Coups, Conflicts and Human Rights: Pacific Media Paradigms and Challenges

Abstract

The role of news media in the global South nations and declining credibility in some sectors of the developed world’s Fourth Estate pose challenges for the future of democracy in the Pacific region. Truth, censorship, ethics and corporate integrity are critical media issues in a region faced with coups, such as in Fiji (four in the past two decades) and attempted in Papua New Guinea (Sandline mercenary crisis in 1997), conflicts and rampant human rights violations, such as in West Papua. This commentary reflects on the challenges in the context of the political economy of the media and journalism education in the Asia-Pacific in 2012. The relevance to the region of emerging disciplines such as deliberative journalism, peace journalism, human rights journalism, and notions of critical development journalism are also discussed.