David Robie

Asia Pacific Report · Editorial

Just months before the outbreak of the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza after the deadly assault on southern Israel by Hamas resistance fighters, Australian investigative journalist and researcher Antony Loewenstein published an extraordinarily timely book, The Palestine Laboratory. In it he warned that a worst-case scenario — “long feared but never r...

Prime Minister James Marape has made two foreign policy gaffes in the space of a week that may come back to bite him as Papua New Guinea prepares for its 48th anniversary of independence on 16 September 2023. Critics have been stunned by the opening of a PNG embassy in Jerusalem in defiance of international law-when only three countries have done t...

The Melanesian Spearhead Group has thrown away a golden chance for achieving a historical step towards justice and peace in West Papua by lacking the courage to accept the main Papuan self-determination advocacy movement as full members. Membership had been widely expected across the Pacific region and the MSG's silence and failure to explain West...

New Zealand-adopted Fiji journalist, sports writer, national news agency reporter, anti-coup activist, media freedom advocate, storyteller and mentor Sri Krishnamurthi has died. He was just two weeks shy of his 60th birthday. Born on 15 August 1963, just after his twin brother Murali, Sri grew up in the port city of Lautoka, Fiji’s second largest i...

Two researchers examining responses to conspiratorial pandemic narratives have warned Aotearoa New Zealand not to be complacent over the risk of fringe views over climate crisis becoming populist. Byron C. Clark, a video essayist and author of the recent book Fear: New Zealand’s Hostile Underworld of Extremists, and Emmanuel Stokes, a postgraduate...

A new documentary and human rights report have documented savage attacks in 2021 by Indonesian security forces on a remote West Papuan village close to the Papua New Guinea border as part of an ongoing crackdown against growing calls for independence. The documentary, Paradise Bombed, and the research report made public yesterday [4 August 2023] al...

How to Stand up to a Dictator: The Fight for our Future, By Maria Ressa. London: Penguin Random House, 2022. 301 pages. ISBN 978073559208. AS WE marched in our pink tee-shirts in solidarity with the diaspora supporting outgoing Vice-President and opposition leader Leni Robredo in Auckland’s Centennial Park in the lead up to the Philippine presiden...

For more than a decade, the pioneering Pacific Media Centre at Aotearoa’s Auckland University of Technology led the way in journalism research and publication, publishing the globally ranked peer-reviewed journal Pacific Journalism Review, monographs, and a series of media and social justice books and documentaries. Perhaps even more important was...

By David Robie Free Papua Organisation (OPM) leader Jeffrey Bomanak has appealed to US President Joe Biden for a “proactive role” in ending Indonesia’s “unlawful military occupation and annexation” of West Papua. He claims this illegal occupation led to the subsequent US “foreign policy failure” in protecting six decades of crimes against humanity....

For more than a decade, the pioneering Pacific Media Centre at Aotearoa's Auckland University of Technology led the way in journalism research and publication, publishing the globally ranked peer-reviewed journal Pacific Journalism Review, monographs, and a series of media and social justice books and documentaries. Perhaps even more important was...

By David Robie Timor-Leste has topped a stunning rise among Asia-Pacific countries to make it to into the “top ten” countries in this year’s World Press Freedom Index that saw island nations improve their rankings. The youngest nation in Southeast Asia — which gained independence from Indonesia in 2002 — jumped from 17th last year to 10th as the Pa...

By David Robie As part of an Indonesian-backed disinformation and troll campaign against West Papuan pro-independence advocates, a Facebook page has emerged making bitter and slanderous attacks on campaigners, Papuan exiles and media people in the Pacific region. Among the targets for this page-dubbed "View Information", purportedly based in the Va...

Two countries. A common border. Two hostage crises. But the responses of both Asia-Pacific nations have been like chalk and cheese. On February 7, a militant cell of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), the armed wing of the Free Papua Organisation (OPM) — a fragmented organisation that been fighting for freedom for their Melanesian hom...

