readers held the key to early media success · auckland university press, 2013. 287pp. isbn...

290 PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 19 (1) 2013

MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFIC

ReviewsDR ALLISON OOSTERMAN is associate editor and reviews editor on Pacific Journalism Review.

Readers held the key to early media success

Extra! Extra! How the people made the news, by David Hastings, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2013. 287pp. ISBN 9781869407384 (pbk)

IT HAS been many years since an author has produced a New Zea-land press history that has so reso-lutely taken to task previous research in this field. But David Hastings has done this with his new book on the early newspaper scene in Auckland, Extra! Extra! How the people made the news.

Journalist and author Hastings has refuted earlier arguments by historians, such as Patrick Day, that newspapers were instruments of social control ‘devised by the ruling elite for the dual purpose of making money and exercising power through their influence on public opinion’. Rather, says Hastings, newspapers

were ‘shaped by their communities and were constantly having to ad-just as social interests and standards changed’ (p. 3).

A paper’s success or failure ‘de-pended on its ability to provide news that interested its readers’. Hastings questions the standard narrative of the ‘corrupted ideal’ proposed by Day that early papers up to the 1860s were political and reliant on political pa-tronage but then became commercial enterprises. With his detailed investi-gations of the early Auckland news-papers, in particular New Zealander, Southern Cross, The New Zealand Herald and Auckland Evening Star, Hastings contends that news was not

PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 19 (1) 2013 291


researched. It is notable that even as a Herald journalist Hastings has not used, or been able to use, any minute books, letter books, wage books, or other 19th century company records from his employer.

Nobody seems to know where any of these records are, whether it is for the Herald or for the Star. Repeated attempts by this writer to discover what old records have been preserved have come to nought.

Sadly this is a similar story around the country, except for per-haps, Dunedin, where some of the early Otago Daily Times records have been deposited in the Hocken Library. Hastings would not have been able to do such a good job on the early Auckland newspaper scene if it hadn’t been for the personal manuscripts of some of the major figures such as Henry Brett, David Burn, Thomson Leys et al.

Some of the ‘standard narra-tives’ that Hastings has contested in his book include the idea that papers were started solely for politi-cal purposes, that they had no inter-est in covering local news, that the establishment of the national press agency, the UPA, lead to a uniformity of news coverage and that there was no clash of ideas because newspapers served the interests of the ruling elite (p. 9). It was never that simple, says

invented by commercialism but was the discovery that certain topics had always been interesting to readers and had commercial value when ‘pack-aged, printed and sold’. He is talking about such topics as crime, disasters and other extraordinary events (p. 6).

Hastings has concentrated his research on the ‘newspaper wars’ in Auckland in the 19th century and aims to ‘explain what forces and influ-ences made the four papers what they were’ (p. 8).

‘The narrative that emerges calls into question some of the standard assumptions, generalisations and half-truths that have been recycled through the admittedly limited historiography on the subject,’ he says (p. 9). Dutch historiographer Frank Ankersmit as long ago as 1997 lamented the overproduction of histories on every conceivable subject such that it was almost impossible for a reader to obtain a comprehensive view (An-kersmit, 1997, p. 277).

As Hastings notes, this is not the case for New Zealand’s press history where scholarship in the field is rather limited, although Redmer Yska’s Truth, in 2010, was a welcome ad-dition. Considering the lack of inter-est shown by many of the country’s newspapers in conserving their valu-able historical records and documents it is not surprising the field is under-



Hastings. Newspapers fought their battles and the prize was profit and a say in politics, but readers were the key to success or failure (p. 10).

Having laid out his argument in the introduction, Hastings then sets about proving it with his detailed and fascinating research into the early newspaper battles in Auckland start-ing with the birth of the New Zealand-er, which lasted for a little more than 20 years, and locked in a fierce battle with the Southern Cross, founded in 1843. It was this battle between these papers that Hastings claims revealed much about the ‘intense commercial and political pressures that all news-papers came under as well as the over-riding importance of reader interests in deciding the victor’ (p. 14).

He moves on to the impact of The New Zealand Herald and the rise of the Auckland Evening Star as its major competitor.

