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This article advances discussions on media freedom and media development in Melanesia through the introduction of an ‘external’ and ‘internal’ threats analytical framework. Singling out the challenges and categorising them into these two main groups provides a clearer picture of the issues at stake, the links between them, and the need to address the situation holistically. External threats emanating from outside the media sector are often seen as more serious, and they often overshadow internal threats, which come from within the media sector. This article argues that both sets of threats have serious impacts on media and journalism in their own ways, and that both should be regarded equally. Furthermore, the linkages between these threats mean that one cannot be properly addressed without addressing the other. A key outcome of this discussion is a clearer understanding of how little control the media have over both external and internal threats, and how stakeholder support is needed to overcome some of the issues. Because good journalism benefits the public, this article argues for increased public support for high-quality journalism that delivers a public benefit.

The sovereign states of Melanesia are countries where the yoke of colonialism and struggles for independence are still within living memory. There are territories within Melanesia where the questions and complexities associated with achieving self-determination are very much live issues. In West Papua, this issue is one over which blood continues to be spilt. As these countries, and the communities within them, grapple with political-economic and technical shifts, the need for independent journalism is self-evident. However, journalists, editors, publishers and media owners face a barrage of challenges to their ability to operate free from repression or coercion by those who wield power in their societies. Some of these challenges are overt and can extend to threats or physical intimidation. Others are more subtle but no less pervasive and damaging. They lead to a narrowing of the media landscape, the loss of talented professionals to other areas, the rise of self-censorship, and more.

The principle of open justice, including the media’s right to attend and report on criminal courts, must be balanced with the protection of individuals’ privacy and an accused person’s fair trial rights. Prohibiting media from identifying those involved in criminal cases is one way privacy and fair trial rights may be protected in New Zealand. Court news was not always restricted in this way: 115 years ago all parts of criminal court proceedings could be reported and media decided what information was censored. In 1905, New Zealand judges were given the power to suppress court evidence to protect public morality, and 15 years later, the power to suppress the names of certain first offenders to give them a second chance. The laws now stretch to suppressing many kinds of evidence and the identities of some people accused and convicted of New Zealand’s most serious crimes. Investigation of the 115-year-long evolution of New Zealand’s name suppression laws illuminates a piecemeal, but severe, curtailment of media freedom and a trend of imposition of increasingly complex laws which journalists must keep abreast of, understand and observe to prevent appearing before the courts themselves.

Commentary: While the media has demonstrated that it can cover global and governance issues, it neglects the potential to be a responsible partner, especially in developing countries such as Papua New Guinea and to an extent the Pacific. However, this partnership can be strengthened with the media industry and government departments and agencies working to improve their ability to work with each to achieve social, economical and political mileage. Freedom of information and a free media is about upholding the freedom we currently enjoy in a democratic society, as it is about our freedom to express ourselves and be informed appropriately and responsibly.

Papua New Guineans would not be impressed by fancy arguments advanced elsewhere —that it is immoral to copy somebody else's work and that a country should adopt copyright laws to enhance its international standing.

This article examines whether Australia’s current shield law regime meets journalists’ expectations and whistleblower needs in an era of unprecedented official surveillance capabilities. According to the peak journalists’ organisation, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), two recent Australian court cases ‘despite their welcome outcome for our members, clearly demonstrate Australia’s patchy and disparate journalist shields fail to do their job’ (MEAA, 2014a). Journalists’ recent court experiences exposed particular shield law inadequacies, including curious omissions or ambiguities in legislative drafting (Fernandez, 2014c, p. 131); the ‘unusual difficulty’ that a case may present (Hancock Prospecting No 2, 2014, para 7); the absence of definitive statutory protection in three jurisdictions—Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory (Fernandez, 2014b, p. 26); and the absence of uniform shield laws where such law is available (Fernandez, 2014b, pp. 26-28). This article examines the following key findings of a national survey of practising journalists: (a) participants’ general profile; (b) familiarity with shield laws; (c) perceptions of shield law effectiveness and coverage; (d) perceptions of story outcomes when relying on confidential sources; and (e) concerns about official surveillance and enforcement. The conclusion briefly considers the significance and limitations of this research; future research directions; some reform and training directions; and notes that the considerable efforts to secure shield laws in Australia might be jeopardised without better training of journalists about the laws themselves and how surveillance technologies and powers might compromise source confidentiality.

Australia has ranked among the top 30 nations in recent world press freedom surveys published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Freedom House and is broadly regarded as a substantially free Western liberal democracy. This article considers how the methodologies of those organisations assess the impact upon media freedom of a range of recent decisions and actions by Australian politicians, judges and government agencies. There is considerable evidence of a shift towards official secrecy and suppression of information flow. However, according to this analysis such developments are unlikely to impact significantly on Australia’s international ranking in media freedom indices. This article uses the methodologies of RSF and Freedom House to explore whether the international free expression organisations’ criteria are justifiably weighted towards violence against journalists, their imprisonment and formal anti-press laws and might allow for a nuanced comparison of other evidence of constraints on the news media in developed democracies.

