REGION: PMC director condemns ‘targeting’ of journalists and silence on West Papua
Professor David Robie ... “I’m an educator and a journalist ... I have a responsibility to share
my knowledge with as many people as I can about issues.” Khairiah A. Rahman/PMC
By Jean Bell
AUCKLAND (Asia Pacific Report/Pacific Media Watch): An alarming number of “targeted” journalists being killed and West Papua media for independence were just some of the
topics covered in wide-ranging seminar by the director of the Pacific Media Centre last night.
Professor David Robie called for the media, universities and journalism schools to take their Pacific “backyard” more
seriously and not just wait for crises to happen.
The seminar was in marking May 3 – World Press Freedom Day. This year’s conference is in Accra, Ghana.
Dr Robie cited the number of journalists killed while working in 2017 and called journalism an increasingly “dangerous
occupation”.
“Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) [Reporters Without Borders] statistics showed 65 journalists were killed worldwide in 2017,” Dr Robie said. Of the 65 journalists killed, 7 of these people were so-called citizen journalists.
This number of casualties varied between media freedom monitoring agencies depending on the definitions of journalists
and media workers counted in the statistics, he said.
Although this statistic showed a drop from the previous year, the growth of “hatred” for media and targeting of journalists was a worsening problem.
“This is a dire situation that is getting worse.”
On top of the killings, the Paris-based statistics showed that 326 journalists were detained in prison and a further 54
were being held hostage.
Dr Robie said use of the term “citizen journalist” was problematic, as it gave an impression of untrained journalists
working without an ethical basis. In fact, many professional journalists were becoming “citizen” journalists tactically
and using social media to defeat mainstream media “gags” such as relating to the Melanesian region West Papua inside
Indonesia.
“There are more and more independent journalists that are disillusioned” and publishing untold stories on their own
blogs.
One such journalist is Papua New Guinea’s Scott Waide, with whom Pacific Media Centre is collaborating with, published
many articles by independent journalists and civil society people on his blog My Land, My Country.
Dr Robie also talked about the latest RSF Press Freedom Index and its findings on the Asia-Pacific region.
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