THE FIJI
TIMES 152nd ANNIVERSARY – PART 2 of 4
HOW FT,
WITH THE CHIEFS, CONTRIBUTED TO FALL OF DEMOCRACY IN FIJI AS A BIASED
MEDIA.
Thakur
Ranjit Singh
PROLOGUE - PART 2
This is SECOND PART of continuation of the four-part
series on the history of the Fiji Times
(FT). This is from already published articles and my research of Master’s
Thesis – a historical notoriety of a Fiji newspaper never told in this manner
and language.
DISCLAIMER: All reference to FT is to the foreign-owned
paper before localisation in 2010. Hence I do not have any concerns with the locally
- owned FT of 2021.
INTRODUCTION
In Part 1, we mentioned that The Fiji Times (FT) just
marked 152nd anniversary and
were in Fiji prior to arrival of first Girmitiyas but remained blind to their
plight and inhumane treatment. In fact they despised and hated them as smelly,
dark-skinned invaders to Fiji and became cheerleaders and mouthpiece of the British and Australian
colonists and degraded these helpless and defenceless people.
Part 2 here will show that the leopard did not change spots, and after
departure of the white men, they became towel boys and lapdogs of Eastern
Chiefs, elite Itaukei and European and Gujarati businesses, and how they became
a threat to Fiji’s democracy. As I have openly stated before, the greatest
threat to democracy in Fiji came from the Great Council of Chiefs, followed by
a partisan media. Please read that here…………..
Sitiveni Rabuka, the coup-maker of 1987, was soundly defeated by Chaudhry in 1999 election. He was having an affair with a key senior reporter of FT, Margaret Wise who was agitating a war with Chaudhry, unethically using FT, while management of FT allowed this rot to continue.
THE FIJI TIMES - PART 2 (OF 4)
Russell
Hunter was refused an extension of his work permit by Chaudhry government which
had a bitter running battle with the media in general and FT in particular. One
notable incident was during the launch of the Fiji Media Council’s Code of
Conduct where the Prime Minister Chaudhry was very critical of reporting
standards and the attitude of FT towards his government and accused it of
“fanning the fires of sedition and racism.” In his speech, Chaudhry had singled
out one particular reporter, Margaret Wise – that, later.
In speaking
about unnecessary and unwarranted coverage given to nationalist union leader
Taniela Tabu, Chaudhry accused The Fiji Times of harbouring an agenda:
There
have been a number of articles on Taniela Tabu breathing fire and brimstone
along racial lines, making all kinds of threats and allegations not backed by
facts. Yet The Fiji Times continues to pose this man whose own credibility is
questionable, having frittered away $4 million of union membership funds that
he can’t explain, as the saviour of the Fijian civil servants… none of the
other media reported anything on his unwarranted ourbursts... It makes me
wonder whether there is not a conspiracy at work here between that particular
reporter and these anti-government elements?
Russell Hunter, Editor-in Chief of Fiji Times, during late 1990, and was denied visa and deported during the Peoples Coalition rule, but joined FT once Chaudhry was displaced as a result of political instability that, as my research shows, was partly contributed by the stance of a biased FT.
Media
commentators Field, Baba and Nabobo-Baba shed additional light on the Wise
story:
The
Rupert Murdoch-owned Fiji Times decided, almost by default and as a result of
one particular reporter that they were going to get rid of Chaudhry. Reporter
Margaret Wise tore into Chaudhry with many an unsourced story which the paper
had no qualms about publishing. What was known to the newspaper, but not shared
with readers and now a matter of court record, was that she was also Rabuka’s
lover and had a child by him.
It was Mahendra Chaudhry and his
People’s Coalition Government that soundly walloped Rabuka and his SVT into
oblivion. The unethical sexual relationship between FT’s political star
reporter Margaret Wise and the person who was soundly beaten by Chaudhry,
Sitiveni Rabuka was reported in FT. Michael
Field (2010), in his Swimming with Sharks
mentioned this:
Rabuka fathered a boy with
[Margaret] Wise and then denied it was his. I was often in Fiji at the time,
covering treason and mutiny trials. More than once I would run into Rabuka after
Wise took him to court. ‘ A DNA test revealed Mr Rabuka was 99.999 percent [certain] to be the likely
father of the 18-month-old boy,’ the Fiji Times said.