A tragic result of the repressive media environment in Fiji has been a huge brain drain within the industry. Many of the best and experienced media workers have left or been forced out. In fact, Australia and New Zealand have benefitted by the migration of some of Fiji’s senior media workers from as far back as 1987, the year of the first two military coups by Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka, and more so in the past eight years since the Voreqe Bainimarama coup in December 2006. Those who have remained have either been moved to non-controversial roles or mellowed to the point of silence.

This is the third issue Pacific Journalism Review has published on the theme of investigative journalism in recent years. Our first issue (PJR, 2011) followed the first regional Investigative Journalism conference held at the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology in December 2010. In that issue, we argued that universities and academic journalists have an important role to play in building a culture of investigative reporting in the region. This issue follows up on that suggestion by focusing particularly on investigative journalism produced in an academic context. The second edition followed the ‘Back to the Source’ conference hosted by the Australian Centre for Investigative Journalism (ACIJ) and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in September 2011 (PJR, 2012). Since our 2011 issue, pressures on the business model that once sustained high quality investigative journalism have continued to increase. As we go to press, photographers’ jobs at Fairfax media are threatened. Journalists have mobilised to focus public attention on the role of photographers as newsgatherers. Walkley Award-winning Fairfax photographer Kate Geraghty’s picture of asylum seekers holding up their identity cards as they are transported in buses into the Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea in 2013 is a reminder of how images recorded by journalists courageous enough to defy official restrictions on media have both humanised and publicised the plight of asylum seekers in our region.

That journalism, especially journalism delving into serious impropriety, relies heavily upon a journalist’s ability to honour promises of confiden­tiality to sources, and therefore needs protection, has been well acknowledged. Former Attorney-General Philip Ruddock in proposing protec­tion for journalists’ confidential sources—commonly referred to as shield law—in the first such major federal level initiative, said ‘[t]his privilege is an important reform to evidence law’ (Explanatory Memorandum, 2007); and in the circumstances then prevailing ‘the protection of journalists is too important an issue to wait’ (Philip Ruddock, Second Reading Speech, 2007). In one instance the court went so far as to say that the importance of source protection was ‘entirely unexceptionable and in accordance with human experience and common sense’ (Liu, 2010, para 51). Are journal­ists’ confidential sources better protected with the advent of statutory protection in several Australian jurisdictions? The media does not think so (MEAA, 2013). Former Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus observed towards the end of his term of office: ‘Recent court proceedings have highlighted the inadequacy of protections for journalists in some jurisdictions and lack of uniformity in laws across Australia’ (Dreyfus, 2013). The current Commonwealth government in relation to national uniform shield law is unclear. The Australian shield law framework beckons reform and recent events indicate some potential reform areas.

New Zealand is unique in its legislative restrictions on news media reporting of suicide, with criminal penalties for breaches. Recently, in response to ongoing controversy about the effectiveness of the law in preventing imitative suicides, the government announced a review of the relevant legislation, the Coroners Act 2006. This article discusses the history of suicide reporting restrictions in New Zealand, suggests they amount to censorship, and furthermore argues that the suicide media discourse here has not taken account of nuances in suicide research which do not support such restrictions, but do justify voluntary moderation of reporting, in line with comparable OECD countries. Also, it argues that current suicide research is based on an outdated conception of media effects, which does not consider adequately the opportunity for public good messages.

Review of: The Journalist’s Guide to Media Law, 4th Edition, Mark Pearson and Mark Polden. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2011, 480 pp. ISBN 9781742370385; Blogging and Tweeting Without Getting Sued: A Global Guide to the Law for Anyone Writing Online, Mark Pearson. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2012, 222 pp. ISBN 9781742378770 Over recent years in Australia we have seen a number of big stories emerge which highlight the difficult legal positions in which journalists too often find themselves. One of the biggest was Gina Rinehart’s attempts in Western Australia to have journalists reveal their sources for stories which were published regarding the legal battles she had been fighting against her own children. Another involved the 2009 counter-terrorism operations in Victoria that were apparently reported, somewhat controversially, on the front page of The Australian several hours before they had occurred. While, a third case was what Australian Twitter users dubbed the #TwitDef saga, where The Australian’s editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell claimed that he had been defamed by Australian journalism academic Julie Posetti, who had simply tweeted what a former News Corp journalist had said publically during the 2010 JEAA conference.

