal of occupying all of Gaza and ethnically cleansing its people into the Sudan desert, is all public knowledge.”
Minto said Israel’s “depraved Prime Minister” who was wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICJ) for war crimes and crimes against humanity, had boasting that if Israel was really committing genocide, “it could have killed everyone in Gaza in a single afternoon”.
“The poll shows New Zealand First supporters are most opposed to sanctions against Israel (59 percent of those who gave an opinion were opposed) so it’s little surprise Winston Peters is dragging the chain.”
“Just a kid” with his blunt message to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Image: APR
On this episode of the MintCast, hosts Mnar Adley and Alan MacLeod speak with Ahmed Kaballo, the man behind the viral media outlet that the U.S. government has been trying to silence.
In September, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a speech smearing media platform African Stream as secretly funded and controlled by Vladimir Putin himself. As Blinken said:
According to the outlet’s website, ‘African Stream is’ – and I quote ‘a pan-African digital media organization based exclusively on social media platforms, focused on giving a voice to all Africans, both at home and abroad.’ In reality, the only voice it gives is to Kremlin propagandists.”
Blinken provided no evidence to support these assertions. Yet, within hours, Silicon Valley reacted and crushed Kaballo’s organization. African Stream’s YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook pages were permanently deleted, while its Twitter account was demonetized.
The word “Gaza” is taking on similar connotations to what the word “Auschwitz” meant to a previous generation. It signifies a deliberate and systematic attempt to erase an entire people from history on the basis of their ethnic identity.
On Monday night a five-year-old disabled child starved to death. Reportedly, he weighed only three kilograms when he died. Muhammad Zakaria Khudr was the 101st child among the 227 Palestinians now reported to have died from starvation.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters keep on saying that with regard to New Zealand recognising a Palestinian state, it is a matter of “Not if, but when.” Yet why is “ but not now” still their default position?
At this rate, a country that used to pride itself on its human rights record — New Zealand has never stopped bragging that this is where women won the right to vote, before they did anywhere else — will be among the last countries on earth to recognise Palestine’s right to exist.
What can we do? Some options:
Boycott all Israeli goods and services;
Engage with the local Palestinian community, and support their businesses, and cultural events;
Donate financial support to Gaza. Here’s a reliable link to directy support pregnant Gaza women and their babies;
Lobby your local MP, and Immigration Minister Erika Stanford — to prioritise the inclusion of hundreds of Gazans in our refugee programme, just as we did in the wake of the civil war in Syria, and earlier, in Sudan;
Write and phone your local MP, and urge them to support economic sanctions against Israel. These sanctions should include a sporting and cultural boycott along the lines we pursued so successfully against apartheid South Africa
Contact your KiwiSaver provider and let it be known that you will change providers if they invest in Israeli firms, or in the US, German and UK firms that supply the IDF with weapons and targeting systems. Contact the NZ Super Fund and urge them to divest along similar lines;
Identify and picket any NZ firms that supply the US/Israeli war machines directly, or indirectly;
Contact your local MP and urge him or her to support Chloe Swarbrick’s private member’s bill that would impose economic sanctions on the state of Israel for its unlawful occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Swarbrick’s Bill is modelled on the existing Russian sanctions framework.If 61 MPs pledged support for Swarbrick’s Bill, it would not have to win a private members ballot before being debated in Parliament. Currently 21 MPs (the Greens and TPM) formally support it. If and when Labour’s 34 MPs come on board, this will still require another six MPs (from across the three coalition parties) to do the right thing. Goading MPs into doing the right thing got Swarbrick into a world of trouble this week. (Those wacky Greens. They’re such idealists.);
We should all be lobbying our local MPs for a firm commitment that they will back the Swarbrick Bill. Portray it to them as being in the spirit of bi-partisanship, and as them supporting the several UN resolutions on the status of the occupied territories. And if they still baulk ask them flatly: if not, why not?
Email/phone/write to the PM’s office, and ask him to call in the Israeli ambassador and personally express New Zealand’s repugnance at Israel’s inhumane actions in Gaza and on the West Bank. The PM should also be communicating in person New Zealand’s opposition to the recently announced Israeli plans for the annexation of Gaza City, and expansion of the war in Gaza.
Write to your MP, to the PM, and to Foreign Minister Winston Peters urging them to recognise Palestinian statehood right now. Inquire as to what further information they may need before making that decision, and offer to supply it. We need to learn how to share our outrage; and
Learn about the history of this issue, so that you convince friends and family to take similar actions.
This map showing (in white) the countries that are yet to recognise Palestinian statehood speaks volumes:
Those holdout nations in white tend to have been the chief enablers of Israel’s founding in 1948, a gesture of atonement driven by European guilt over the Holocaust.
This “homeland” for the Jews already had residents known to have had nothing to do with the Holocaust. Yet since 1948 the people of Palestine have been made to bear all of the bad consequences of the West’s purging of its collective guilt.