The histories of these papers would be nothing without the men who ran or wrote for them and Hast-ings paints a lively picture of the men of the early Auckland press. From John Williamson to Henry Brett, Hugh Carleton to Thomson Leys, Joseph Wilson to William Berry, these men fought the battle for readership, sometimes succeeding and in the case of the New Zealander and Southern Cross, eventually failing. None of the

successful editors, claims Hastings, lost sight of the golden rule—that the ‘readers held the key to victory in the newspaper wars and what they wanted most of all was news’ (p. 251).

Extra! Extra! is an important book, and not before time. This is a scholarly, well researched and emi-nently readable book of interest to the wider public as much as to academics studying in this field. It might be the spur for others to research and write about other notable New Zealand newspapers.

However, unless the historical documents are available, such as dia-ries and personal papers that families have donated to research libraries, I fear the mysterious disappearance of press records will stymie any attempt.

ReferencesAnkersmit, F. R. (1997). In Jenkins, K.

(Ed.), The postmodern history reader. London: Routledge, p. 277.

Yska, R. (2010). Truth: The rise and fall of the people’s paper. Nelson: Craig Potton Publishing.


MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFICProfessor JUDY McGREGOR is head of the School of Social Sciences at AUT University and a former newspaper editor.

Meticulous study of early colonial infanticide

Women, Infanticide and the Press,1822-1922: News narratives in England and Australia, by Nicola Goc. Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2013. 203pp, ISBN 9781409406044 (pbk)

EVERY ONCE in a while an academic researcher will pri-vately concede they would like to have written the book they have reviewed. Count me in that cate-gory. Nicola Goc’s examination of news narratives of infanticide from 1822-1922 in Britain and Australia reveals painstaking scholarship. It yields insights into the primacy of crime news, the ideology of infan-ticide news discourse, the privileg-ing of medical and legal voices in courtroom reportage, and the per-sonification of infanticide women as maternal deviants, mad women or as celebrity subjects of newspaper campaigning.

That said, this is not an easy book to read, but more of that later.

The author begins by asking: ‘How do you make sense of such a brutal act?’ (p. 1). She structures her book against personal narratives in news discourse, many taken from the national English newspaper The Times, of acts committed during 1822-1833 variously described as ‘in-human atrocity’, ‘child murder’ and ‘shocking infanticide’. She examines in some depth the impact of the 1834 New Poor Law with its pernicious bastardy clause and what she terms, with a passing nod to Stanley Cohen, the 1860s maternal panic.



The next section of Goc’s book is, in my opinion, the most original sec-tion, examining infanticide in the Van Diemen’s Land Press and what was known as ‘bush madness’. The case of Mary McLauchlan, a convict publicly executed after an unjust judicial deci-sion for the alleged strangulation of her male child, is a searing indictment of a patriarchal penal society.

While Mary had revealed the name of the child’s father before she went to the gallows, she was dis-suaded from publicly denouncing the immoral colonial ‘seducer’ or maybe rapist. He saved his reputation despite widespread elite knowledge of his identity that was aided and abetted by the press, while Mary lost her life.

Equally as compelling, through the textual analysis that Goc provides, is the story of Sarah Masters, not the least because the town of Masterton in New Zealand is named after her former husband, Joseph, who later left Tasmania for New Zealand where he become a respected pioneer. The case of Harriet Lovell, who may have killed her four children, is another graphic and powerful exploration through news texts of the harshness of mothering in the Australian outback.

Goc uses critical discourse analy-sis to elicit meaning from the his-torical news texts she has examined and relies on John E. Richardson’s

methodology because it allows for an interpretation of the meanings of text rather than mere quantification of textual features and the derivation of meaning from this numbering. Noth-ing wrong with this.

The author states that critical discourse analysis follows on from Michel Foucault’s ground-breaking discourse analysis work relating to knowledge and power. The author is very attracted to Foucault’s notion of ‘society of blood’ ( in fact ‘society of blood’ is mentioned at least seven times in the book) where power was rooted in ‘blood relation’ to examine infanticide women who threatened the domestic ideal of womanhood and who were seen as a direct threat to the family.

At one level, Foucault is a strange choice as an over-arching perspective. Goc herself states,

It may seem more than a little strange that this study looks to Foucault for an understanding of infanticide and infanticide press discourse when in Foucault’s work on power, language and knowledge he not only largely ignores the female subject, but is also silent on news journalism and the power of the press discourse (apart from a brief mention of sensational 18th-century broadsides) (p. 7).

