Fit To Print

Press standards in the region are threatened by growing

government intervention.

By Danielle Robinson

THE EDITORIAL independence and sophistication of publications in the South Pacific are as diverse as the region’s economic and social devel opment: local publications can be as un ashamedly domestic as the Tuvalu Echoes, which carries the 1987 livestock and poul try census as front-page news, or as sophisticated as Papua New Guinea’s big gest-selling daily, the Post-Courier.

They can be as outspoken as Papua New Guinea’s The Times, which unas hamedly plasters the faces of MPs who “fail to perform” on its front page, or as apolitical as the community-oriented Nor folk Islander. According to academics and editors who have worked in the region, the difficulties facing the press are complex and so ingrained that there is little pros pect of rapid change not least because consumers are by and large, receiving the coverage they want from their press.

There is a surprisingly large number of publications in the region, from regular dailies of varying sophisticiation to ran domly printed weeklies, bi-monthlies and small news-sheets.

But only a handful can afford or at tempt the publication standards of the Australian or American papers, and ex cluding the French Pacific region, sophis ticated dailies are confined to Papua New Guinea and Fiji.

Western Samoa and the Cook Islands print regular newspapers, but their facili ties (and, of course, their potential audi ence) cannot be compared with anything in more populous PNG or Fiji.

The coups in Fiji last year forced the closure of its most outspoken newspaper, the Fiji Sun: its remaining newspaper, the Fiji Times, agreed to a policy of “self-cen sorship” of potentially divisive stories solely, as editor Vijendra Kumar has said, in order to continue to provide coverage of international and domestic events to Fiji’s news-starved public. There have lately been signs of an easing of censorship in Fiji, and more open critical comment on the state of the economy is beginning to creep back; but politically sensitive sub jects must perforce wait for easier times to be addressed in full.

Mr Philip Harkness, publisher of the Fiji Sun, is presently trying to sell the pa per to local interests, but doubts it will re turn to its former outspoken ways in the near future. He believes that once some thing like freedom of the press is beaten down, it is doubly hard to ever return to the same level.

In PNG, contentious new media laws

aimed at diluting foreign control are threatening editorial freedom, and the ex isting media has recently come under at tack from the government for its outspokenness: PNG Post-Courier editor Luke Sela has even been threatened with charges of sedition.

The general manager of the Papua New Guinea Post Courier , Mr Don Kennedy, responded to the proposed bill with a statement that is typical of the opposition it has inspired: “This is the sort of legis lation you would expect to find under a dictatorship, not in a democratic country such as PNG.

“Despite Government assurances that freedom of the press would not be inter fered with, such a proposal provides a mechanism by which the control of the Press can be implemented.”

The French Pacific territories have well established newspapers and magazines such as Les Nouvelles Caledoniennes and La Depeche de Tahiti, though they are un derstandably supportive of their governments.

The bulk of the South Pacific must li kewise rely on small local publications which, if not government offshoots, are usually dependent on official support.

Mr Harkness pointed out that the def inition of freedom of the press differs markedly in Australia and America from what exists in the South Pacific region.

“You’ll find most South Pacific publica tions will lean toward the Singaporean model, which is far less aggressive than in Australia,” he says.

The social conservatism of the South Pacific acts to restrict freedom of the press, according to Professor Grant McCall of the University of New South Wales. “The smaller publications have to operate un der a kind of self-censorship so they don’t offend the chiefs, for example, or offend the church: the missionary movement has been very strong in the region,” he says.

Apart from the political and social problems facing newspapers, there are practical problems choking the growth of the press sheer economic disadvantage is enough to prevent commercial publish ers expanding into the region. “If there is no economic growth there is no market for the goods companies would want to ad vertise in the papers,” says the University of Sydney’s Dr John Connell.

“I am not very confident that the press will become any more open than it is at present. The role of the press is really in its infancy, and whether it grows to be an adolescent remains to be seen.” □