Conditional justice The same indifference to the lives of Palestinians is evident in the belated steps towards supporting the right of Palestinians to self-determination. Even the recognition promised by the UK, Canada, France and Australia next month is decked out with further conditions that the Palestinians are being told they need to meet. No equivalent demands are being made of Israel, despite the atrocities it is committing in Gaza.
There’s nothing new about this. Historically, all of the concessions have been made by the Palestinians, starting with their original displacement. Some 30 years ago, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) formally recognised Israel’s right to exist. In response, Israel immediately expanded its settlements on Palestinian land, a flagrant breach of the commitments it made in the Oslo Accords, and in the Gaza-Jericho Agreement.
In a 1993 exchange of letters, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s chairman, Yasir Arafat, recognized the “right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security” and committed the PLO to peaceful negotiations, renouncing terrorism and amending the Palestinian charter to reflect these commitments. In return, Israel would merely recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people — and only “in light of” Mr Arafat’s commitments. Palestinian sovereignty remained remote; Israeli occupation continued apace.
This double standard persists:
This fundamental unfairness has informed every diplomatic effort since. The rump Palestinian government built the limited institutions it was permitted under the Oslo Accords, co-operated with Israeli security forces and voiced support for a peace process that had long been undermined by Israel. Led by then-Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority’s statehood campaign in the 2000s was entirely based on playing the game according to rules set by Israel and the Western-dominated international community. Yet recognition remained stalled, the United States blocked Palestine’s full membership in the United Nations — and still, no conditions were placed on the occupying power.
That’s where we’re still at. Luxon, Peters and David Seymour are demanding more concessions from the Palestinians. They keep strongly denouncing the Hamas October 7 atrocities — which is valid — while weakly urging Israel to abide by the international laws and conventions that Israel repeatedly breaches.
When a state deploys famine as a strategic weapon, doesn’t it deserve to be condemned, up front and personal?
Instead, the language that New Zealand uses to address Israel’s crimes is almost invariably, and selectively, passive. Terrible things are “happening” in Gaza and they must “stop.” Children, mysteriously, are “starving.” This is “intolerable.”
It is as if there is no human agent, and no state power responsible for these outcomes. Things are just somehow “happening” and they must somehow “cease.” Enough is enough, cries Peters, while carefully choosing not to name names, beyond Hamas.
As mentioned, Israel is publicly discussing its plans for Gaza’s “voluntary emigration” and for the permanent annexation of the West Bank. Even when urged to do so by Christopher Luxon, it seems that Israel is not actually complying with international law, and is not fulfilling its legal obligations as an occupying power. Has anyone told Luxon about this yet?
Two state fantasy, one state reality At one level, continuing to call for a “two state” solution is absurd, given that the Knesset formally rejected the proposal a year ago. More than once, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly denounced it while also laying Israel’s claim to all of the land west of Jordan, which would include the West Bank and Gaza.
Evidently, the slogan “ from the river to sea” is only a terrorist slogan when Hamas uses it. Yet the phrase originated as a Likud slogan.Moreover, the West evidently thinks it is quite OK for Netanyahu to publicly call for Israeli hegemony from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Basic rule of diplomacy: bad is what they do, good is what we do, and we have always been on Team Israel.
Over the course of the three decades since the Oslo Accords were signed, the West has kept on advocating for a two state solution, while acting as if only one of those states has a right to exist. On what land do Luxon and Peters think that a viable Palestinian state can be built?
One pre-condition for Palestinian statehood that Luxon cited to RNZ last week required Israel to be “not undermining the territorial integrity that would then undermine the two state solution.” Really? Does Luxon not realise that this is exactly what Israel has been doing for the past 30 years?
Talking of which . . . are Luxon and Peters genuinely expecting Israel to retreat to the 1967 borders? That land was agreed at Oslo and mandated by the UN as the territory needed for a viable Palestinian state. Yet on the relatively small area of the West Bank alone, 3.4 million Palestinians currently subsist on disconnected patches of land under occupation amid extreme settler violence, while contending with 614 Israeli checkpoints and other administrative obstacles impeding their free movement.
Here’s what the land left to the Palestinians looks like today:
A brief backgrounder on Areas A, B and C and how they operate can be found here. Obviously, this situation cannot be the template for a viable Palestinian state.
What is the point? You might well ask . . . in the light of the above, what is the point of recognising Palestine as a state? Given the realities on the ground, it can only be a symbolic gesture. The reversion to the 1967 borders (a necessary step towards a Palestinian state) can happen only if the US agreed to push Israel in that direction by withholding funds and weaponry.
That’s very hard to imagine. The hypocrisy of the Western nations on this issue is breath-taking. The US and Germany continue to be Israel’s main foreign suppliers of weapons and targeting systems. Under Keir Starmer’s leadership as well, the UK sales of military equipment to Israel have sharply increased.
