Editor
The Fiji Sun
Private Mail Bag
SUVA
Fiji Islands Fax: 311455

OPEN LETTER FOR PUBLICATION

IB MISREPRESENTATIONS

I am appalled at the disregard for facts displayed by Robert Keith-Reid in both his March editorial in Islands Business and his letter to the Fiji Sun (March 19). This sort of "journalism" by innuendo demonstrates the need in Fiji for an independent, professional and practical media programme with exacting standards such as ours at the University of the South Pacific.

For a start, the news report in the Sun was published quoting from an open letter by our programme to Islands Business which was signed by my colleague Pat Craddock as well as me. Craddock was not acnowledged. Keith-Reid has a copy of this joint open letter which we expect to see published in next month's IB.

Keith-Reid has never visited our programme in the past two years, or talked to us, and his statements utterly misrepresent journalism at USP. His ideas about education are outdated and technophobic.

Here is a brief response to some of the claims he makes in his ill-informed editorial and letter:

1. A description of our Pacific graduates as "academic anaemics" and a claim that our programme is not practical. This is absurd. Our programme in December won two honours in the 1999 Ossie Awards for our training newspapers against leading journalism schools in Australia and New Zealand. The independent judge from the Sydney Morning Herald praised how our programme was putting the students through such practical "hoops".

2. A claim that our planned new postgraduate journalism course is for inexperienced "kids" when it is well known that to qualify, an applicant would normally have a minimum of about 10 years professional media experience.

3. A claim that another journalism school, the sectarian Divine Word University (formerly Institute) in Madang, Papua New Guinea, is the largest (and also implied as the leading) journalism school in the Pacific is one that Islands Business has been fond of peddling in recent months. This is quite wrong. DWU currently has about 10 degree students (according to The National newspaper) - USP has 57 (plus additional diploma students). Also, our programme is the only one with a Pacific regional mandate - for the 12 USP member nations Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

4. Keith-Reid's claim that I broke a newly renewed contract at the University of Papua New Guinea is wrong. I never took it up after previously serving two contracts at UPNG. During my time there, the UPNG newspaper Uni Tavur, which I supervised, won an Ossie Award for the region's best training publication in 1995. (See Post-Courier, 27-29 March 1998; The National, 30 March 1998).

5. The UPNG journalism programme did not "collapse". It is still going on. But the then UPNG Vice-Chancellor made a decision to close it (along with other faculties) at the beginning of 1999 - a year after I had left Port Moresby. Four months later, the same Vice-Chancellor broke his contract and left the university for overseas in controversial circumstances. Since then the journalism programme has been revived.

Finally, Keith-Reid's comments appear to be a sad case of sour grapes over the innovative successes of the USP programme. For example, our student training newspaper Wansolwara was on line a year before Islands Business.

Sincerely

DAVID ROBIE
Senior Lecturer and Journalism Coordinator
University of the South Pacific
Suva
Fiji Islands

Stan Ritova
Editor
The Fiji Sun
Suva

SAINT PATRICK'S DAY JOKE

You published an article in your paper on 17 March 2000 with the headline "Robie slams IB criticism". As I read what the reporter had written, I began to think that it was part of a St Patrick's Day joke.

Your reporter wrote the article as if it had been an interview with David Robie. Wrong. It was an open letter. Your reporter never interviewed David.

You kept quoting David Robie as if he were the sole author of the response to the Islands Business statement. Wrong. Both David and myself wrote and signed the letter.

As a journalist myself I respect the right of a reporter and the editor of a newspaper to select their own focus on the stories they cover, but I object strongly to the shoddy journalism in your article.

I have no problem in standing up for what I believe. You denied me that right.

If your reporter had quoted my name in the article as a co-author, it would have been possible for Robert Keith-Reid (letter to the Fiji Sun, March 19) to have increased his weekend pleasure by attacking both David and myself with his considerable skills of innuendo and invective journalism.

PATRICK CRADDOCK
Suva
Fiji Islands

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

Islands Business editor Laisa Taga's letter in response to outgoing television lecturer Ingrid Leary's brief reference to achievements of the journalism programme at the University of the South Pacific cannot go unchallenged.

To be frank, Ms Taga doesn't know what she is talking about. While it is true that founding coordinator Francois Turmel should be acknowledged for his fine efforts in establishing the foundation of a journalism programme at USP, to suggest that he should be credited for the rapid achievements of the past two years is ridiculous.

When I arrived at USP in March 1998, the cupboard was bare, so to speak. There wasn't even so much as a single file in the coordinator's filing cabinet, nor a computer for coordinating the programme.

The USP journalism programme is now more than double the size (63 students) of what it was in M Turmel's day: it has also replaced the University of Papua New Guinea as the region's leading journalism education institution, significantly raised standards and has established a strong working relationship with many news media companies in the Pacific.

In specific achievements, it established the first newspaper website in the Fiji Islands and media regional resource in 1998, revamped most of the journalism courses to make them more professional and has developed two professional newspapers.

All this has been achieved through the hard work and enthusiasm of the present staff and students at the regional university - and not on the coat-tails of a foreign government.

If Ms Taga had taken the trouble to actually visit our programme and contribute something constructive like so many leading and generous journalists and media executives in Fiji and the Pacific have done over the past two years, she might get her facts right.

It is about time she gave credit where credit is due.

David Robie
Journalism Coordinator
University of the South Pacific

GIVE PRAISE WHERE IT'S DUE

Recent arrivals often don't know what has gone on before. This seems to be the case with some of the comments coming out of the University of the South Pacific about its journalism programme (Ingrid Leary, Daily Post, 26 November 1999).

Undoubtedly the present lecturers work hard.

But their work is built on the solid foundations laid by the university's founding journalism programme coordinator, Francois Turmel, and the French.

Francois has not even been gone two years.

But already there seems to be some rewriting of history going on down at USP.

Lest they forget: Francois, working by himself, put in tremendous effort to get USP's journalism programme started despite many bureaucratic hurdles.

He was supported by French Government funding and the expertise of one of France's top journalism schools, ESJ.

Francois and the French should not be forgotten when the praise is being handed around.

Laisa Taga
Editor
Islands Business and Fiji Islands Business
Suva