News

APMN's David Robie talks media challenges, education and decolonisation on Radio 531pi’s Pacific Mornings

PMN Pacific Mornings
A major conference on the state and future of Pacific media has been taking place in Fiji.

Dr David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report and deputy chair of Asia Pacific Media Network, joins Pacific Media Network's #PacificMornings in a live cross to discuss the event and reflect on his work covering Asia-Pacific current affairs and research for more than four decades.

Former Green MP and ‘conscience of the year’ Keith Locke dies, aged 80

OBITUARY:  RNZ News/Asia Pacific Report
Former Green MP Keith Locke, a passionate activist and anti-war critic once described as “conscience of the year”, has died in hospital, aged 80.

Locke was in Parliament from 1999 to 2011, and was known as a human rights and nuclear-free advocate.

His family said he had died peacefully in the early hours this morning after a long illness.

Pictured above: Former Green Party MP…

Newshub closures: creating waves of change across the Pacific

By Alana Musselle of Te Waha Nui
Cook Islands News
, the national newspaper for the Cook Islands, is one of many Pacific news media agencies expecting change in the face of New Zealand’s Newshub closure next month.

The organisation has content-sharing agreements with traditional NZ media organisations including Stuff, New Zealand Herald, RNZ and TVNZ, and is dependent on them for some news relevant to their readers.

Cook Islands News

‘I can’t just stand back’: Kanak pro-independence activist follows mother’s footsteps

By Pretoria Gordon, RNZ News journalist
Jessie Ounei is following in her mother’s footsteps as a Kanak pro-independence activist.

Last Wednesday, Ounei organised a rally outside the French Embassy in Wellington to “shed light on what is happening in New Caledonia“.

She said there was not enough information, and the information that had been reported in mainstream media was skewed.

Pictured above: Kanak activist Jessie Ounei . . . trying…

Liberation for New Caledonia’s Kanak people ‘must come’, says media educator

RNZ Pacific
A New Zealand author, journalist and media educator who has covered the Asia-Pacific region since the 1970s says liberation “must come” for Kanaky/New Caledonia.

Dr David Robie sailed on board Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior until it was bombed by French secret agents in New Zealand in July 1985 and wrote the book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior.

He has also been arrested at gun…

NZ’s first Pinoy Green MP Francisco Hernandez talks climate policy and activism

Asia Pacific Report
Barangay New Zealand’s Rene Molina has interviewed the country’s first Filipino Green MP Francisco Hernandez who was sworn into Parliament on Friday as the party’s latest member.

This is the first interview with Hernandez who replaces former Green Party co-leader James Shaw after his retirement from politics to take up a green investment advisory role.

Hernandez talks about his earlier role as a climate change activist and his role…

TVNZ breached union pact when deciding on programme cuts, ERA rules

RNZ News/PacificMediaWatch
Television New Zealand has breached its collective agreement with the E tū union when deciding on discontinuing programmes, the Employment Relations Authority has ruled.

It was announced in March that 68 staff members who work for news programmes Midday and Tonight, consumer justice programme Fair Go, current affairs programme Sunday, and the youth programme Re: and in-house video content production were affected by redundancy.

Last month, the company confirmed…

'Quite emotional' - 1News' Barbara Dreaver receives ONZM honour

1News Reporters
Television New Zealand Pacific Correspondent Barbara Dreaver has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to investigative journalism and Pacific communities in a ceremony at Government House today.

She has been the Pacific Correspondent for 1News since 2002, breaking many stories uncovering social and economic issues affecting Pacific people living in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.

Her investigative journalism has exposed major fraud…

Pacific journalists are world’s ‘eyes and ears’ on climate crisis, says EU envoy

By Kaneta Naimatu in Suva
Journalists in the Pacific region play an important role as the “eyes and ears on the ground” when it comes to reporting the climate crisis, says the European Union’s Pacific Ambassador Barbara Plinkert.

Speaking at The University of the South Pacific (USP) on World Press Freedom Day last Friday, Plinkert said this year’s theme, “A Press for the Planet: Journalism in the face of the environmental crisis,”

Samoa’s TV3 closes channel and goes fully online streaming

RNZ Pacific
In a first of its kind in Samoa, Apia Broadcasting channel TV3 is moving its station completely to online streaming because it can no longer afford to broadcast traditionally.