The court found he was the
father, and he was ordered to pay F$30 a week. (p.179)
 |
| Tin-Pot racist trade unionists and political party leaders, with questionable support and ethics were allowed space by certain reporters of FT to spew racial venom on Chaudhry's Peoples Coalition Government of the day, and management of FT allowed this partisan approach to flourish. |
The ethical issue that arises here is that when
she was reporting against the Chaudhry government, she was also having an
affair with Rabuka. How would a multinational, Rupert Murdoch’s media allow
such a conflict of interest to exist without any control, and with apparent
knowledge, encouragement, and the blessings from FT management. Why did Alan
Robinson and Russel Hunter allow this unethical media practice to flourish?
It is
incidents and situations like this that gave rise to the term “skirt
journalism” that raises ethical and conflict of interest issues.
Another
researcher at USP was also critical of the newspaper which portrayed Speight as
a crusader for the Fijian race, wresting back the power for the Fijian race for
preservation of their future. She also named Margaret Wise, as one of FT
reporters who wrote stories that were aimed at consolidating the myth that the
takeover was an ethnic conflict and not provincial rivalry between the
confederacies. Wise continued to run stories which kept on emphasising inter-ethnic
conflict as the reason.
Sakiasi Butadroka, who helped displace Ratu Mara's Alliance Government was also used by ethno-nationalist politicians to destabilise Chaudry's Government, and FT allowed them enough space and publicity to do this.
Another researcher in her hypothesis proposed that:
The Fiji
Times represented and reinforced the ruling class ideology in Fiji, a ruling
class who were determined to consolidate political power by promoting the role
of chiefly elite and thereby disguising the tension caused by class relations
in society.
It also
declared that the Speight crisis happened because Fijians did not trust an Indo
Fijian Prime Minister to deliver security of Fijian rights and guarantee of
Fijian leadership. She added that the editor of FT during the crisis was a
Fijian (referred to as indigenous race). The view of the Fijian editor appeared
to have been filtering in the newspapers. FT took it
for granted that the Fijian chiefs had legitimacy to provide leadership role in
a crisis situation, ignoring the Indo-Fijians in the process.
This concept
of legitimising the role of non-elected and politically aligned chiefs over all
the people of Fiji matches Herman and Chomsky’s (2008) Propaganda Model theory
which stipulates that media is dependent on the elites and participates in
propaganda campaigns helpful to elite interests. Research analysis showed the
newspaper tended to support not only the business functions but also the ruling
chiefly elite over that of the survival of democracy.
The racial slant of FT
supported democracy, as long as the Fijians and the GCC dominated
leadership and ruled Fiji. FT, while supporting democracy tended
to favour Fijian self-interest over the political system and mandate of the
people. The papers failed to support the huge mandate of the people for return
of Chaudhry to power. This was a clear reflection of
the racial skew of the papers’ editor and senior and influential journalists
and their links to the ruling elite who supported Fijian leadership for Fiji.
A free and neutral media in a fledgling democracy, in a developing nation, with racial issues, need to exercise extra care to project itself as a neutral, impartial and balanced Fourth Estate. Unfortunately, as my research substantiates, the foreign-owned FT failed to live up to this expectation, while beating hollowed drums of success in Fiji for 152 years.
.
Criticism by
Chaudhry and other researchers and authors concluded that:
……the FT editor failed to provide any in-depth analysis of the
causes of the political crisis nor related it back to historical events. .…
reinforced the colonial legacy that Fijian chiefs are the rightful rulers of
Fiji, emphasising that Fiji, and this presumably means Fijians, was not ready
for a multiracial constitution.
The
researcher was critical of the standard of the editorials and the paper’s
understanding of the Constitution and their lack of understanding of the
special protection accorded in the 1997 Constitution, the process of Constitutional
change and the inability of any Prime Minister to be able to change things at
their whim, hence the fact that an Indo-Fijian Prime Minister was not a
situation that should agitate the Fijian public.
My
continuing Part 3 will brief you on my research for AUT Thesis, which
substantiated that a partisan, a biased FT contributed to fall of democracy in
Fiji - an irony for a supposedly Fourth Estate to do so.
[About the Author: Thakur Ranjit Singh is former
publisher of now closed, partly government-owned Daily Post newspaper, a
journalist, a media commentator, a community worker in Auckland and runs his
blog FIJI PUNDIT. He did a research on the role of the Fiji Times in
contributing to destabilising of democracy by a partisan newspaper that culminated in Speight’s
attempted coup in 2000. Details in the articles are largely from his Masters in
Communication (MCS) thesis at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) in 2011,
and from already published materials. E-mail:thakurjifj@gmail.com.]
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