Following a district court order referring the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange back to the United Kingdom’s Home Office, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has launched a new petition calling on Home Secretary Priti Patel to reject Assange’s extradition to the United States.
RSF urges supporters to join the call on the Home Secretary to #FreeAssange by signing and sharing the petition before May 18.
On April 20, the Westminster Magistrates’ Court issued an order referring Julian Assange’s extradition back to the Home Office, reports RSF.
Following a four-week period that will now be given to the defence for representations, Home Secretary Priti Patel must approve or reject the US government’s extradition request.
As Assange’s fate has again become a political decision, RSF has launched a new #FreeAssange petition, urging supporters to sign before May 18 to call on the Home Secretary to protect journalism and press freedom by rejecting Assange’s extradition to the US and ensuring his release without further delay.
“The next four weeks will prove crucial in the fight to block extradition and secure the release of Julian Assange,” said RSF’s director of operations and campaigns Rebecca Vincent, who monitored proceedings on RSF’s behalf.
“Through this petition, we are seeking to unite those who care about journalism and press freedom to hold the UK government to account.
“The Home Secretary must act now to protect journalism and adhere to the UK’s commitment to media freedom by rejecting the extradition order and releasing Assange.”
RSF’s prior petition calling on the UK government not to comply with the US extradition request gathered more than 90,000 signatures (108,000 including additional signatures on a German version of the petition), and was delivered to Downing Street, the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office ahead of the historic first-instance decision in the case on 4 January 2021.
The Media Association of Solomon Islands (Masi) has called on the police to respect journalists and media workers when carrying out their work in a public space after officers harassed two media people trying to film the prime minister, reports the Solomon Star.
Masi said in a statement that the incident happened at the National Parliament precinct this week when police confronted two members of the press, asking them not to film Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare on his arrival.
Masi president Georgina Kekea said Solomon Islands was a democratic country and freedom of the press was guaranteed under article 12 of the Constitution.
She said Sogavare was a public figure and the incident happened when he was carrying out his duty as a parliamentarian and prime minister of his country.
Masi was surprised to hear of the incident and Kekea said it was hoped that it was just a mistake by the police.
“If the press are not allowed to carry out their duties without fear or intimidation, then we are doomed as a democratic country,” Kekea said.
“There are different roles that each of us play in society and the police must respect this.
“Had the incident occurred at the prime minister’s private residence, then it should be a concern for his Close Personal Protection team.
‘A national duty’
“However, this incident occurred just in the Parliament precinct where he was on his way to carry out a national duty. This should not be an issue at all,” the Masi president said.
Kekea said members of the press were “not the enemy” and should not be treated as such either. She said journalists were doing their jobs just like any other profession.
“Our job is to gather information through interviews, filming and of course we write news pieces and present them to the public. I know there are instances where a few articles published by the press are deemed irresponsible.
“This however should not be the reason to restrict journalists or members of the press from doing their job.
“If the police or the government is concerned about such articles being a threat to national security, they should work on improving or developing effective communication strategies.”
Kekea said the action by the police showed a lack of understanding of the work of journalists and the role of the media.
The third anniversary of the arrest and incarceration of Julian Assange at a maximum-security prison has sparked protests in London and the United States.
Tomorrow marks three years since the Wikileaks founder was forcibly dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy, where he had sought asylum over the previous seven years.
Vigils were due to be held yesterday at the embassy, Westminster magistrates’ court and Belmarsh prison, where he has been held for the past three years.
Mr Assange’s family, friends and supporters are calling for his release and the US to drop its extradition case against him.
Protests are also planned today in Washington DC outside the British embassy and the Department of Justice offices.
Australia must step up diplomatic efforts to encourage the US government to drop its bid to extradite Julian Assange who has now been imprisoned for three years, says the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance.
Today marks the third anniversary of Assange’s arrest when he was dragged from the Ecuador Embassy in London on 11 April 2019 to face extradition proceedings for espionage charges laid by the US.
The WikiLeaks founder and publisher has been held at Belmarsh Prison near London ever since, where his mental and physical health has deteriorated significantly.
On this day, the MEAA calls on the Biden administration to drop the charges against Assange, which pose a threat to press freedom worldwide. The scope of the US charges imperils any journalist anywhere who writes about the US government.
MEAA media federal president Karen Percy urged the Australian government to use its close ties to both the US and the UK to end the court proceedings against him and have the charges dropped to allow Assange to return home to Australia, if that is his wish.
Assange won his initial extradition hearing in January last year, but subsequent appeals by the US government have dragged out his detention at Belmarsh.
“Julian Assange’s work with WikiLeaks was important and in the public interest: exposing evidence of war crimes and other shameful actions by US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Percy said.
Assange charges an ‘affront to journalists’
“The stories published by WikiLeaks and its mainstream media partners more than a decade ago were picked up by news outlets around the world.
“The charges against Assange are an affront to journalists everywhere and a threat to press freedom.”
The US government has not produced convincing evidence that the publishing of the leaked material endangered any lives or jeopardised military operations, but their lasting impact has been to embarrass and shame the United States.
“Yet Assange faces the prospect of jail for the rest of his life if convicted of espionage charges laid by the US Department of Justice,” Percy said.
“The case against Assange is intended to curtail free speech, criminalise journalism and frighten off any future whistleblowers and publishers with the message that they too will be punished if they step out of line.
“The US Government must see reason and drop these charges, and the Australian Government should be doing all it can to represent the interests of an Australian citizen.”
“This dramatic escalation in the legal harassment of Maria Ressa and Rappler highlights the urgent need for the Philippines’ to decriminalise libel and do away with laws that are repeatedly abused to persecute journalists whose reporting exposes public wrongdoing,” said the Hold the Line Coalition Steering Committee.
“The state’s blatant attempts to suppress Rappler’s election-related fact-checking services is an unacceptable attempt to cheat the public of their right to accurate information, which is critical during elections.”
Quiboloy and his associates were charged with conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion; sex trafficking of children; marriage fraud; fraud, and misuse of visas; and various money laundering offences.
In addition to these cases, Ressa has been named personally as one of 17 reporters, editors and executives, and seven news organisations in cyber libel complaints brought by Duterte government cabinet minister Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi.
Cusi is demanding each of the accused pay him 200 million pesos (nearly US$4 million) in damages.
Ressa did not write the article published by Rappler.
If the authorities choose to prosecute these cases, they will become criminal charges with potentially heavy jail sentences attached.
Having already been convicted of one criminal cyber libel charge, which is under appeal, and facing multiple other pre-existing legal cases, Ressa testified before the US Senate last week about the state-enabled legal harassment she experiences:
“All told, I could go to jail for the rest of my life. Because I refuse to stop doing my job as a journalist. Because Rappler holds the line and continues to protect the public sphere.”
Countering disinformation
As a result, this collaboration between Rappler and COMELEC designed to counter disinformation associated with the presidential poll has been temporarily halted — just over a month from the election.
“This new wave of cases and complaints, which represents an egregious attack on press freedom, is designed to undermine the essential work of fact-checking and critical reporting during elections — acts which help uphold the integrity of democratic processes.
“Rappler must be allowed to perform the essential public service of exposing falsehoods, particularly during the election period, even when these prove politically damaging for those in power,” the coalition said.
The #HTL Coalition comprises more than 80 organisations around the world. This statement is issued by the #HoldTheLine Steering Committee, but it does not necessarily reflect the position of all or any individual coalition members or organisations.
Good news — an Australian parliamentary review recommends a more “expansive” media presence in the Pacific.
Bad news — little of that expansion envisions a role for island media.
Instead, the committee endorsed a proposal for “consultation” and the establishment of an independent “platform neutral” media corporation, versus the existing “broadcasting” organisation.
That proposal was among several points raised at two public hearings and nine written submissions as part of Australia’s “Pacific Step Up” programme, aimed at countering the growing regional influence of China.
“But the vacant space that was left there when Australia Network disappeared, as people have said, has really been taken over by China,” he said.
“Throughout my time as the Pacific correspondent for the ABC, I saw this Chinese influence growing everywhere.”
Local media delivery
Dorney suggested local media ought to deliver news content in any future media expansion.
“I’ll just end off by saying that, if we did boost broadcasting again, it does require greater collaboration.
“There are excellent journalists out there in the Pacific that we could work with to create content for both of us. It’s our region, and I think we should embrace it.”
“Key to the success of the PacificAus TV initiative has been Free TV’s ability to work with our Pacific broadcast partners to ensure that the programming made available meets the needs of the Pacific communities.”
However recommendations for local staff were not picked up in the final findings of the standing committee.
Only “consultation” was called for.
Relatively comprehensive
Taking up ten of 176 pages, the report’s media section is nonetheless seen as relatively comprehensive compared with the dismantling of broadcasting capacity in recent years.
This includes the literal dismantling of shortwave equipment in Australia despite wide protest from the Pacific region.
Nearly three years previously, a 2019 Pacific Media Summit heard that discontinuation of the shortwave service would save Australia some $2.8 million in power costs.
A suggestion from a delegate that that amount could be spent on $100,000 for reporters in each of 26 island states and territories was met with silence from ABC representatives at the summit.
However, funding would be dramatically expanded if the government takes up suggestions from the submissions to the joint committee.
Members of the Australia Asia Pacific Media Initiative (AAMPI) called for the “allocation of a total of $55-$75 million per year to ensure Australia has a fit-for-purpose, multi-platform media voice in the Asia Pacific region.”
Overall, submissions called for greater recognition of the media in “soft power” calculation.
Public diplomacy tool
AAPMI member Annmaree O’Keeffe said that “international broadcasting and its potency is not recognised at government level as a public diplomacy tool.”
Consultancy group Heriot Media and Governance cautioned against trying to use media as a policy messenger.
“A substantial body of research internationally supports the view that audiences are likely to invest greater trust in an international media service if they perceive it to be independent of political and other vested interests.”
Heriot also noted the loss of radio capacity, submitting that “shortwave [radio] had been the only almost uninterruptible signal when local media had been disabled by natural events or political actions.”
ABC told the inquiry that around 830,000 Pacific Islanders access their various platforms each month.
Off-platform, there were 1.6 million views of ABC content via social media such as YouTube.
Jason Brown is a long-time Pacific reporter based in Aotearoa New Zealand and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
This week, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security released its much anticipated report on national security threats affecting the higher education and research sector.
The 171-page report found the sector is a target for foreign powers using “the full set of tools” against Australia, which can undermine our sovereignty and threaten academic freedom.
It made 27 recommendations to “harden the operating environment to deny adversaries the ability to engage in the national security risks in the sector”.
The committee’s recommendations, when correctly implemented, will go a long way towards combating the threat of espionage and foreign interference. But they are not enough to protect academic freedom.
This is because the laws that make espionage and foreign interference a crime could capture legitimate research endeavours.
National security risks to higher education and research The joint committee found there are several national security threats to the higher education and research sector. Most significant are foreign interference against students and staff, espionage and data theft.
