Correspondent's Notebook

Pacific media’s meeting

4 August 2009

Australia Network’s Pacific correspondent Sean Dorney attended the recent meeting in Vanuatu of the Pacific Islands News Association, PINA.

Against expectations, the Pacific’s main media organisation decided not to shift its secretariat out of military-ruled Fiji, despite the media censorship imposed by the interim government of Frank Bainimarama.

George Pitt from the Cook Islands moved that Pacnews should remain in Fiji and that was passed by the AGM. I might say that there were only 18 paid-up members of PINA allowed to vote at the AGM. There were some Samoan members of PINA who were told they were not allowed to vote because they hadn’t paid up their dues, and in fact quite a number of regional media organisations were denied voting at the AGM because of regulations brought in some years ago that you had to be a paid-up member by March of the year of the convention if you were to have a vote.

It was very interesting also to see who was voted in as president. There were two nominees, Stanley Simpson who works for MAI TV in Fiji was nominated, and then Nanisee Fafeeta from Tonga Television and Radio nominated Moses Stevens, the president of the Media Association blong Vanuatu. And in that vote Moses Stevens won 10 to eight.

In the debate leading up to that, Moses Stevens said he thought it was important that the president should not be in Fiji, whereas Stanley Simpson argued that it was possibly better to have a president in Fiji who could confront the military there and stand by the journalists who were in trouble.

In the end as I said that vote went 10 to eight in favour of Moses Stevens, which is an interesting decision because if there’s any media organisation in the Pacific that’s in trouble it’s the Media Association blong Vanuatu, which is horribly split here on the ground. But now the president of that organisation has been elected President of PINA.

The new vice president of PINA, John Woods, from the Cook Islands moved a motion right towards the end. In fact one of the interesting things about the AGM is that when it came to other matters the secretariat was saying it could only be other matters that have been brought to the attention of the secretariat. Well John Woods, the new vice president, said well hold on, one of the issues that was discussed over the last few days during the convention was whether the Fiji Ministry of Information, which is actively censoring other PINA members should be allowed to continue to be a member. So he moved a motion saying that if any member of PINA was actively engaged in censorship of other PINA members then they should be expelled from PINA, and Moses Stevens then said that well why don’t we leave that for the new executive to decide, and that’s where it was left. It didn’t even get a seconder.

Perhaps the strongest statement on media freedom came at the annual awards dinner, when Netani Rika from the Fiji Times, the Editor-in-Chief, was given PINA’s media freedom award and the statement accompanying that award was full of condemnation for the current censorship going on in Fiji.