After four military coups in 20 years, Fiji is poised to return to democracy in elections promised for 2014. An emergency decree placing censors in newsrooms was lifted in January 2012, but with domestic media gagged by lawsuits and Fiji Television threatened with closure for covering opposition figures, a pervasive climate of self-censorship imposed by government decrees is enforced by a government-appointed judiciary. As elections draw closer, the illusion of press freedom is framed by highly paid American ‘spin doctors’ from a prominent Washington DC public relations and lobbying firm. Paralysis in the newsroom is reflected at Fiji’s premier University of the South Pacific, once a leader in journalism education. The author taught television journalism at the university and trained reporters for Fiji TV in the 1990s, but returned to find Fiji’s media and higher education in a crisis reflecting the decline of Western influence in the Pacific. Student grievances over harassment and expulsion in retaliation for independent reporting echo the deceit and dysfunction unfolding on the national stage. As traditional allies Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States anguish over sanctions, unprecedented visits to the Fijian government by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and incoming Chinese Premier Xi Jinping portend diplomatic rivalry and raise the stakes for a fragile Pacific nation.

Media freedom and the capacity for investigative journalism have been steadily eroded in the South Pacific in the past five years in the wake of an entrenched coup and censorship in Fiji. The muzzling of the Fiji press, for decades one of the Pacific’s media trendsetters, has led to the emergence of a culture of self-censorship and a trend in some Pacific countries to harness New Zealand’s regulatory and self-regulatory media mechanisms to stifle unflattering reportage. The regulatory Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) and the self-regulatory NZ Press Council have made a total of four adjudications on complaints by both the Fiji military-backed regime and the Samoan government and in one case a NZ cabinet minister. The complaints have been twice against Fairfax New Zealand media—targeting a prominent regional print journalist with the first complaint in March 2008—and twice against television journalists, one of them against the highly rated current affairs programme Campbell Live. One complaint, over the reporting of Fiji, was made by NZ’s Rugby World Cup Minister. All but one of the complaints have been upheld by the regulatory/self-regulatory bodies. The one unsuccessful complaint is currently the subject of a High Court appeal by the Samoan Attorney-General’s Office and is over a television report that won the journalists concerned an investigative journalism award. This article examines case studies around this growing trend and explores the strategic impact on regional media and investigative journalism.

This article examines the domestic and regional impact of a punitive media law introduced in Fiji in June. Decree No. 29 of 2010, the Media Industry Development Decree, is the first of its kind in the South Pacific. It brings to an end the tradition of media self-regulation, one of the hallmarks of a free media. All Fiji governments since independence have tried to introduce tougher media laws. The Bainimarama government, which took power in a coup in December 2006, has succeeded where others failed. Its media decree prescribes hefty fines and jail terms for journalists who fall foul of the law. Given the precedent in Fiji, it is unlikely that a future government will move to change this law, which could become a permanent fixture in the country. This article looks at the impact of the law in Fiji and raises the possibility of copycat laws in other island countries where governments distrust media. The article also questions the applicability of conventional journalistic approaches, which place a premium on conflict as a news element, in politically fragile island countries

Commentary: Journalists in Fiji continue to try as best they can, working under trying censorship conditions, to ensure that their readers, listeners, viewers and other audience—the people of Fiji—receive as much information as possible that is relevant to their lives and essential for them to make informed decisions.

Commentary: Media freedom is not absolute, which is why we also accept that laws must be instituted, to prevent and discourage media owners, editors and journalists from abusing this freedom. The problem, however, is that, whereas these laws are made by politicians to protect themselves and members of the public from a critical media, there are no laws to protect media owners, editors and journalists from angry politicians.

Commentary: A Cook Islands proverb goes like this: Taraia to toki, ei toki tarai enua – ‘Sharpen your adze, the adze to carve nations.’ Applying the proverb in this context, the toki/adze can be seen as the media. The right to know is the tool which keeps the adze strong and effective. When the toki is well prepared for its work, the impact on public debate and protection of media freedoms is strongest. The diversity of news outlets and ‘talking heads’ in the public domain helps foster a sense of public participation; and ownership of the governance process. When the adze is blunted by lack of Freedom of Information legislation, or by the failure of media workers to pressure for the public interest and the right to know, we see the deadening impacts that many of us can attest to in our countries.

Whether they are nationals reporting wars occurring within their countries or international news media staff, journalists are facing growing dangers when covering conflict events. As civilians, they are protected to some extent by international humanitarian law (IHL). But what are these rules and how adequate is such coverage? The article details the core elements of IHL, its relevance for journalists and key issues of implementation and compliance. The news media profession has attempted in the last decade to strengthen normative protections which are discussed. The issue is viewed as one of continuing salience for the Pacific. The article concludes by observing that the issue of protection in combat for journalists is something that the profession has to confront systematically.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart informa tion and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. - Article 19, Universal Declaration of Human Rights When military strongman Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama staged his creeping coup d’état on 5 December 2006—Fiji’s fourth in two decades—he was quick to declare: ‘We will uphold media freedom’ (cited in Foster, 2007). Barely two and a half years later, when he finished off the job with a putsch—dubbed ‘coup 4.5’ by some—and after having expelled three publishers, two New Zealand diplomats and five journalists over the intervening period, he told Radio New Zealand freedom of speech ‘causes trouble’ and must be curbed to allow the military government do its work (Bainimarama: Free speech ‘causes trouble’, 15 April 2009).

