Transcript
RICARDO MORRIS: The main mechanism of the survey was an online survey of quite a number of questions and within the set of questions were eight questions which targeted at measuring self-censorship and this was done using a survey developed about ten years ago. It was developed by researchers who study public opinion research so I used that tool as a mechanism to measure how willing or not journalists were to self-censor and the rest of the questionnaire was questions relating to media freedom and the perception of journalists of what their role is in Fiji's media industry.
SALLY ROUND: And you got 40 respondents willing to answer the survey and you sent out a hundred links to the survey. Were you surprised that less than half of those came forward?
RM: No, not surprising at all. I actually expected much less than 40. I was able to get a good range of respondents from across the mainstream media and also some of the smaller media organisations.
SR: So what did you actually find? What were the conclusions?
RM: In brief the survey showed that journalists in Fiji, while they generally stuck to neutrality, they chose the middle ground, the safe space of the middle ground, there was a slight leaning towards self-censorship however when the follow up interviews were conducted with some of those respondents, these were open-ended questions that were asked of these respondents, it painted a completely different picture in which they explained, sometimes in detail, about how self-censorship would work in their particular newsrooms. and the questions about the role, perception of Fiji's journalists without fail mentioned factors such as fairness, balance, independence, fearlessness but again this perception and the practice appeared to be disconnected.
SR: And some of those anecdotes were interesting weren't they, some of the practices that those journalists said that they employed? Can you just tell us about some of them?
RM: Some of the journalists I have spoken to talked about how they would get a call from the powers that be that they were not happy with a particular story and then the journalist, or the editor in charge, would have to explain in writing to the news manager who then had to explain to the CEO of a company. Because these journalists then feared the consequences, they would then the next day and later on, without being prompted, they would be much more careful, so to speak, about what they put on the news. There's also some discussion about 'touching up' a story. A few journalists didn't term it as self-censorship, or didn't want to admit it was self censorship, they spoke about it as 'touching up' a story or leaving out views that they felt may trigger a negative response, so those are some of the things that they disclosed in the follow up interviews.
SR: There was also a perception that you found among journalists that they had a role of supporting national development and social cohesiveness and that was an important role for journalists. Can you just elaborate on that?
RM: Because of the political environment that a lot of the journalists have grown up in over the past ten years and also because there's a growing understanding of the power of the media, of the power that can be sometimes misused and then there's also an understanding because of the reforms that have taken place in Fiji politically, socially we now realise in the media as well that the media must also play a part in national development not just a watchdog role in which it stands on the sidelines and points out faults but also a media that's now coming to understand that it, while also pointing out faults, it should also be part of the solution. So that is the kind of perception that this new generation of journalists and also some who have come through from the previous generation have come to accept and understand that this is what a media in this country ought to be now. I mean I must say that it's also because also that there have been media laws that have virtually imposed this on us and while the majority of people agree that there should be some law reforms to the media laws, there's an understanding that in the meantime nothing much can be done. We just need to get on with it and accepting that the media has a development role is one of those things.