This includes theft via talent recruitment programmes where Australian academics working on sensitive technologies are recruited to work at foreign institutions.
These threats have been occurring through cyber attacks and human means, including actors working in Australia covertly on behalf of a foreign government.
The kind of information targeted is not limited to military or defence, but includes valuable technologies or information in any domain such as as agriculture, medicine, energy and manufacturing.
What did the committee recommend? The committee stated that “awareness, acknowledgement and genuine proactive measures” are the next steps academic institutions must take to degrade the corrosive effects of these national security risks.
Of its 27 recommendations, the committee made four “headline” recommendations. These include:
adherence to the taskforce guidelines by universities. These include having frameworks for managing national security risks and implementing a cybersecurity strategy
introducing training on national security issues for staff and students
guidance for universities on how to implement penalties for foreign interference activities on campus.
New & long-awaited parliamentary report (PJCIS) on foreign interference at Australian universities. It makes strong recommendations to unis & government on ways to counter state-backed harassment & intimidation & protect students & staff. https://t.co/7I8mI52gb9pic.twitter.com/uTlMWzDCkv
Other recommendations include creation of a mechanism to allow students to anonymously report instances of foreign interference on campus and diversification of the international student population.
What about academic freedom? Espionage makes it a crime to deal with information on behalf of, or to communicate to, a foreign principal (such as a foreign government or a person acting on their behalf). The person may also need to intend to prejudice, or be reckless in prejudicing, Australia’s national security.
In the context of the espionage and foreign interference offences, “national security” means defence of Australia.
It also means Australia’s international relations with other countries. “Prejudice” means something more than mere embarrassment.
So, an academic might intend to prejudice Australia’s national security where they engage in a research project that results in criticism of Australian military or intelligence policies or practices; or catalogues Australian government misconduct in its dealings with other countries.
Because “foreign principals” are part of the larger global audience, publication of these research results could be an espionage offence.
The academic may even have committed an offence when teaching students about this research in class (because Australia has a large proportion of international students, some of whom may be acting on behalf of foreign actors), communicating with colleagues working overseas (because foreign public universities could be “foreign principals”), or simply engaging in preliminary research (because it is an offence to do things to prepare for espionage).
Even communicating about research with overseas colleagues could fall foul of espionage and foreign interference laws. Image: The Conversation/Shutterstock
Foreign interference makes it a crime to engage in covert or deceptive conduct on behalf of a foreign principal where the person intends to (or is reckless as to whether they will) influence a political or governmental process, or prejudice Australia’s national security.
The covert or deceptive nature of the conduct could be in relation to any part of the person’s conduct.
So, an academic working for a foreign public university (a “foreign principal”, even if the country is one of our allies) may inadvertently commit the crime of foreign interference where they run a research project that involves anonymous survey responses to collect information to advocate for Australian electoral law reform.
The anonymous nature of the survey may be sufficient for the academic’s conduct to be “covert”.
Because it is a crime to prepare for foreign interference, the academic may also have committed an offence by simply taking any steps towards publication of the research results (including preliminary research or writing a first draft).
The kind of research criminalised by the espionage and foreign interference offences may be important public interest research. It may also produce knowledge and ideas that are necessary for the exchange of information which underpins our liberal democracy.
Criminalising this conduct risks undermining academic freedom and eroding core democratic principles.
So, how can we protect academic freedom? In addition to implementing the recommendations in the report, we must reform our national security crimes to protect academic freedom in Australia. While the committee acknowledged the adequacy of these crimes to mitigate the national security threats against the research sector, it did not consider the overreach of these laws.
Legitimate research endeavours could be better protected if a “national interest” defence to a charge of espionage or foreign interference were introduced. This would be similar to “public interest” defences and protect conduct done in the national interest.
“National interest” should be flexible enough so various liberal democratic values — including academic freedom, press freedom, government accountability, and protection of human rights — can be considered alongside national security.
In the absence of a federal bill of rights, such a defence would go a long way towards ensuring legitimate research is protected and academic freedom in Australia is upheld.
In the early morning of March 19, 2022, agents from the federal Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU, showed up at the apartment of Yuri Tkachev, editor-in-chief of the online publication Timer, based in the southern Black Sea port of Odessa.
What happened next was reported on Timer’s website (1), quoting journalist and human rights activist Oksana Chelysheva (2), who said she had spoken with Tkachev’s wife:
“According to [Oksana], when Yuri opened the door of the apartment, he did not show any resistance. Despite this, the SBU dragged him to the site, laying him face down. They also asked Oksana to leave the apartment. No violence was used against her.
“Oksana claims that through the open front door she saw how one of the SBU officers entered the bathroom and stayed there for several minutes. … After this man left the bathroom, the SBU took Yury [sic] and Oksana back to the apartment, where the search began.”
Fifty-five million dollars does sound like a lot of money. It could buy you a fantastic jet-setting lifestyle, homes around the world and certainly the freedom to never work again.
But what it won’t buy you is influence over a near 200-year-old industry that costs billions to run every year.
Yet, as the government’s Public Interest Journalism Fund turns towards its home straight, there is the baffling suggestion that somehow editors around New Zealand have all been “bought” by the Labour government.
It is a false, dangerous and frankly lazy assumption.
One of the bigger recipients of the fund is the Local Democracy Reporting scheme. It takes about $1.5 million a year. It will likely always need public money because it was set up to fix a problem.
Regional news is struggling. Advertising revenue has been hoovered by tech giants.
Facebook versus the Akaroa Mail… who would you bet on?
Slashed to survive
So, local radio stations, community papers and even regional titles in place for more than a century have had to slash to survive.
Reporters could no more sit in council meetings, chase up the activities of ports or dig into what district health boards are up to. There wasn’t the time. There wasn’t the money.
Journalists, already earning scandalously small wages, got sacked and local news got smaller.
Private media did not step in to fill the gap as there was no profit to be had.
So local lawmakers were quietly left alone to manage ratepayer money. Some did better than others.
Addressing this information vacuum, RNZ and the News Publishers’ Association got creative.
In 2019, they set up a project known as Local Democracy Reporting. Based on similar schemes in Canada and the UK, it now manages 15 reporters around the country.
Seeking the truth
The journalists, funded by taxpayer money, are employed to go and seek truth from publicly elected people and organisations.
Stories they write can be accessed by rival media outlets at the same time as they go to print by the host newsroom. It is, at its core, a domestic wire service.
Last year, LDR reporters wrote more than 3000 local stories from around the country generating more than 9 million page views.
Stories from the top to bottom of New Zealand were shared for free to the 30 media partners who sign up to the scheme.
And since the project’s inception in 2019, how many stories have been questioned by the purse holders at NZ On Air? Not one. Not a single email, telephone call or meeting has questioned the editorial output of any one of the reporters.
Neither has there been a single suggestion of a news line that reporters might consider. And if there had been, you can take it as gospel that these reporters would chuck the suggestions straight in the bin.
Journalists value their independence.
LDR reporters not ‘newbies’ LDR reporters are not “newbies” to the game either. They are at least mid-career and know their patches well. Most are part of a newsroom they worked in before LDR existed and are well in tune with their audience.
They are Māori, Pākehā, female, male, old and young. But most importantly they are skilled reporters who spend their time searching for fact, inconsistency, lies and truth.
The idea that they and their editors are now craven to government paymasters that they have never met is both preposterous and insulting.
And the best way to see this is to look at the stories. They hardly paint the government of the day in a flattering light.
Covid-19 rules, new laws for farmers, racial inequity and management of water are just some of the topics given regional voice. In these stories, government ministers don’t get a look in.
Some who decry public funding of news are also quick to complain that the ‘metropolitan elite’ don’t pay enough attention to the smaller towns and communities.
They say the mainstream media has no clue about ‘real New Zealand, doing it tough’.
Stitching it all together LDR is in place to address that very concern.
Up and down the country, the reporters go out and talk to iwi, business owners, parents, councillors and mayors. They stitch it all together and get it in the news.
If you want to judge the success and worth of a local democracy reporter, go talk to your local councillors. Ask if they enjoy having reporters present at meetings. If they are honest, they will tell you that they don’t.
They know public discussion of any rate increase, speed limit change or building project could be online to a big audience within minutes.
The LDR project constantly keeps its eye on the use of public cash all around the country. It costs every New Zealander about 30 cents a year. What a bargain.
The first media freedom advocacy group has formed in the Marshall Islands. Organisers this week were in the initial phase of outreach to launch the Pacific Media Institute, which was incorporated last month as a non-profit organisation.
Despite a small but robust independent news media in the Marshall Islands, there has never been an advocacy group for media freedom in this nation.
“If ever there was a ‘right time’ to form an advocacy organisation for freedom of expression and transparency in government, now is it,” said Marshall Islands Journal editor Giff Johnson, one of the founding members of the institute.
“Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine is a prime example of a violation of a sovereign, independent democracy that undermines the rule of law.
“Moreover, we watch as Russia suppresses access to independent media at home to prevent its citizens from knowing what is happening in the Ukraine and the world’s reaction to the invasion.”
Founders of PMI said closer to home, there were indications of democracy and media freedoms eroding in island nations that banned visits by foreign independent media and attempted to restrict their own media and freedom of expression by their citizens.
“We are fortunate in the Marshall Islands to have clear free speech rights enshrined in the Constitution and to have had governments for decades that respect this essential element of democracy,” Johnson added.
Freedoms ‘cannot be taken for granted’
“But these freedoms here and in the region should not be taken for granted. We need to celebrate them where they exist, strengthen them where we can, and advocate for them where they don’t.”
A growing concern is the increasingly active presence in the islands of governments outside the region that do not support media freedom and transparency in government operations at home and bring this philosophy with them into the region, he said.
The PMI is a joint effort of three people in independent media in the Marshall Islands.
Joining Johnson as co-founders of PMI are Daniel Kramer, CEO of Six9Too Productions and Power 103.5FM, and Fred J. Pedro, a long-time broadcaster and talk show host.
They said PMI hoped to promote independent media and transparency in government in the Marshall Islands as well as neighbouring nations.
The purpose of the new non-profit organisation is to:
• Advocate for and engage in media freedom and freedom of expression;
• Promote transparency and accountability in government;
• Support expansion of independent, non-government media; and
• Promote training and other initiatives to increase the number and skills of people working in media and the quality of reporting in the Marshall Islands and regionally.
‘Watershed moment’
Veteran Pacific islands journalist Floyd K. Takeuchi said: “This is a watershed moment in the history of independent journalism in the Western Pacific.
“And what better country to see a media freedom group organized than the Marshall Islands, which for more than half a century has shown how democratic values, chiefly and cultural traditions, and a free press can comfortably coexist.”
PMI has already reached out to Takeuchi and other journalists with extensive experience in the region to collaborate on proposed training for media and outreach dialogues with top-level government authorities in the initial phase of the organisation.
“We want to see more young people take up careers in media in the future,” said Kramer.