Papuan independence rebels are playing a desperate game of cat and mouse with Indonesian authorities over their hostage taking last week with a New Zealand pilot caught in the middle. Christchurch-raised Philip Mehrtens, 37, a pilot for the national feeder airline Susi Air owned by a former cabinet minister and with Jakarta government supply contra...

As the founder of the Jubi news media group, he remained defiant that he would tell the truth no matter what the risk while facing an oppressive and vindictive regime. "Journalists need to break down the wall and learn freely about our struggle," he said in a message to New Zealand media via an interview with Pacific Media Watch. Now the 49-year-ol...

New Zealand is still coming to grips with the exit of an inspirational leader: Aotearoa New Zealand has been shaken to the core by the sudden resignation of one of its most iconic and revered prime ministers amid a fierce controversy over misogyny and death threats stirred by the global coronavirus pandemic. Jacinda Ardern, the world’s youngest fem...

2022 PACIFIC REVIEW: By David Robie: The Pacific year started with a ferocious eruption and global tsunami in Tonga, but by the year’s end several political upheavals had also shaken the region with a vengeance. A razor’s edge election in Fiji blew away a long entrenched authoritarian regime with a breath of fresh air for the Pacific, two bitterly...

When I first encountered Owen Wilkes it was at a range of 17,000 kilometres – the distance between Auckland, Aotearoa, and Stockholm, Sweden. He was already something of an extraordinary and increasingly well-known, although humble, celebrity in the final decade of the Cold War. As a researcher for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institu...

A tragic day of mourning. Thousands thronged the West Papuan funeral cortège today and tonight as the banned Morning Star led the way in defiance of the Indonesian military. There haven’t been so many Papuan flags flying under the noses of the security forces since the 2019 Papuan Uprising. Filep Jacob Semuel Karma, 63, the “father” of the Papuan n...

A Fiji-based academic challenged the Pacific region’s media and policymakers today over climate crisis coverage, asking whether the discriminatory style of reporting was a case of climate injustice. Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, head of the journalism programme at the University of the South Pacific, said climate press conferences and meeti...

New Zealand journalist and academic David Robie has covered the Asia-Pacific region for international media for more than four decades. An advocate for media freedom in the Pacific region, he is the author of several books on South Pacific media and politics, including an account of the French bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in A...

A human rights advocate appealed tonight for people in Aotearoa New Zealand to take personal responsibility in the fight against disinformation and to upskill their critical thinking skills. Anjum Rahman, project lead of the Inclusive Aotearoa Collective Tāhono, said this meant taking responsibility for verifying the accuracy and source of informat...

Seven weeks ago the Philippines truth-telling martial law film Katips was basking in the limelight in the country's national FAMAS academy movie awards, winning best picture and a total of six other awards. Last week it began a four month "world tour" of 10 countries starting in the Middle East followed by Aotearoa New Zealand today-hosted simultan...

The final Pacific Media Centre Annual Review 2020 (concluding the existence of the PMC 2007-2020). The PMC Advisory Board chair's report by Professor Camille Nakhid is included. This review/report is also available at the National Library of New Zealand/Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa: https://natlib.govt.nz/records/40710350?search%5Bpath%5D=items&se...

A short excerpt from the final Pacific Media Centre 2020 Toolbox of projects

Te Amokura: Pacific Media Center (PMC) was founded at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) in October 2007 at a time of great turbulence in the Pacific (Robie, 2018). Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban, at the time New Zealand’s Minister of Pacific Island Affairs before she later became Victoria University of Wellington’s Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Pa...

The Pacific Media Centre Strategic Review 2013-19 relates to this document, the Pearson Report - Pacific Media Centre: Report of External Moderation conducted 29/4/13- 4/5/13 (29 May 2013).

A proposal for a PMC Deputy/Post-Doctoral researcher in response to the Pearson Report (2013) and linked to the PMC Strategic Plan 2013-19.

