Commentary: Small Pacific states and media freedom: A Kiribati case study

For more than 50 years, the governments of Kiribati have manipulated the affairs of the Broadcasting and Publications Authority (BPA). The authority runs a radio station and newspaper reaching the majority of the population of Kiribati. The interference is simply a warning to those  working for the authority that they do not have freedom to inform the public. In practice, the political opposition would oppose this interference, describing it as draconian and demanding more media freedom. But when the  opposition came to power, it would also restrict the work of  journalists. Thus reporters have often been caught in the crossfire between the politicians and are fearful of their future. Some journalists have been accused of being anti-government or sanctioning stories that embarrass the political leaders. This commentary explains—from the firsthand experience of this journalist—why in the digital era small Pacific nations such as Kiribati face a more fundamental issue: protecting the public’s right to know

REVIEW: Noted: Pacific climate change doco lacks ‘media impact’

"On the night the The Hungry Tide was screened on Māori Television in New Zealand, our family was having a farewell party for our relatives returning to Kiribati the next day. We sat cross-legged on a mat in a circle while women prepared meals for everyone... of course our family members were going to watch the 'movie' rather than a documentary. They were going to re-connect their memories of Kiribati through this film. Not suprisingly, climate change and sea level rise are already a disaster on the minds of these people.

Media and the politics of climate change in Kiribati: a case study on journalism in a "disappearing nation"

Although the Pacific nation of Kiribati has been identified as one of the most vulnerable countries to the impact of climate change, little is known about the attitudes of the local media and the public toward this issue. This is in contrast to empirical studies’ findings which have shown that the public and the media were aware of the threats posed by climate change. Aware of and concern about are very different from ‘we care and let’s do something because it is our country’. President Anote Tong and his growing focus on this issue – centred on his close relationship with the foreign news media – have increasingly cast his I-Kiribati people as the victims and thus further marginalised their ability to learn about climate change. Further to this, there is no connection with what Tong has declared overseas with his government’s 2008-2011 Development Plan. This thesis argues that Kiribati is not united on climate change. Traditional, cultural and religious beliefs about land, environment and sea, and division among educated elites and political parties are some of the key barriers to communicating and receiving climate change stories. The government’s closed door policy, top down approach and its one-way communication have restricted the media’s access to information relating to climate change, and more importantly how 'climate funds' are distributed in the country. Despite attempts by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) to bridge this gap with training workshops to increase media reporting, this study argues that the regional organisation has become part of the problem. Its workshops have been flawed and lack a solid theoretical basis. These complex issues shed new light on the problems facing the Kiribati media on communicating climate change to a society that is not united on this issue. Therefore, a culturally planned deliberative journalism model based on the Karoronga cultural concept is proposed as a framework to engage the media in addressing these issues and encouraging participation of I-Kiribati on climate change discourse through a bottom up, vertical and horizontal communication approach. This is an emerging challenge for the Kiribati media