Pressing times

IT was a small paper with a

big voice - jointly winning

the Pacific Islands Media Association freedom award in 1996. But after making a lot of noise over fours years - Cook Islands Press is now silent. Much, no doubt, to the glee of peopie, especially bureaucrats who came under it’s close scrutiny.

The economic crisis in the Cook Islands has taken its toll on the media as well.

Cook Islands Press - closed down early December after four years of crusading against government mismanagement and corruption. Publisher and editor, Jason Brown, is hopeful that some Cook Islanders will believe the Sunday newspaper’s role was important enough to invest in starting it up again.

But with the economy down and the commercial sector closely watching spend ing, some business people feel the only way to go is with another daily. The ailing economy cost the paper up to 500 readers when the population dropped from about 22,000 to 16,000 in three years, says Brown.

Advertising revenue also fell dramati cally with the commercial sector unwilling to spend money, especially on a Sunday when there is no trading in the Cooks.

Brown says unless he can attract finance to establish the paper properly, the “techni cally insolvent” company will go bankrupt.

Cook Islands Press began in the lounge

room of Brown’s bedsitter with $2OOO from the publisher’s late father, Australian artist Mike Brown.

For a year, Brown worked on his own.

Cook Islands Press was unpopular with government and some politicians because it exposed scams - such as the Letters of Guarantee debacle that could have landed the country further into millions of dollars in debt. After over 20 years of government controlled media and politicians and offi cials dictating what should be published, Cook Islands Press led the way with expos es and investigative journalism. “Look where nearly 30 years of silence and back room dealing has got us - millions of dol lars in debt and what most voters see as a deeply corrupt political arena,” says Brown. ■