"SUVA (Radio NZ International Online/Pacific Media Watch): The Fiji government is in the process of finalising a piece of legislation which it says will effectively control irresponsible reporting by the country’s media." Full story.
All I can say to this is -- codswallop!*
Since 2006, and on at least two occasions earlier when the Bavadra (1986-7) and Chaudhry(1999-2000) coalition governments were in power, the Fiji Times was supportive of very irresponsible journalism. Since 2006 their idea of "all sides" was to cite four or more anti-Government sides to one Government side on each issue. And they rarely, if ever, "armed" the people of Fiji with "as much information as possible."
Their information was selective, lacking in investigative depth, and invariably biased. If any one media source is responsible for the present restrictions on media freedom, it is the Fiji Times. Anne, you can still rescue your paper but not by trying to score another "political point" (for that is what your statement is) under the guise of innocent reasonableness.
Photo: Fiji Times.
* An old English word meaning "nonsense." I refrained from using a less polite term.
4 comments:
Let the fiji times squirm and churn. The damage they have done to Fiji and so to us all is incalculable. All who sailed in the fiji times or were associated with it, their fatally incompetent, racist and political-activist editor, their board of directors, their lack of an ethos and proper appreciation of their role in a multi-ethnic, small island nation. What were they thinking of? Where did they think they were coming from in the first decade of the 21st century? Take heed too late of David Selbourne and what he says in his work 'The Principle of Duty': "a revised emphasis upon, and reinforcement of, the principle of duty has been made necessary....by the increasing failure of citizens voluntarily to observe the principle of duty in their relations with their fellows, and therefore to sustain the civic bond". (An Essay on the Foundations of the Civic Order 1994). A.C. Grayling in the Financial Times believes this work is the "the most comprehensive theory of civic society written in English since Locke and that it "stakes out the ground of a new politics and ethics founded not upon rights but upon duties: the duties of citizens (and newspapers?)to society and of society to the citizen.
The work has recently been republished in October 2009: a timely event.
Anne Fussell is a disgrace, using the cover of media freedom to justify presiding over a newspaper whose standards have been steadily eroded over the years. Her latest statement is self-serving nonsense. The Fiji Times has never "covered all sides" of any story, least of all the tumultuous events that have brought Fiji to its current sorry state. Pick up any issue of the Fiji Times and what assails your eyes and insults your intellect is a standard of journalism no better than the poorest undergraduate rag. And to add insult to injury, its editor, Netani Rika, poses as some kind of journalistic crusader, ludicrously casting himself and his paper as somehow representative of ordinary people suffering under the yoke of dictatorship. Instead of dragging Rika into line as she should, Fussell assists Rika in his fantasy and drives the Fiji Times further and further into the margins of national life. No one likes to see government intruding into the affairs of the media but these two deluded poseurs have brought the impending calamity of permanent censorship on themselves. The Fiji Times no longer represents the aspirations of ordinary people but the undergraduate persecution fantasies of journalists who've long ago lost the plot. By forgetting that the story's the thing and that their readers are more important than they are, they've condemned themselves to the worst fate of any media outlet - irrelevance.
About time - the same thing has happened with the Banking and Finance markets globally. Left without sufficient Govt regulation these industries created the 2nd worst Global recession in history due to their personal greed. The US and other Govt throughtout the world have had to bail them out. The free market has realised that a level of regulation is required.
The point is that there are laws and regulation that is also required for the media. In Fiji the Fiji Times has a far greater influence on the nation than the papers in larger countries which have opposing media to put forward another view. Rubert Madock started Fox News to put forward a Conservative spin on news in the US. Fiji Times has been putting forward a one sided view for far too long.
Bravo, Croz, for calling the FT's bluff. But I do think you owe it to us to always call a spade a spade and BS, well, BS when you see it. I know it's not in the nature of a refined and scholarly gentleman such as yourself to be so crude. But I suggest that the current state of the Fiji Times warrants the most extreme censure. If draconian media laws are introduced in the New Year, as the AG seems to be indicating, there's only one media outlet to blame. So, far from being a beacon of truth, as the Fiji Times purports to be, it's actually handed the regime the excuse it needs to keep us all in the dark and feed us BS. ( I haven't spelt it out in deference to you as a true beacon of truth amid all the...)
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