Given criticism of Foucault by femi-nists and his omission in journalism



seven examples of collocations, the coupling of proximate words) seri-ously alter the flow of the narrative for the reader at various points in the structure of the book. The power and potency of the selected portions of texts used by Goc have a meaning, a resonance, and an ideology in their own right. It often pays to trust the intelligence of the reader who is as complicit in their own interpretations, as is the author.

That quibble aside, this is a meticulous book of the infanticidal actions of young women in England and Australia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It demonstrates their desperation, their resistance, and in some cases their deaths against the social, political and legislative history of the day as reported by the press. This book will have particular appeal for crime news researchers, for those interested in the lives and stories of women, and for fans of Foucault.

studies on the basis of perceived dif-ficulty, the author’s choice of theo-retical framework is brave.

However, it is not so much Fou-cault’s theories that make this book difficult to read, but the over-egging of him in the pudding as the dominant (domineering?) theoretical frame-work. As an example of this over-egging, Goc describes the coverage of Harriet Lovell’s trial verdict by reference to the ‘bold and capitalised descending headlines’ (p. 137):

MOUNTAIN RIVER TRAGEDY.Mrs Lovell Charged with Murder.Question of Insanity Raised.Found Not Accountable for Her Actions. (Mercury, 24 July 1912, p.2)

Readers get the nuances instantly as they read these descending headlines as cryptic, one-sentence, news sto-ries. But in case we didn’t, Goc la-bours the point with more Foucault:

The headlines provided readers with ‘the crime, its punishment and its memory’ (Foucault 2008b, p. 90) in four lines, assuring readers that the judicial system and medicine had ‘dealt’ with the maternal aberration that was Harriet Lovell’ (p 137).

The constant and continuing ref-erence to Foucault’s canon of work, and other stylistic repetitions in the book (for example, did we need


MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN THE PACIFICEDGAR MASON is a media commentator and academic.

Solid grounding on race in sport issues

Race, Racism and Sports Journal-ism, by Neil Farrington, Daniel Kilv-ington, John Price and Amir Saeed. London and New York: Routledge, 2012. 172 pp. ISBN: 9780415676403 (pbk)

THIS SLIM volume is in the Routledge tradition of highly current but also academically repu-table overviews of important media studies and political issues. Overall it lives up to expectations as a use-ful guide to theory. Recent racial is-sues in European sport, particularly football, have highlighted the need to think more deeply about the prob-lem and overcome the widely-held notion that racism is somehow now behind us.

The authors cover a number of particularly British concerns for sports journalism and race in the wider UK society. The University of Sunderland offers a strong concentra-tion in sports journalism with empha-sis on racial issues so it is appropriate all four writers are academics at that institution.

The overview of the issues in British race relations and the early chapter on theory are particularly helpful for a sound undergraduate grounding. It may be, however, that non-British students and scholars find the examples used a rather patchy compilation. For example the chapters on football and cricket tend to meander into issues of immigrant and non-immigrant sportsmen (sic) and lose focus on the overall issues of race in sports journalism.

Surprisingly rugby union and rugby league do not feature at all apart from a brief mention of Māori not featuring in New Zealand cricket. Given the number of Polynesians



and Māori plying their football trade in British and French rugby of both codes, and the arrival of featured North African and sub-Saharan play-ers in French rugby and soccer, this is an oversight which could have been rectified to make the book more comprehensive.

Women sportspeople do not fea-ture except in the complicated case of South African runner Caster Semenya who faced the double indignity of questions about both her race and gender. Surely women of colour in sport have to contend with these is-sues throughout their athletic careers.

One of the most influential think-ers on race issues is Frantz Fanon. The authors are particularly interested in his idea that black people, in this case athletes, have to put on a ‘mask of whiteness’ in order to fit into the dominant white society. This was particularly true in Fanon’s Carib-bean during colonial times and many scholars have tried to apply the theory to post-colonial and migrant people in the UK and elsewhere. The complica-tions these peoples face include the complexities of social class in socie-ties which feature upward mobility as a social good.

An athlete who becomes a profes-sional in a featured UK sport such as football or cricket may be accused of leaving his people behind. The

authors grapple with this issue in the case of black Formula 1 star Lewis Hamilton. We must ask ourselves as the authors do; Is Hamilton black, half black, middle class, a role model or all of the above? Sports journalists routinely have to make professional decisions along these lines when re-porting Hamilton and his sport.