Fires burned across Aotearoa New Zealand’s Parliament grounds, and violent clashes broke out between protesters and police on the day the law enforcement officers moved to quell a 23-day anti-vaccination mandate siege of the House in February-March 2022 in scenes rarely witnessed in this country. The riot climaxed a mounting campaign of disinformat...

Commentary: This keynote commentary at the Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) conference with the theme Change, Adaptation and Culture: Media and Communication in Pandemic Times is addressed through a discussion of three main issues: 1. The Covid-19 Pandemic and how it is being coped with; 2. A parallel Infodemic—a crisis of communic...

A lively 43sec video clip surfaced during last week’s Pacific Islands Forum in the Fiji capital of Suva — the first live leaders’ forum in three years since Tuvalu, due to the covid pandemic. Posted on Twitter by Guardian Australia’s Pacific Project editor Kate Lyons it showed the doorstopping of Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare by...

By David Robie Migrants and overseas Filipinos in Aotearoa New Zealand today called on the governments of both Australia and New Zealand to halt all military and security aid to the Philippines in protest over last month's "fraudulent" general election. At simultaneous meetings in Auckland and Wellington, a new broad coalition of social justice and...

COMMENTARY: By David Robie Timor-Leste, the youngest independent nation and the most fledgling press in the Asia-Pacific, has finally shown how it's done-with a big lesson for Pacific island neighbours. Tackle the Chinese media gatekeepers and creeping authoritarianism threatening journalism in the region at the top. In Dili on the final day of Chi...

Photographs by David Robie: Today is Nakba Day — “the great catastrophe”. This is the day marking the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and forced off their land by Israeli militias in 1948. For 74 years Israel has refused to allow them to return to their homes and land in Palestine despite dozens of United Nations...

Sadly, the Philippines has sold its soul. Thirty six years ago a People Power revolution ousted the dictator Ferdinand Marcos after two decades of harsh authoritarian rule. Yesterday, in spite of a rousing and inspiring Pink Power would-be revolution, the dictator’s only son and namesake “Bongbong” Marcos Jr seems headed to be elected 17th presiden...

Opposition National Federation Party leader Professor Biman Prasad is confident there will be a change of government in Fiji this year and his party will be part of the new lineup giving the people a genuine choice for an optimistic future. "The people of Fiji are fed up with the lies and propaganda that they have seen with this government," he tol...

OPEN LETTER: By David Robie Kia ora Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi It is unconscionable. A bewildering and grossly unfair crisis for 34 young Papuan students – 25 male and 9 female – the hope for the future of the West Papua region, the Melanesian half of Papua New Guinea island ruled by Indonesia. They were part of a cohort of 93 Papuan students...

The Pacific year has closed with growing tensions over sovereignty and self-determination issues and growing stress over the ravages of covid-19 pandemic in a region that was largely virus-free in 2020. Just two days before the year 2021 wrapped up, Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama took the extraordinary statement of denying any involvement b...

"Loyalist" New Caledonians handed France the decisive victory in the third and final referendum on independence it wanted in Sunday's vote. But it was a hollow victory, with pro-independence Kanaks delivering Paris a massive rebuke for its three-decade decolonisation strategy. The referendum is likely to be seen as a failure, a capture of the vote...

After three decades of frustratingly slow progress but with a measure of quiet optimism over the decolonisation process unfolding under the Noumea Accord, Kanaky New Caledonia is again poised on the edge of a precipice. Two out of three pledged referendums from 2018 produced higher than expected — and growing — votes for independence. But then the...

Pressure is mounting on Indonesia to back off its brutal and unsuccessful military strategy in trying to crush West Papuan resistance to its flawed rule in "the land of Papua". Critics have intensified their condemnation of the intransigent "no negotiations" stance of authorities as West Papuans mark their national day today on 1 December 1961 when...

This article is extracted from a keynote speech by Dr David Robie at the Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) conference in Auckland on 25-27 November 2021. The conference theme was "Change, Adaptation and Culture: Media and Communication in Pandemic Times". Dr David Robie is editor of Asia Pacific Report and the retired founding direc...

