10 Sep 2010

Fiji Information Ministry meets Labour over Media Decree breaches

1:10 pm on 10 September 2010

The Ministry of Information in Fiji has met the Fiji Labour Party to discuss compliance issues relating to the Media Decree.

The Ministry sent a letter to the Labour Party earlier this week saying it must comply with the Decree and added that all its media releases have to be approved before being posted.

The Permanent Secretary for Information Sharon Smith-Johns says the letter was sent after the Labour Party posted a handful of messages on its website which breached the Media Decree.

She says it was prompted by one particular post.

"That came off a blog site and there was speculation about the salaries of the Prime Minister and the Attorney General. And someone had calculated that because they have the Prime Minister, and he's the Minister of Information, and you know all of this. So that added up all the salaries for those posts and assumed that that was what the Prime Minister's salary was."

Sharon Smith-Johns says although the information is just speculation it's been circulated around different blog sites.

She says the Labour Party has agreed to comply with the provisions of the Media Decree.