The authors argue persuasively that the press guidelines as they cur-rently exist in the UK do not provide adequate guidance. Journalists need the angles to sell their stories both to editors and audiences. Race is often seen as the angle most in tune with reader/viewer perceptions.

They also argue with good reason that reporters write within the context of popular views of race which may run contrary to sociological and in-deed biological thinking on race. Race is a social rather than a biological construct yet many people subscribe to myths which can be demonstrated as untrue. Black Africans are often framed as unbeatably fast—does this make them achievers in a white world or simply racially superior in a nar-row, racially-defined way? Based on the myth some have even argued that people of African descent don’t even have to train hard to win!

When white French runner Chris-tophe Lemaitre broke the 10s mark for the 100 metres, he was labelled



‘White Lightning’ and sports reports routinely emphasised his colour. Is this racist? Is his colour critical to news stories about his achievement? The UK guidelines require that race not be featured unless it is critical to the news story being reported. Media people could argue that Lemaitre’s race or colour are essential to the news of this event. We could argue that the mythology of black superiority in sprints has created the need for the story to be framed racially.

The authors are attentive to the is-sue of diversity in the sports reporter’s newsroom. Few Asian and black students choose sports journalism perhaps because they feel they won’t fit in to the dominant culture. New Zealand has had to think about this issue as well. Few women and fewer Māori and Pasifika choose sports reporting as a career.

For all the decline in job pros-pects and the relatively weak pay structure this is still an issue for bal-anced reporting and wider community interests being covered. Are talented women and minorities choosing law, accountancy and medicine? Perhaps we need to know.

Overall this book is a useful guide to theory and to a British view of current race issues in reporting. This currency will make most of the chapters dated very quickly.

Another weakness for Pacific and New Zealand students is the lack of helpful American examples. The US has strengthened its support for mi-norities in a number of both federal and corporate initiatives such as the NFL’s ‘Rooney Rule’ requiring that minority candidates be shortlisted for head coaching jobs. Federal funding requirements for university sports have emphasised and enforced gen-der equity in particular. This resulted from new court interpretations of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

This publication is a fitting ad-dition to a well-stocked journalism library.



acting tensions between journalists and the power structures they work alongside and within.

In the chapter on the Solomon Islands, the IFJ report notes that the wantok system protects its media members but it also puts a risk factor on their independence, as an ethnic group may also exert pressure to hamper or compromise a journalist’s ability to report fairly. The Deputy Prime Minister of the Solomon Is-lands talks about media freedom but Dorothy Wickham, a senior journalist with more than 20 years experience of radio, TV, print and a freelancer for overseas media says she has been sexually and verbally harassed by politicians and had her personal

PAT CRADDOCK is a New Zealand-based global media educator and consultant.

Pacific journalists and frontline freedom

Pacific Media Freedom 2011: A status report, by Alex Perrottet and David Robie. Auckland: Pacific Media Centre and Pacific Media Watch. 2011, 44pp. ISBN 978-1-927184-06-6 Fragile freedom: Inaugural Pacific press freedom report, by various contributors. Sydney: Asia-Pacific office of International Federation of Journalists, 2012, xx pp. No ISBN

TWELVE countries feature in the new Fragile Freedom, Inaugu-ral Pacific press freedom report, a publication concerned with strength-ening press freedom and the rights of media workers in the Pacific. When read alongside a monograph from the Pacific Media Centre, Pa-cific Media Freedom 2011: A status report, published the previous year as the region’s first media freedom dossier (and republished as a mono-graph in May 2012), these two docu-ments shed insight into the inter-



vehicle burnt in front of her house. Lisa Williams-Lahari, a found-

ing member of the Pacific Freedom Forum and Pacific coordinator for the IFJ Media for Democracy and Human Rights in the Pacific project nails key factors that threaten journalism. Poor pay and lack of decent working condi-tions play their part and some ethical breaches which occur are often linked to a lack of senior journalists and a weak editorial frontline.

Readers may see a confirmation of her views in the debacle facing The Fiji Times over its publication of stories in 2011-2012 that landed it in court on charges of contempt of court with a fine being sought of

F$500,000 and a six-month impri- sonment term for the editor-in-chief. In mitigation, lawyers for The Fiji Times argue that the publication was the result of errors in the newsroom. It appears that the editor was away, the job was given to someone else who gave it to someone else and the error occurred.

