Journalism trainers told to do better

Transcript

Well known Pacific media personality and commentator Kalafi Moala has told journalism trainers they have to do more to prepare their students to properly cover Pacific stories.

Mr Moala, who has had a number of publishing and broadcasting interests in Tonga while campaigning for democracy there, was speaking at the 4th World Journalism Education Congress in Auckland last week.

Don Wiseman spoke with Mr Moala and began by asking him to pinpoint the failures in journalism courses with regard to the Pacific.

KALAFI MOALA: There are issues that are kind of unique to us in the Pacific. Issues that are getting attention globally, like the climate change issues, the fact that this is affecting some of our islands like Tuvalu and Kiribati, mainly in the relocation of populations; the issues of having to deal with natural disasters of cyclones or tsunamis and hurricanes. And these are things that happen now and then, it happens every year, we have seasons where we expect these things to happen and it does tremendous damage to our economies and it puts people out of work, and we have other issues of course that are health issues, like with non-communicable diseases. There is a call from health officials throughout the Pacific, that this is something that's killing off our population and we need to deal with it. Those are just some things, I think, that I think we need to have attention at least by other journalists from other areas, and it is important, in my view, that we need to have journalism schools include the Pacific in their curriculum, and to be more knowledgeable about the Pacific. We are maybe small in the sense of our population and our land size, islands, but we are significant at least in that we occupy a third of the earth's surface - we are the biggest tuna stock in our continent, so to speak. So one of the things that I have noticed is that there is a lack of knowledge among global journalists and a lack of attention that's given to our region, which is a major region.

DON WISEMAN: Yes, although I imagine the journalism trainers are thinking 'well they're teaching techniques.' It's not necessarily the stories that people will follow up, that's something that comes before or later isn't it?

KM: Yes, but I think this is some of the shifts that's happening in journalism. I think educators are beginning to realise more and more that you cannot separate the skills on how to deliver messages from the message itself - the content. In a sense, the content of a message, or a story, helps shape the way that you deliver those stories and I'll give an example, when you read a report from a journalist who comes in from, let's just say Europe, who flies in to the Pacific and reports a story from there, it's quite different and the interpretation and analysis is quite different. Sometimes they actually fall short from real meaning than say a journalist that flies in from New Zealand or Fiji, or even Hawaii within the region in the way they deal with some of these stories.

DW: Yes, and a lot of that is just going to be lack of exposure. So if they get more and more exposure they'll get better and better at that.

KM: That's correct.

DW: One of the criticisms, historically, of western journalists of course has been this focus on cyclones and coups and anything that's big and obvious becomes a big story, but otherwise they forget about many of the other things. But again, those are decisions being made by editors, aren't they?

KM: Yes. Well it's because western journalism is built on conflict reporting, and then in this age of terrorism and high securities it just drives home the fact that there are so many stories associated with that. But in our region, we have stories that have to do with development, that have to do with political reforms, that have to do with moving forward in advancing the health and the quality of life of our people, and these stories are just as important.  

DW: I guess one of the issues that then confronts western journalists is the still closed nature of media very often, right across the Pacific, where it can be very very difficult to access this information can't it? Because often it's not very free and open.

KM: Yes that's correct, and I think western journalists have to have, I think, a bit of a better understanding of the way power is being handled by our leaders in the Pacific without any excuse. The issue of transparency and accountability and good governance are issues of democracy that are very, very important and you've got to understand that democracy is a new thought, it's a new practice in the Pacific despite the fact that there are some islands that have been operating under a democratic type of rule. But in many cases in our Pacific democracy has not really worked, and you've got to find out why it's not working and how can we improve it? These are some of the issues that I believe we are dealing with now.