REVIEW: Contrasting Al Jazeera’s forensic October 7 report with TVNZ’s Tame interview: Review of October 7 (Documentary), directed by Richard Sanders; and Israeli-Hamas War: Israeli Ambassador on rising deaths in Gaza (Video), presented by Jack Tame

October 7, directed by Richard Sanders, Al Jazeera Investigations (Documentary); Israeli-Hamas War: Israeli Ambassador on rising deaths in Gaza,TVNZ Q&A with Jack Tame (Current Affairs). FOR a more informed report of what actually took place when Hamas fighters broke through the perimeter fences surrounding Gaza to attack Israel on 7 October 2023, Al Jazeera’s hour-long documentary, October 7, which was broadcast on March 20, exposed the lies of the Israeli/US propaganda machine, and has been pivotal in transforming the Palestine/Israel narrative and so too the politics of the Middle East

Legacy media outlets also stand in dock over Gaza: How RNZ, ABC and other Western media failed to challenge Israeli war narratives

As Israel faces charges at the International Court of Justice in The Hague of breaching the 1948 Genocide Convention, for many people Western media institutions also stand in the dock. Critics have pointed to a media failure to effectively challenge a narrative that framed Israel’s actions in terms of an erroneous claim to Israeli ‘self-defence’, a de facto diplomatic cover for war crimes, ethnic cleansing and probable acts of genocide. In the Pacific, news leaders at Radio New Zealand (RNZ) and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), by alleged omission, story framing, inaccuracies, passive editorial stances, including a refusal to adjudicate contentious claims when the evidence was available, fall into the category. Such failures call into question claims of due impartiality, a fundamental tenet media outlets use to anchor their credibility as trusted sources of news. Failure to adequately create awareness of Israeli crimes also raises questions over whether state-funded public broadcasters are fulfilling the informational needs of democratic citizenship and serving the public interest, or whether they are serving the interests of a Western power elite

Time to rethink 'watchdog' journalism in the Pacific

For more than five decades, ‘Watchdog Journalism’ has been taught as the yardstick for a free media. With the so-called ‘mainstream’ media becoming increasingly commercialised—both in a global scale and domestically—and with the media being primarily owned by business conglomerates, the ‘watchdog’ model has created a journalism culture that is too adversarial and creates conflicts rather than helping to solve today’s problems/conflicts. A new paradigm of watchdog journalism is needed where the media is able to hold powerful players to account for facilitating the development/livelihood needs of communities, especially those in the margins of society. This new paradigm of journalism needs to focus on ‘development rights’ rather than ‘human rights’ taking into account many aspects of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs should be looked at in terms of a new definition of human rights where the journalist could play a similar role to that prescribed in ‘watchdog’ journalism theory, but looking for solutions rather conflicts, and include a larger field of stakeholders which need to be made accountable such as governments, big business and particularly conglomerates—even NGOs and faith-based organisations. This watchdog role needs to be applied to trade agreements and other treaties, including those addressing climate change.  To develop a new journalism culture to address these issues, media training programmes in the Pacific need to rethink their strategies and examine how to promote independent social media models that are economically and sustainably viable

When safe is not enough: an exploration of improving guidelines on reporting mental illness and suicide

Mental illness, coping, and suicide-related stigma are influenced by social discourse. Legacy, digital and social media create and amplify existing attitudes and contribute to mindsets and behaviour, including suicidality. While internationally there have been guidelines for several decades, the focus has been on ‘safe’ language and word choices that highlight problems. However, these guidelines have not prevented deaths by suicide and have contributed to the prevalence of catastrophising of normal unpleasant emotions and social problems as mental illness. With calls in government reviews and by consumers for greater focus on consumer-centred suicide prevention and the advent of increasing biopsychosocial stressors from COVID-19, consideration of other approaches to and inclusions in media guidelines are timely and prudent. In this article, we explore how a consumer-centred coping approach would augment existing media guidelines to influence community attitudes and behaviours in a way that contributes to health and wellbeing, as well as suicide prevention

Social media ecology in an influencer group: Intersection between Fiji's media and social media

Social media use in Fiji has expanded in recent years and has become a ubiquitous feature in wider society. Social media ecology focusses and examines the dimensions of an online environment and its interplay with human experiences in user engagement. These dimensions with human experiences in user engagement, can provide an insight into how influential social media groups can become in shaping discourses and views. To examine and discuss the social media ecology of an influencer group, the article details one of Fiji’s largest and most influential online groups. To do this, the article uses digital ethnography, supplemented with social media analytics. This study provides key findings in the social media ecology of influencer groups and online behavior. These findings may have implications for further research in media, citizen journalism, viral content creation and online political campaigning