The PMC and Pacific Media Watch freedom monograph by Alex Perrottet and Dr David Robie includes a two-page matrix chart with head-ings for killings, abductions, assaults, formal censorship, police arrests etc. (Robie is also interviewed at length in a new half-hour IFJ-funded Media Freedom in the Pacific report for television produced by the University of the South Pacific (Pollock, 2012). It is clear that West Papuan journalists face more dangers than any other Pacific journalists with two killings, five abductions, eight assaults and two police arrests during the March 2010-2011 year. The situation has been bad ever since.

Foreign journalists are unwel-come. Only three journalists accom-panied by ‘minders’ were allowed into West Papua during 2011. The authors of the monograph conclude that the situation for journalists is not likely to change in West Papua while the international community remains inactive on media safety and there is



impunity for the security forces on media abuses.

Papua New Guinea has the lar- gest number of people working in the media industry in the South Pacific region, but it is dogged by a poor salary structure, lack of direction from managers that compromise the quality of journalism, plus a bubbling brew of violence and intimidation. At a Media Rights Workshop held in Port Moresby in 2011, journalists said that police in search of a reporter stormed the newsroom of The Sunday Chronicle. They entered the premises and threatened staff, but that story was not reported.

Vanuatu Daily Post Publisher Marc Neil-Jones faced intimidation and threats in 2011 when his office and person were attacked. The minis-ter involved faced charges of inciting, abetting assault and unlawful assem-bly. The case ended with the minister pleading guilty to aiding and abetting and paying a small fine of US$162.

Compare this to the fine of US$116,000 given in legal costs and damages to Prime Minister Derek Sikua of the Solomon Islands and his secretary and the fines and jail sentences that may be imposed on journalists, editors and publishers in Fiji for their breaching of content regulations.

Not examined in Fragile Free-

dom or the Pacific Media Freedom 2011 is the limitation of internet ac-cess to the public. Nice words are said about social media and new media platforms turning information gate-keeping on its head.

I don’t accept this view. There is a 7.6 percent usage of the internet in Vanuatu. Solomon Islands has 3.4 per cent. Timor-Leste has 0.2 per cent. Even a large Pacific country like Fiji can only claim internet access for 16.6 percent of the population.

How much of this internet cover-age is urban and how much is rural? In a number of villages there is no electricity. Internet access in several countries is also expensive compared to the average worker income.

The real benefits of the limited internet access in many Pacific coun-tries go to the media who talk with the outside world and with other broadcasters. Government and com-mercial businesses are the other main beneficiaries.

The chapter on Samoa in Fra- gile Freedom raises questions. What impact does the media have on the potential audience of under 200,000 people that is exposed to 18 radio and television outlets and several news-papers? Who benefits in Samoa from an internet audience of 4.7 percent?

A Code of Ethics with the power ful acronym of JAWS guides the



Samoa media industry. There are calls to review part of the code where journalism conflicts with the cultural content of accepting traditional gifts. There is no clear consensus among the media on whether these gift tokens qualify as sua or, according to the code, as bribery. Some leading jour-nalists argue that sua is part of their culture, but for the Samoa Observer newspaper, the policy is clear. Accept no gifts.

I expect Fragile Freedom to ap-pear each year, applaud its work, and I hope Pacific Journalism Review sees it way to publish another PMC monograph on Pacific media freedom next year. Both appearing at the same time would be a bonus.

ReferencePollock, D. (2012). Media freedom in the

Pacific. Director. [Video documen-tary]: Suva: International Federation of Journalists and the University of the South Pacific. 26min. Avail-able online at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLANV10xm5M

DREADLOCKS:OCEAN, ISLAND

AND SKIESSPECIAL EDITION

Pacific Studies | Vol 6/7 |ISBN 978-1-927184-02-8March 2012 , RRP: $35Published by: Pacific Writing Forum and the University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji; Pacific Media Centre (AUT University), Auckland PACIFIC MEDIA CENTREAUT UNIVERSITYOrder from Little Island Pressand bookshopslittleisland.co.nz

Edited by Mohit Prasad This special edition of the literary journal Dreadlocks incorporates proceedings

from Oceans, Islands and Skies - Oceanic Conference on Creativity and Climate

Change. The conference highlighted the role of writers, artists and the media in

environmental challenges in the Pacific. The conference was held from 13-17

September 2010 at the Laucala Campus of the University of the South Pacific

in Suva.



