(o) Outsider's Media Freedom Report

The main reason given for the extension of the Emergency Regulations was a purportedly irresponsible Fiji press. Calm was said to be need after the Abrogation of the 1997 Constitution, and a "free" press would not help this process.

Did the Government have reason for concern? For the past 12 months the Fiji media has published reports by a string of outside observers (e.g., the International Bar Association, the US world report on human rights, and the International Jurists) without informing its readers of the full identity and credentials of these observers. Readers were left assuming they were qualified, informed, objective and unbiased, even though their sources came exclusively from opponents to the then Interim Government.

The latest report, on media freedom, by Freedom House ranked Fiji 85th out of a total of 195 countries, Tonga 73rd and Timor Leste 78th. They were classified, together with one-third of the countries reviewed, as "partly free". The other 12 Pacific Island nations in the report were "free". New Zealand and Palau were 11th, Marshall Islands 21th, Federated States of Micronesia 33rd, Australia 38th, Vanuatu 43rd, Papua New Guinea and Tuvalu 53rd, Kiribati 59th, Nauru 60th, Samoa 63rd and Solomon Islands 66th.) Fiji's media freedom was reported to have suffered from “official pressure”, the deportation of two foreign national publishers and the Fiji Times being held in contempt for publishing “unflattering letters about three judges” (the High Court judges who ruled the President's action in appointing the Interim Government legal. Not the Appeal Court judges who found otherwise. They escaped censure!)

Many such international comparisons are often pretty meaningless, because we are seldom told the measures by which each country is measured (some things are just not comparable or measurable, and may be culturally or contextually specific) but we do at least in this case know who did the measuring. Freedom House is an "independent, non-profit organization" (aren't they all?). It styles itself as "a strong voice for a U.S. foreign policy that places the promotion of democracy at the forefront." It is "bipartisan", favouring neither US Democrats or Republicans; it condemned the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan but not the US invasion of Iraq.

So, you can take whatever you like from its Fiji assessment: only 85th (worse than last year, and likely to be judged worse now), or only 85th, in the top half (44%) of the "freer" press. I doubt its political and cultural credential, but I have little doubt that its primary Fiji sources were the Fiji Times and the Fiji Media Council.

My thanks to Pacific Media Centre and Josephine Latu for the report but I should not need to have checked the credentials and credibility of its source.