Pacific Media Watch newsdesk: Journalists and journalism are waging a global struggle for survival and for "truth" against fake news and alternative facts, say two Asia-Pacific media commentators. "Without journalists who will tell it like it is no matter the consequences, the future will continue to be one of alternate facts and manipulated opinio...

Professor David Robie's keynote address entitled "Journalism education 'truth' challenges in an age of growing hate, intolerance and disinformation" at the Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) global virtual conference at Auckland University of Technology on 25-27 November 2021. Dr Robie is founder of the Pacific Media Centre: https://...

Frontline journalism in the age of COVID-19 has posed particular challenges in dealing with personal risk, tackling an ‘infodemic’ of misinformation, and providing valuable news that can be used in vulnerable Pacific countries that have struggled with soaring infections and limited health infrastructure and resources. Five Pacific countries or terr...

Climate Aotearoa: What’s happening and what we can do about it, edited by Helen Clark. Auckland: Allen & Unwin, 2021. 327 pages. ISBN 9781988547633 WHEN the publication of Climate Aotearoa was heralded by Radio New Zealand in April 2021 it was featured along with a striking image and a quote from the collection editor, former prime minister Helen C...

Edited by Philip Cass and David Robie: This edition of Pacific Journalism Review was originally planned as an unthemed edition. However, a cluster of media papers on COVID-19, climate change and the ongoing human rights crisis in West Papua has led to it being designated as a 'Pacific Crises' edition. The edition also features a Photoessay case stu...

WHEN I arrived at my office at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji on the morning of 12 September 2001 (9/11, NY Time), I was oblivious to reality. I had dragged myself home to bed a few hours earlier at 2am as usual, after another long day working on our students’ Wansolwara Online website providing coverage of the Fiji general election. O...

It is open season again for Indonesian trolls targeting Asia Pacific Report and other media with fake news and disinformation dispatches in a crude attempt to gloss over human rights violations. Just three months ago I wrote about this issue in my "Dear editor" article exposing the disinformation campaign. There was silence for a while but now the...

Aotearoa New Zealand’s Te Amokura : Pacific Media Centre was founded in 2007 as an innovative development communication research and publication unit, originally as a foundation member of the Creative Industries Research Institute (CIRI) at Auckland University of Technology (AUT). It was developed over a 13-year period as a model based on collabora...

AFTER his release from prison in South Africa and he became inaugural president of the majority rule government with the abolition of apartheid, Nelson Mandela declared in a speech in 1997: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” Founding Halt All Racist Tours (HART) leader John Minto invoked these...

In contrast to disastrous Western exceptionalist trends in Europe and the United States in countering the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, New Zealand was influenced by the success of Asian countries such as Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam. New Zealand was conscious of its strategic responsibility for vulnerable Pacific Island nations and...

Game changer over nuclear justice Tavini Huiraatira leader Oscar Temaru speaking about the nuclear contamination of Tahiti revealed by new evidence published in the book Toxique three days prior to the Mai Te Paura rally on 17/18 July 2021. PHOTO: TAHITI-INFOS Kia ora Koutou | Kia orana | Ia orana FROM a journalist's perspective, particular events...

Media freedom means journalism can "shape and spread values, defuse tensions, and counter hate-speech." Through its capacity to investigate, challenge, and question competing views and opinions with facts and balanced reason, journalism can contribute to positive and sustainable notions of peace. However, advocating for positive peace in the news m...

A forensic account of the status of the Pacific Media Centre and the uncertainty of its future in 2021. The cultural diversity and development communication research and public centre was founded at the Auckland University of Technology in 2007 with the following mission: “Informed journalism and media research contributes to economic, political an...

New Zealand's largest ever crowd in support of migrant rights gathered in Auckland's Aotea Square at the weekend in triple protests that also marked solidarity for Palestinian justice and the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, China. More than 1500 people filled the square on Saturday proclaiming "migrant lives matter" with speakers calling on t...