“We hope that PMI can help interest young people in media careers through training and other opportunities that our new group plans to offer for journalists here and in the island region.”
Kramer’s Six9Too Productions has established an ongoing record of collaboration among musicians from the Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands and Polynesian countries that have produced hit songs and music videos.
He said PMI hoped to see this type of collaboration among working journalists here and in the region to bolster reporting skills and media freedom in general.
The PMI founders said they were hopeful that countries internationally that supported media freedom, democracy and transparency in government would be supportive of PMI training and other initiatives.
“We want to start tapping opportunities for synergy among working journalists in the Marshall Islands and in other Pacific islands through collaborative training programs and reporting initiatives,” said Johnson.
Julian Assange is one step closer to being extradited to the US has the court received ‘assurances’ that the US will offer adequate prison conditions. Listen to Curtis Daly’s reaction.
A journalist who investigated the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings will not have to hand over his notes to police after they lost a legal bid to force him to reveal his sources.
Chris Mullin, 74, challenged an application by West Midlands Police to require him to disclose source material dating back to his investigation in 1985 and 1986.
Speaking after an Old Bailey judge ruled he would not have to hand over the material, Mullin said he was “grateful” for the judge’s decision, adding that the right of a journalist to protect sources is “fundamental to a free press in a democracy”.
Chris Mullin speaks to the media outside the Old Bailey in London (Jonathan Brady/PA)
A victory for journalism
In his book, Error Of Judgement, and a series of documentaries, Mullin helped expose one of the worst miscarriages of justice, leading to the release of the Birmingham Six after their convictions were quashed in 1991.
Twenty-one people were killed in the bomb attack on two pubs in Birmingham on November 21 1974.
West Midlands Police used the Terrorism Act to bring the production order application.
Handing down his ruling on Tuesday morning, the judge Mark Lucraft said: “I decline to grant the production order sought.”
He said there were three issues that the court had to determine.
The first was whether Mr Mullin had the material in his possession and if so what such material does he have.
The judge wrote:
On this issue, I find that CM (Chris Mullin) does have material in his possession, custody or power that comes within the wording of the production order as refined in the course of the hearing.
The second issue was whether there were “reasonable grounds for believing that the material is likely to be of substantial value, whether by itself or together with other material, to a terrorist investigation”.
The judge wrote: “On this issue, I find that the condition is made out.”
He said the third issue was whether there are
reasonable grounds for believing that it is in the public interest that the material should be produced, or that access to it should be given having regard to the benefit likely to accrue to a terrorist investigation if it is obtained and to the circumstances under which CM has the material in his possession, custody or power.
The judge continued:
In effect, is there a clear and compelling case that there is an overriding public interest that might displace CM’s strong Article 10 right to protect his confidential journalistic source along with the Court considering its discretion?
On this issue I do not find an overriding public interest to displace the journalistic source protection right. I decline to grant the production order sought.
Chris Mullin said he was grateful the judge had ruled in his favour (Jonathan Brady/PA)
“This is a landmark freedom of expression decision”
Speaking after the ruling was handed down, Mullin said:
The right of a journalist to protect his or her sources is fundamental to a free press in a democracy. My actions in this case were overwhelmingly in the public interest.
They led to the release of six innocent men after 17 years in prison, the winding up of the notorious West Midlands Serious Crimes Squad and the quashing of a further 30 or so wrongful convictions.
This case also resulted in the setting up a Royal Commission which, among other reforms, led to the setting up of the Criminal Cases Review Commission and the quashing of another 500 or more wrongful convictions.
My investigation is also the main reason why the identity of three of the four bombers is known
Mullin’s solicitor said the judgment was a “landmark” for freedom of expression.
Louis Charalambous, of Simons Muirhead Burton, said:
This is a landmark freedom of expression decision which properly recognises the public interest in Chris Mullin’s journalism which led to the release of the Birmingham Six.
If a confidential source cannot rely on a journalist’s promise of lifelong protection then these investigations will never see the light of day.”
Several media crews have already come under fire and four reporters have sustained gunshot injuries in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion as it enters its fourth week.
The shots came within centimetres of Swiss photographer Guillaume Briquet’s head when presumed members of a Russian special commando fired on him shortly after he passed a Ukrainian checkpoint on a road towards the southern city of Mykolaiv on March 6, while covering the Russian advance in the region.
Despite the many “Press” markings on his car and his bulletproof vest marked “Press,” this experienced war reporter was then harassed by the soldiers, who stole 3000 euros and reporting equipment from him.
“As this incident clearly illustrates, reporters in the field are targets for belligerents despite all the rules protecting journalists,” said Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk.
“They are civilians, who are keeping the world informed about the progress of the fighting. They must be able to work safely. We therefore call on all parties to the conflict to immediately commit to protecting journalists in the field in accordance with international law.
“We also recommend that journalists exercise the utmost caution in the light of the many attacks by Russian commandos sent ahead as scouts.”
Under Russian fire “They were less than 50 metres away,” RSF was told by Briquet, who was wounded in the face and arm by glass splinters from his windshield.
“They clearly shot to kill. If I hadn’t ducked, I would have been hit. I’ve been fired on before in other war zones, but I’ve never seen this.
“Journalists traveling around the country with no war experience are in mortal danger.”
A crew working for the London-based pan-Arab TV channel Al-Araby TV — reporter Adnan Can and cameraman Habip Demirci — came under Russian fire in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv, on March 6. Shots were aimed at their car even though they had attached a white flag and “Press” signs to it.
Trapped in a town where fighting was taking place, the two journalists had to hide with residents.
A crew with the UK’s Sky News TV channel — consisting of four Brits and a Ukrainian journalist – came under fire from a Russian reconnaissance unit while heading toward Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, on the fourth day of the invasion, February 28.
The crew’s leader, reporter Stuart Ramsay, sustained a gunshot injury to the lower back while cameraman Richie Mockler’s body armour stopped two other rounds.
After shouting that they were journalists and after seeing that the shooting continued despite their press vests, the crew had to abandon their vehicle and run for cover.
Brush with death
Vojtech Bohac and Majda Slamova, two Czech journalists reporting for Voxpot, and two Ukrainian journalists with Central TV had more luck during a similar incident while travelling together in a car in Makariv, another town on the outskirts of Kyiv, on March 3.
They managed to escape uninjured in their car after coming under fire from Russian soldiers using AK-47 assault rifles, their media outlets reported.
“This shoulder wound missed costing me my life by just a few centimetres,” Danish journalist Stefan Weichert told RSF. He is now hospitalised in Denmark after being evacuated along his colleague, Emil Filtenborg Mikkelsen, who sustained four gunshot wounds in the same attack.
The two reporters for the Danish newspaper Ekstra-Bladet sustained these injuries in the northeastern town of Okhtyrka on 26 February.
“The gunman, who we weren’t able to identify, was located about 15 metres behind our car.” Weichert said. “He couldn’t have failed to see the ‘press’ sign that was clearly visible on our car.”
4 TV towers bombed As well as firing live rounds at reporters, the Russian armed forces have also carried out strikes on telecommunications antennae to prevent Ukrainian TV and radio broadcasts. Four radio and TV towers — in Kyiv, Korosten, Lyssytchansk and Kharkiv — have been the targets of Russian attacks that abruptly terminated broadcasting by at least 32 TV channels and several dozen national radio stations.
Evgeny Sakun, a cameraman for the local Kyiv Live TV channel, was at the Kyiv tower at the time of the attack and was killed in circumstances that RSF is investigating.
Ukraine is ranked 97th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index, while Russia is ranked 150th.
As China seeks greater influence in the South Pacific, its manipulation of local news outlets is having a serious impact on media independence.
Most Pacific media organisations are struggling financially, many journalists have lost their jobs and China is offering a way for them to survive — at the cost of media freedom.
It’s not just the “no strings attached” financial aid and “look and learn” tours of China for journalists; it’s about sharing an autocratic media model.
Now it’s trying to influence media around the world, especially in countries which have signed up to its Belt and Road Initiative. That includes 10 Pacific island nations. Four remain with Taiwan.
China has spent an estimated US$6.6 billion over 13 years strengthening its global media presence. It took over Radio Australia’s shortwave transmitter frequencies in the Pacific when the ABC shut down its shortwave service in 2017.
Satellite service for Vanuatu
China’s national television service is about to start broadcasting by satellite into Vanuatu.
In a 2020 report, the International Federation of Journalists warned that foreign journalists were wooed by exchange programs, opportunities to study in China, tours and financial aid for their media outlets. Beijing also provides free content in foreign newspapers and ambassadors write opinion pieces for local media.
The federation’s report found that journalists frequently think their media is strong enough to withstand this influence, but a global survey suggests that’s not the reality and China is reshaping the media round the world.
These attempts at ‘sharp power’ go beyond simply telling China’s story, according to Sarah Cook, research director for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at Freedom House. Their sharper edge often undermines democratic norms, erodes national sovereignty, weakens the financial sustainability of independent media, and violates local laws.
Journalists say this is an ideological and political struggle, with China determined to combat what it sees as decades of unchallenged Western media imperialism.
There’s mounting evidence from the Pacific of the impact of Beijing’s worldwide campaign, particularly in Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.
The situation for journalists in Solomon Islands has rapidly changed since the country swapped diplomatic allegiance from Taipei to Beijing in 2019. Media freedom has deteriorated and journalists say leaders are now taking their cues from China.
Vulnerable media outlets
Media outlets are vulnerable to offers of financial help. Many journalists have lost jobs and others haven’t been paid for months. It’s estimated there are just 16 full-time journalists left in Honiara.
There’s been little advertising since the November 2021 riots, a situation exacerbated by the covid pandemic. The only income for one privately owned media outlet is from the small street sales of its newspapers.
Earlier this month, the Solomon Islands government held its first news conference for 2022 after months of pressure to talk to journalists. The government denied there were restrictions on media freedom.
As the media struggles to survive, China’s ambassador is offering support, such as more trips to China (after the pandemic) and donations including two vehicles to the Solomon Star and maintenance of the newspaper’s printing presses. In the experience of other media, these offers are often followed with pressure to adhere to editorial positions congruent with those of the Chinese embassy.
While some journalists are resisting the pressure and holding a strong line, others are being targeted by China with rewards for “friends”.
Chinese embassies throughout the South Pacific are active on social media. In Solomon Islands, the embassy’s Facebook site includes posts about its aid assistance for covid-19, joint press releases with the Solomons government and stories from official Chinese news outlets.
There are numerous examples of the growing impact on media freedom.
Harassment over investigation
A freelance journalist has relocated to Australia after her investigations into the relationship between Solomons Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare and a Chinese businessman resulted in harassment from police. She said police told her an order for her arrest came directly from the prime minister.
She was advised by Australia’s high commissioner to move to Australia for her safety.
Veteran journalist Dorothy Wickham was among a group of Solomon Islands journalists who accepted an invitation for a “look and learn” tour of China soon after the Sogavare government swapped allegiance to China in 2019.