REVIEW: A grim year ahead, but some cause for optimism: Review of Reuters Trends and Predictions 2024, by Nic Newman

Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions 2024, by Nic Newman. Oxford: Reuters Institute. 2024. 46 pages. DOI: 10.60625/risj-0s9w-z770 EVERY day more and more online content is disappearing behind paywalls as publishers try to protect their dwindling revenues. Whether readers confronted by paywalls will bother to subscribe or simply seek the information elsewhere—or just give up and look at another Beyonce listicle—is one of the scenarios prompted by the appearance of the latest set of predictions about the future from the Reuters Institute

REVIEW: Noted: Planning for the survival of megacities: Review of Come Hell and High Fever, by Russell W. Glen

Come Hell or High Fever. Readying the World’s Megacities for Disaster, by Russell W. Glen. Canberra: ANU Press. 2023. 482 pages. ISBN 9781760465537. WITH a title straight out a Tom Clancy novel and a writing style that manages to combine facts, analyses and deep understanding of his topic with the pace of a thriller, Russell Glen’s book is as entertaining and it is thought provoking. Russell predicts that the world’s largest urban agglomeration, like Tokyo, are at risk from a variety of disasters and that it is vital for local and national leaders to think seriously about how to deal with them

EDITORIAL: Gaza, genocide and media: Will journalism survive?

30th Anniversary Edition of Pacific Journalism Review: When editor Philip Cass and I, as founding editor, started planning for this 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review, we wanted a theme that would fit such an important milestone. At the time when we celebrated the second decade of the journal’s critical inquiry at Auckland University of Technology with a conference in 2014, our theme was ‘Political journalism in the Asia Pacific’, and our mood about the mediascape in the region was far more positive than it is today (Duffield, 2015). Three years later, we marked the 10th anniversary of the Pacific Media Centre, with a conference and a rather gloomier ‘Journalism under duress’ slogan. The PJR cover then featured a gruesome corpse at the height of Rodrigo Duterte’s callous and bloodthirsty ‘war on drugs’—and on media—in the Philippines. Three years later again the PMC itself had been closed in spite of its success. EDITORIAL NOTE: After the editorial of Pacific Journalism Review and the lead article in this edition (Vol 30, No 1&2) about the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were printed, the Australian journalist was set free and he arrived back in Australia after a plea bargain. The winner of his country’s Walkley Award for journalism excellence, Assange was freed by a US federal court in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, on 26 June 2024 after a plea bargain to plead guilty to one charge of violating the US Espionage Act and the judge sentenced him to 62 months, jail time already served in the UK on remand. His 14-year struggle for freedom was over, but his lawyers say they will press for a full US presidential pardon. &nbsp

Nurturing resilient journalists: A Fiji case study of student news reporting in challenging Pacific environments

This article examines the multifaceted learning experiences University of the South Pacific (USP) journalism students gain from practical training. It is the latest in a series of papers on applied learning and teaching at USP journalism. Applied training methods take into account the challenges of the Pacific news reporting terrain in which USP journalism graduates will operate once they start work. The article reiterates that the best way to condition future journalists for their work environment is to expose them to the elements. The article uses USP student journalists’ coverage of the 2018 and 2022 Fiji elections as background case studies of practical experience and learning outcomes

Artificial intelligence (AI) and future newsrooms: A study on journalists of Bangladesh

Many Western and economically developed countries have already incorporated Artificial Intelligence (AI) into their newsrooms. As the media industry is constantly addressing new technological advancements, media scholars are highly confident about the combination of AI and the newsroom. This research investigates AI as a new prospect in the Bangladeshi journalism arena, focusing on the current state of AI usage and projecting the future by evaluating professional journalists’ ‘Mental Readiness’ across a variety of media companies. In the first phase, from the survey of 107 working journalists from 20 different news organisations, this study finds that journalists possess a mostly positive attitude towards AI and are willing to incorporate current technologies in their newsrooms. The majority of journalists are informed, yet many of them lack sufficient AI literacy. In the second part, in-depth interviews with five newsroom editors reveal that it is difficult for Bangladesh to make a significant transformation within a short period. Most of them believe that providing AI-enabled newsrooms in a developing country like Bangladesh is still a long shot, owing to economic and technological constraints