International reporting has hardly been a strong feature of New Zealand journalism. No New Zealand print news organisation has serious international news departments or foreign correspondents with the calibre of such overseas media as The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. It has traditionally been that way for decades. And it became much worse aft...

Branding armed Papuan resistance groups as “terrorists” has sparked strong condemnation from human rights groups across Indonesia and in West Papua, some describing the move as desperation and the “worst ever” action by President Joko Widodo’s administration. Many warn that this draconian militarist approach to the Papuan independence struggle will...

Environmental damage, climate change, and increasingly intense natural disasters are serious problems faced by humanity in this millennium. More ecological damage occurs due to expensive and destructive human activities. Illegal logging, expansion of mining areas, pollution of water sources, overfishing, trade-in protected wildlife continue to happ...

Asia Pacific Report, the Auckland-based independent news and analysis website, has been increasingly targeted by Indonesian trolls over the past three months, involving a spate of “letters to the editor” and social media attacks. One of the most frequent letter writers, an “Abel Lekahena”, who claims to be a “student” or “writing on behalf of the p...

The Pacific Media Centre (PMC) completed a challenging year dealing with the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic through several projects, including an international grant for a climate and Covid environmental initiative. Although social distancing ruled out its usual public and industry seminars, staff and students collaborated in several virtual confer...

Parallel with the global spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic, a dangerous ‘disinfodemic’ has been infecting the flow of information worldwide. Communication and media outlets have faced a new challenge with not only being responsible for reportage and analysis of a fast-moving public health emergency—the biggest this century, but forced to sif...

It is possible that future generations will think that BC stands for Before Coronavirus—and possibly that AD stands for After the Donald. All joking aside, here in Aotearoa New Zealand we have been far luckier than most countries, with early and decisive action by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her advisers rapidly bringing the pandemic threat u...

Review iof: Myth of ‘Free Media’ and Fake News in the Post-truth Era, by Kalinga Seneviratne. New Delhi, India: Sage. 2020, 348 pages. ISBN 9789353881276 Mindful Communication for Sustainable Development: Perspectives from Asia, edited by Kalinga Seneviratne. New Delhi, India: Sage: 2018, 353 pages. ISBN 9789352805518 POST-TRUTH? Was there ever r...

While pro-independence Kanak supporters rued another defeat in the second referendum on independence for New Caledonia at the weekend, it was even narrower than the loss two years ago. Now there is a real prospect of a win in 2022. “The path to independence and sovereignty is inevitable,” pledges the Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialist...

A three-year Pacific climate research and storytelling documentary and journalism project has contributed to a disruption and renewal theme in Pacific Island Countries (PIC) development. Focused initially on Fiji, the project has involved three pairs of postgraduate students engaging with climate crisis challenges. Responding originally to the deva...

Parallel with the global spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic, a dangerous ‘disinfodemic’ has been infecting the flow of information worldwide. Communication and media outlets have faced a new challenge with not only being responsible for reportage and analysis of a fast-moving public health emergency – the biggest this century, but forced to s...

Environmental damage, climate change and increasingly intense natural disasters are serious problems faced by humanity in this millennium. More ecological damage occurs due to expensive and destructive human activities. Illegal logging, expansion of mining areas, pollution of water sources, overfishing, trade in protected wildlife continue to happe...

The silence from Facebook is deafening and disturbing. At first, when I lodged my protests earlier this month to Facebook over the immediate removal of a West Papua news item from the International Federation of Journalists shared with three social media outlets, including West Papua Media Alerts and The Pacific Newsroom, I thought it was rogue alg...

Philippine Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists. Manila: Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication and International Media Support. 2019. 45 pages. ISBN 9789718502204 A DECADE after the world’s worst atrocity inflicted on journalists in a single event, a remarkable publishing event happened in Manila that could set a trend in the glob...