She said the trip left her concerned about how Solomon Islands would deal with its new diplomatic partner.
“By the time our tour concluded in Shanghai, I was personally convinced that our political leaders are not ready or able to deal effectively with China. Solomon Islands’ regulatory and accountability mechanisms are too weak,” she says.
“We have already shown some spirit with our attorney-general rejecting a hasty deal to lease the island of Tulagi, the capital of one of our provinces, to a Chinese company, but I fear how fragile and weak my country is against any large developed nation let alone China,’ she wrote in an article for The Guardian.
One senior media executive that said if his own government, Australia, and New Zealand didn’t assist, he would look to China.
“There is too much talk about the role of media in democracy,” he said. He thought the Chinese ambassador understood that his organisation had its own editorial policy.
Soon after that, though, he was asked to publish a press release word for word.
No expense spared
Another media executive said he only had to ring the Chinese embassy and help arrived. He said China was rapidly moving into his country’s media space with no expense spared.
High-profile Vanuatu journalist Dan McGarry says he has no doubt that some Pacific governments are following China’s lead and adopting its contempt for critical speech and dissent.
In 2019, McGarry left Vanuatu to attend a forum in Australia, but his visa was revoked and he was banned from re-entering Vanuatu. He told the ABC’s Media Watch programme at the time that he had no doubt it was because of a story he wrote about the secret deportation of six Chinese from Vanuatu.
The six were arrested and detained without charge on the premises of a Chinese company with numerous large government contracts before being escorted out of Vanuatu by Chinese and Vanuatu police. McGarry said he was summoned by the prime minister, who told him he was disappointed with his negative reporting.
McGarry said he had no evidence that China tried to influence the Vanuatu government over his residence, but he’d seen a tendency in Pacific leaders to emulate behaviour they saw elsewhere.
Now back in Vanuatu, he said the decision to refuse his work permit was still under judicial review and he’s seeking financial compensation.
In 2018, Papua New Guinea journalist Scott Waide was suspended by EMTV under pressure from Prime Minister Peter O’Neill for a story he wrote about a diplomatic Chinese tantrum and a scandal over the purchase of Maserati cars for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Port Moresby.
Waide told the ABC that Pacific governments were taking lessons from China in dealing with their critics using media clampdowns and intimidation. That didn’t necessarily involve direct instructions from Beijing, “but people watch, people learn”.
Head of news sacked
A dispute over media freedom has escalated with the sacking of the head of news and 24 journalists at EMTV in PNG. They were initially suspended but later terminated for supporting their editor over interference from a government minister about a story involving an Australian man charged with drug trafficking.
On March 9, the EMTV news manager was sacked for insubordination. The network has since hired a new team of recent graduates with little experience — just months before the scheduled elections in June.
These examples give a sharper edge to concerns about China’s growing influence in the South Pacific and the lack of an Australian media voice there. The ABC’s presence has been described as a whisper.
There’s only one Australian journalist based in the region, the ABC’s Natalie Whiting in PNG. Meanwhile, Xinhua has a correspondent based in Fiji and China has recently been recruiting Pacific journalists for its global TV network.
The situation worries Australia’s national broadcaster. ABC managing director David Anderson told a Senate hearing in February 2022 of growing Chinese influence in the Pacific.
“The single biggest piece of information that comes back to us from the public broadcasters is concern over the pressure the Chinese government put on them to carry content,” he said.
In November 2019, the Melanesian Media Freedom Forum at Griffith University expressed concern about growing threats to media freedom. It called on Pacific governments to fund public broadcasters properly to ensure they have sufficient equipment and staff to enable their services to reach all citizens and to adequately play their watchdog role.
Australian journalist, media development consultant and trainer Jemima Garrett says media executives are at risk of being captured by China.
She has no doubt that China’s growing influence is a major story, but with so few Australian journalists based in the region, even significant developments in the China story are going unreported.
The British judicial system has erected still another barrier to Julian Assange’s freedom. On March 14, the U.K. Supreme Court refused to hear Assange’s appeal of the U.K. High Court’s ruling ordering his extradition to the United States. If extradited to the U.S. for trial, Assange will face 17 charges under the Espionage Act and up to 175 years in prison for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes.
With no explanation of its reasoning, the Supreme Court denied Assange “permission to appeal” the High Court’s decision, saying that Assange’s appeal did not “raise an arguable point of law.” The court remanded the case back to the Westminster Magistrates’ Court, which is the same court that denied the U.S. extradition request on January 4, 2021.
In all likelihood, the magistrates’ court will refer the case to the British Home Office where Home Secretary Priti Patel will review it. Assange’s lawyers then have four weeks to submit materials for Patel’s consideration. If she orders Assange’s extradition — which is highly likely — his lawyers will file a cross-appeal in the High Court asking it to review the issues Assange lost in the magistrates’ court.
If the High Court refuses to review those additional issues, Assange can appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. That could take years. Meanwhile, he languishes in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison, in fragile mental and physical health. He suffered a mini-stroke as his extradition hearing began. United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer wrote in a Twitter post that the “U.K. is literally torturing him to death.”
The Legal Background
On January 24, 2022, the High Court rejected Assange’s appeal but it certified to the Supreme Court that Assange had raised a “point of law of general public importance.” This means that it is a proper issue for the Supreme Court to review. The three-judge panel of the Supreme Court has now refused Assange permission to appeal.
The point of law that the High Court certified to the Supreme Court was as follows:
“In what circumstances can an appellate court receive assurances from a requesting state which were not before the court of first instance in extradition proceedings.”
The United States waited until after the extradition hearing was over to offer U.K. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser assurances about the way Assange would be treated in U.S. prisons if extradited.
Following a three-week evidentiary hearing, Baraitser ruled on January 4, 2021 that if Assange is extradited to the United States for trial, he is very likely to attempt suicide due to his mental state and the harsh conditions of confinement under which he would be held in U.S. prisons.
During the hearing, the U.S. government did not assure Baraitser that Assange would not be held in solitary confinement in the United States. After Baraitser denied extradition, the Biden administration provided “assurances” that Assange wouldn’t be subject to special administrative measures (SAMs) or be housed at the ADX supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.
But the United States’ so-called assurances contained a loophole big enough to drive a truck through. All assurances would be void if Assange committed a “future act” that “met the test” for the imposition of SAMs. That subjective determination would be made by prison officials with no judicial review.
Although the late timing of the U.S.’s assurances prevented Assange’s lawyers from arguing they were unreliable and citing prior such assurances the United States failed to honor, the High Court accepted Biden’s assurances and dismissed Assange’s appeal in its January 2022 ruling.
Issues Assange Seeks to Raise on Cross-Appeal
In the cross-appeal, Assange’s lawyers will raise the following points:
*The extradition treaty between the U.S. and the U.K. forbids extradition for a political offense and since espionage is a political offense, the court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case;
*Extradition would be oppressive or unjust due to the passage of time;
*The charges against Assange do not satisfy the “dual criminality test” which requires that they constitute criminal offenses in both the U.S. and the U.K.;
*Extradition is barred because the request is based on Assange’s political opinions;
*Extradition is barred because it would violate Assange’s rights to a fair trial and freedom of expression, as well as the prohibition on inhuman and degrading treatment, under the European Convention on Human Rights; and
*The request for extradition is an abuse of process because it is being pursued for a political motive and not in good faith.
Human Rights Organizations Decry Supreme Court’s Refusal to Hear Appeal
Julia Hall, Amnesty International’s deputy research director for Europe, called the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the appeal a “blow to Julian Assange and to justice.” Hall said, “Demanding that states like the UK extradite people for publishing classified information that is in the public interest sets a dangerous precedent and must be rejected.” She added:
Prolonged solitary confinement is a key feature of life for many people in U.S. maximum security prisons and amounts to torture or other ill treatment under international law. The ban on torture and other ill-treatment is absolute and empty promises of fair treatment, such as those offered by the U.S.A. in the Assange case threaten to profoundly undermine that international prohibition.
Likewise, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) expressed strong opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision. “Assange’s case is overwhelmingly in the public interest, and it deserved review by the highest court in the U.K. After two full years of extradition proceedings, once again Assange’s fate has become a political decision,” said Rebecca Vincent, RSF’s director of operations and campaigns. “We call on the Home Office to act in the interest of journalism and press freedom by refusing extradition and releasing Assange from prison without further delay.”
Assange’s Fiancée Says U.S. Wants to Imprison Him for Exposing Its War Crimes
Stella Moris, Assange’s fiancée, says Assange is being persecuted for carrying out a core journalistic mission: telling the truth.
“Whether Julian is extradited or not, which is the same as saying whether he lives or dies, is being decided through a process of legal avoidance,” Moris said. “Avoiding to hear arguments that challenge the UK courts’ deference to unenforceable and caveated claims regarding his treatment made by the United States, the country that plotted to murder him. The country whose atrocities he brought into the public domain. Julian is the key witness, the [principal] indicter, and the cause of enormous embarrassment to successive US governments.”
Moris added, “Julian was just doing his job, which was to publish the truth about wrongdoing. His loyalty is the same as that which all journalists should have: to the public. Not to the spy agencies of a foreign power.”
According to Moris, the United States wants to imprison Assange for 175 years because he “published evidence that the country that is trying to extradite him committed war crimes and covered them up; that it committed gross violations that killed tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children; that it tortured and rendered; that it bombed children, had death squads, and murdered Reuters journalists in cold blood; that it bribed foreign officials and bullied less powerful countries into harming their own citizens, and that it also corrupted allied nations’ judicial inquiries into US wrongdoing.”
Assange and Moris, who have two small children together, have finally received permission to marry. They will be wed later this month in Belmarsh Prison.
SPECIAL REPORT:By Giff Johnson, editor of the Marshall Islands Journal and RNZ Pacific correspondent
Micronitor News and Printing Company founder Joe Murphy moved the goal posts of freedom of press and freedom of expression in the Marshall Islands, a country that had virtually no tradition of either, by establishing an independent newspaper that today is the longest running weekly in the Micronesia region.
Murphy’s sharp intellect, fierce independence, vision for creating a community newspaper, bilingual language ability, and resilience in the face of adversity saw him navigate hurdles — including high tide waves that in 1979 washed printing presses out of the Micronitor building and into the street — to successfully establish a printing company and newspaper in the challenging business environment of 1970s Majuro.
Murphy, who died at age 79 in the United States last week, was the original sceptic, who revelled in the politically incorrect.
At 25, he arrived in the Marshall Islands capital Majuro in the mid-1960s and was dispatched by the Peace Corps to Ujelang, the atoll of the nuclear exiles from Enewetak bomb tests that was a textbook definition of the term “in the back of beyond.” A ship once a year, and no radio, TV, telephones or mail.
Still, Joe thrived as an elementary teacher, survived food shortages and hordes of rats, endearing him to a generation of Ujelang people as an honorary member of the exiled community.