Jon Stephenson. He tells us, on the way to an interview, about the risk of attack from insurgents. There is jerky in-car footage, no doubt meant to suggest imminent danger, brack-eted by shots of ute-riding men with Kalashnikovs and RPGs.

Cut to a sinister humming sound-track, burnt-out Russian tanks, the inhospitable grandeur of the Afghan countryside. All very Lawrence of Arabia, beautifully shot, romantic, pretty to watch.

The main theme, it eventually emerges, is the lack of serious media scrutiny of New Zealand’s role, both in the so-called provincial reconstruc-tion team in Bamiyan province, and as special forces SAS. Stephenson is portrayed as a lone figure, virtually the only person to defy warnings

JAMES HOLLINGS is a senior lecturer in global journalism at Massey University.

Shameful exposé of Afghan war but not enough media grunt

H e To k i H u n a ( T h e H i d d e n Adze): New Zealand in Afghani-stan. Documentary directed by Kay Ell- mers and Annie Goldson, 2013. 60min.

NEW ZEALAND’S war in Af-ghanistan is our longest-ever foreign engagement. Our troops have been there for 10 years—more than World Wars One and Two combined. It has cost the country around $300 million, and one soldier has died for every year the New Zealand military has been there.

And for what? That is one of the questions this documentary, perhaps the first serious attempt on film to question New Zealand involvement in the International Security Assistance Force, tries to answer.

It is a slick effort—it opens with close-ups of freelance Kiwi journalist



about the risks of acting indepen-dently, and to go and see for himself what local Afghans really think of our engagement.

There are clips of very articulate English-speaking (and translated) Af-ghans, interspersed with commentary from New Zealand-based critics, such as Other People’s Wars author Nicky Hager (2011), balanced with com-ment from the New Zealand Defence Force. Some of the most interesting footage is of Stephenson asking the locals what they think of the New Zealand effort. Ill-directed, several said; if they wanted to do something useful, they should have built a dam and brought them electricity.

Most effort has gone into patrol-ling; another said the security was already good there anyway. They seemed to view it rather like an un-invited visit from a mother-in-law; bossy, well-meaning, but ultimately ineffectual.

Watching Stephenson’s foot-slogging around the villages, I felt a growing cringe of embarrassment at the timidity or lack of initiative of so many mainstream New Zealand journalists who have been there, paid for by the military, and not bothered to venture beyond the compound.

From this distance, set against the Afghan villagers’ voices of which we have heard so little, embedded jour-nalism looks even uglier than it did at

the time; a dark and shameful stain. Perhaps the biggest black hole

has been around the role of the SAS, New Zealand’s special forces. Stephenson was the first, and only journalist, to raise questions about their role, and particularly whether they had handed prisoners over to be tortured (Brown, 2011). For daring to ask such questions, he was subjected to an extraordinary personal attack by Prime Minister John Key; the sort of thing one might expect from a third-rate central Asian dictator.

Sadly, this film does not explore those claims further. It does look at one raid, and suggests we were misled about the SAS’s role, but not really conclusively.

Unfortunately, in a film about media scrutiny, it doth at times protest too much. Some of the claims made about New Zealand media are ac-cepted uncritically. More importantly, it suffers from its own lack of balance, by neglecting to put some of these questions to the faces behind these decisions.

It would have been good to see Fairfax, APN and TV chiefs explain themselves. Did they really have an ‘arrangement’ not to publish pictures of New Zealand soldier’s faces? Why? What else are they self-censoring?

Most of all, why, given they can send several journalists to each All



Blacks tour, could they not pay for one independent journalist to cover Afghanistan, when the much-smaller Metro magazine could? Given the scale and length of New Zealand’s involvement, the wilful ignoring of it by New Zealand media executives just embarrassing, but almost sinister.

Nor does the film put the serious questions about media manipulation to any of the politicians responsible. It ends, rather lamely, with a plea by Stephenson for the worth of inde-pendent scrutiny; which struck me as almost a capitulation to the idea, that the military’s spin doctors would have us believe, that ‘real’ journalism is dangerous to our troops.