The sovereign states of Melanesia are countries where the yoke of colonialism and struggles for independence are still within living memory. There are territories within Melanesia where the questions and complexities associated with achieving self-determination are very much live issues. In West Papua, this issue is one over which blood continues t...

Melanesia, and the microstates of the Pacific generally, face the growing influence of authoritarian and secretive values in the region—projected by both China and Indonesia and with behind-the-scenes manipulation. There is also a growing tendency for Pacific governments to use unconstitutional, bureaucratic or legal tools to silence media and ques...

Prisoner 345: My 2330 days in Guantánamo, by Sami Alhaj. Doha, Qatar: Al Jazeera Media Network, 2019. 126 pages. No ISBN. The Refugee’s Messenger: Lost Stories Retold, edited by Tarek Cherkaoui. Istanbul, Turkey: TRT World Research Centre, 2019. 192 Pages. ISBN 978-605-9984-28-7 A RECENT article in the Middle East Eye pilloried the United States...

The Road: Uprising in West Papua, by John Martinkus. Carlton, Vic: Black Books Inc. 2020. 114 pages. 978-1-760-64242-6 The rugged mountainous highlands of New Guinea stretch from the Owen Stanley range in the east of the independent state of Papua New Guinea through the Star mountains straddling the border with Indonesian-ruled West Papua westward...

As fears grow over vulnerability to the coronavirus in parts of the Pacific, some governments stand accused of sheltering behind tough emergency or lockdown rules to silence criticism. Already, several media freedom watchdogs and the United Nations have condemned countries – including Fiji and Papua New Guinea – for exploiting the crisis. UN High C...

PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY: The jailing of the Jakarta Six – five Papuans and the first Indonesian to be convicted for a Papuan protest – in Indonesia last month has focused global attention on the plight of political prisoners in the face of a failing struggle against the coronavirus pandemic. Already several analysts are warning that both Indonesia a...

A new report from media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has shown that Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific Island countries have slipped in global media freedom rankings. Australia has slipped five places to 26th place with Pacific countries like Papua New Guinea and Tonga also dropping significantly. The coronavirus emergency has left some peop...

PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY: By David Robie, self-isolating in Auckland under New Zealand’s Covid-19 lockdown as part of a Pacific Media Watch series: Against a backdrop of many governments using tough controls under cover of fighting the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic to strengthen “creeping authoritarianism”, a global media freedom watchdog has signall...

PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY: By David Robie, self-isolating in Auckland under New Zealand’s Covid-19 lockdown as part of a Pacific Media Watch series. Donald Trump’s sabre-rattling freeze on funding for the World Health Organisation at a time when many countries are pulling together for a global response to the coronavirus pandemic has surely earned him...

PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY: By David Robie, self-isolating in Auckland under New Zealand’s Covid-19 lockdown as part of a Pacific Media Watch series. A rather beautiful Guåhan legend is rather poignant in these stressed pandemic times. It is one about survival and cooperation. In ancient times, goes the story, a giant fish was eating great chunks out o...

PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY: By David Robie, self-isolating in Auckland under New Zealand’s Covid-19 lockdown as part of a new Pacific Media Watch series. A South African celebrity jingle that has gone viral at the end of this week could easily have been a theme song for New Zealand when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared a lockdown on Monday for mi...

Rappler, the innovative online publisher that has been at the media freedom frontline in the Philippines for the past three years, has challenged President Rodrigo Duterte by taking the executive to the Supreme Court. The news website has called on the court to rule on whether President Duterte – or the state executive branch – has the power to con...

For decades, the feared Ampatuan clan held sway in the impoverished province of Maguindanao in Mindanao in the southern Philippines. Through a ruthless private army and a reported “propensity for beheadings”, the clan cultivated a culture of impunity. Now, however, reports David Robie, a courageous judge has challenged the horror by jailing the mas...

Operating out of a modest three-roomed rooftop suite overlooking the local marketplace in the rice-producing Bicol township of Vinzons, a tiny Filipino community radio startup is quietly making its mark. Radyo Katabang 107.7FM only began broadcasting two years ago out of a studio lined with egg-container acoustic buffers in the Camarines Norte comm...