After Ujelang, he wrapped up his two-year Peace Corps stint by taking over teaching an unruly urban centre public school class after the previous teacher walked out. He rewrote what he deemed boring curriculum and taught in military style, replete with chants in English.
These experiences in pre-1970s Marshall Islands fuelled his desire to return. After his Peace Corps tour, some time to travel the world, and a brief return to the US, Murphy headed back to Majuro.
No money, but a vision
He had no money to speak of, but he had a vision and he set out to make it happen.
“He was determined to start a newspaper written in both the English and Marshallese languages,” recalls fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Mike Malone, the co-founder with Murphy of what was initially known as Micronitor.
Marshall Islands Journal founder and publisher Joe Murphy in the late 2010s … “Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.” – “I own one.” Image: Giff Johnson/RNZ
In late 1969, they began constructing a small newspaper building, mixing concrete and laying the foundation block-by-block with the help of a few friends.
Before the building was completed, however, they launched the Micronitor in 1970, printing from Malone’s house.
The Micronitor would be renamed later to the Micronesian Independent for a bit before finding its identity as the Marshall Islands Journal.
Writing in the Journal in 1999, Murphy commented: “The 30th anniversary of this publication is an event most of us who remember the humble beginnings of the Journal are surprised to see.
“February 13, 1970 was a Friday, an unlucky day to begin an enterprise by most reckonings, and the two guys who were spearheading the operation were Irish-extract alcohol aficionados with very little or no newspaper experience.
A worthy undertaking
“They also, between the two of them, had practically no money, and of course should never, had they any commonsense, even attempted such a worthy undertaking.
“But circumstances and time were on their side, and with all potential serious investors steering clear of such a dubious exercise they had the opportunity to make a great number of mistakes without an eager competitor ready and willing to capitalise on them.”
With Murphy at the helm, it wasn’t long before the Journal earned a reputation far beyond the shores of the tiny Pacific outpost of Majuro. Murphy encouraged local writers, and spiced the newspaper with pithy comment and attacks on US Trust Territory authorities and the Congress of Micronesia.
Joe Murphy in Majuro in the mid-1970s, a few years after launching the Marshall Islands Journal, which would go on to be the longest publishing weekly newspaper in the Micronesia area. Image: Giff Johnson/RNZ
In the late 1980s and 1990s Murphy built two bars and restaurants, local-style places that appealed to Majuro residents as well as visitors. He also built the Backpacker Hotel, a modest cost accommodation that turned into a popular outpost for fisheries observers awaiting their next assignment at sea, low-budget journalists, environmentalists and assorted consultants.
“The first thing that people think about when it comes to my father is that he is a very successful businessman here in the Marshall Islands,” said his eldest daughter Rose Murphy, who manages the company today.
“But we need to remember him as someone who wanted to give the Republic of the Marshall Islands a voice.”
“To say Joe was a unique person is a large understatement,” said Health Secretary and former Peace Corps Volunteer Jack Niedenthal.
An icon with impact
“He was an icon and had a profound impact on our country because he fostered free speech and demanded that those in our government always be held publicly accountable for their actions.”
A plaque in his office defined his independent personality and his appreciation of the power of the press. It quoted the famous American journalist AJ Liebling: “Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.” This was followed by a three-word comment: “I own one.” – Joe Murphy.
“He fought for freedom of speech and fought against discrimination,” said Rose Murphy. “Regardless of race, religion, and even status, he befriended people from all parts of the world and from all walks of life.”
In the mid-1990s, Joe Murphy created what became the justly famous motto of the Journal, the “world’s worst newspaper.” It was a reaction to the more politically correct mottos of other newspapers.
Those three words led to wide international media exposure. In 1994, the Boston Globe conducted a survey of the world’s worst newspapers, reviewing a batch of Journals Murphy mailed.
When the Globe reporter concluded that despite its claim, the Journal not only didn’t rank as the world’s worst newspaper it was “a first-class newspaper,” Murphy’s reaction was to say, “We must have sent you the wrong issues.”
The Marshall Islands Journal was the subject of scrutiny by the Boston Globe to determine if publisher Joe Murphy’s claim that the Journal was the “World’s Worst Newspaper” was accurate. Image: Giff Johnson/RNZ
Murphy knew the key to successful newspaper publishing was not how nicely or otherwise the newspaper was packaged, or if a photograph was in colour. The most important ingredient in any successful local newspaper is original content, intelligently and interestingly written.
‘Livened up’ the Journal
He did more than his fair share to liven up the Journal, from the time of its launch until poor health after 2019 prevented his engagement in the newspaper.
“My father experienced extreme hardships on Ujelang along with his adopted Marshallese family, the exiled people of Enewetak Atoll, who were moved to Ujelang to make way for US nuclear tests in the late 1940s,” said daughter Rose.
“He shared these hardships with his children to give them the perspective of being grateful for any little thing we had. If we had a broken shoe or little food, he shared with us this story.
“Our father, to us, is a symbol of resilience and gratitude. Be resilient in tough situations.”
From growing up among eight children of Irish immigrant parents in the United States to the austerity of Ujelang Atoll to the early days of establishing what would become the longest publishing weekly newspaper in the Micronesia region, Murphy was indeed a symbol of resilience and independence, able to navigate tough situations with alacrity.
One of the first editions of the Majuro newspaper in 1970, then known as Micronitor. Image: Giff Johnson/RNZ
“Democracy was able to establish a toehold, and then a firm grip, in the Western Pacific in part because of a handful of journalism pioneers who believed in the power of truth, particularly Joe Murphy on Majuro,” said veteran Pacific island journalist Floyd K Takeuchi.
“He had the courage to challenge the powers that be, including those of the chiefly kind, to be better, and to do better.
“People forget that for many years, the long-term future of the Marshall Islands Journal wasn’t a sure thing. With every issue of the weekly newspaper, Joe’s legacy is made firmer in the islands he so loved.”
Murphy is survived by his wife Thelma, by children Rose, Catherine “Katty,” John, Suzanne, Margaret “Peggy,” Molly, Fintan, Sam, Charles “Kainoa,” Colleen “Naki,” Patrick “Jojo”, Sean, Sylvia Zedkaia and Deardre Korean, and by 32 grandchildren.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the threats and violence against news media by protesters during the 16-day anti-covid-19 vaccine mandates occupation of Parliament grounds, and called for prosecutions of those responsible.
The media are among favourite targets of some of the 500 or so protesters still camped in front of the Parliament building, known as the Beehive, after arriving from various parts of the country in “freedom convoys” akin to those causing chaos in parts of Canada for the past month, reports the Paris-based media freedom watchdog in a statement tonight.
The violence against journalists trying to cover the protest had included being regularly pelted with tennis balls with such not-very-subtle insults as “terrorists” and “paedophiles” written on them, said RSF.
“Media = Fake News” and “Media is the virus” are typical of the slogans on the countless signs outside protesters’ tents.
Journalists who approach have also been greeted with drawings of gallows and nooses, as well as insults and threats of violence – to the point that most of them now have bodyguards, says Mark Stevens, head of news at Stuff, New Zealand’s leading news website.
“They’ve had gear smashed, been punched and belted with umbrellas,” he wrote. “Many reporters have been harassed […], including one threatened with their home being burned down.”
The violence has not been limited to Wellington.
In New Plymouth, an angry crowd tried to storm the offices of the local newspaper, Stuff’s Taranaki Daily News, two weeks ago, as reported by Mediawatch. Some of the protesters even managed to breach the newspaper’s secured doors and attack members of the staff.
“After the police intervened, [conspiracy theorist] Brett Power urged the protesters to return in order to hold the editor ‘accountable for crimes’ — meaning the newspaper’s failure to report their protests in the way they wanted,” the RSF statement said.
“The verbal and physical violence against journalists is accompanied by extremely shocking online hate messages.”
Stuff’s chief political reporter Henry Cooke tweeted an example of the threats he had received on social media:
i prefer the old “sleep with one eye open” thing personally, one has to get SOME sleep pic.twitter.com/wxh5x83Dsx
Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk, said: “The virulence of the threats against journalists by demonstrators, and the constant violence to which they have been subjected since the start of these protests are not acceptable in a democracy.”
He called on authorities to “not allow these disgraceful acts to go unpunished. There is a danger that journalists will no longer be able to calmly cover these protests, opening the way to a flood of misinformation.”
In a recent article, Kristin Hall, a reporter for 1News, described her dismay at discovering the level of “distaste for the press” among protesters who regarded the mainstream media as nothing more than “a bunch of liars”.
“People have asked me why I’m not covering the protests while I’m in the middle of interviewing them,” she wrote.
A Wellington Facebook page publisher attacked at the protest, as reported by 1News. Image: 1News screenshot APR
‘Headlocks, punches’ Protester mistrust is no longer limited to mainstream media regarded as accomplices of a system imposing pandemic-related restrictions, as Graham Bloxham — a Wellington resident who runs the Wellington Live Community local news page on Facebook – found to his cost when he went to interview one of the protest organisers on February 18.
“We just wanted to show people that it is peaceful … then bang. They just yelled and whacked. They were just all on me and they basically beat me and my cameraman to a pulp,” he told 1News.
“Headlocks, punches… they were really violent.”
Protesters have been asking me all week for “evidence” of volatility towards the Wellington public so here it is. https://t.co/mhJNcXlMrF
A photo of a dozen Nazi war criminals being hanged at the end of the Second World War has been circulating on social media popular with the protesters for the past few days, accompanied by the comment: “Photograph of hangings at Nuremberg, Germany. Members of the media, who lied and misled the German people, were executed.” Definitely not subtle.
Attacks against journalists have rarely or never been as virulent as this in New Zealand, which is ranked 8th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index.
Henry Cooke reported an apology from some of the protesters over the “treatment” of some journalists, but incidents have continued to be reported.
Group of protest groups apologise for denying media access to Parliament grounds – but now ask we go through a liaison officer before turning up. pic.twitter.com/MIgksDJ50O
COMMENTARY:EMTV’s deputy news editor Jack Lapauve Jr in Port Moresby writes in defence of the newsroom’s decision to walk out in protest over the suspension of head of news and current affairs Sincha Dimara on February 7.
The EMTV News editorial decision to run the two stories [about the court cases involving Australian hotel businessman Jamie Pang] was based on two important points in our line of work:
Impartiality and Objectivity.
Impartiality cannot be achieved by the measure of words in a story, it is achieved by:
Avoiding bias towards one point of view
Avoiding omission of relevant facts
Avoiding misleading emphasis
All of which are stated in the EMTV News and Current Affairs Manual 2019 in section 17.5 under standard operations of the television code.
By running the stories, the team was accused of bias.
We fail to see the areas of bias in our stories, especially because we presented more than one point of view in both stories.
The information presented was based on facts and in avoiding any misleading emphasis; we delivered objective television news packages that were fully impartial in the code and conduct of journalism.
Objective stories
Overall, both stories were objective stories where two or more opinions were looked at closely in each story.
To be clear, in television news objectivity is achieved by taking a rational but sceptical approach to ALL points of view.
In this case, Jamie Pang’s arrest, conviction and charges were looked at, as well as his community and social activities:
Pang was arrested – Fact
Pang was convicted, charged and fined for having firearms and munitions in his possession – Fact
Pang was acquitted by a sound and proper court of justice in the PNG judicial system, from charges relating to methamphetamine – Fact
Being acquitted by a sound and proper court of justice in the PNG judicial system, makes Pang a free man from drug charges – Fact
Pang is heavily involved in social and community works – Fact
Pang was rearrested and detained – Fact
All these factual points were documented in one story.
Head of news Sincha Dimara … suspended by EMTV. Image: RSF
It is important to understand, that in objective writing, the opinion of the interviewees are their own. However, [how] it is perceived by the our viewers is up to them to weigh [up] and decide.
Objective [news] stories are often mistaken as opinion pieces.
They are not the same.
An opinion piece is a commentary on one point of view.
Journalism independence
As journalists we cannot be servants of sectional interests. It is our duty to speak to both “saints” and “sinners”. It is our democratic right to report on the good, bad and the ugly aspects of any story.
There are no instances of perceived impartiality in our reporting which display a lack of objectivity.
And a lack of objectivity leaves room for personal bias which is not acceptable in the journalism code of ethics.
The failure of the interim EMTV CEO, Lesieli Vete, to understand how a newsroom operates and a newsroom’s code of conduct led to the suspension of head of news Sincha Dimara.
Vete’s failure to try to understand the newsroom’s points of objectivity and impartiality in the stories led to her issuing of the statement portraying the newsroom as biased and in support of meth by sympathising with Pang’s employees and friends.
Vete’s statement served the purpose of explaining the leaked memo and portraying a bad picture of her newsroom.
Her statement lacked objectivity and impartiality because a written standpoint of the newsroom’s reasons for airing stories in the coverage of the Pang story were not included in her statement.
Suppression of media freedom
Vete’s questioning of our stance on running the story, and not showing any interest in learning nor understanding the way it was put together, led to further suppression of freedom of speech; direct and daily intimidation of senior and junior staff; micromanagement of staff whereabouts and activities; and direct and indirect threats of termination on staff.
The immense pressure to put a [news] bulletin together while being highly and closely monitored took a direct and serious toll on newsroom staff morale.
This created conditions that were suffocating to work under. A walk off was imminent.
We are making a stand now in solidarity against bullying and ill treatment of newsroom staff in the absence of news managers.
This is the third time we are experiencing a suppression of our right to freedom of speech, and we want it to stop once and for all.
After the suspension of Sincha Dimara, EMTV’s deputy news editor Jack Lapauve Jr is now the most senior news manager and he was with the walk out. He posted this commentary on his Facebook page and it is republished here with his permission.
The empty EMTV newsroom last Thursday … after a walkout in protest by journalists over the suspension of their head of news Sincha Dimara. Image: APN
The national news team of Papua New Guinea’s major television channel, EMTV, walked out last night in protest over a decision earlier this month to suspend head of news Sincha Dimara for alleged insubordination.
They have condemned the political “endless intimidation” of the news service which has led to the suspension or sacking of three news managers in the past five years.
The news team has vowed to not return until the “wrongs have been righted” by the EMTV management with Dimara, a journalist of 30 years experience, being reinstated, and acting CEO Lesieli Vete being “sidelined and investigated for putting EMTV News into disrepute”.
In a statement signed by the “Newsroom 2022” team made public tonight, the team apologised to viewers for not broadcasting last night’s news bulletin.
“With all that has happened in the last eight days, the EMTV News team has decided to walk off producing EMTV News for tonight, Thursday, 17th February 2022,” the statement said.
“We, therefore demand that Ms Dimara be reinstated and for interim CEO Lesieli Vete to be sidelined and investigated for putting EMTV News into disrepute.
“We no longer have confidence in her leadership.
Apology to viewers
“The EMTV Newsroom would like to apologise to our viewers for not bringing you tonight’s news bulletin. We will return when the wrongs have been righted.”
According to the newsroom statement, on Monday, 7 February 2022, “a fraction of the EMTV News team was verbally notified of a decision made by EMTV management to suspend EMTV’s head of news and current affairs, Sincha Dimara for a 21-day period”.
The statement said the decision had been based on two grounds:
“Purported insubordination over a series of news stories relating to Jamie Pang and his associates and damaging the reputation of EMTV, which the interim CEO claims EMTV received negative comments from the public on the airing of Jamie Pang’s stories.”
Suspended EMTV news manager Sincha Dimara … “”We are dismayed at the extreme harsh treatment of our head of news,” say the EMTV news team. Image: EMTV News
The news team said the issue could have been “handled better” by the interim CEO Vete who “lacked a demonstration of leadership”.
“We are dismayed at the extreme harsh treatment of our head of news and the continuous interferences from outside the newsroom,” the statement said.
Third suspension in five years
“This is the third time in a space of five years for an EMTV news manager to be suspended due to external influence.”
Scott Waide was the first manager suspended in 2018 over a story aired during the 2018 APEC meeting.
Neville Choi was terminated in August 2019, also on grounds of “insubordination”.
And now Sincha Dimara was placed in a similar situation.
On Wednesday, 9 February 2022, the news team wrote a letter to Vete expressing concern on the suspension of Dimara.
According to the news team, Vete queried the letter demanding to know which staff members were involved in sending out the letter.
The same day, Thursday, 10 February 2022, the entire news team expressed their concern in another letter with signatures from all individual members to support the call to re-instate Dimara.
“We are certain that the manner and approach taken by the interim CEO over the suspension of Ms Dimara is not right,” said the news team.
“We consider the grounds of suspension to be shallow, contradictory and irrelevant.
EMTV’s statement defending the suspension of its news chief by highlighting a memo “leak” on February 8. Image: EMTV website
News reports ‘unbiased and factual’
“The news team strongly believes that the stories that ran on the nightly news relating to Jamie Pang were unbiased and reported with facts and did not impede on any of the current laws nor did not implicate anyone.”
On Thursday, 10 February 2022, the EMTV management team, acting CEO of Telikom – the owners of EMTV’s parent company Media Niugini Limited (MNL) — and few senior officers met with the news team and explained their decision to suspend Dimara.
The management team initiated an audit investigation into the situation to determine what went wrong. That investigation is still continuing.
After that meeting, the news team wrote another letter addressed to Telikom acting CEO, Amos Tepi and copied in the chairman of Telikom, Johnson Pundari which was sent to both Tepi and Pundari yesterday – February 17.
“The decision to suspend Dimara is wrong as it breaches the Media Code of Ethics which is to report without fear or favour,” the news team said.
The team also said it was standing up against continuous intimidation from the interim CEO.
‘Endless intimidation’
“We condemn the endless direct or indirect intimidation which includes:
Threats of terminating news members for not putting together a news bulletin;
Micromanaging daily news production by being present in the master control room during live news;
Forcing the news team to sign a recently drafted news manual through the HR Department; and
Attempts to single out individual staff and asking if they have read the news manual or finding out if they have completed a degree or diploma in their respective fields.
Under Dimara’s leadership, EMTV News has won the award for AVN Outstanding Reporting from the Pacific category for a well-documented series, Last Man Standing, which covered the political life of a founding father of Papua New Guinea, Sir Julius Chan.
Dimara was planning the coverage of Papua New Guinea’s 2022 National Elections and the news team insist they need her leadership.
There was no immediate public response from the EMTV management to the news team’s walkout protest last night, nor was there any mention of the absence of the nightly bulletin on the new channel’s website.
Every year, Project Censored publishes State of the Free Press, an in-depth look at the year’s best independent journalism, centering voices and topics marginalized by the establishment press. Each volume features the project’s list of the year’s most important but underreported news stories. In addition, the book provides critical analysis of the junk food news served by the establishment media and the prevalence of “news abuse.” It also revisits previous years’ top 25 stories and shares the inspiring examples of media democracy in action. The top 25 list for State of the Free Press 2022 includes topics such as how “climate debtor” nations have colonized the atmosphere, the way Pfizer bullies South American governments over the COVID-19 vaccine and the scant coverage of the historic wave of wildcat strikes for workers’ rights.
State of the Free Press is edited by Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff. Roth is the coordinator of Project Censored’s Campus Affiliates Program, which brings hundreds of professors and students at colleges and universities across the U.S. together in a collective effort to identify each year’s most underreported news stories. Huff is the project’s director and president of the nonprofit Media Freedom Foundation. We asked Roth and Huff to share their thoughts on what important news goes unmentioned and why.
Peter Handel: How does Project Censored decide on its top 25 most censored stories each year?
Andy Lee Roth: The aim of the project’s annual top 25 story list is to alert the public to extraordinarily important news stories that have been marginalized, distorted or ignored by the corporate news media, and to celebrate the good work of the independent journalists who have helped inform the public about those stories nonetheless.
The production of the project’s annual top 25 story list is a year-long process that involves several hundred people and at least five distinct rounds of review and evaluation. Candidate stories are nominated by college students participating in the project’s Campus Affiliates Program and interested community members. Once identified, stories are vetted by those students and their faculty mentors for newsworthiness, credibility, transparency of sourcing and corporate news coverage. If a story fails on any one of these criteria, it is deemed inappropriate and excluded from further consideration.
Once Project Censored receives the candidate story, we undertake a second round of evaluation, using the same criteria and updating the review to include any subsequent corporate news coverage. Stories that pass this stage of review are posted on the project’s website as Validated Independent News stories (or VINs).
In spring, we present all eligible VINs in the current annual cycle to the faculty and students at our affiliate campuses and to our panel of expert judges, who vote to winnow the candidate stories down from several hundred to a short list.
The stories that make the short list are subject to another round of intensive review, and those that pass muster are sent to our panel of judges, who vote to rank them in numerical order. The resulting top 25 story list is featured in Project Censored’s annual book, on our website and by independent news weeklies across the country.
Give us a few examples of the independent news stories featured on the 2020-2021 story list.
Andy Lee RothCourtesy Andy Lee Roth
Andy Lee Roth: One of this year’s top stories is the historic wave of wildcat strikes: Payday Report, an independent news outlet focused on labor issues, has documented more than 1,750 wildcat strikes since March 2020. Corporate media have by and large failed to “connect the dots” on the scope of these protests. In fact, until October 2021, when the corporate media began to cover “Striketober,” corporate news framed worker protests during the pandemic as sporadic, isolated events. Overall, corporate news media do a poor job of covering labor issues.
This year’s number two story, “Journalists Investigating Financial Crimes Threatened by Global Elites,” focused on a report by the U.K.-based Foreign Policy Centre about the threats faced by journalists investigating financial misconduct by wealthy individuals and international corporations. Journalists from 41 nations reported being subject to defamation lawsuits, social media smear campaigns, online trolling and even physical violence in the course of investigating stories on financial crimes. Although the Foreign Policy Centre’s report received some attention from corporate news media outside the United States, our research found that, as of July 2021, no major commercial newspaper or broadcast outlet in the United States had so much as mentioned the report. This is especially troubling because threats to journalists undermine freedom of the press and jeopardize the health of democratic societies.
Still other stories on the list have received limited corporate news coverage, but that coverage is not at all proportional to the significance of the topic. For example, story number 19, about Europe’s hunger for biomass fuel made from American forests, was the subject of one exemplary New York Times article, but no other corporate news outlet so much as ran an op-ed on the issue. The harvesting of timber for biomass fuels has led to toxic air pollution and catastrophic flooding along the southern coast of the United States, including North and South Carolina, southern Georgia, Alabama and northern Florida, but most Americans know nothing about this because the establishment press have failed to cover the issue.
In State of the Free Press 2022, you talk about disturbing attacks on the media at home and abroad. What were the major challenges to a free press in 2020-2021?
Mickey HuffCourtesy Mickey Huff
Mickey Huff: The COVID-19 pandemic is the most obvious threat to journalistic integrity, but not the only one. The pandemic has done severe damage to every sector of American society, and journalism has not been spared. In December 2021, the Poynter Institute reported that more than 100 local news outlets have closed since the beginning of the pandemic — a terrible loss that accelerates the spread of “news deserts,” communities and regions where there is no local news coverage at all. Project Censored has documented how corporate outlets with conservative agendas swoop into these communities to exploit the need for local news.
But the threats to journalism aren’t limited to the pandemic. The United States is an increasingly dangerous place for journalists, who are subject to assaults, arrests and other threats. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker described 2021 as “another record year” for press freedom violations in the country, and documented 142 assaults on journalists, 59 arrests or detainments, 23 subpoenas of journalists or news organizations, and 36 instances of journalists having equipment damaged or destroyed. For these and related reasons, the United States ranked just 44th of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index, which identified the “disappearance of local news” and “ongoing and widespread distrust of mainstream media” among the “many chronic, underlying conditions” impacting press freedoms in the United States.
A third threat to journalistic integrity comes from Big Tech. The impacts of the internet and the increasing influence of social media cannot be overstated. “Google may not be a country, but it is a superpower,” Timothy Garton Ash noted in his book, Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World. The new media giants — including Alphabet (which owns Google and YouTube), Meta (which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), Twitter, Apple and Microsoft — function as arbiters of public issues and legitimate discourse, despite their leaders’ assertions that they are tech platforms, not publishers or media companies.
As Andy Lee Roth has written, these tech giants are the new gatekeepers and their proprietary algorithms “determine which news stories circulate widely, raising serious concerns about transparency and accountability in determinations of newsworthiness.” Accountability and transparency are guiding principles for ethical journalism. But news gatekeeping conducted by proprietary algorithms crosses wires with these ethical guidelines, producing grave threats to the integrity of journalism — not to mention the likelihood of a well-informed public.
Did threats to freedom of the press worsen during the Trump administration, or have they remained basically the same since 1976 when Project Censored began?
Andy Lee Roth: Trump’s presidency exposed (and exploited) chronic malignancies in American society that predated his rise to power. Trump was extraordinary in his zeal to condemn the press as “the enemy of the people” whenever it reported news that failed to flatter him. He seemed opposed to any form of journalism that involved factual reality, with the exception, perhaps, of “alternative” facts, as endorsed by his counselor Kellyanne Conway. It’s difficult to accept that there is no connection between Trump’s provocative rhetoric and subsequent violence and threats directed at journalists, from Rep. Greg Gianforte’s 2017 assault of a Guardian reporter, to the message “Murder the Media” scratched onto a door to the U.S. Capitol during the failed insurrection on January 6, 2021.
But it is misleading — and dangerous — to assume that U.S. journalism was free of faults until Donald Trump weaponized the term “fake news” to serve his own interests. That position cedes more influence to Trump than he deserves, while it ignores the importance of deep, structural flaws in corporate news media. As Project Censored’s Steve Macek and I argued in a November 2020 article for Truthout, explanations of news bias that trace it back to “the self-interest and partisan bias of editors and journalists — or even aggregates of those individual interests and biases — fail to explain the political power of news or to identify the foundations on which far more fundamental forms of news slant are built.” To understand the establishment media’s deepest biases requires a structural analysis of journalism, including the economic imperatives, institutional constraints, professional values and social relationships that shape the production of every news story. These are the basic building blocks of the critical media literacy that Project Censored champions.
A clear-eyed analysis of threats to freedom of the press must look back before Trump’s presidency — not to mention beyond it. The Biden administration does not refer to the press as “enemy of the people,” but it continues in its efforts to extradite Julian Assange. And, although the First Amendment provides protection against “prior restraint” — the effort to prevent publication or publicization of information or ideas — by the government, in November 2021, a New York State court orderedTheNew York Times not to publish information about the group Project Veritas, a far right group notorious for its production of deceptively edited videos. As the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker noted, this was the first prior restraint for the Times since the Pentagon Papers case of 1971.
In your book you include a chapter on sensationalized and empty “Junk Food News” that discusses something you call “humilitainment.” What is “Junk Food News,” and how does it distract us from more substantive reporting?
Mickey Huff: Project Censored began to track Junk Food News after news editors contacted Carl Jensen, the project’s founder, to counter the project’s claim that certain news topics were “censored.” Citing a finite amount of time and space for news reporting, which prevented them from covering every important story, those editors got Jensen wondering: What do they report? The problem, Jensen found, was not necessarily a lack of time and space for substantive news, but the quality of the news selected to fill that limited time and space. Most of it was, in Jensen’s words, “sensationalized, personalized, and homogenized inconsequential trivia,” for which he coined the now-common term “Junk Food News.”
Today, faculty and students working with Project Censored continue to track Junk Food News. This year’s chapter investigates the social networking service TikTok as a popular purveyor of junk food news. In particular, the analysis focuses on “humilitainment,” a term developed in 2005 by media scholars Brad Waite and Sara Booker to describe entertainment that capitalizes on someone else’s humiliation. TikTok trades in humilitainment, as exemplified by sensational news coverage of Gorilla Glue Girl. The chapter’s authors show how a fascination with humilitainment obscured more substantive reporting on topics including humanitarian crises in Yemen and Ethiopia, the wave of disproportionately female unemployment propelled by COVID-19, and legislation to restrict voting rights.
The Media Council of PNG has condemned the suspension of the news chief of Papua New Guinea’s major television channel, EMTV, describing the move as a “dangerous precedent … in an election year”.
The council said the suspension of head of news and current affairs Sincha Dimara for 21 days without pay over coverage by EMTV about the rearrest of Australian hotel manager Jamie Pang last month was an an act of intimidation by the interim CEO and management of Media Niugini Ltd in the face of political influence.
It amounted to “suppression of a free media in the country”, the council added in its statement today.
Papua New Guinea faces a general election in June this year.
As a warning to all media managements in PNG, the council said that a strong news service was only as strong as its head of news, with the support of the company’s management and board.
“To resort to suspending its head of news for reasons of performing and complying to a ministerial directive based on personal or emotional reactions to social media comments about a story reeks of undue political influence, and sets a dangerous precedent as the country moves into election year,” it said.
“[This is] a time when strong independent news assessment will be key in news coverage.”
Reinstate Dimara call by Media Council
The council called on EMTV’s interim CEO Lesieli Vete and the management to immediately reinstate Dimara as head of news to “protect the interest of the media industry”.
The suspension had been at the “behest of an executive directive” from the minister responsible for EMTV to “fix the problem”. The minister was not named by the council.
The Media Council of PNG media statement today. Image: APR
Friday, January 28, 2022: “Pang acquitted”, about the legal outcome of the case against the hotelier.
Monday, January 31, 2022: “Pang’s staff concerned”, focused on the alleged human rights abuse surrounding the re-arrest of Pang.
Tuesday, February 1, 2022: “Boxers concerned for Pang”, focused on the views of boxers involved in community martial arts programmes run by Pang.
Wednesday, Febuary 2, 2022: “Mixed martial arts”, focused on the Mixed Martial Arts club with no mention of Pang’s association with it.
Other PNG news media reported Pang being acquitted and the concerns of his employees over his rearrest.
‘Shallow’ reasons for suspension
The council said it recognised Dimara’s news assessment over the stories and rejected EMTV management’s reasons for suspending her, describing them as “shallow”.
EMTV’s management claimed staff were neither “restricted nor stopped from reporting unfolding stories on the detained resident”.
It said a leaked internal memo had been the result of “alleged insubordination by staff towards verbal lawful instructions to drop stories sympathising with Pang”.
Suspension of the news manager of Papua New Guinea’s major television channel, EMTV, has sparked a flurry of protest from senior news personalities and independent who condemn the apparent political pressure on the broadcaster.
Long standing and experienced news manager Sincha Dimara has reportedly been suspended over news judgement in a move that a former EMTV senior news executive said “reeks of external influence” on the company’s top management.
“A CEO is a buffer between staff and any external pressure. You need a heart of steel and buckets of bravery to fend off political pressure,” said independent television journalist and blogger Scott Waide.
Waide was himself subjected to unfair suspension over airing a controversial story about then Peter O’Neill government’s purchase of luxury Maseratis for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference hosted in Port Moresby in 2018. He was later reinstated after an international outcry.
“There is another way to correct coverage that does not ‘fit the aspirations’ of a news organisation — it’s called leadership,” said Waide in response to the Dimara suspension.
“If the CEO is too timid and cannot protect our Papua New Guinean staff, then please resign and go home! This is not the place for you.”
In responses shared on social media, former publisher of the PNG Post-Courier and a regional media consultant Bob Howarth, asked: “What does the Media Council have to say about political meddling in PNG’s struggling ‘free press’ …?”
Another former news executive, Joseph Ealedona, who headed the state broadcaster NBC and was himself involved in controversies, said NBC had built its reputation and integrity for years and “has the people’s protection”.
“It did happen to me but the people’s protest and insistence and the will of senior statesmen and political leaders to right the wrong saw me return for EMTV,” he said.
“in my view, it is just someone trying to protect oneself and fearful of losing privileges and has no guts to say no … and listening to just one or two people.
“I would believe that the PM [James Marape] is not happy with this this, it is at the detriment of the government if allowed to continue, especially when the NGE is around the corner [national general election is in June].
“The freedom of the media is very important to a free democracy but we in the [media] fraternity must carry [on] with utmost respect and do nothing but expose the truth as a responsible profession.”
Ealedona said journalists “must continue to fight against and with the might of the pen”.
Washington, DC – Led by the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), more than 26 antiwar groups and 2,500 individual peace and justice advocates have cosponsored a statement calling for the immediate release of publisher Julian Assange and commending him for his contributions toward global peace.
Assange is currently fighting extradition to the United States after the Trump administration indicted him on unprecedented Espionage Act charges. His indictment marked the first time in U.S. history that a journalist has been charged for publishing truthful information.