Six-year-old Coral-Ellen Burrows disappeared in September 2003 after her stepfather, Stephen Williams, had apparently dropped her off at school, though in fact he had murdered her. After extensive searches, her body was found 10 days later. Williams pleaded guilty to murder and was duly sentenced. The intensive cross-media coverage of the search for Coral-Ellen—of the kind that Innes (1999) commenting on media and police interactions in Britain calls ‘blitz coverage’, made this case the pre-eminent news story of 2003. However, the attenuated nature of the search also exposed some of the tensions inherent in the relationships between those parties interested in the case. We understand these to consist of six entities which have an existence that is both material and conceptual: these are the victim’s family, possible suspects, the local community, the police, the media, and the national public, in this case envisaged in a dual role as wider community and media-audience. All of these stand in relationship to the more abstract yet rigid institution of the law, whose dictates guide the behaviour of the police, and strongly influence that of the media. This paper reports on research carried out by analysis ofNew Zealand Herald, Wairarapa Times-Age and TV One coverage of the case, and by two interviews with journalists investigating the forces that shaped the media coverage.

This text presents one of the pseudo-journalistic formats with long tradition in the print media: advertorials. It depicts how this advertising model, quite usual at the daily press, imitates, sometimes grotesquely, the forms of the editorial content and goes beyond the rules set by the Spanish law, not just in specific examples, but in its very soul. We wonder if these advertorials exceed the limits set by law when trying to avoid its differences with the editorial material or if, maybe, according to the examples of some newspapers that fight in a very tough advertising market, it is about time to brake the barrier and, accordingly, legal texts are now outdated.

This article reviews some of the main anti-terrorism laws in Australia and New Zealand and assesses their impact upon the media in the five years since the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001. It also makes some observations about anti-terrorism laws in the Pacific Islands and recommends further research on this important topic. It identifies the main intrusions into press freedom emanating from such laws and finds quite different approaches with resultant impacts on media freedoms. Australia, while claiming to be a liberal democracy, has taken tough measures against terrorism at the expense of some press freedoms. New Zealand, with freedom of expression protected in its Bill of Rights, has implemented counter-terrorism measures without major limitations on media freedoms. Pacific Island nations, many troubled by internal strife, appear to have been slow to comply with even the very basic international protocols on counter-terrorism.

Justice Ian Callinan, appointed to the Autralian High Court in 1998, challenged the rhetoric on the media's role in society and its claims to press freedom with his minority decision in the Lenah Game Meats case in 2001. He questioned the notion of media freedom in an age where information providers are multinational coporations with a vested intereset in the sale of news. Further, he challenged the claim of news organisations to special priviliages on public interest grounds to the detriment of the rights of others. This paper uses qualitative analysis techniques to consider the comments of Justice Callinan and Justice Michael Kirby in the Lenah Case and four subsequent media-related cases in an attempt to develop a theory about the attitudes of these High Court justices towards the media. It finds five key themes emerging from their decision, headed by the expression 'The Modern Media' used by both Jusitce Callinan and Justice Kirby, whicn embodies many of these attitudes. The other key themes are the shift to considering media 'just another business', the self-appointed role of judges as reporting experts, the ascendancy of privacy over press freedom, and the challenge to some legal privleges with which the media have become comfortable.

'Despite the fact that we were given an opportunity to address the [Tongan] Parliament and our [Moala and Akau'ola] legal representive was permitted to pose questions relating to the legality of the proceeding, I already felt that we would be found guilty, based on the statements and arguments made by the members of Parliament.'

On 23 August 1996, all the nine People's Representatives met and agreed to submit to the Parliament of Tonga a petition for the impeachment of the Minister for Justice and Attorney-General Tevita Poasi Tupou based on Section 75 of the Constitution.

In May 1995, one of the Pacific's best known newspapers closed. A regional magazine summed up The Times of Papua New Guinea thus: Strength: the diversity of views and efforts to cover national life fully. Weakness: Loss of skilled journalists that it develops to organisations like the Post-Courier.

Some argue there is no place for investigative journalism in Melanesia, particularly in Papua New Guinea. Such critics believe that for investigations to be effective then politicians must make changes. A media panel at a UNESCO-funded seminar at the University of PNG debates these issues.

There is a new trend in the Papua New Guinea media. Along with the 'look north' policy of the Wingti government there are signs of greater manipulation of the news media.