Posted on January 5, 2025 25 Comments
22 months ago, Stanley Simpson – the doyen of Fijian journalism and Secretary General of the Fiji Media Association – made an astonishing spectacle on what was then Twitter and is now “X” of shedding tears of joy over the abolition of the FijiFirst government’s media laws.
It was meant to herald in a new era of media freedom and there were similar scenes of emotion at the venerable Fiji Times – the media outlet that has since done more than all others to debase the quality of journalism in Fiji.
Let’s remind ourselves of Stanley Simpson’s posting and then think about the state of the Fijian media almost two years on and its betrayal of its readers, listeners and viewers. And of the national interest.See AlsoMühelose Installation Weep Hole Covers 50 Stück Edelstahl für Ziegel • EUR 47,86
Rather than taking advantage of their new-found freedom and staking out a position of independence free from government control, the local media identified itself with the Coalition right from the start. This included putting the new Minister for Communications, Manoa Kamikamica, in pride of place at successive gatherings.
When the Fiji Media Council was subsequently reintroduced with great fanfare, Minister Kamikamica was also placed centre stage – a none-too-subtle message of continuing government influence over the media and clear evidence that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Did Stanley Simpson or any of the great luminaries of the media such as Vijay Narayan, Fred Wesley or Rosi Doviverata, ever think that this was sending the worst possible message to media consumers in Fiji about the independence of their media? Clearly not.
But we certainly got a whole lot of hype about how the bad guys who throttled media freedom were gone and the good guys had arrived to usher in a new era of transparency and accountability.
Two years on, where are we at, Fiji? In a new era in which the media and its patrons in government continue the pretence of media freedom when the previous government’s media laws have simply been replaced by something much more sinister – self censorship and media proprietors shamelessly using their outlets to manipulate the news to suit their own commercial purposes.
Our readers will have already noticed that we are gunning in particular for the Motibhai Patels – the owners of the Fiji Times – who have abandoned all pretence at editorial independence for the “freedom” of parading their prejudices and sucking up to their fellow travellers in the Coalition.
It reaches its apotheosis in the following astonishing article by Cheerieann Wilson – the former media advisor to the Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka – in her new role as Fiji Times reporter.
The subject is the SODELPA leader and Minister for Education, Aseri Radrodro. And is one of the most disgraceful abuses of journalism that Grubsheet has ever had the misfortune to witness – naked propaganda that completely ignores Radrodro’s history as a domestic violence abuser who almost killed his former wife – the Prime Minister’s daughter – and gave Lynda Tabuya such a “brutal” rogering in Room 233 that she was left struggling to walk the following day.
Read on, Fiji, and weep. And then get very angry and boycott the Fiji Times, as well as any other Motibhai business including Prouds.
Then support any political party that commits itself to stripping the Motibhai Patel family of the Fiji Times. And tell the strutting cocks and timid hens of the Fijian media what you think of them and their debasing of democracy as members of a supine and impotent fourth estate* the next time they cross your path.
We have been duped, conned, betrayed by the pretence of a free media in Fiji. And it is time for media consumers to fight back.
Crikey. Now there’s something to really weep about. It doesn’t get much worse. Yet this outrage doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the corruption of the Fiji Times and the malevolent influence on national life of the Motibhai Patels of Ba.
They are unfit to preside over Fiji’s traditional newspaper of record and the nation’s “first draft of history” and the evidence against them is mounting by the week.
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* the origins of the term “Fourth Estate”. The traditional role of the media explained by Wikipedia: