‘...media freedom is an increasingly important international parameter or yardstick in assessing a national government’s commitment to the freedoms and liberty it has been elected to guarantee its citizens.'


This year is turning out to be one of the worst years for media freedom in the Pacific Islands in decades. In one country after another, over the past few months, media outlets have found themselves at the receiving end of both overt and covert action by their respective ruling regimes.

Most worryingly, instances of such action against the media have been on the increase in recent weeks.

In Fiji, as well as deporting expatriate publishers and frequently hauling local scribes and photographers over hot coals, the latest instances have involved police raids on media outlets and the seizure of broadcast materials from their premises. This despite repeated assurances of fair play from the interim administration following meetings with members of the media.

In Tonga, there have been curbs on the political reporting of events in the run-up to the polls on the laughably flimsy premise that the kingdom’s media is not trained well enough to do so. If by ‘not being trained well enough’ means the media won’t play lapdog to the powers that be, they may well be right. But in this case, the government’s own broadcasting arm was restrained from airing any content that had any political overtones.

In the region’s economic frontrunner Papua New Guinea, a politician no less than the Prime Minister himself has criticised his country’s media in the crudest manner casting all sorts of aspersions for merely doing its job of bringing to light events that are quite obviously inconvenient truths for the government.

And over in the Cook Islands, a newspaper publisher has been convicted on two charges of contempt in a case that can only be termed as controversial. Of course, in this instance, the prima facie matter appears to be only between the judiciary and the media with the executive and legislative arms not being involved.

These cases either betray the utter ignorance of the workings of the democratic process on the part of these men who wield power or bring to light their deliberate attempts to subvert one of democracy’s most vital components.

It won’t be surprising even if it’s a bit of both. And this despite almost all of them—bar the obvious ones of course—who in fact owe their positions of power primarily to a democratic process.

The irony couldn’t be starker. If it is indeed the former, these regimes need to realise the media is considered the fourth pillar of democracy—the important bridge and communication channel between the leaders and those who elected them.

If it is not for the media, the grassroot stakeholder would never know about the goings-on in the three other pillars that make democracy work: the legislature, judiciary and the executive.

Not being an institutionalised body like these three pillars, the media often finds itself powerless. But then, as much as these three draw their power from the people, so does the media. If at all in any functioning democracy, the relationship between the media and the people is built on a stronger foundation of trust than that between the lawmakers and the people.

Oxymoronic though it may be sound, it is this power of the powerless media that is the dread of regimes that have things to hide. They fear the implicit tendency of the public to believe the printed or aired word. Why else would any regime use its power to curb a basic freedom that is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, which the very governments they run have long been signatories to?

Unlike in decades past, media freedom is an increasingly important international parameter or yardstick in assessing a national government’s commitment to the freedoms and liberty it has been elected to guarantee its citizens. There is little doubt that recent events in some of these Pacific Islands nations will portray them in poor light.

Historically too, attempts to muzzle the media have ultimately spelt doom for the regimes—for the natural tendency of all humans is to shun authoritarianism in all its guises. Curbing media freedom is indeed an assault on many other freedoms of the human spirit that are vouchsafed by nature at the time of birth and are supposed to be protected against all odds by governments and regimes, no matter how they have jostled themselves to positions of power.

If they call themselves democracies—at least all the Pacific Islands nations in question here purport to—the sooner they consider the media an undissociable moiety of democracy and accord it the due respect it would to all other components of democracy including the last person on the street, the better it would be. 

At this difficult time, it is of utmost importance for the region’s media as a whole to come together and fight the growing belligerence of governments that has all the alarming symptoms of a fast-spreading infectious disease.

Before it engulfs other islands governments, it is urgent for media constituents from across the region to bury any differences they may have, cease working at cross purposes and work instead in unison to fight the malaise.

Fortunately, modern media communication technologies are a great tool in forging such an alliance and making it work for a common cause.

But like much else in life, technology too is a double-edged sword—and often fails to achieve its full potential owing to the petty foibles of human behaviour.

This is the time for the region’s media to rise as one and provide both the moral support and the technical and legal wherewithal to shake errant regimes out of their power drunk stupor.

The framework to achieve this has long existed in the form of the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA). It needs to proceed quickly in the right direction—and it can hardly do so without the combined energy that can come only from a united Pacific media.

Failing in this onerous duty would be tantamount to failing not just as the voice of the silently suffering masses but also as the ultimate symbol of the freedoms that the human race aspires for.