A case study in ethical failure: Twenty years of media coverage of Aboriginal deaths in custody

Australia’s media accountability systems (M*A*S) include the Australian Press Council, broadcasting self-regulatory schemes, public broadcasting charters, the Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance (MEAA) Code of Ethics, journalism education and training programmes and organisations devoted to critiquing and enhancing the media. The explicit or implicit purpose of these systems is to enable the media to play its role in representative democracy, ensuring citizens can obtain information and communicate. So it is against these broader democratic goals that M*A*S and journalism itself must finally be evaluated. One way of doing this is to look at the end product—the media content produced by journalists—and examine how it reflects and responds to sources and events beyond the media itself. To explore further the implications of such an approach, in this article I have chosen a single case study—the Australian media’s coverage of Aboriginal deaths in custody over a 20-year period

Editorial: A viable public sphere?

This edition is the third occasion the Pacific Journalism Review has published several of the papers presented at an Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) Public Right to Know (PR2K) conference. The PR2K conferences, which have been held regularly since 2000, have mostly focused on how the right of people to know what is happening has been frustrated by legal, political and social constraints on the media and access to information in the Asia and Pacific regions

Reporting sustainability in the English-language press of Southeast Asia

This article reports on a preliminary scan of six English-language newspapers in Southeast Asia, with a side comparison to a leading Australian newspaper, regarding their coverage of environmental sustainability issues over a two month period in 2005.  It identifies the ownership and key politico-economic issues for each masthead, and does a detailed quantitative analysis of their subject matter and use of sources, followed by two case studies of complex, multisourced stories critical of corporate or government activities. The analysis draws on field theory, and canvasses debates about the power relations among journalists and sources. It concludes that there is a common set of journalistic practices across the sample regardless of national and political differences, but considerable diversity of approaches within that commonality. Patterns of ownership, particularly state vs non-state offer little general explanatory power for this diversity.  Protection of the environment had ‘motherhood status’ in the reporting, but precisely because of this status no assumptions can be made about the quality of the coverage

FRONTLINE: The making of Ophir - Bougainville stories and silences: An exploration of the documentary

This article focuses on the making of the award-winning film Ophir in the context of issues relevant to journalism and documentary production. It explores how a partnership of filmmakers, scholars and Bougainvillean community leaders worked to create a documentary that goes beyond bare facts to create deeper meaning. Based on an interview with one of the filmmakers, Olivier Pollet, it discusses issues of archival research, gender, distribution and language. It raises ethical questions about how mining company Rio Tinto used an anthropologist to produce covert corporate intelligence in the 1960s. Through a discussion of the work of independent investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein, it considers how recent Australian aid policy was used to shape public debate about options for Bougainville. It highlights the importance of supporting grassroots storytelling that penetrates distorted mainstream media narratives, especially at a time of shifting geopolitical interests.&nbsp

Covering the environmental issues and global warming in Delta land: A study of three newspapers

This article explores the coverage of environmental issues in the daily newspapers of Bangladesh, a South-Asian country facing the onslaught of global warming because of its low-lying deltaic plains and overpopulation. The results are based on an examination of the content of environmental coverage in three national daily newspapers (two Bangla and one English-language) during June 2007. Drawing on field theory and analytical frames from journalism studies, this study examines the principles of journalistic practices as revealed by the content of these publications. The findings indicate that environmental journalism is a strong subfield in Bangladesh’s media, which constructs its own veracity in ways that reflect the social, economic and political contexts of each publication. Based on this small study, the authors conclude that environmental journalists in Bangladesh adopt approaches to sourcing and causation which enable them, in alliance with non-government organisations, to pursue their aim of actively intervening in the field of government policy of Bangladesh, both in international and local spheres

FRONTLINE: An innovative direction in academic journalism

The Pacific Media Centre—Te Amokura—which publishes Pacific Journalism Review has always been concerned to link ‘robust and informed journalism’ with media research that contributes to social development both in the broader community, the media industries and inside the academy. The new section Frontline aims to further this by addressing more directly the interface between professional or practice-based journalism and scholarly journalism research practices. This commentary reflects new directions in academic journalism. It is worth charting some of the developments that have brought us to this point

Investigative journalism in the academy—possibilities for storytelling across time and space

More than thirty universities within the Pacific region are now teaching journalism. Across the sector, there are now hundreds of journalism academics and thousands of students. While students are undergraduates, others are postgraduates who may already have practised as journalists. Considered collectively, this is a large editorial resource which can be partly be deployed in producing journalism in the public interest, including investigative journalism. But while students can play a part, academic journalist involvement is crucial. This article discusses the role that universities can play in building and maintaining investigative journalism in our region. It suggests that global approaches can provide part of the intellectual underpinnings of investigative journalism in universities and explores possibilities for collaborative investigation across time and space and how these might connect to broader innovations in the field of journalism

Why the market can’t ensure a free press

When Australia’s Independent Media Inquiry headed by ex-judge Ray Finkelstein released its report on the Australian media in February 2012, if you had been following the media discussion since then, one could not be blamed for thinking that Finkelstein wanted to create a state super cop which would seize control of the media, impose new standards on journalists, dragging every blogger and tweeter into its net. Some media have accused the inquiry report of being ‘leftist’, academic and beyond the comprehension of ordinary people. Part of the media’s job is to explain to the public what is in reports they do not have time to read so they can decide what they think. This commentary was an attempt to do that published by the independent New Matilda online magazine

EDITORIAL: Journalism with integrity

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

Editorial: An investigative legacy

In April 2017, a one-day seminar was held at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) to celebrate more than 25 years of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ). The ACIJ produced, researched and promoted discussion of journalism from 1991 until it was closed by UTS in early 2017. Although no clear explanation was given for the university’s decision, observers generally agreed that the closure reflected the contemporary pressure on independent public interest activities in Australian universities, which are increasingly driven by financial and corporate needs as a consequence of decades of underfunding