New export licensing figures show that the UK approved licenses for £127.6 million worth of military equipment to Israel in single issue licenses between October to December 2024. This is a massive increase, with the figure in this three-month period totaling more than 2020-2023 combined.
Thanks to an explicitly enacted legal exemption, the UK also continues to supply parts for Israel’s F-35 jets.
UK industry makes 15% of every F-35 in contracts [estimated] to be worth at least £500 million since 2016, and [this] is the most significant part of the UK arms industry [relationship]with Israel . . . at least 79 companies [are] involved in manufacturing components.
These are the same F-35 war planes that the IDF has used to drop 2000 pound bombs on densely populated residential neighbourhoods in Gaza. Starmer cannot credibly pose as a man of peace.
So again . . . what exactly is the point of recognising Palestine as a state? No doubt, it would boost Palestinian morale if some major Western powers finally conceded that Palestine has a right to exist. In that narrow sense, recognition would correct a historical injustice.
There is also optimistic talk that formal Palestinian statehood would isolate the US on the Security Council (Trump would probably wear that as a badge of honour) and would make Israel more accountable under humanitarian law. As if.
Theoretically, a recognition of statehood would also enable people in New Zealand and elsewhere to apply pressure to their governments to forthrightly condemn and sanction Israel for its crimes against a fellow UN member state. None of this, however, is likely to change the reality on the ground, or prevent the calls for Israel’s “accountability” and for its “compliance with international law” from ringing hollow.
As the NYT also says:
After almost two years of severe access restrictions and the dismantling of the UN-led aid system in favour of a militarised food distribution that has left more than 1300 Palestinians dead, [now 1838 dead at these “aid centres” since late May, as of yesterday] . . . The 15 nations [at a UN meeting in late July that signed a declaration on Gaza] still would not collectively say “Israel is responsible for starvation in Gaza”. If they cannot name the problem, they can hardly hope to resolve it.
In sum . . . the world may talk the talk of Palestinian statehood being a matter of “not if, but when” and witter on about the “irreversible steps” being taken toward statehood, and finally — somewhere over the rainbow — towards a two state solution. Faint chance:
“For those who are starving today, the only irreversible step is death. Until statehood recognition brings action — arms embargoes, sanctions, enforcement of international law — it will remain a largely empty promise that serves primarily to distract from Western complicity in Gaza’s destruction.
Exactly. Behind the words of concern are the actions of complicity. The people of Gaza do not have time to wait for symbolic actions, or for sanctions to weaken Israel’s appetite for genocide. Consider this option: would New Zealand support an intervention in Gaza by a UN-led international force to save Gaza’s dwindling population, and to ensure that international humanitarian law is respected, however belatedly?
Would we be willing to commit troops to such a force if asked to do so by the UN Secretary-General? That is what is now needed.
Footnote One: On Gaza, the Luxon government has a high tolerance for double standards and Catch 22 conditions. We are insisting that the Palestinians must release the remaining hostages unconditionally, lay down their arms and de-militarise the occupied territories. Yet we are applying no similar pre-conditions on Israel to withdraw, de-militarise the same space, release all their Palestinian prisoners, allow the unrestricted distribution of food and medical supplies, and negotiate a sustainable peace.
Understandably, Hamas has tied the release of the remaining hostages to the Israeli cessation of their onslaught, to unfettered aid distribution, and to a long-term commitment to Palestinian self-rule. Otherwise, once the Israeli hostages are home, there would be nothing to stop Israel from renewing the genocide.
We are also demanding that Hamas be excluded from any future governing arrangement in Gaza, but – simultaneously – Peters told the House recently that this governing arrangement must also be “representative.” Catch 22. “Representative” democracy it seems, means voting for the people pre-selected by the West. Again, no matching demands have been made of Israel with respect to its role in the future governance of Gaza, or about its obligation to rebuild what it has criminally destroyed.
Footnote Two: There is only one rational explanation for why New Zealand is currently holding back from joining the UK, Canada, France and Australia in voting next month to recognise Palestine as a full UN member state. It seems we are cravenly hoping that Australia’s stance will be viewed with such disfavour by Donald Trump that he will punish Canberra by lifting its tariff rate from 10%, thereby erasing the 5% advantage that Australia currently enjoys oven us in the US market.
At least this tells us what the selling price is for our “independent” foreign policy. We’re prepared to sell it out to the Americans – and sell out the Palestinians in the process – if, by sitting on the fence for now, we can engineer parity for our exports with Australia in US markets. ANZAC mates, forever.
In a time of polarized politics, independent community media plays an increasingly important role. Big media are owned and controlled by large corporations. Their salient interest? To make as much profit as possible for their shareholders. That is its political economy. Given that acute limitation, it makes it difficult for most people to get information that challenges mainstream perspectives. By featuring diverse voices and views that are largely excluded, community-based media provide an alternative to corporate McNews.
This content originally appeared on AlternativeRadio and was authored by info@alternativeradio.org.