In fact, real journalism might have saved some of the troop’s lives, by questioning earlier the Labour gov-ernment’s shameful delay in sending LAVs, for example. A thoughtful and worthwhile film, but behind the slick-ness, some more journalistic grunt would have helped.

ReferencesBrown, R. (2011, April 26). More secrets

and lies. Public Address [weblog]. Retrieved on April 27, 2013, from http://publicaddress.net/hardnews/more-secrets-and-lies/

Hager, N. (2011). Other people’s wars: New Zealand in Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terror. Nelson: Craig Potton Publishing.

Communication,

Culture and Society in Papua New Guinea:

Yu tok wanem?

PACIFIC MEDIA CENTREAUT UNIVERSITYOrder from Little Island Pressand bookshopslittleisland.co.nzPrice:NZ $35www.pmc.aut.ac.nz

Edited by Evangelia Papoutsaki

Michael McManus and Patrick Matbob

Preface and chapter by David Robie

Young, emerging and established researchers

write about issues involving mainstream media, social

concerns, development and the information gap in Papua

New Guinea. ISBN : 9781877314943Published by Divine Word University Press, and Paci c Media Centre



NotedTABERANNANG KORAUABA is editor of the Kiribati Independent and he researches climate change.

Pacific climate change doco lacks ‘media impact’

The Hungry Tide, documentary produced, directed and written by Tom Zubrycki. 2011. 88min. I-Kiribati with English subtitles. thehungrytide.com.au

ON THE night the The Hungry Tide was screened on Māori Television in New Zealand, our fam-ily was having a farewell party for our relatives returning to Kiribati the next day. We sat cross-legged on a mat in a circle while women pre-pared meals for everyone.

Words circulated through text messages and social media about The Hungry Tide. As time approached the broadcast, the TV was turned on and children were told not to make a noise. There was excitement and anxiety on the faces of just ten Kiribati people in the house.

I remember one of the elders’ famous phrases during movie ses-sions, ‘ataei tai karongoa bwa e nang oti te tamnei’—children don’t make a noise because the movie is now showing. Documentary and movies are different, but in Kiribati every-thing on DVD is a movie, tamnei or birim. There is no Kiribati word for documentaries.

Of course, our family members were going to watch the ‘movie’ rather than a documentary. They were going to re-connect with their country and to re-construct their memories of Kiribati through this film. Not surprisingly, climate change and sea level rise are already a disaster on the minds of these people.



Though none of them have stu- died climate science before, the power of the media and the word of mouth has played its strong advocacy here. Kiribati is ‘disappearing’. The family members in that sitting room have identified some of the places and characters in that documentary.

The protagonist, Maria Timon, an I-Kiribati woman living and working in Australia, took the audience to an outer island in Kiribati, Beru—where her entire family live. The island of Beru has some interesting legends and myths that could have made The Hungry Tide a well-informed and researched documentary had the producers explored them.

For instance, there is a lake on that island containing ‘mud’. The lake produces a source of food for the people on this island during a long and prolonged drought that struck the island many decades ago.

Today, visitors are taken to see the lake and villagers can make food out of this mud for their guests. The mud of te bokaboka story is important history of Beru island.

The Hungry Tide was the title of a novel by Amitav Ghosh. It tells a very contemporary story of adventure and unlikely love, identity and history. It takes place off the easternmost coast of India, in the Bay of Bengal.

Amitav Ghosh is one of India’s

best-known writers. His books in-clude The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, Incendiary Circumstances and The Hungry Tide. Maria was part of the Kiribati delegation to Copenhagen 15 in Demark, 2009 and also accom-panied the Kiribati team to another climate conference the following year.

There Was Once An Island also applies the same technique; the pro-tagonist was a woman and she works and lives in Port Moresby. She advo-cated for her people in Takuu Island; she returned to meet her parents there. Her loved one passed away and she had to convince the rest of her family and the community to leave the island.

The Hungry Tide and There Was Once An Island have both raised the profile of climate change to an outside world but they have done little to raise the awareness of the media in the Pacific. A new study on why the media feel reluctant to cover news on documentaries and movies on the islands may assist future investiga-tions. In Kiribati, video clippings, DVD, documentaries are called mov-ies and they are for entertainment only.

readers held the key to early media success · auckland university press, 2013. 287pp. isbn...

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