The station had its final broadcast last week on Samoa’s digital television platform.
General manager Michael Aisea said Samoa was a small market with many players.
“To run a TV station you…

Israeli ban on Al Jazeera slammed as a ‘criminal and dangerous’ decision

Asia Pacific Report
Haggai Matar, executive director of the independent +972 Magazine, has described the Tel Aviv government’s decision to shut down Al Jazeera in Israel as “an attack on free speech and freedom of the press”.

The Israeli journalist told Al Jazeera the ban on the global network was “clearly a criminal and very dangerous decision”.

He described the move as an attack on Israel itself because it denies the…

NZ slumps to 19th as RSF says press freedom threatened by global decline

Pacific Media Watch
New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders 2024 World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3.

This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its usual place in the top 10.

However, New Zealand is still the Asia-Pacific region’s leader in a part of the world…

'If not journalists, then who?' NZ's Koi Tū media future paper


Koi Tū
New Zealand cannot sit back and see the collapse of its Fourth Estate, the director of Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures, Sir Peter Gluckman, says in the foreword of a paper published today.
 
The paper, “If not journalists, then who?” paints a picture of an industry facing existential threats and held back by institutional underpinnings that are beyond the point where they are merely outdated. 

It…

Biden hails ‘press freedom, democracy’ but ignores Gaza media death toll of 142

Pacific Media Watch
US President Joe Biden has spoken at the annual White House Correspondents’ dinner in Washington in spite of protests over alleged “complicity” of media about Israel’s war on Gaza, offering a toast to “press freedom and democracy” but ignoring the death toll of Palestinian journalists.

Demonstrators targeted the Washington Hilton hotel which hosted the dinner, denouncing the Biden administration’s handling of the war and urging guests — especially media…

200 journalists ‘targeted’ over their environment reporting, warns RSF


Pacific Media Watch
Journalists who report on environmental issues are encountering growing difficulties in many parts of the world, reports Reporters Without Borders.

According to the tally kept by RSF, 200 journalists have been subjected to threats and physical violence, including murder, in the past 10 years because they were working on stories linked to the environment.

Twenty four were murdered in Latin America and Asia — including the Pacific, which…

NZ’s Media Minister Melissa Lee demoted after Newshub crisis

RNZ News
Melissa Lee has been ousted from New Zealand’s coalition cabinet and stripped of the Media portfolio, and Penny Simmonds has lost the Disability Issues portfolio in a reshuffle.

Climate Change and Revenue Minister Simon Watts will take Lee’s spot in cabinet.

Simmonds was a minister outside of cabinet.

Pictured: Melissa Lee . . . under pressure after Warner Bros Discovery announced it would stop producing local news in New Zealand…

Australia’s social cohesion under strain, challenges and solutions

Pacific Media Watch
Australians are being urged to stay united following the horrific events in Sydney last week, reports the ABC’s Saturday Extra programme.

Five women and one man were killed in a mass stabbing at Bondi Junction last Saturday by a man with a history of mental illness, and a nine-month-old baby baby was among the eight people wounded.

The attacker was shot by a police officer and died at the…

Gavin Ellis reflects on the state of NZ media at APMN's AGM

Asia Pacific Media Network
Media analyst and commentator Dr Gavin Ellis, who is also an honorary research fellow of Koi Tū : The Centre for Informed Futures at the University of Auckland, has reflected on how he sees the state of New Zealand media in the wake of last week' devastating cuts of Newshub and slashed editorial staff at Television New Zealand. 

Speaking at today's third annual general meeting of the…

NZ media: All Newshub operations to be shut down, 250 jobs to go

RNZ News
All of Newshub operations — part of New Zealand’s second largest television news network channel Three — are to be shut down and 250 people will lose their jobs. The shutdown includes the company’s website, Warner Bros Discovery announced today.

The last 6pm news bulletin will air on July 5.

Warner Bros Discovery said talks were ongoing with third parties to provide a pared-back news service — such as a…

New research report shows major drop in media trust in New Zealand

Pacific Media Watch
Just a third of New Zealanders now say they trust the news. That is the major finding of Auckland University of Technology’s research centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD) fifth annual Trust in News in Aotearoa New Zealand report, reports RNZ News.

Trust in news in general fell from 42 percent last year to 33 percent in this year’s report — but it is a whopping 20…