Since being removed from Ecuador’s London embassy after a new Ecuadorian administration bowed to U.S. pressure to withdraw his asylum, Assange has been held for more than 1,000 days in Belmarsh Prison while his extradition case is being heard through UK courts.
“Iron” we called him. And so he was, our iron man at Papua New Guinea’s Post-Courier in Lawes Road, Port Moresby, to the end.
Until Wednesday, Isaac Nicholas was the steely fearless reporter who held us up front, and firmly led us from the front page as chief political reporter.
Wary of his beat
Either way, Isaac Nicholas was always wary of his beat. He played the pollies with a calculated intensity like no-one did.
He was sure fire seeking the truth and quite firm in gaining traction without compromising the essence of fair and unbiased reporting.
He was a friend to all of them but getting under their skins, irritating them, made the Iron a trademark enemy to none.
Some of his best friends, like the MP for Goilala [William Samb], criticised him openly when they could about his reporting but at the end of the day, he would stand up in the newsroom and declare, “the member just called me” and that was it!
This little man from Yangoru, 52, served our newspaper and our country faithfully for the past 15 years, going places where few reporters dare, like the mountains of Goilala and the bush of Telefomin and the crocodile-infested swamps of Kerema.
You can think of many journos from the Sepik and Isaac Nicholas was among the best.
He was friendly, good natured and humorous.
Green iron tins under a mango tree
At the end of a hard day’s news hunt, our Iron would always retire under his mango tree at East Boroko. How ironic it was that his favourite cooling off was always with green iron tins under a green tree.
His notebooks were filled with names and stories.
There’s a box full of them on his table.
That is his life story.
Those of us who knew him, walked with him, talked with him, shared a buai [betel nut], shed our tears for the loss of a close friend.
A protector of junior newshounds, a leader of senior scribes. His leadership and reporting will be missed in Papua New Guinean journalism.
Life is such that we make friends without knowing when that friendship will pass. PNG woke up on Wednesday to the news that our iron man in news-making had breathed his last.
From Yangoru to Manugoro, Dagua to Kagua, Vailala to Goilala, Malalaua to Salamaua, Baniara to Honiara, the name Isaac Nicholas was a trusted forte of political drama and conscience leadership.
Without the generosity of a goodbye, without the curiosity of a farewell, we, his friends at the Post-Courier find it quite hard to fathom losing such a dear brother, news leader and best friend so suddenly.
We remember the late Isaac and comfort Judy Nicholas and their children in this time of sadness.
Vale Isaac, you were truly our IRON MAN!
Tributes flow in for Isaac Nicholas Isaac Nicholas, 52, was a giant in the Papua New Guinean media fraternity, known for his ability to get answers from PNG’s political heavyweights on any given day, report colleagues in the PNG media industry.
Fellow senior journalists, NBC’s Gregory Moses and Sunday Bulletin’s Clifford Faiparik remembered their friend and the light moments they shared while on the beat.
Moses lamented: “Parliament coverage next week will not be the same.
“I fought back tears whole day, and sat down and reminiscing all the fun and jokes we shared as colleagues and brothers.”
Professor David Robie, who was head of the journalism programme at the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) in the 1990s, paid tribute to Nicholas as “one of the outstanding journalists in the making of our times on Uni Tavur”, the award-winning student newspaper featured in his 2004 book Mekim Nius.
CPJ is concerned that U.S. President Joe Biden has not addressed many of the Obama and Trump-era limitations on press freedom. In ‘Night and Day’, a CPJ special report on the Biden administration’s relationship with the press during its first year in office, former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. found that while some progress has been made, key problems outlined in his reports on the previous two administrations remained. These range from freedom of information requests that remain backlogged, stymieing reporters’ ability to cover matters of public interest; limited access to the southern border; and the use of the Espionage Act against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Embrace good practice and transparency in dealing with the press by speaking to reporters on the record and avoiding overuse of on background briefings and quote approval. Make the president more accessible to reporters.
Instruct all government departments to comply with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in a timely manner without regard to the media organizations or reporters filing those requests. Enforce prompt and less restrictive responses to FOIA requests to facilitate greater transparency.
Implement restrictions that would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to obtain warrants before searching electronic devices. Require both agencies to release transparency reports about such searches.
Prohibit DHS and CBP agents from intimidating and singling out journalists for questioning and/ or asking journalists about their work .
Codify the new DOJ policy restricting federal prosecutors’ ability to obtain journalists’ phone and email records in government leak investigations.
Prioritize and support passage of legislation – such as Senator Ron Wyden’s PRESS Act – that would protect journalists’ First Amendment rights against government prosecution for using and receiving confidential and classified information. The legislation should expansively define journalists, and shield reporters’ communication records, ensuring that the government cannot compel journalists to disclose sources or unpublished reporting information.
Stop the misuse of the Espionage Act to hinder press freedom: Drop the espionage charges against Julian Assange and cease efforts to extradite him to the U.S. Put into place legislation that would prevent the use of the Espionage Act as a means to halt news gathering activity.
Ensure that U.S. companies or individuals are not contributing to the secret surveillance of journalists abroad, and that foreign companies face targeted sanctions for enabling authoritarian governments to spy on journalists.
Take action against impunity in the murder of journalists: Impose sanctions on Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, holding the leader to account for his role in the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Process P-2 visa applications for Afghan journalists as rapidly as possible and be communicative about which cases are being processed; allow P-2 processing for individuals who have reached the U.S.; and provide support and protection to journalists still in Afghanistan or who have escaped to third countries.
Support the creation of an emergency visa for journalists at-risk around the world (such as in section 6 of the International Press Freedom Act of 2021) to ensure solutions are in place for future crises like the one in Afghanistan.
I spent five years as the lone journalist on the remote Pacific island of Yap. During that time I was harassed, spat at, threatened with assassination and warned that I was being followed.
The tyres on my car were slashed late one night.
There was also pressure on the political level. The chiefs of the traditional Council of Pilung (COP) asked the state legislature to throw me out of the country as a “persona non grata” claiming that my journalism “may be disruptive to the state environment and/or to the safety and security of the state”.
During a public hearing of the Yap state legislature in September 2021, 14 minutes of the 28-minute meeting was spent complaining about an article of mine that reported on the legislature’s initially unsuccessful attempt to impeach the governor.
One politician then posted about me on his Facebook page, under which a member of the public posted a comment saying I should be assassinated.
American Bill Jaynes, editor of the Kaselehlie Press in Pohnpei, one of Yap’s sister states in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), has had his share of death threats over the years, too.
Several death threats
“In the 15 or so years I’ve been at this desk I have had several death threats,” he said.
“Early on in my tenure, some angry individual carved a request for me to perform an act of physical impossibility into the hood of my car which then rusted for posterity. Most of that was during the early days before I came to be trusted to view things from an FSM rather than a foreigner’s point of view and to handle things factually rather than sensationally.”
Freedom of the press is included in both the FSM and the Yap State Constitution, but as Leilani Reklai, publisher and editor of the Island Times newspaper in Palau and president of the Palau Media Council, says: “Freedom of the press in the constitution is pretty on paper but not always a reality.”
These incidents are shocking, but sadly are not isolated. Journalists in the Pacific face imprisonment, loss of employment and banishment from their homes.
“While there might not be assassinations, murders, gagging, torture and ‘disappearances’ of journalists in Pacific island states, threats, censorship and a climate of self-censorship are commonplace,” professor David Robie, founding editor of Pacific Journalism Review, wrote in a 2019 article for The Conversation.
A Fijian journalist, who asked to remain anonymous, said that after he posed questions to a politician during a public forum, the politician replied that he knew where the reporter lived. The following day, the reporter’s car was broken into.
Soon after, the reporter was told that if he didn’t stop being critical, he would be kicked out of his job “and can go bag groceries instead” and he was evicted from his housing. The reporter believes all of these incidents stemmed from the questions he asked of the politician.
“Within one week my life changed completely,” he said. “I do not see a future for me or any other journalist who is curious and questioning to make a career in journalism in Fiji.”
The index highlights the “draconian” Media Industry Development Decree, introduced in 2010 and turned into law in 2018. “Those who violate this law’s vaguely-worded provisions face up to two years in prison. The sedition laws, with penalties of up to seven years in prison, are also used to foster a climate of fear and self-censorship,” said Reporters Without Borders.
In 2018, senior journalist Scott Waide of Papua New Guinea was suspended by EMTV after the airing of his report critical of the government for purchasing 40 luxury Maseratis and three Bentleys to drive attendees during the APEC conference.
Reinstated after a public and media outcry, Waide stated during an interview on ABC’s Pacific Beat programme: “Increasingly, not just EMTV, but nearly every other media organisation in Papua New Guinea has been interfered with by their boards or with politicians, or various other players in society.
“They’re doing it with impunity. It’s a trend that’s very dangerous for democracy.”
Daniel Bastard, Asia-Pacific director of Reporters Without Borders, said the situation is complicated by how small and connected many Pacific nations are.
“The fact is that political leaders are also economic bosses so there’s a nexus. It’s symptomatic of the small journalistic communities in the Pacific islands that need to deal with the political community to get access to information. They have to be careful when they criticise knowing the government can cut advertising, publicity, etc. There’s still a strong level of intimidation.”
While there are particular dangers faced by local journalists, foreign reporters living in the Pacific are not safe either.
Denied renewal of work permit
Canadian Dan McGarry, former media director of the Vanuatu Daily Post and a resident of the island nation for nearly 20 years, was denied renewal of his work permit in 2019. The reason given was that his job should be held by a local citizen.
But McGarry said he believed it was politically motivated due to his reporting on “Chinese influence” in the small nation. He was then denied re-entry to Vanuatu after ironically attending a forum on press freedom in Brisbane.
Regional and international news organisations came to his defence and the court granted McGarry re-entry, but the newspaper’s appeal to have his work permit renewed is ongoing.
I have written about some sensitive and difficult topics and like to think of myself as pretty fearless. In 2018 I wrote about illegal fishing by Chinese commercial fishing boats around the Outer Island of Fedrai. That coverage resulted in the expulsion of the fishing vessel and significant political consequences.
I’ve written about issues in the customs and immigration processes in FSM, that were potentially jeopardising tourism to Yap, which is so important to so many people’s livelihoods, and also about a huge and controversial proposed resort that would have seen thousands and thousands of Chinese tourists flown in to that tiny island on charter flights.
These stories matter and just because some Pacific nations are small and remote does not mean that they do not need or deserve the scrutiny of a free press.
But eventually, the threats to my safety were too much to handle. I spent too much time looking over my shoulder, living behind locked doors and never going out alone after dark.
In mid-2021, I moved to Guam for greater peace of mind where I am continuing to write about this largely invisible, but crucial part of the world.
Joyce McClure is a freelance journalist based in Guam. This article was first published by The Guardian’s Pacific Project and has been republished with permission.