While preparing this pre-Melanesia Media Freedom Forum (MMFF) conference keynote, I have just returned to the Pacific from four weeks in Iran where media freedom is in dire straits. Iran has been described by the latest Reporters Without Borders global index on press freedom as “one of world’s most repressive countries for journalists for the past...

David Robie, concluding his three-part series about Iran, profiles an extraordinary pair of Tehran brothers who have been pioneering global research adventurers. They have been dubbed the “Persian Indiana Joneses”. Their adventures are fabled and hair-raising, as shown by a Jivaro shrunken human head and relics from curious rituals on display from...

David Robie continues his three-part series about travelling in Iran. I stumbled on the scene by chance. Our host family in Iran’s second city Mashhad, a modern and beautiful metropolis that would comfortably fit in New Zealand’s entire population, was taking us on a drive to the outskirts to visit the tomb of the famous poet and chronicler Abolqas...

Iran attracts an onslaught of negative media in New Zealand and Western media. But is it fair or deserved? David Robie has spent several weeks travelling in the country on sabbatical and finds the media negativity far from the reality of the “most friendly” country he has ever visited in the first of a three-part series. The headlines were chilling...

Constitutional guarantees of free speech and media freedom are well established 'on paper' in most South Pacific nations. How these gurantees are interpreted is constantly a source of tension between policitans, media practicioners and constitutional advocates. Recent attempts by two countries in the region, Fiji and Tonga, to introduce draconian l...

Indonesia’s harsh policies towards West Papua ought to be scrapped. Whatever happened to the brief window of enlightenment ushered in by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo in 2015 with promises of a more “open door” policy towards foreign journalists and human rights groups? They were supposed to be seeing for themselves the reality on the ground. But...

For nine years, the Pacific Media Centre research and publication unit at Auckland University of Technology has published journalism with an ‘activist’ edge to its style of reportage raising issues of social justice in New Zealand’s regional backyard. It has achieved this through partnerships with progressive sections of news media and a nonprofit...

Soldiers Without Guns: An untold story of unsung Kiwi heroes, documentary, 92min. Director Will Watson. Narrated by Lucy Lawless. WHILE a gripping film about the apocalyptic Bougainville war, or more accurately the peace that ended the decade-long conflict, opened in cinemas across New Zealand in April 2019, an island roadshow was taking place bac...

THIS edition of Pacific Journalism Review is a special issue on several fronts in our 25th year. First, it is a double issue—the first in our history. Second, it began production as an ‘unthemed’ issue, partly to catch up with a backlog of accepted peer-reviewed papers that had missed recent themed editions. However, the tragic mosque massacre in t...

Race, Islam and Power: Ethnic and Religious Violence in Post-Suharto Indonesia, by Andreas Harsono. Melbourne: Monash University Publishing. 2019. 288 pages. ISSN 978-1-925835-09-0. THIS PASSIONATE book is something of a cross between an inspired political travelogue, journalistic catalogue of insights into suffering and a cathartic defence of hum...

Indonesia recently hosted a bold public relations window-dressing expo in Auckland presenting itself as a “Pacific” nation while attempting to provide an unconvincing impression of normality in the two Melanesian provinces known collectively as West Papua. Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi hailed “a new era of Pacific partnership – a Pacifi...

The French-ruled territory of New Caledonia, or Kanaky, as Indigenous pro-independence campaigners call their cigar-shaped islands, voted on their political future on 4 November 2018 amid controversy and tension. This was an historic vote on independence in a ‘three-strikes’ scenario in the territory ruled by France since 1853, originally as a pena...

We now live in the age of science and technology. In this age, the senior citizens among us walk around bewildered by these strange electronic gadgets and programs in the hands of the millennials—video games, computers, PSP games, phone apps, mobile phones, tablets, and many others. As we move into this new age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,...