Pacific media under threat amid US-China contest, experts warn

Friday, 12 May 2023

US President Joe Biden and China's President Xi Jinping. A Pacific academic says the media is “facing uncertain times” because of the US-China competition for power and influence in the region.

While Fiji has repealed its draconian media law, its imprint can still be felt in the region due to the United States-China competition for power and influence in the Pacific, media experts have warned.

Under Fiji’s Media Industry Development Act (MIDA), journalists could be fined or faced a jail sentence if they published content contrary to the public or national interest.

The post-coup decree was thrown out last month in Parliament, marking the return of press freedom in Fiji after 13 years.

But the University of the South Pacific’s head of journalism, Dr Shailendra Singh, says the media is “still experiencing some major turbulence, and facing uncertain times”.

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In his latest report published last week, Singh accused the Papua New Guinea government of trying to legislate its national press.

The Fijian academic said geopolitics is to blame, citing the US-China competition to gain power and influence in the Pacific, and to court the region’s journalists.

Singh said draft media legislation unveiled in PNG on February 6 showed elements of “China’s controlled media system, as opposed to the liberal media model which has been the norm across the Pacific.

“If the law passes as expected, PNG media will come under government regulation for the first time in the country’s history.

“Autocratic-minded national governments and leaders were once considered the major threats to media independence in the Pacific, but the situation has become complicated by the intensifying geopolitical contest in the region, with China on one side, and the United States and its allies on the other,” Singh said.

In a first for the Pacific, PNG is set to host US President Joe Biden at the Forum for India-Pacific Islands Cooperation in Port Moresby on May 22.

Pacific leaders with President Joe Biden in Washington on September 29, 2022.

While he did not respond to Singh’s claims, PNG Prime Minister James Marape said in a statement Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would stop in Port Moresby for three hours on their way from a G7 meeting in Japan.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins will also attend the PNG summit. Both Biden and Modi will then attend the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue – Quad leaders meeting – in Australia on May 24.

Research published by the Australian National University’s Pacific Affairs unit in 2020 revealed media is one of the core avenues of competition in the Pacific between Australia and China.

Beijing’s Global Media Influence 2022 report by Freedom House suggested the Pacific could be part of China’s greater media strategy.

The restrictions on journalists during Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s Pacific tour in May last year are only the most recent example of a media sector under siege, Singh said.

During that trip, Wang signed a security deal with the Solomon Islands which allows Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare to call on Beijing for police and defence assistance.

Singh said it was no coincidence that Washington has stepped up its presence in the Pacific since Wang’s visit. The most notable, President Joe Biden hosting Pacific leaders at the White House in September.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken joined the Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) launch of its 2023 edition of the World Press Freedom Index last week.

“He called on governments to ensure media safety and protect journalists’ ability to do their jobs without fear,” Singh said.

Newsroom co-editor Mark Jennings, investigations editor Melanie Reid and camera man Hayden Aull, at morning tea with then Fiji Police Commissioner Sitiveni Qiliho. The Kiwis were released after being detained overnight by Fijian police on April 3, 2019.

“PNG is following in the footsteps of Fiji, the first country in the region to bring the national media under government regulation through its 2010 Media Industry Development Act. The law was repealed by the new government elected in December 2022.”

Media in Fiji, PNG, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu faced increased government hostility including threats of stronger legislation, according to a 2017 ANU discussion paper.

In the report, the governments of all four Melanesian countries had expressed a preference for a developmental and nation-building approach, which was closer to the Chinese communist media model rather than the liberal watchdog model.

Singh said he was alarmed that the trend of legislating media in Fiji and PNG was taking hold in other Pacific countries.

“Historically, media practices in the region have been based on the western liberal watchdog model, which emphasises the importance of holding governments to account.

“This is premised on the separation of powers principle whereby an independent media is seen as a cornerstone of democracy, and allowed to operate with minimum government control.

“In some instances, anti-media sentiments are actually playing out in the field with cases of crackdowns against reporters critical of China or of national governments,” Singh said.

In November 2018, PNG journalist Scott Waide was sacked by the state-owned media company EMTV for criticising the government’s purchase of 40 luxury Maseratis for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in Port Moresby.

In April 2019, three New Zealand journalists were detained overnight by Fiji police while working on a story about a controversial resort development.

Newsroom’s Melanie Reid, Mark Jennings and Hayden Aull, were taken into custody in Suva after attempting to interview a resort developer accused of the “environmental desecration” of an island.

They were released and an apology from then prime minister Frank Bainimarama blamed a “group of rogue police officers”.

In October 2019, Australian 60 Minutes reporter Liam Bartlet and his crew were deported from Kiribati while investigating the country’s “switch” from Taiwan to China.

Bartlet told a media conference that while being followed by a government vehicle in the capital Tarawa, he had wondered “whether that’s the Kiribati government or whether somebody from [the] government operating under Chinese instruction. It’s a very, very strange thing to happen in a place like this.”

Vanuatu Daily Post news director Dan McGarry was barred from the country for his October 2019 report on the arrest of six Chinese nationals in Port Vila by Chinese police.

McGarry stated that he had observed a trend among some Pacific leaders of “emulating behaviour that they had noticed elsewhere”.

Waide warned Pacific governments were taking lessons from China when dealing with their critics.

“I’m not saying China’s directly telling them what to do, but people watch, people learn,” he said.